Contradictory to the hopeful prognosis of Captain Stryker, his unaccredited passenger was not "better" when, after a period of oblivious rest indefinite in duration, he awoke. His subsequent assumption of listless resignation, of pacific acquiescence in the dictates of his destiny, was purely deceptive—thin ice of despair over profound depths of exasperated rebellion.

Blank darkness enveloped him when first he opened eyes to wonder. Then gradually as he stared, piecing together unassorted memories and striving to quicken drowsy wits, he became aware of a glimmer that waxed and waned, a bar of pale bluish light striking across the gloom above his couch; and by dint of puzzling divined that this had access by a port. Turning his head upon a stiff and unyielding pillow, he could discern a streak of saffron light lining the sill of a doorway, near by his side. The one phenomenon taken with the other confirmed a theretofore somewhat hazy impression that his dreams were dignified by a foundation of fact; that, in brief, he was occupying a cabin-bunk aboard the good ship Alethea.

Overhead, on the deck, a heavy thumping of hurrying feet awoke him to keener perceptiveness.

Judging from the incessant rolling and pitching of the brigantine, the crashing thunder of seas upon her sides, the eldrich shrieking of the gale, as well as from the chorused groans and plaints of each individual bolt and timber in the frail fabric that housed his fortunes, the wind had strengthened materially during his hours of forgetfulness—however many the latter might have been.

He believed, however, that he had slept long, deeply and exhaustively. He felt now a little emaciated mentally and somewhat absent-bodied—so he put it to himself. A numb languor, not unpleasant, held him passively supine, the while he gave himself over to speculative thought.

A wild night, certainly; probably, by that time, the little vessel was in the middle of the North Sea ... bound for Antwerp!

"Oh-h," said Kirkwood vindictively, "hell!"

So he was bound for Antwerp! The first color of resentment ebbing from his thoughts left him rather interested than excited by the prospect. He found that he was neither pleased nor displeased. He presumed that it would be no more difficult to raise money on personal belongings in Antwerp than anywhere else; it has been observed that the first flower of civilization is the rum-blossom, the next, the conventionalized fleur-de-lis of the money-lender. There would be pawnshops, then, in Antwerp; and Kirkwood was confident that the sale or pledge of his signet-ring, scarf-pin, match-box and cigar-case, would provide him with money enough for a return to London, by third-class, at the worst. There ... well, all events were on the knees of the gods; he'd squirm out of his troubles, somehow. As for the other matter, the Calendar affair, he presumed he was well rid of it,—with a sigh of regret. It had been a most enticing mystery, you know; and the woman in the case was extraordinary, to say the least.

The memory of Dorothy Calendar made him sigh again, this time more violently: a sigh that was own brother to (or at any rate descended in a direct line from) the furnace sigh of the lover described by, the melancholy Jaques. And he sat up, bumped his head, groped round until his hand fell upon a doorknob, opened the door, and looked out into the blowsy emptiness of the ship's cabin proper, whose gloomy confines were made visible only by the rays of a dingy and smoky lamp swinging violently in gimbals from a deck-beam.

Kirkwood's clothing, now rough-dried and warped wretchedly out of shape, had been thrown carelessly on a transom near the door. He got up, collected them, and returning to his berth, dressed at leisure, thinking heavily, disgruntled—in a humor as evil as the after-taste of bad brandy in his mouth.

When dressed he went out into the cabin, closing the door upon his berth, and for lack of anything better to do, seated himself on the thwartships transom, against the forward bulkhead, behind the table. Above his head a chronometer ticked steadily and loudly, and, being consulted, told him that the time of day was twenty minutes to four; which meant that he had slept away some eighteen or twenty hours. That was a solid spell of a rest, when he came to think of it, even allowing that he had been unusually and pardonably fatigued when conducted to his berth. He felt stronger now, and bright enough—and enormously hungry into the bargain.

Abstractedly, heedless of the fact that his tobacco would be water-soaked and ruined, he fumbled in his pockets for pipe and pouch, thinking to soothe the pangs of hunger against breakfast-time; which was probably two hours and a quarter ahead. But his pockets were empty—every one of them. He assimilated this discovery in patience and cast an eye about the room, to locate, if possible, the missing property. But naught of his was visible. So he rose and began a more painstaking search.

