with a glass from your poop. I scrambled up on it and rested
myself for a bit. Then I made another start. That last spell must
have been over a mile."

His whisper was getting fainter and fainter, and all the time he
stared straight out through the port-hole, in which there was not
even a star to be seen. I had not interrupted him. There was
something that made comment impossible in his narrative, or perhaps
in himself; a sort of feeling, a quality, which I can't find a name
for. And when he ceased, all I found was a futile whisper: "So
you swam for our light?"

"Yes--straight for it. It was something to swim for. I couldn't
see any stars low down because the coast was in the way, and I
couldn't see the land, either. The water was like glass. One
might have been swimming in a confounded thousand-feet deep cistern
with no place for scrambling out anywhere; but what I didn't like
was the notion of swimming round and round like a crazed bullock
before I gave out; and as I didn't mean to go back . . . No. Do
you see me being hauled back, stark naked, off one of these little
islands by the scruff of the neck and fighting like a wild beast?
Somebody would have got killed for certain, and I did not want any
of that. So I went on. Then your ladder--"

"Why didn't you hail the ship?" I asked, a little louder.

He touched my shoulder lightly. Lazy footsteps came right over our
heads and stopped. The second mate had crossed from the other side
of the poop and might have been hanging over the rail, for all we
knew.