“I have put Mr. Burns back to bed, sir.”
“You have.”
“Well, sir, he got out, all of a sudden, but when he let go the edge of his bunk he fell down. He isn’t light-headed, though, it seems to me.”
“No,” I said dully, without looking at Ransome. He waited for a moment, then cautiously, as if not to give offence: “I don’t think we need lose much of that stuff, sir,” he said, “I can sweep it up, every bit of it almost, and then we could sift the glass out. I will go about it at once. It will not make the breakfast late, not ten minutes.”
“Oh, yes,” I said bitterly. “Let the breakfast wait, sweep up every bit of it, and then throw the damned lot overboard!”
The profound silence returned, and when I looked over my shoulder, Ransome—the intelligent, serene Ransome—had vanished from my side. The intense loneliness of the sea acted like poison on my brain. When I turned my eyes to the ship, I had a morbid vision of her as a floating grave. Who hasn’t heard of ships found floating, haphazard, with their crews all dead? I looked at the seaman at the helm, I had an impulse to speak to him, and, indeed, his face took on an expectant cast as if he had guessed my intention. But in the end I went below, thinking I would be alone with the greatness of my trouble for a little while. But through his open door Mr. Burns saw me come down, and addressed me grumpily: “Well, sir?”
I went in. “It isn’t well at all,” I said.
Mr. Burns, reestablished in his bed-place, was concealing his hirsute cheek in the palm of his hand.
“That confounded fellow has taken away the scissors from me,” were the next words he said.
The tension I was suffering from was so great that it was perhaps just as well that Mr. Burns had started on his grievance. He seemed very sore about it and grumbled, “Does he think I am mad, or what?”