I instinctively stopped. He did not come right up to me, and through the darkness I sensed something like anxiety and awkwardness in his gait.

“Forgive me,” he said quickly “if I ask you a favour. I … I … ” he stammered, for a moment too embarrassed to go on at once. “I … I have private … very private reasons for staying out of sight … a bereavement … I prefer to avoid company on board. Oh, I didn’t mean you, no, no … I’d just like to ask … well, I would be very much obliged if you wouldn’t mention seeing me here to anyone on board. There are … are private reasons, I might call them, to keep me from mingling with people just now … yes, well, it would put me in an awkward position if you mentioned that someone … here at night … that I …” And he stopped again. I put an end to his confusion at once by assuring him that I would do as he wished. We shook hands. Then I went back to my cabin and slept a heavy, curiously disturbed sleep, troubled by strange images.

 

I kept my promise, and told no one on board of my strange meeting, although the temptation to do so was great. For on a sea voyage every little thing becomes an event: a sail on the horizon, a dolphin leaping, a new flirtation, a joke made in passing. And I was full of curiosity to know more about the vessel’s unusual passenger. I searched the ship’s list for a name that might be his, I scrutinized other people, wondering if they could be somehow related to him; all day I was a prey to nervous impatience, just waiting for evening and wondering if I would meet him again. Odd psychological states have a positively disquieting power over me; I find tracking down the reasons for them deeply intriguing, and the mere presence of unusual characters can kindle a passionate desire in me to know more about them, a desire not much less strong than a woman’s wish to acquire some possession. The day seemed long and crumbled tediously away between my fingers. I went to bed early, knowing that my curiosity would wake me at midnight.

Sure enough, I woke at the same time as the night before. The two hands on the illuminated dial of my clock covered one another in a single bright line. I quickly left my sultry cabin and climbed up into the even sultrier night.

The stars were shining as they had shone yesterday, casting a diffuse light over the quivering ship, and the Southern Cross blazed high overhead. It was all just the same as yesterday, where days and nights in the tropics resemble each other more than in our latitudes, but I myself did not feel yesterday’s soft, flowing, dreamy sensation of being gently cradled. Something was drawing me on, confusing me, and I knew where it was taking me: to the black hoist by the ship’s side, to see if my mysterious acquaintance was sitting immobile there again. I heard the ship’s bell striking above me, and it urged me on. Step by step, reluctantly yet fascinated, I followed my instincts. I had not yet reached the prow of the ship when something like a red eye suddenly hovered in front of me: the pipe. So he was there.

I instinctively stepped back and stopped. Next moment I would have left again, but there was movement over there in the dark, something rose, took a couple of steps, and suddenly I heard his voice very close to me, civil and melancholy.

“Forgive me,” he said. “You obviously want to sit there again, and I have a feeling that you hesitated when you saw me. Do please sit down, and I’ll go away.” 

I made haste to say he was very welcome to stay so far as I was concerned. I had stepped back, I said, only for fear of disturbing him.

“Oh, you won’t disturb me,” he said, with some bitterness. “Far from it, I’m glad to have company for a change. I haven’t spoken a word to anyone for ten days … well, not for years, really, and then it seems so difficult, perhaps because forcing it all back inside myself chokes me. I can’t sit in my cabin any more, in that … that coffin, I can’t bear it, and I can’t bear the company of human beings either because they laugh all day … I can’t endure that now, I hear it in my cabin and stop my ears against it.