e (he would not even look up but kept his
eyes fixed on the deck) but more as if communing in a low voice with
his familiar devil. Now and then he would give me a glance and make the
hairs of his stiff little moustache stir quaintly. His eyes were green
and every cat I see to this day reminds me of the exact contour of his
face. What he was travelling for or what was his business in life he
never confided to me. Truth to say, the only passenger on board that
schooner who could have talked openly about his activities and purposes
was a very snuffy and conversationally delightful friar, the superior
of a convent, attended by a very young lay brother, of a particularly
ferocious countenance. We had with us also, lying prostrate in the dark
and unspeakable cuddy of that schooner, an old Spanish gentleman, owner
of much luggage and, as Ricardo assured me, very ill indeed. Ricardo
seemed to be either a servant or the confidant of that aged and
distinguished-looking invalid, who early on the passage held a long
murmured conversation with the friar, and after that did nothing but
groan feebly, smoke cigarettes, and now and then call for Martin in a
voice full of pain. Then he who had become Ricardo in the book would go
below into that beastly and noisome hole, remain there mysteriously,
and coming up on deck again with a face on which nothing could be read,
would as likely as not resume for my edification the exposition of his
moral attitude towards life illustrated by striking particular instances
of the most atrocious complexion. Did he mean to frighten me? Or seduce
me? Or astonish me? Or arouse my admiration? All he did was to arouse my
amused incredulity. As scoundrels go he was far from being a bore.
For the rest my innocence was so great then that I could not take his
philosophy seriously. All the time he kept one ear turned to the cuddy
in the manner of a devoted servant, but I had the idea that in some way
or other he had imposed the connection on the invalid for some end of
his own. The reader, therefore, won't be surprised to hear that one
morning I was told without any particular emotion by the padrone of the
schooner that the "rich man" down there was dead: He had died in the
night. I don't remember ever being so moved by the desolate end of a
complete stranger. I looked down the skylight, and there was the devoted
Martin busy cording cowhide trunks belonging to the deceased whose white
beard and hooked nose were the