might just as well prefer a small favour . . . seeing that I would
not inconvenience you, sir . . . I . . . I . . . "

I waited for him to proceed, and in the pause that ensued, while he
licked his dry lips with his tongue, the thing ambushed in his skull
peered at me through his eyes and seemed almost on the verge of
leaping out and pouncing upon me.

"Well, sir," he began again, this time more coherently, "it's just a
little thing--foolish on my part, of course--a whim, so to say--but
you will remember, near the beginning of the voyage, I showed you a
scar on my head . . . a really small affair, sir, which I contracted
in a misadventure. It amounts to a deformity, which it is my fancy
to conceal. Not for worlds, sir, would I care to have Miss West, for
instance, know that I carried such a deformity. A man is a man, sir-
-you understand--and you have not spoken of it to her?"

"No," I replied. "It just happens that I have not."

"Nor to anybody else?--to, say, Captain West?--or, say, Mr. Pike?"

"No, I haven't mentioned it to anybody," I averred.

He could not conceal the relief he experienced. The perturbation
went out of his face and manner, and the ambushed thing drew back
deeper into the recess of his skull.

"The favour, sir, Mr. Pathurst, that I would prefer is that you will
not mention that little matter to anybody. I suppose" (he smiled,
and his voice was superlatively suave) "it is vanity on my part--you