He had avoided buying a ticket. As the Gunter warped out, the purser came to him.
“I understand you have no ticket.”
“No,” said Gerry, drawing a roll of bills. “How much is the passage to Pernambuco?”
The purser fidgeted.
“This is irregular, sir,” he said.
“Is it?” said Gerry, indifferently.
“I have no ticket-forms,” said the purser, weakening.
“I don’t want a ticket,” said Gerry. “I want a good room and three square meals a day.”
Long, quiet days on a quiet sea are a master sedative to a troubled mind. Gerry had a great deal to think through. He sat by the hour with hands loosely clasped, his eyes far out on the ocean, tracing the course of his married life, and measuring the grounds for Alix’s arraignment. Gerry was just and generous to others’ faults, but not to his own. He had forgotten the sting of Alix’s words, and, to his growing amazement, saw in himself their justification. A time-server he certainly had been.
The landfall of Pernambuco awoke him from reveries and introspection. He did not look upon this palm-strewn coast as a land of new beginnings; he sought merely a Lethean shore.