e afternoon (I had straw slippers
on my bare feet) I stopped at the open pantry door and spoke to the
steward. He was doing something there with his back to me. At the sound
of my voice he nearly jumped out of his skin, as the saying is, and
incidentally broke a cup.

"What on earth's the matter with you?" I asked, astonished.

He was extremely confused. "Beg your pardon, sir. I made sure you were
in your cabin."

"You see I wasn't."

"No, sir. I could have sworn I had heard you moving in there not a
moment ago. It's most extraordinary... very sorry, sir."

I passed on with an inward shudder. I was so identified with my secret
double that I did not even mention the fact in those scanty, fearful
whispers we exchanged. I suppose he had made some slight noise of some
kind or other. It would have been miraculous if he hadn't at one time
or another. And yet, haggard as he appeared, he looked always perfectly
self-controlled, more than calm--almost invulnerable. On my suggestion
he remained almost entirely in the bathroom, which, upon the whole,
was the safest place. There could be really no shadow of an excuse for
anyone ever wanting to go in there, once the steward had done with it.
It was a very tiny place. Sometimes he reclined on the floor, his legs
bent, his head sustained on one elbow. At others I would find him on the
campstool, sitting in his gray sleeping suit and with his cropped dark
hair like a patient, unmoved convict. At night I would smuggle him into
my bed place, and we would whisper together, with the regular footfalls
of the officer of the watch passing and repassing over our heads. It
was an infinitely miserable time. It was lucky that some tins of fine
preserves were stowed in a locker in my stateroom; hard bread I could
always get hold of; and so he lived on stewed chicken, _Pate de Foie
Gras_, asparagus, cooked oysters, sardines--on all sorts of abominable
sham delicacies out of tins. My early-morning coffee he always drank;
and it was all I dared do for him in that respect.

Every day there was the horrible maneuvering to go through so that my
room and then the bathroom should be done in the usual way. I came to
hate the sight of the steward, to abhor the voice of that harmless man.
I felt that it was he who would bring on the disaster of discovery. It
hung like a sword over our heads.

The fourth day out, I think (we were then working down the east side of
the Gulf of Siam, tack for tack, in l