"
Some of this looks rough and blunt, but as it was spoken there was that
in it which softened it to my ear. I knew he had told all he thought I
ought to know, and that he wished me to question him no more, nor to
refer to Mrs. Falchion, whose relationship to Boyd Madras--or Charles
Boyd--both of us suspected.
"It was funny about those verses coming to my mind, wasn't it, Marmion?"
he continued. And he began to repeat one of them, keeping time to the
wave-like metre with his cheroot, winding up with a quick, circular
movement, and putting it again between his lips:
"'There's never a ripple upon the tide,
There's never a breath or sound;
But over the waste the white wraiths glide,
To look for the souls of the drowned."'
Then he jumped off the berth where he had been sitting, put on his
jacket, said it was time to take his turn on the bridge, and prepared to
go out, having apparently dismissed Number 116 Intermediate from his
mind.
I went to Charles Boyd's cabin, and knocked gently. There was no
response. I entered. He lay sleeping soundly--the sleep that comes after
nervous exhaustion.
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