The cabin was at once tiny, low-ceiled, and depressingly gloomy. Its furniture consisted entirely in a chair or two, supplementing the transoms and lockers as resting-places, and a center-table covered with a cloth of turkey-red, whose original aggressiveness had been darkly moderated by libations of liquids, principally black coffee, and burnt offerings of grease and tobacco-ash. Aside from the companion-way to the deck, four doors opened into the room, two probably giving upon the captain's and the mate's quarters, the others on pseudo state-rooms—one of which he had just vacated—closets large enough to contain a small bunk and naught beside. The bulkheads and partitions were badly broken out with a rash of pictures from illustrated papers, mostly offensive. Kirkwood was interested to read a half-column clipping from a New York yellow journal, descriptive of the antics of a drunken British sailor who had somehow found his way to the bar-room of the Fifth Avenue Hotel; the paragraph exploiting the fact that it had required four policemen in addition to the corps of porters to subdue him, was strongly underscored in red ink; and the news-story wound up with the information that in police court the man had given his name as William Stranger and cheerfully had paid a fine of ten dollars, alleging his entertainment to have been cheap at the price.

While Kirkwood was employed in perusing this illuminating anecdote, eight bells sounded, and, from the commotion overhead, the watch changed. A little later the companion-way door slammed open and shut, and Captain Stryker—or Stranger; whichever you please—fell down, rather than descended, the steps.

Without attention to the American he rolled into the mate's room and roused that personage. Kirkwood heard that the name of the second-in-command was 'Obbs, as well as that he occupied the starboard state-room aft. After a brief exchange of comment and instruction, Mr. 'Obbs appeared in the shape of a walking pillar of oil-skins capped by a sou'wester, and went on deck; Stryker, following him out of the state-room, shed his own oilers in a clammy heap upon the floor, opened a locker from which he brought forth a bottle and a dirty glass, and, turning toward the table, for the first time became sensible of Kirkwood's presence.

"Ow, there you are, eigh, little bright-eyes!" he exclaimed with surprised animation.

"Good morning, Captain Stryker," said Kirkwood, rising. "I want to tell you—"

But Stryker waved one great red paw impatiently, with the effect of sweeping aside and casting into the discard Kirkwood's intended speech of thanks; nor would he hear him further.

"Did you 'ave a nice little nap?" he interrupted. "Come up bright and smilin', eigh? Now I guess"—the emphasis made it clear that the captain believed himself to be employing an Americanism; and so successful was he in his own esteem that he could not resist the temptation to improve upon the imitation—"Na-ow I guess yeou're abaout right ready, ben't ye, to hev a drink, sonny?"

"No, thank you," said Kirkwood, smiling tolerantly. "I've got any amount of appetite..."

"'Ave you, now?" Stryker dropped his mimicry and glanced at the clock. "Breakfast," he announced, "will be served in the myne dinin' saloon at eyght a. m. Passingers is requested not to be lyte at tyble."

Depositing the bottle on the said table, the captain searched until he found another glass for Kirkwood, and sat down.

"Do you good," he insinuated, pushing the bottle gently over.

"No, thank you," reiterated Kirkwood shortly, a little annoyed.

Stryker seized his own glass, poured out a strong man's dose of the fiery concoction, gulped it down, and sighed. Then, with a glance at the American's woebegone countenance (Kirkwood was contemplating a four-hour wait for breakfast, and, consequently, looking as if he had lost his last friend), the captain bent over, placing both hands palm down before him and wagging his head earnestly.

"Please," he implored,—"Please don't let me hinterrupt;" and filled his pipe, pretending a pensive detachment from his company.

The fumes of burning shag sharpened the tooth of desire. Kirkwood stood it as long as he could, then surrendered with an: "If you've got any more of that tobacco, Captain, I'd be glad of a pipe."

An intensely contemplative expression crept into the captain's small blue eyes.

"I only got one other pyper of this 'ere 'baccy," he announced at length, "and I carn't get no more till I gets 'ome. I simply couldn't part with it hunder 'arf a quid."

Kirkwood settled back with a hopeless lift of his shoulders. Abstractedly Stryker puffed the smoke his way until he could endure the deprivation no longer.

"I had about ten shillings in my pocket when I came aboard, captain, and ... a few other articles."

"Ow, yes; so you 'ad, now you mention it."

