“How, I do not know, but they will come to me. It is permitted them for my sake and to save my reason, for otherwise I would have gone mad; also for some other purpose they would not say.—Do you not believe me?”
“Yes, yes,” said the other soothingly. “It’s strange, but there’s no telling—no telling.” He felt that Providence or Nature had possibly used the dream device to save the poor gentleman from, at all events, violent insanity, but he doubted if he had gained much by the exchange.
“No telling,” said Lestrange. “We know as little of this life as our shadows know of us, but there it is, and now you know why I am happy. My mind is free from all care and my loved ones are coming to meet me.”
He turned from the rail and went below. Stanistreet saw the steward come along with breakfast things—the Ranatonga had a deck galley—and vanish down the cabin hatch. Then he heard the voice of a child and the voice of the steward as if talking to it.
Then Bowers rose like a sea elephant from the fo’c’sle and came along the deck. Bowers had handed over the wheel to Peterson just before Lestrange came up. He had dodged below to light a pipe, risen to see Lestrange and Stanistreet in confabulation and then lain doggo, waiting.
“How’s the gentleman taking it now, sir?” asked Bowers, speaking in a lowered voice. “I popped my head up when you was talkin’ and he looked to have got back to his self.”
“God help me, I don’t know,” said Stanistreet; “but if there’s any sense in the world he’s gone crazy, plain crazy—but he’s happy.”
“Well, thank the Lord he’s gone the laughin’, not the howlin’ kind,” said Bowers. “Happy, is he? Well, it’s fortunit for him. That’s all I have to say.”
“Maybe. Anyhow, dodge down, will you, and bring up that kid. The steward’s fooling with it and wasting his time, and I want to see it on deck—after-bunk you’ll find it.”
Bowers dived.