Mr Reardon gave a violent start.
“Your night-glass, sir?” he said.
“Yes, mine; you borrowed it.”
The lieutenant handed the telescope without a word, and at another time we should all have had to turn away to smother the desire to burst out laughing, as we recalled the irritable remarks about the idiot to whom the glass belonged, and the wretchedness of his eyesight, coupled with an opinion that he ought to be dismissed the service.
But it was not a time for mirth: we were all too sad, and Barkins contented himself with whispering—
“I say, I’m jolly glad it wasn’t I who said that. Don’t the skipper take it coolly now? But he’ll give old Dishy a talking-to for it when he gets him alone.”
Mr Reardon’s face was not visible to us, but we could see his movements, which were, so to speak, fidgety, for he began to walk up and down hastily, and once or twice I heard him mutter—
“How could I be such a fool?”
A dead chill had settled down upon the ship, and I felt as I stood there as if eight or nine years had suddenly dropped away from me—that I was a little child again, and that I should like to creep below somewhere out of sight, or sit down and cry and sob.
For it was such a horrible lesson to me of the nearness of death, and I felt as if it was impossible for it all to be true—that it must be some terrible dream.