Stryker rose, ambled into his room, and returned with Kirkwood's possessions and a fresh paper of shag. While the young man was hastily filling, lighting, and inhaling the first strangling but delectable whiff, the captain solemnly counted into his own palm all the loose change except three large pennies. The latter he shoved over to Kirkwood in company with a miscellaneous assortment of articles, which the American picked up piece by piece and began to bestow about his clothing. When through, he sat back, troubled and disgusted. Stryker met his regard blandly.

"Anything I can do?" he inquired, in suave concern.

"Why ... there was a black pearl scarfpin—"

"W'y, don't you remember? You gave that to me, 'count of me 'avin syved yer life. 'Twas me throwed you that line, you know."

"Oh," commented Kirkwood briefly. The pin had been among the most valuable and cherished of his belongings.

"Yes," nodded the captain in reminiscence. "You don't remember? Likely 'twas the brandy singing in yer 'ead. You pushes it into my 'ands,—almost weepin', you was,—and sez, sez you, 'Stryker,' you sez, 'tyke this in triflin' toking of my gratichood; I wouldn't hinsult you,' you sez, 'by hofferin' you money, but this I can insist on yer acceptin', and no refusal,' says you."

"Oh," repeated Kirkwood.

"If I for a ninstant thought you wasn't sober when you done it.... But no; you're a gent if there ever was one, and I'm not the man to offend you."

"Oh, indeed."

The captain let the implication pass, perhaps on the consideration that he could afford to ignore it; and said no more. The pause held for several minutes, Kirkwood having fallen into a mood of grave distraction. Finally Captain Stryker thoughtfully measured out a second drink, limited only by the capacity of the tumbler, engulfed it noisily, and got up.

"Guess I'll be turnin' in," he volunteered affably, yawning and stretching.

"I was about to ask you to do me a service...." began Kirkwood.

"Yes?"—with the rising inflection of mockery.

Kirkwood quietly produced his cigar-case, a gold match-box, gold card-case, and slipped a signet ring from his finger. "Will you buy these?" he asked. "Or will you lend me five pounds and hold them as security?"

Stryker examined the collection with exaggerated interest strongly tinctured with mistrust. "I'll buy 'em," he offered eventually, looking up.

"That's kind of you—"

"Ow, they ain't much use to me, but Bill Stryker's allus willin' to accommodate a friend.... Four quid, you said?"

"Five...."

"They ain't wuth over four to me."

"Very well; make it four," Kirkwood assented contemptuously.

The captain swept the articles into one capacious fist, pivoted on one heel at the peril of his neck, and lumbered unsteadily off to his room. Pausing at the door he turned back in inquiry.

"I sye, 'ow did you come to get the impression there was a party named Almanack aboard this wessel?"

"Calendar—"

"'Ave it yer own wye," Stryker conceded gracefully.

"There isn't, is there?"

"You 'eard me."

"Then," said Kirkwood sweetly, "I'm sure you wouldn't be interested."

The captain pondered this at leisure. "You seemed pretty keen abaht seein' 'im," he remarked conclusively.

"I was."

"Seems to me I did 'ear the nyme sumw'eres afore." The captain appeared to wrestle with an obdurate memory. "Ow!" he triumphed. "I know. 'E was a chap up Manchester wye. Keeper in a loonatic asylum, 'e was. 'That yer party?"

"No," said Kirkwood wearily.

"I didn't know but mebbe 'twas. Excuse me. 'Thought as 'ow mebbe you'd escyped from 'is tender care, but, findin' the world cold, chynged yer mind and wanted to gow back."

Without waiting for a reply he lurched into his room and banged the door to. Kirkwood, divided between amusement and irritation, heard him stumbling about for some time; and then a hush fell, grateful enough while it lasted; which was not long. For no sooner did the captain sleep than a penetrating snore added itself unto the cacophony of waves and wind and tortured ship.

Kirkwood, comforted at first by the blessed tobacco, lapsed insensibly into dreary meditations. Coming after the swift movement and sustained excitement of the eighteen hours preceding his long sleep, the monotony of shipboard confinement seemed irksome to a maddening degree. There was absolutely nothing he could discover to occupy his mind. If there were books aboard, none was in evidence; beyond the report of Mr. Stranger's Manhattan night's entertainment the walls were devoid of reading matter; and a round of the picture gallery proved a diversion weariful enough when not purely revolting.

