"'I understand,' said I, looking up from my business of unguenting the stoker, who was not badly burnt.
"'But if Grimalson should turn rotten.… Well, now, I've had an eye on you, sir, and I judge I can share off on you a bit of trouble I wouldn't share off on most.… You must know as well as I do that the chance is pretty thin for us all, even if this weather holds. I reckon there's no nearer land than Easter Island, four hundred good miles norr'ard, and a beat in light winds.… I've heard too much about long beats in open boats—heard enough to make the flesh creep. Anyways, I'm responsible. I've turned it over in my head: and I'm giving orders—you take me? We're not steering for any land at all. We're steering the shortest way, due south—what wind there is drawing behind us—on the chance to hit in with the way of traffic—Sydney ships making round the Horn.… You'll not argue that, I hope?" he demanded.
"'On the contrary, sir,' I agreed, 'I just know enough to be sure that you are doing the wisest thing.'
"'Nobody but God can be sure,' said he, and sat musing. 'Well, I take the responsibility God has seen fit to lay on me of a sudden. You won't hear me speak of this again: but you're an educated man, and you've nerve as well as brains—I marked ye by the head of the ladder, when the first boat was getting out. I reckoned you for one that doesn't speak out of his turn; and it came over me, just now, that I'd like one such man, and him a gentleman, to bear in mind that if I set my face pretty hard in the time that's ahead of us, it won't mean that I ain't feeling things at the back of it.'
"'Thank you, Captain Macnaughten,' said I, pretty earnestly. 'The best I can answer is the simplest—that you're doing me much honour.'
"'That's all right,' he said lightly: 'all right and understood. One man often helps another in funny little ways in this funny old world.' After a pause he went on yet more lightly and cheerfully, 'Well—and I've noticed you've a trick of beginning your sentences on that word 'well': it's a habit of mine too, they tell me—as the ladies say ashore, we're going to be worse before we are better, so we'll call those fellows aft a bit and ease the steering.… Stay a minute, though, before I call to them.… A clever man like you ought to be able to pick up a bit of navigation in a few lessons. While our boats keep together (as, please God, they will to the end) it wouldn't be a bad notion if you dropped alongside just before midday for a morning call, and I'll learn you how to handle a sextant and prick down a reckoning.… It'll be sociable, too.… Yes, I'll signal the time to you: but, to be ready for it, you might set your watch by my chronometer here.… I wonder, now,' he inquired oddly, 'if you've forgot to wind yours up to-night?'
"Well, Roddy, it's the truth that I had forgotten. I looked at him, pretty foolish, and with that we both laughed—yes, there and then, a sort of laugh, low and quiet, like well-water bubbling.
"'Now I'll tell you,' said the skipper, 'I caught myself winding up mine the moment after the ship went down… that's funny, eh? Five minutes to nine was the hour.… I'd hooked the old timepiece out of my fob, and there I was, winding, for all the world as if ashore and going to bed.… See here—three turns of the winch and she's chock-a-block again, if you ever!… And, come to think, I may as well correct her by the chronometer, too.'
"So we solemnly set our watches together, there by the binnacle light. A queer fancy took me that the act was a sort of ritual, not devised by either of us—a setting and sealing of friendship.… Ought a fellow, Roddy, shipwrecked in the South Pacific, to complain while he has these three stand-by's—a woman to love, a man to admire, and a man to hate?"
"The engineer died just before dawn. Indeed, the day broke of a sudden as I finished straightening his body and wrapping it for burial; and I looked up in the new light, and around me, to take in that second gush of loneliness of which I told you.… It was appalling. It swept in on me from the whole enormous circumference of empty waters, and I fairly cowered from it over the corpse I had been tending.