said, smiling to himself
as if in fun.

I moved myself so as to get a look at his face. There seemed a horror in
the eyes, and a stopping of all hope, that made me uncomfortable.

Waiting for a little time, I said again:

"If we come home----"

He did not answer. I was angry with him, and stood one foot
uncomfortably over the other for a little while, and then went back to
the men.

"He will answer only 'Yes,'" I said angrily. The men grunted, and I sat
down, angry, yet not quite understanding, leaving him still smiling.

All day I sat, angry, and when evening came and we had eaten, grumbling,
and cursing--all save my lord, who had eaten nothing--I got up and
clambered again on to the hind-deck.

When I came to him I stood, all the words having left me. I seized my
courage hard and spoke.

"When we get back, if we ever do, the men will leave you."

I waited; he gave no answer. I started to speak again, but no words
would come. I tried again. Then, with a sudden movement I leaned round
on the bulwark and saw his face. For a moment yet I stood impatient;
then with a cry of rage and pity I seized his hand and held it a moment,
then dropped it and rushed back among the men, and hid my face in a dark
corner, and sat there cursing weakly in a childish feeling of
impotency--oh, the shame; and the great woe he carried in his smiling
face!

Toward evening the wind fell, and as the sun went down the water shone
smooth, and the light blazed in our faces. The cool of the dusk was a
relief, and long after the great red moon had risen, we lay, restlessly,
surely a strange ship-load, lost on the limitless seas.

When morning came we pushed out our oars and toiled regularly,
creakingly, over the level water. The sun blistered the wood of the
bulwarks and burned our faces, and we longed for evening. So for twelve
days; till the yard was crooked, and our faces the colour of tanned
skin. The men used to groan at the oars. On the twelfth day, midway
between sunset and dark, came a little breeze over the water, that made
the men shout. And for two days we went unsteadily eastward and
northward with the little puffs of wind.

All this time we saw no land and no streak of foam upon the sea, that
was the colour of wood-ashes; only brown seaweed drifting northwards.
My lord had become very brown, and had a way of always turning toward
the light, looking east when the sun rose and west when it set.

Now, for some days we went n