feared an attempt to break through his reserve, some demonstration
arising out of last night's adventure, that might be taken advantage of
by the men to force their society and friendship upon him. He looked at
none of the faces turned curiously in his direction, and his expression
of stubborn enmity killed the cheer that sprang from a few of the
forecastle passengers, and it tailed into a feeble absurdity. Leaning
upon the old wooden gun-carriage, with his arms supporting his chin; he
stared at the cleavage of the green sea and the swelling foam, feeling at
his back all the time the cackle of criticism, like an irritation of the
spinal marrow, chafing fretfully at this further proof of the failure of
his long endeavour to school himself into complete indifference.

Absolute serenity in the teeth of public opinion--good, bad, or
indifferent--that was an ideal frame of mind, to the attainment of which
he had set himself when still a mere boy; but men and women remained
powerful to hurt and to auger him. He had acquired from his long moral
exercise a certain power of restraint up to the point at which his fierce
temper blazed; he reached the stage of ignition without those displays of
sparks and smoke that are usual preliminaries to a 'flare-up.' He had
learned, too, in the course of his schooling, to simulate an imposing
unconcern under commonplace trials and tribulations, when it so pleased
him, and between the satisfaction to be felt in being able successfully
to assume a given virtue and in having actual possession of that virtue
the distinction is too delicate for unregenerate minds.

The young man did not envelop himself in his spare skin of
imperturbability at this crisis, because he felt that some show of active
resentment was necessary to repel effusive admirers and maintain the
barrier he had set up between himself and his fellow-travellers. When Jim
Done set foot on board the Francis Cadman he was flying from an
intolerable life, seeking to escape from despair. This he did not admit
to himself, for he had the indomitable pride of a lonely man who gave to
thought the time that should have been gloriously wasted on boon
companions and young love.

Done was a sensitive man, who had been some thing of a pariah since his
knickerbocker period, and was first the butt and later the bane of the
narrow, convention-governed public of a small English village. A fierce
defiance of the people amongst whom he had lived his l