the instant of shooting I had thought, had almost spoken it aloud:  “There!  There’s for a channel to let the starlight into your unclean brain.”  Self-defence?  Tish!  The Governor’s son desired, possibly loved in his way, a girl that I had known no longer than I knew him, and there it was—­I loved her, too!  Captain Blaise himself had probably never killed on less provocation; and meditating on his emotional side, on his many provocations, his life-long environment, I had to concede that the Captain Blaise I condemned was a less guilty man than I.

This, as I was beginning to see, was but an argument with myself for a final dismissal of my old life.  Surely I should be ashamed to admit that in such fashion was my brain trying to fool my soul; but so it was.  Remorse?  I should have been worn with remorse, I know; but I was not.  I tried to grieve for my hasty judgment of Captain Blaise:  and I did.  But for the Governor’s son, not a qualm.  I, too, like Captain Blaise, had become the creature of hereditary instincts and overpowering emotion.  Never in all my life before had I thought that any sin or shortcoming of mine was ever to be anybody’s business but my own.  My salvation lay in the future, which, now that my conscience was awakened, I would have only myself to censure if it did not become what I wished.

But these serious thoughts were of previous days.  This morning I was to have some little composition ready for her when she came down.  I turned to my paper and pencil and began to write.  But thoughts, such thoughts as I conceived would please her, came slowly.  My new conscience or it may have been the voices of the quarter-deck,—­her father’s questions, Captain Blaise’s muffled answers, her exclamations of delight and wonder,—­all these diverted me.  In despair I tried to catch, as I usually could, what Captain Blaise was saying, but to-day he spoke in so low a tone that I could not quite.

Ubbo came down for a chart, a particular chart which Captain Blaise has always kept apart from the others.  I pointed out to him where he would find it.  And my eye followed his figure up the cabin steps.  In a sailor’s costume Ubbo was proud but perspiring, though devotion shone out in every drop of perspiration.

[Illustration:  After a long look I saw that he did not resume his narrative.  By that I knew that the stranger was troubling him]

Through the skylight I saw Captain Blaise take the chart from Ubbo, unroll and scan it.  “I was right.  Yes, here’s the spot.”  He was addressing Shiela.  “In red ink, see, and here’s about where we are now—­not ten miles from here, north by east.”

Shiela was bending over the chart when “Sail-ho!” rang out from the lookout in the foretop.  He had a grand voice, that man on watch.

With one hand Captain Blaise held the chart so Shiela still could read it; with the other he reached through the skylight opening for his long glass.  After a long look I saw that he did not resume his narrative.  By that I knew that the stranger was troubling him.