-but at this distance of years
I hardly am sure), his ship's name, and a few other particulars of
that sort, in the manner of a criminal making a reluctant and
doleful confession. He had had terrible weather on the passage
out--terrible--terrible--wife aboard, too.

By this time we were seated in the cabin and the steward brought in a
tray with a bottle and glasses. "Thanks! No." Never took liquor. Would
have some water, though. He drank two tumblerfuls. Terrible thirsty
work. Ever since daylight had been exploring the islands round his ship.

"What was that for--fun?" I asked, with an appearance of polite
interest.

"No!" He sighed. "Painful duty."

As he persisted in his mumbling and I wanted my double to hear every
word, I hit upon the notion of informing him that I regretted to say I
was hard of hearing.

"Such a young man, too!" he nodded, keeping his smeary blue,
unintelligent eyes fastened upon me. "What was the cause of it--some
disease?" he inquired, without the least sympathy and as if he thought
that, if so, I'd got no more than I deserved.

"Yes; disease," I admitted in a cheerful tone which seemed to shock him.
But my point was gained, because he had to raise his voice to give me
his tale. It is not worth while to record his version. It was just over
two months since all this had happened, and he had thought so much
about it that he seemed completely muddled as to its bearings, but still
immensely impressed.

"What would you think of such a thing happening on board your own
ship? I've had the Sephora for these fifteen years. I am a well-known
shipmaster."

He was densely distressed--and perhaps I should have sympathized with
him if I had been able to detach my mental vision from the unsuspected
sharer of my cabin as though he were my second self. There he was on the
other side of the bulkhead, four or five feet from us, no more, as we
sat in the saloon. I looked politely at Captain Archbold (if that was
his name), but it was the other I saw, in a gray sleeping suit, seated
on a low stool, his bare feet close together, his arms folded, and every
word said between us falling into the ears of his dark head bowed on his
chest.

"I have been at sea now, man and boy, for seven-and-thirty years, and
I've never heard of such a thing happening in an English ship. And that
it should be my ship. Wife on board, too."

I was hardly listening to him.

"Don't you think," I said, "that the heavy sea which, y