"Well, I served my time out—all but three years," said the tall man, fearfully.
"What?" gasped the skipper.
"I served my time out, nearly out. It was only fifteen years I got. I'm all right and have papers to prove it. One of the men they thought I killed got well again. The money was divided among my pals. I didn't get a cent of it; no, not a cent. But the past is past. Let it die!"
"An' you calls yourself a sanctified man, you bloomin' convict, hey? Steward, set these things somewhere else. I may not be particular as to friends aboard ship, but I draw the line at eatin' with jailbirds."
"I never was in jail—only for a month. It was the penitentiary," corrected the tall man, his small voice almost dying away. There was something very sad in his tone; something so touching that even the steward hesitated at obeying the skipper's orders.
"An' to think," said the Captain, "that Jubiter John should play it so badly on us."
He ate his meal in silence on the other side of the little room, while the vessel plunged and ran down the slopes of following seas, creaking and straining so that he soon left for the deck.
The sanctified man sat eating slowly, in spite of the motion and cries from above, as the men shortened sail to ease the racing craft in the sea. He was lost in thought. The memories of his sufferings were upon him, and as the sad years rolled back, he seemed to stand again upon a ship's deck giving orders to a crew who obeyed as only deep-water men know how. His had been a long, hard road, indeed. The surly Captain was forgotten and his insults were as though they had never been uttered.
While he sat there eating slowly and thinking over the past, he became aware that the door leading to the main saloon was open. Through it he caught a glimpse of shining silver as the Dartmoor rolled heavily to starboard, letting in a flood of sunlight through her side ports. A huge urn or cup weighing many pounds, and of solid silver, was firmly planted upon a shelf near the end of the saloon. Upon it was an engraving of a yacht under full sail with the legend "Dartmoor" with "1898" beneath. Evidently the trophy of that season and probably the greatest she had ever won. It was a superb piece of ware, and the man looked at it for a long time, while his face gradually took on a hard expression and the strange look of defiance and challenge came again into his eyes. He had suffered much, but there was something within him that was stirred by the glint of that silver. Twelve long years among a certain class of men had implanted new weaknesses and developed those he had already possessed. He was forgetting himself under the flashing of that reflected sunlight.