if I had shouted in a mountain gorge. And then I watched
the land intently. In that smooth water and light wind it was impossible
to feel the ship coming-to. No! I could not feel her. And my second self
was making now ready to ship out and lower himself overboard. Perhaps he
was gone already...?

The great black mass brooding over our very mastheads began to pivot
away from the ship's side silently. And now I forgot the secret stranger
ready to depart, and remembered only that I was a total stranger to the
ship. I did not know her. Would she do it? How was she to be handled?

I swung the mainyard and waited helplessly. She was perhaps stopped, and
her very fate hung in the balance, with the black mass of Koh-ring like
the gate of the everlasting night towering over her taffrail. What would
she do now? Had she way on her yet? I stepped to the side swiftly, and
on the shadowy water I could see nothing except a faint phosphorescent
flash revealing the glassy smoothness of the sleeping surface. It was
impossible to tell--and I had not learned yet the feel of my ship. Was
she moving? What I needed was something easily seen, a piece of paper,
which I could throw overboard and watch. I had nothing on me. To run
down for it I didn't dare. There was no time. All at once my strained,
yearning stare distinguished a white object floating within a yard of
the ship's side. White on the black water. A phosphorescent flash passed
under it. What was that thing?... I recognized my own floppy hat. It
must have fallen off his head... and he didn't bother. Now I had what
I wanted--the saving mark for my eyes. But I hardly thought of my other
self, now gone from the ship, to be hidden forever from all friendly
faces, to be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, with no brand of
the curse on his sane forehead to stay a slaying hand... too proud to
explain.

And I watched the hat--the expression of my sudden pity for his mere
flesh. It had been meant to save his homeless head from the dangers of
the sun. And now--behold--it was saving the ship, by serving me for a
mark to help out the ignorance of my strangeness. Ha! It was drifting
forward, warning me just in time that the ship had gathered sternaway.

"Shift the helm," I said in a low voice to the seaman standing still
like a statue.

The man's eyes glistened wildly in the binnacle light as he jumped round
to the other side and spun round the wheel.

I walked to the break of the poop.