"Eh?" he said, and the other repeated his question. Dan sucked at his pipe and breathed the smoke forth in a thin blue mist.
"It might be true enough," he answered at length, in his deliberate bass. "Things like that does happen; you c'n read 'em in newspapers. Anyhow, true or not, the Dago believes it all."
"Meanin' he's mad?" inquired the other. "Blowed if I didn't think it once or twice myself."
"He's mad right enough," agreed another seaman comfortably, while from Bill's bunk came the usual snarl of "bloomin' fool."
Dan turned over on his side and put his pipe away.
"He don't do any harm, anyhow," he said, pulling up his blanket.
"There's worse than him."
"Plenty, poor devil," agreed the first speaker, as he too prepared for the afternoon's sleep.
On his knees upon the deck aft, shoving his holystone to and fro laboriously and unhandily along the planks where the accident with the tar-pot had left its stain, the Dago still broke into little meaningless smiles. For him, at any rate, the narrow scope between the stem and stern of the Anna Maria was not the world. He had but to lift up the eyes of his mind to behold, beyond it and dwarfing it to triviality, the glamours of a life in which it had no part. Those who saw him at his dreary penance had their excuse for thinking him mad, for there were moments when his face glowed like a lover's, his lips moved in soundless speech, and he had the aspect of a man illuminated by some sudden and tender joy.
"Now, then, you Dago there," the officer of the watch shouted at him.
"Keep that stone movin', an' none of yer shenanikin'!"
"Yais, sir," answered the Dago, and bowed himself obediently.