"'D'you think I'll sit here in the dark, alongside of—oh, hurry, you devil! Hurry!'
"I chuckled at this. It came into my mind to refuse, and declare I would sit out the night here by the boat. I knew that the shore beyond, though it curved for two good miles, would not be wide enough to contain his agony through the night hours.… But I had pushed him far enough for the time. So we launched the boat again and paddled her around and beached her on shelving sand: and soon after, night fell.
"Farrell slept poorly. Three or four times I heard him start up, to pace to and fro under the starlight: and each time the dog awoke and trotted with him.…
"But he was up, brisk and early, with dawn; and he made quite a good job of tacking bark over the boat's seams, while I sat and cobbled up his boot with sailmaker's needle and twine. He made, indeed, and though swift with the work, so good a job that, inspecting the boat when he had done, I judged she would stand the strain of sailing— whereas I had looked forward to a grilling pull in a craft that leaked like a basket.
"At a quarter to ten, by my watch, we pushed off, stepped mast and hoisted sail—a small balance-lug. We carried a brisk offshore wind—a soldier's wind—which southerned as the day wore on, and again flew and broke off-shore as we neared home. I steered: Farrell, for the most part, dozed after his labours. He had not, I may say, one single faculty of a seaman in his whole make-up. He could mend a boat or make an imitation Sheraton wardrobe; but, when the both were made, he'd have sailed the one about as well as the other.
"He dozed uneasily, with many twitchings. Once he woke up and said, 'I thank God he lay so as we couldn't see his face. Would it have been swollen much, think you?… Bleached, I make no doubt.…'
"'What about worse?' I answered. 'I noticed a crab or two.' "He put up his hands to his face. 'How the devil can you talk so!' he stammered.
"'It was you who started questions,' said I.
"'Suicide, you think?' he asked, after half an hour's silence, during which his mind had plainly been tugging away from the horrible subject only to find it irresistible.
"'All pointed to it,' I answered. 'As for the motive, we can only guess.'