turned below, I sat down on one end of a deep, semi-circular,
or, rather, semi-oval settee, upholstered in red plush. It extended
right across the whole after-end of the cabin. Mr. Burns motioned to sit
down, dropped into one of the swivel-chairs round the table, and kept
his eyes on me as persistently as ever, and with that strange air as if
all this were make-believe and he expected me to get up, burst into a
laugh, slap him on the back, and vanish from the cabin.

There was an odd stress in the situation which began to make me
uncomfortable. I tried to react against this vague feeling.

"It's only my inexperience," I thought.

In the face of that man, several years, I judged, older than myself, I
became aware of what I had left already behind me--my youth. And that
was indeed poor comfort. Youth is a fine thing, a mighty power--as
long as one does not think of it. I felt I was becoming self-conscious.
Almost against my will I assumed a moody gravity. I said: "I see you
have kept her in very good order, Mr. Burns."

Directly I had uttered these words I asked myself angrily why the deuce
did I want to say that? Mr. Burns in answer had only blinked at me. What
on earth did he mean?

I fell back on a question which had been in my thoughts for a long
time--the most natural question on the lips of any seaman whatever
joining a ship. I voiced it (confound this self-consciousness) in a
degaged cheerful tone: "I suppose she can travel--what?"

Now a question like this might have been answered normally, either in
accents of apologetic sorrow or with a visibly suppressed pride, in a
"I don't want to boast, but you shall see," sort of tone. There are
sailors, too, who would have been roughly outspoken: "Lazy brute," or
openly delighted: "She's a flyer." Two ways, if four manners.

But Mr. Burns found another way, a way of his own which had, at all
events, the merit of saving his breath, if no other.

Again he did not say anything. He only frowned. And it was an angry
frown. I waited. Nothing more came.

"What's the matter? . . . Can't you tell after being nearly two years in
the ship?" I addressed him sharply.

He looked as startled for a moment as though he had discovered my
presence only that very moment. But this passed off almost at once. He
put on an air of indifference. But I suppose he thought it better to say
something. He said that a ship needed, just like a man, the chance to
show the best she could do, and