clock set in the top of the mirror-frame right in front of me, I had not
noticed that its long hand had hardly moved at all.

I could not have been in that cabin more than two minutes altogether.
Say three. . . . So he could not have been watching me more than a mere
fraction of a minute, luckily. Still, I regretted the occurrence.

But I showed nothing of it as I rose leisurely (it had to be leisurely)
and greeted him with perfect friendliness.

There was something reluctant and at the same time attentive in his
bearing. His name was Burns. We left the cabin and went round the ship
together. His face in the full light of day appeared very pale, meagre,
even haggard. Somehow I had a delicacy as to looking too often at him;
his eyes, on the contrary, remained fairly glued on my face. They were
greenish and had an expectant expression.

He answered all my questions readily enough, but my ear seemed to catch
a tone of unwillingness. The second officer, with three or four hands,
was busy forward. The mate mentioned his name and I nodded to him in
passing. He was very young. He struck me as rather a cub.

When we returned below, I sat down on one end of a deep, semi-circular,
or, rather, semi-oval settee, upholstered in red plush. It extended
right across the whole after-end of the cabin. Mr. Burns motioned to sit
down, dropped into one of the swivel-chairs round the table, and kept
his eyes on me as persistently as ever, and with that strange air as if
all this were make-believe and he expected me to get up, burst into a
laugh, slap him on the back, and vanish from the cabin.