shipmates, I could not have been happier if I had had the life and the
men made to my order by a benevolent Enchanter.

And suddenly I left all this. I left it in that, to us, inconsequential
manner in which a bird flies away from a comfortable branch. It was
as though all unknowing I had heard a whisper or seen something.
Well--perhaps! One day I was perfectly right and the next everything was
gone--glamour, flavour, interest, contentment--everything. It was one
of these moments, you know. The green sickness of late youth descended
on me and carried me off. Carried me off that ship, I mean.

We were only four white men on board, with a large crew of Kalashes and
two Malay petty officers. The Captain stared hard as if wondering what
ailed me. But he was a sailor, and he, too, had been young at one time.
Presently a smile came to lurk under his thick iron-gray moustache, and
he observed that, of course, if I felt I must go he couldn't keep me
by main force. And it was arranged that I should be paid off the
next morning. As I was going out of his cabin he added suddenly, in a
peculiar wistful tone, that he hoped I would find what I was so anxious
to go and look for. A soft, cryptic utterance which seemed to reach
deeper than any diamond-hard tool could have done. I do believe he
understood my case.

But the second engineer attacked me differently. He was a sturdy young
Scot, with a smooth face and light eyes. His honest red countenance
emerged out of the engine-room companion and then the whole robust man,
with shirt sleeves turned up, wiping slowly the massive fore-arms with
a lump of cotton-waste. And his light eyes expressed bitter distaste, as
though our friendship had turned to ashes. He said weightily: "Oh! Aye!
I've been thinking it was about time for you to run away home and get