Wherefore Mr. Kirkwood stretched himself out on the transom and smoked and reviewed his adventures in detail and seriatim, and was by turns indignant, sore, anxious on his own account as well as on Dorothy's, and out of all patience with himself. Mystified he remained throughout, and the edge of his curiosity held as keen as ever, you may believe.

Consistently the affair presented itself to his fancy in the guise of a puzzle-picture, which, though you study it never so diligently, remains incomprehensible, until by chance you view it from an unexpected angle, when it reveals itself intelligibly. It had not yet been his good fortune to see it from the right viewpoint. To hold the metaphor, he walked endless circles round it, patiently seeking, but ever failing to find the proper perspective.... Each incident, however insignificant, in connection with it, he handled over and over, examining its every facet, bright or dull, as an expert might inspect a clever imitation of a diamond; and like a perfect imitation it defied analysis.

Of one or two things he was convinced; for one, that Stryker was a liar worthy of classification with Calendar and Mrs. Hallam. Kirkwood had not only the testimony of his sense to assure him that the ship's name, Alethea (not a common one, by the bye), had been mentioned by both Calendar and Mulready during their altercation on Bermondsey Old Stairs, but he had the confirmatory testimony of the sleepy waterman, William, who had directed Old Bob and Young William to the anchorage off Bow Creek. That there should have been two vessels of the same unusual name at one and the same time in the Port of London, was a coincidence too preposterous altogether to find place in his calculations.

His second impregnable conclusion was that those whom he sought had boarded the Alethea, but had left her before she tripped her anchor. That they were not stowed away aboard her seemed unquestionable. The brigantine was hardly large enough for the presence of three persons aboard her to be long kept a secret from an inquisitive fourth,—unless, indeed, they lay in hiding in the hold; for which, once the ship got under way, there could be scant excuse. And Kirkwood did not believe himself a person of sufficient importance in Calendar's eyes, to make that worthy endure the discomforts of a'tween-decks imprisonment throughout the voyage, even to escape recognition.

With every second, then, he was traveling farther from her to whose aid he had rushed, impelled by motives so hot-headed, so innately, chivalric, so unthinkingly gallant, so exceptionally idiotic!

Idiot! Kirkwood groaned with despair of his inability to fathom the abyss of his self-contempt. There seemed to be positively no excuse for him. Stryker had befriended him indeed, had he permitted him to drown. Yet he had acted for the best, as he saw it. The fault lay in himself: an admirable fault, that of harboring and nurturing generous and compassionate instincts. But, of course, Kirkwood couldn't see it that way.

"What else could I do?" he defended himself against the indictment of common sense. "I couldn't leave her to the mercies of that set of rogues!... And Heaven knows I was given every reason to believe she would be aboard this ship! Why, she herself told me that she was sailing ...!"

Heaven knew, too, that this folly of his had cost him a pretty penny, first and last. His watch was gone beyond recovery, his homeward passage forfeited; he no longer harbored illusions as to the steamship company presenting him with another berth in lieu of that called for by that water-soaked slip of paper then in his pocket—courtesy of Stryker. He had sold for a pittance, a tithe of its value, his personal jewelry, and had spent every penny he could call his own. With the money Stryker was to give him he would be able to get back to London and his third-rate hostelry, but not with enough over to pay that one week's room-rent, or ...

"Oh, the devil!" he groaned, head in hands.

The future loomed wrapped in unspeakable darkness, lightened by no least ray of hope. It had been bad enough to lose a comfortable living through a gigantic convulsion of Nature; but to think that he had lost all else through his own egregious folly, to find himself reduced to the kennels—!

So Care found him again in those weary hours,—came and sat by his side, slipping a grisly hand in his and tightening its grip until he could have cried out with the torment of it; the while whispering insidiously subtile, evil things in his ear. And he had not even Hope to comfort him; at any previous stage he had been able to distil a sort of bitter-sweet satisfaction from the thought that he was suffering for the love of his life. But now—now Dorothy was lost, gone like the glamour of Romance in the searching light of day.

Stryker, emerging from his room for breakfast, found the passenger with a hostile look in his eye and a jaw set in ugly fashion. His eyes, too, were the abiding-place of smoldering devils; and the captain, recognizing them, considerately forbore to stir them up with any untimely pleasantries. To be sure, he was autocrat in his own ship, and Kirkwood's standing aboard was nil; but then there was just enough yellow in the complexion of Stryker's soul to incline him to sidestep trouble whenever feasible. And besides, he entertained dark suspicio............