ognized the same thing in the three
gangsters for'ard. Like the second mate, they are prison birds. The
restraint, the secrecy, and iron control of prison life has developed in
all of them terrible other selves.

Yes, and another thing is very evident. On board this ship, driving now
through the South Atlantic for the winter passage of Cape Horn, are all
the elements of sea tragedy and horror. We are freighted with human
dynamite that is liable at any moment to blow our tiny floating world to
fragments.

CHAPTER XXV

The days slip by. The south-east trade is brisk and small splashes of
sea occasionally invade my open ports. Mr. Pike's room was soaked
yesterday. This is the most exciting thing that has happened for some
time. The gangsters rule in the forecastle. Larry and Shorty have had a
harmless _fight_. The hooks continue to burn in Mulligan Jacobs's brain.
Charles Davis resides alone in his little steel room, coming out only to
get his food from the galley. Miss West plays and sings, doctors Possum,
launders, and is for ever otherwise busy with her fancy work. Mr. Pike
runs the phonograph every other evening in the second dog-watch. Mr.
Mellaire hides the cleft in his head. I keep his secret. And Captain
West, more remote than ever, sits in the draught of wind in the twilight
cabin.

We are now thirty-seven days at sea, in which time, until to-day, we have
not sighted a vessel. And to-day, at one time, no less than six vessels
were visible from the deck. Not until I saw these ships was I able
thoroughly to realize how lonely this ocean is.

Mr. Pike tells me we are several hundred miles off the South American
coast. And yet, only the other day, it seems, we were scarcely more
distant from Africa. A big velvety moth fluttered aboard this morning,
and we are filled with conjecture. How possibly could it have come from
the South American coast these hundreds of miles in the teeth of the
trades?

The Southern Cross has been visible, of course, for weeks; the North Star
has disappeared behind the bulge of the earth; and the Great Bear, at its
highest, is very low. Soon it, too, will be gone and we shall be raising
the Magellan Clouds.

I remember the fight between Larry and Shorty. Wada reports that Mr.
Pike watched it for some time, until, becoming incensed at their
awkwardness, he clouted both of them with his open hands and made them
stop, announcing that until they could make a