I see Silva sitting opposite me. He looks, looks! Lord God, hast thou deserted me?
CHAPTER XI
THE CODE
There was a moment's silence as Little Billy finished reading. There was in the hunchback's face, and in the faces of the girl and the old captain, a somber understanding of John Winters's fate.
The whaleman's pitiful experience was a commonplace of the sea, and it required no effort of mind on their part to vision the tragedy of an open boat on an empty sea. But Martin was more sharply impressed. The sea held as yet no commonplaces for him, and the poignant question that ended the castaway's chronicle kindled a flame of pity. Martin had the picture mind, and a habit of dramatizing events.
As Little Billy read, Martin had unconsciously followed the narrative with his mind's eye, building a series of vivid, connected pictures. He had witnessed the battle with the whales, the finding of the treasure, had peered baffled into the blanket of Bering fog, had seen the leaping breakers at the base of the smoking mountain, had excursioned through the caves by Winters's side, and, at last, had beheld clearly the little open boat, with its despairing occupant, disappear into the gray mist.
"The poor devil!" cried Martin.
His words broke the spell of silence that was upon the table.
"Yes—the poor devil!" echoed Little Billy. "My very words, as I finished reading, there in Kim Chee's place. 'The poor devil!' A fitting epitaph."