The conversation was very animated; for Daniel heard the sounds from the outer passage.
He entered; and there was silence,—sudden, deep, chilling silence.
Evidently they had been talking about him.
Even if he could have doubted it for a moment, he read it in the faces turned aside, the forced smiles, and the cautious glances with which he was received. He thought, very much troubled,—
“What can this mean?”
In the meantime a young man in citizen’s dress, whom he did not know, called out from one side of the room to the other, to an old officer in a seedy uniform, with blackened epaulets (a real sea-dog), lean, bronzed, wrinkled, and with eyes bearing the traces of recent ophthalmy,—
“Why do you stop, lieutenant? We were much interested, I assure you.”
The lieutenant seemed to hesitate, as if he were making up his mind to do a disagreeable thing, which still did not depend on his choice; and then he resumed his account,—
“Well, we got there, convinced that we had taken all the necessary precautions, and that there was, consequently, nothing to fear,—fine precautions they turned out to be! In the course of a week the whole crew was laid up; and as to the staff, little Bertram and I were the only officers able to appear on deck. Moreover, my eyes were in a state. You see what they say now. The captain was the first to die; the same evening five sailors followed suit, and seven the next day; the day after the first lieutenant and two of the noncommissioned officers. The like was never seen before.”
Daniel turned to his neighbor.