NEXT morning Done lingered below till the day was well advanced, but the
darkness and the heavy atmosphere 'tween decks drove him into the open.
It was a fair day, a big placid sun was shining, and the breeze followed
them with a crisp suggestion of glittering ice-fields far down in the
south. The sailors and passengers were grouped in small parties of six or
seven, lounging about the deck in lazy abandonment, leaning over the
side, smoking comfortably, and spitting with a certain dreamy
satisfaction into the sweet, clean sea, or sitting in rings on improvised
seats, alert, and loud in argument.

Jim's youthful face was even more than usually forbidding that morning as
he stepped amongst the men to his favourite position on one of the guns.
He feared an attempt to break through his reserve, some demonstration
arising out of last night's adventure, that might be taken advantage of
by the men to force their society and friendship upon him. He looked at
none of the faces turned curiously in his direction, and his expression
of stubborn enmity killed the cheer that sprang from a few of the
forecastle passengers, and it tailed into a feeble absurdity. Leaning
upon the old wooden gun-carriage, with his arms supporting his chin; he
stared at the cleavage of the green sea and the swelling foam, feeling at
his back all the time the cackle of criticism, like an irritation of the
spinal marrow, chafing fretfully at this further proof of the failure of
his long endeavour to school himself into complete indifference.

Absolute serenity in the teeth of public opinion--good, bad, or
indifferent--that was an ideal frame of mind, to the attainment of which
he had set himself when still a mere boy; but men and women remained
powerful to hurt and to auger him. He had acquired from his long moral
exercise a certain power of restraint up to the point at which his fierce