She kept her eyes fixed upon the motionless sea; there was another silence.
"And," said the young man, "you do not appear to be greatly inclined to it yourself."
"No," she said again.
"For some days," said Anthony, "I have noted you engaged in talk with Tom. And a little space ago I saw you again, after we'd sighted the wrecks ahead. And I would suggest," continued the young man, "that you not give too much attention to his sayings at this time."
"It is your own word," said the girl, "that of all those with whom you have spoken this man has been nearest the truth."
Anthony poured some wine into a high glass; its amber body picked up a ray of light, bathed joyously in it, and then shot it out, stained and gleaming. And while the young man studied its cheerful message he replied to the girl:
"What you say is fact; I'd be the last to question it. Queer as his way has been, odd and circuitous as his warnings and suggestions, he has often grasped the truth and drawn the darkness from about it. But witness: All these matters dealt with the goings-on at Rufus Stevens' Sons; they had to do with things of record, with the accounts of the house, with the book of arithmetic. He was, no doubt, soundly trained in those things and so stands straight in them. But this," and Anthony nodded out the window, "is a region where he once was cast away, where his spirit sank in the stillness, and his blunting mind gave the darkness shapes no man had known. Many say Tom Horn is mad. I don't know. But if it is so then his distemper took form in this sea; so, when he talks of it, I balance his words with doubt. And if you did the like it would be a careful thing."
"When he spoke of the chance of finding the ship Rufus Stevens, did he not speak of this sea?" asked the girl. "And yet you showed no doubt then; you thought it a thing to follow out with speed and hopefulness."
"And I still think so," said Anthony. "For the chance of the ship being somewhere within the great ocean current, and of finally drifting into this slack sea, is a thing which comes of his arithmetic and not of his madness."
She regarded him quietly for a moment.