not a man to kick up a row with you
and be done with it, but to say nasty things in a whining voice; a man
capable of making one's life a perfect misery if he took a dislike to an
officer.

That very evening I went to see Bunter on board, and sympathized with
him on his prospects for the voyage. He was subdued. I suppose a man
with a secret locked up in his breast loses his buoyancy. And there was
another reason why I could not expect Bunter to show a great
elasticity of spirits. For one thing he had been very seedy lately, and
besides--but of that later.

Captain Johns had been on board that afternoon and had loitered and
dodged about his chief mate in a manner which had annoyed Bunter
exceedingly.

"What could he mean?" he asked with calm exasperation. "One would think
he suspected I had stolen something and tried to see in what pocket I
had stowed it away; or that somebody told him I had a tail and he wanted
to find out how I managed to conceal it. I don't like to be approached
from behind several times in one afternoon in that creepy way and then
to be looked up at suddenly in front from under my elbow. Is it a new
sort of peep-bo game? It doesn't amuse me. I am no longer a baby."

I assured him that if anyone were to tell Captain Johns that
he--Bunter--had a tail, Johns would manage to get himself to believe
the story in some mysterious manner. He would. He was suspicious and
credulous to an inconceivable degree. He would believe any silly tale,
suspect any man of anything, and crawl about with it and ruminate the
stuff, and turn it over and over in his mind in the most miserable,
inwardly whining perplexity. He would take the meanest possible view in
the end, and discover the meanest possible course of action by a sort of
natural genius for that sort of thing.

Bunter also told me that the mean creature had crept all over the ship
on his little, bandy legs, taking him along to grumble and whine
to about a lot of trifles. Crept about the decks like a wretched
insect--like a cockroach, only not so lively.

Thus did the self-possessed Bunter express himself with great disgust.
Then, going on with his usual stately deliberation, made sinister by the
frown of his jet-black eyebrows:

"And the fellow is mad, too. He tried to be sociable for a bit, and
could find nothing else but to make big eyes at me, and ask me if I
believed 'in communication beyond the grave.' Communication beyond--I
didn't know what he mea