long days at sea and of anxious moments.

"You, too!" it seemed to say, "you, too, shall taste of that peace and
that unrest in a searching intimacy with your own self--obscure as we
were and as supreme in the face of all the winds and all the seas, in an
immensity that receives no impress, preserves no memories, and keeps no
reckoning of lives."

Deep within the tarnished ormulu frame, in the hot half-light sifted
through the awning, I saw my own face propped between my hands. And I
stared back at myself with the perfect detachment of distance, rather
with curiosity than with any other feeling, except of some sympathy for
this latest representative of what for all intents and purposes was a
dynasty, continuous not in blood indeed, but in its experience, in its
training, in its conception of duty, and in the blessed simplicity of
its traditional point of view on life.

It struck me that this quietly staring man whom I was watching, both as
if he were myself and somebody else, was not exactly a lonely figure.
He had his place in a line of men whom he did not know, of whom he had
never heard; but who were fashioned by the same influences, whose souls
in relation to their humble life's work had no secrets for him.

Suddenly I perceived that there was another man in the saloon, standing
a little on one side and looking intently at me. The chief mate. His
long, red moustache determined the character of his physiognomy, which
struck me as pugnacious in (strange to say) a ghastly sort of way.

How long had he been there looking at me, appraising me in my unguarded
day-dreaming state? I would have been more disconcerted if, having the