For a minute or so he stood tranquilly watching our confusion, while the smile grew more and more devilishly bland.  Not a word was spoken.  What my comrade did I know not, but, for myself, I could not take my eyes from that fiendish face.

At last he spoke:  in a sweet and silvery voice, that in company with such eyes was an awful and fantastic lie, he spoke—­

“Well, this is pleasant indeed.  To run across an old comrade in flesh and blood when you thought him five fathom deep in the salt water is one of the pleasantest things in life, isn’t it, lad?  To put on sackcloth and ashes, to go about refusing to be comforted, to find no joy in living because an old shipmate is dead and drowned, and then suddenly to come upon him doing the very same for you—­why, there’s nothing that compares with it for real, hearty pleasure; is there, John?  You seem a bit dazed, John:  it’s too good to be true, you think?  Well, it shows your good heart; shows what I call real feeling.  But you always were a true friend, always the one to depend upon, eh, John?  Why don’t you speak, John, and say how glad you are to see your old friend back, alive and hearty?”

John’s lips were trembling, and something seemed working in his throat, but no sound came.

“Ah, John, you were always the one for feeling a thing, and now the joy is too much for you.  Considerate, too, it was of you, and really kind—­but that’s you, John, all over—­to wear an old shipmate’s cap in affectionate memory.  No, John, don’t deprive yourself of it.”

The wretched man felt with quivering fingers for the cap, took it off and laid it on the rock beside me, but never spoke.

“And who is the boy, John?  But, there, you were always one to make friends.  Everybody loves you; they can’t help themselves.  Lucy loved you when she wouldn’t look at me, would she?  You were always so gentle and quiet, John, except perhaps when the drink was in you:  and even then you didn’t mean any harm; it was only your play, wasn’t it, John?”

John’s face was a shade whiter, and again something worked in his throat, but still he uttered no word.

“Well, anyhow, John, it’s a real treat to see you—­and looking so well, too.  To think that we two, of all men, should have been on the jib-boom when she struck!  By the way, John, wasn’t there another with us?  Now I come to think of it, there must have been another.  What became of him?  Did he jump too, John?”

John found speech at last.  “No; I don’t think he jumped.”  The words came hoarsely and with difficulty.  I looked at him; cold and shivering as he was, the sweat was streaming down his face.

“No?  I wonder why.”

No answer.

“You’re quite sure about it, John?  Because, you know, it would be a thousand pities if he were thrown up on this desolate shore without seeing the faces of his old friends.  So I hope you are quite sure, John; think again.”