He turned, and found that one of the passengers had followed him. He was a quiet, gentlemanly man, who had hardly spoken to any one during the voyage. He was tall, dark, and well built, apparently a man of five or six and thirty. The face was pleasing at first glance, the features being well cut, and not too prominent. But on a closer inspection the defects were apparent. The lips were sensual; the eyes had that strange look which one sees in the hunted animal. The fear of something behind was apparent upon the face the moment the features were disturbed from their repose. A dark moustache covered the too thick upper lip, and the rest of the face was bronzed with long travel and exposure to sun and sea. One thing would instantly attract the attention of the ordinary observer—the strange way in which “indecision” was expressed in his countenance. His eyes and his lips would have revealed the secret of his character to a physiognomist at once.
He had evidently made up his mind in a hurry to say something to the clergyman. Directly that gentleman turned kindly, and asked what service he could render him, he hesitated.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, after a pause; ‘but can I speak with you alone?’
They walked to a deserted part of the ship.
‘I am going to make an extraordinary statement to you,’ said the passenger, his undecided eyes now looking in the clergyman’s face and now resting on the deck; ‘but I think I ought to. You are a clergyman, and I know no one better to whom in the hour of death I can confess a secret that should not die with me.’
The clergyman surveyed his interviewer earnestly for a moment.
‘Is it a crime?’ he asked.
The passenger nodded.
‘I don’t want to die with it on my mind,’ he murmured. ‘I fancy when the—the end comes, I shall die easier.’
‘My friend,’ said the clergyman, kindly, ‘do not imagine that a confession at the last moment takes guilt from the soul. To confess a crime to one who is about to share your fate is, perhaps, rather a superstitious than a religious deed. Let us understand each other. We both believe that we are about to die. You confess to me, perhaps thinking that no possible harm can come to you from it—that you run no such risk as you would in confessing under other circumstanccs.’