Only once since then has anyone spoken of him to me. It was the gray old skipper, who, after our rescue, wanted to set me right.
"You thought he fired the ship," he said, "for he told me of your suspicions, and felt badly. But he did not. It was all my fault, for I should have calked the ship at Hongkong. That three-day gale that we met let the water down on the jute. It was spontaneous combustion."
But, in mercy to each other, Grace and I never mention his name.
[THE BABY]
It was Dartmoor who saw the chance. He was the son of a wealthy father, and perhaps the one man of that medical class to feel equal to the experiments given up by the old professor.
Physically, Dartmoor was exceptionally favored by nature, possessing one of the most winning personalities I have ever met, and the face and figure of a Greek god. And to this was added a mental development that was almost abnormal in its completeness. I had gone through school with him, and never saw him studying. He seemed to learn his lessons by a few glances at the page of a book.
He had courage of a high order, but never had a fight in his life, for he could make an adversary surrender without a fight. He could win any girl for sweetheart, or any boy for friend. He had his enemies, carefully chosen by himself, but when he so decided he would make these enemies his friends. I had been one.
Shortly after our diplomas were given us, Dartmoor secured legal possession of the freak, with a history of the case. The history was simple; its mother, a poor immigrant, had died at its birth, and its father was unknown.
The professor, a visiting physician of the hospital at the time, had taken it into his sanitarium and cared for it; but beyond keeping it alive had not helped it. It was a man that had never been conscious—a human being born without the five senses.