t they
ought not to have altered the man as I felt that he was altered.
. . . Yes, cheapened and coarsened, in some indefinable way.
His hair had thinned and showed a bald patch: not a large patch:
still, there it was. His shape had been rather noticeably slim.
I won't say that it had grown pursy, but it had run to seed somehow.
Least of all I liked the change in his eyes, which bulged somewhat,
showing an unhealthy white glitter. I set down this glitter as due
to long weeks at sea: but the explanation couldn't quite satisfy me.
When a lost friend returns as it were from the grave--from shipwreck,
at any rate, and uncharted travel--you look to find him gaunt, brown,
leathery, hollow of cheek and eye, eh? Foe's appearance didn't
answer to this conception . . . not one little bit.

"Then you didn't sail in the _Eurotas_, after all?" said I, finding
speech. "We saw your name on the list."

"Oh, yes, I did," he interrupted. "And, by the way, we shall have to
talk about her--or, rather, about what I ought to do. . . . Yes, I
know what you'll be advising. 'Go straight to Lloyd's,' no doubt."

"Man alive," said I, "why not? If you were aboard of her--and if, as
you tell me, you fetched somehow to Sydney--why in God's name hasn't
Lloyd's heard of it months ago? There are such things as cables.
. . . Unless, to be sure, you have a reason?"

"I have and I haven't," said Jack. "My turning-up doesn't hurt
anyone, does it? The _Eurotas_ went down, sure enough: and _I_
didn't scuttle her, if that's what you suspect."

"Please don't be an ass, Jack," I pleaded.

"Well, I don't see," he continued, ruminating, "--I don't see any way
but to go to Lloyd's and tell them about it. Yet equally I don't see
what good it can do. The underwriters have paid up, eh?"

"More than three years ago," I told him.

"Well, then . . . I was perfectly well prepared to answer any
questions at Valparaiso. I landed in my own name. I went back to
the same hotel. And 'Foe' is not the most common of names,
especially when you write 'Doctor' before it. . . . No, I'm wrong.
Farrell had entered our names on the register, and had entered mine
as 'Professor.' On my return I wrote it 'John Foe, M.D.' But anyway,
not a soul in the hotel recognised me. . . . I think my looks must
have altered, somehow. . . . So I let it go. I dare say you won't
understand, not knowing the kind of experiences I've been through,
nor the number of 'em. But you