ps, you say. Well, have you ever seen a shipmaster
walking his own deck as if he did not know what he had underfoot? Have
you? Dam'me if I don't think that he forgets where he is. Of course he
can be no other than a prime seaman; but it's lucky, all the same, he has
me on board. I know by this time what he wants done without being told.
Do you know that I have had no order given me since we left port? Do you
know that he has never once opened his lips to me unless I spoke to him
first? I? His chief officer; his shipmate for full six years, with whom
he had no cross word--not once in all that time. Aye. Not a cross look
even. True that when I do make him speak to me, there is his dear old
self, the quick eye, the kind voice. Could hardly be other to his old
Franklin. But what's the good? Eyes, voice, everything's miles away.
And for all that I take good care never to address him when the poop
isn't clear. Yes! Only we two and nothing but the sea with us. You
think it would be all right; the only chief mate he ever had--Mr.
Franklin here and Mr. Franklin there--when anything went wrong the first
word you would hear about the decks was 'Franklin!'--I am thirteen years
older than he is--you would think it would be all right, wouldn't you?
Only we two on this poop on which we saw each other first--he a young
master--told me that he thought I would suit him very well--we two, and
thirty-one days out at sea, and it's no good! It's like talking to a man
standing on shore. I can't get him back. I can't get at him. I feel
sometimes as if I must shake him by the arm: "Wake up! Wake up! You are
wanted, sir . . . !"

Young Powell recognized the expression of a true sentiment, a thing so
rare in this world where there are so many mutes and so many excellent
reasons even at sea for an articulate man not to give himself away, that
he felt something like respect for this outburst. It was not loud. The
grotesque squat shape, with the knob of the head as if rammed down
between the square shoulders by a blow from a club, moved vaguely in a
circumscribed space limited by the two harness-casks lashed to the front
rail of the poop, without gestures, hands in the pockets of the jacket,
elbows pressed closely to its side; and the voice without resonance,
passed from anger to dismay and back again without a single louder word
in the hurried delivery, interrupted only by slight gasps for air as if
the speaker were being ch