particular shape. Entering my room, lighted strongly by a big
bulkhead lamp swung on gimbals above my writing-desk, I did not see
him anywhere till he stepped out quietly from behind the coats hung
in the recessed part.

"I heard somebody moving about, and went in there at once," he
whispered.

I, too, spoke under my breath.

"Nobody is likely to come in here without knocking and getting
permission."

He nodded. His face was thin and the sunburn faded, as though he
had been ill. And no wonder. He had been, I heard presently, kept
under arrest in his cabin for nearly seven weeks. But there was
nothing sickly in his eyes or in his expression. He was not a bit
like me, really; yet, as we stood leaning over my bed-place,
whispering side by side, with our dark heads together and our backs
to the door, anybody bold enough to open it stealthily would have
been treated to the uncanny sight of a double captain busy talking
in whispers with his other self.

"But all this doesn't tell me how you came to hang on to our side-
ladder," I inquired, in the hardly audible murmurs we used, after
he had told me something more of the proceedings on board the
Sephora once the bad weather was over.

"When we sighted Java Head I had had time to think all those
matters out several times over. I had six weeks of doing nothing