Burns?" I said."I imagine the dead feel no animos-ity against the living.They care nothing for them.""You don't know that one," he breathed out feebly.
"No.I didn't know him, and he didn't know me.And so he can't have any grievance against me, anyway.""Yes.But there's all the rest of us on board," he insisted.
I felt the inexpugnable strength of common sense being insidiously menaced by this gruesome, by this insane, delusion.And I said:
"You mustn't talk so much.You will tire yourself.""And there is the ship herself," he persisted in a whisper.
"Now, not a word more," I said, stepping in and laying my hand on his cool forehead.It proved to me that this atrocious absurdity was rooted in the man himself and not in the disease, which, ap-parently, had emptied him of every power, mental and physical, except that one fixed idea.
I avoided giving Mr.Burns any opening for con-versation for the next few days.I merely used to throw him a hasty, cheery word when passing his door.I believe that if he had had the strength he would have called out after me more than once.
But he hadn't the strength.Ransome, however, observed to me one afternoon that the mate "seemed to be picking up wonderfully.""Did he talk any nonsense to you of late?" Iasked casually.
"No, sir." Ransome was startled by the direct question; but, after a pause, he added equably:
1
"Isn't this nonsense enough for you?" I asked, looking confidently at the intelligent, quiet face on which the secret uneasiness in the man's breast had thrown a transparent veil of care.
Ransome didn't know.He had not given a thought to the matter.And with a faint smile he flitted away from me on his never-ending duties, with his usual guarded activity.
Two more days passed.We had advanced a little way--a very little way--into the larger space of the Gulf of Siam.Seizing eagerly upon the elation of the first command thrown into my lap, by the agency of Captain Giles, I had yet an uneasy feeling that such luck as this has got perhaps to be paid for in some way.I had held, professionally, a review of my chances.I was competent enough for that.At least, I thought so.I had a general sense of my preparedness which only a man pur-suing a calling he loves can know.That feeling seemed to me the most natural thing in the world.
As natural as breathing.I imagined I could not have lived without it.
I don't know what I expected.Perhaps nothing else than that special intensity of existence which is the quintessence of youthful aspirations.What-ever I expected I did not expect to be beset by hurricanes.I knew better than that.In the Gulf of Siam there are no hurricanes.But neither did Iexpect to find myself bound hand and foot to the hopeless extent which was revealed to me as the days went on.
Not that the evil spell held us always motionless.
Mysterious currents drifted us here and there, with a stealthy power made manifest only by the chang-ing vistas of the islands fringing the east shore of the Gulf.And there were winds, too, fitful and deceitful.They raised hopes only to dash them into the bitterest disappointment, promises of advance ending in lost ground, expiring in sighs, dying into dumb stillness in which the currents had it all their own way--their own inimical way.
The island of Koh-ring, a great, black, up-heaved ridge amongst a lot of tiny islets, lying upon the glassy water like a triton amongst min-nows, seemed to be the centre of the fatal circle.It seemed impossible to get away from it.Day after day it remained in sight.More than once, in a favourable breeze, I would take its bearings in the fast-ebbing twilight, thinking that it was for the last time.Vain hope.A night of fitful airs would undo the gains of temporary favour, and the rising sun would throw out the black relief of Koh-ringooking.
