idnight, and as I
went to bed I dismissed all forebodings and speculated as to how many
more voyages he could last after this sudden onslaught of old age.

I fell asleep quickly, and awoke at midnight, my lamp still burning,
Conrad's _Mirror of the Sea_ on my breast where it had dropped from my
hands. I heard the watches change, and was wide awake and reading when
Mr. Pike came below by the booby-hatch and passed down my hail by my open
door, on his way to his room.

In the pause I had long since learned so well I knew he was rolling a
cigarette. Then I heard him cough, as he always did, when the cigarette
was lighted and the first inhalation of smoke flushed his lungs.

At twelve-fifteen, in the midst of Conrad's delightful chapter, "The
Weight of the Burden," I heard Mr. Pike come along the hall.

Stealing a glance over the top of my book, I saw him go by, sea-booted,
oilskinned, sou'westered. It was his watch below, and his sleep was
meagre in this perpetual bad weather, yet he was going on deck.

I read and waited for an hour, but he did not return; and I knew that
somewhere up above he was staring into the driving dark. I dressed
fully, in all my heavy storm-gear, from sea-boots and sou'-wester to
sheepskin under my oilskin coat. At the foot of the stairs I noted along
the hall that Margaret's light was burning. I peeped in--she keeps her
door open for ventilation--and found her reading.

"Merely not sleepy," she assured me.

Nor in the heart of me do I believe she had any apprehension. She does
not know even now, I am confident, the Samurai's blunder--if blunder it
was. As she said, she was merely not sleepy, although there is no
telling in what occult ways she may have received though not recognized
Mr. Pike's anxiety.

At the head of the stairs, passing along the tiny hall to go out the lee
door of the chart-house, I glanced into the chart-room. On the couch,
lying on his back, his head uncomfortably high, I thought, slept Captain
West. The room was warm from the ascending heat of the cabin, so that he
lay unblanketed, fully dressed save for oilskins and boots. He breathed
easily and steadily, and the lean, ascetic lines of his face seemed
softened by the light of the low-turned lamp. And that one glance
restored to me all my surety and faith in his wisdom, so that I laughed
at myself for having left my warm bed for a freezing trip on deck.

Under the weather cloth at the break of the poop I