Young Powell had settled down to the regular officer-of-the-watch tramp
in the dense shadow of the world decorated with stars high above his
head, and on earth only a few gleams of light about the ship. The lamp
in the after skylight was kept burning through the night. There were
also the dead-lights of the stern-cabins glimmering dully in the deck far
aft, catching his eye when he turned to walk that way. The brasses of
the wheel glittered too, with the dimly lit figure of the man detached,
as if phosphorescent, against the black and spangled background of the
horizon.
Young Powell, in the silence of the ship, reinforced by the great silent
stillness of the world, said to himself that there was something
mysterious in such beings as the absurd Franklin, and even in such beings
as himself. It was a strange and almost improper thought to occur to the
officer of the watch of a ship on the high seas on no matter how quiet a
night. Why on earth was he bothering his head? Why couldn't he dismiss
all these people from his mind? It was as if the mate had infected him
with his own diseased devotion. He would not have believed it possible
that he should be so foolish. But he was--clearly. He was foolish in a
way totally unforeseen by himself. Pushing this self-analysis further,
he reflected that the springs of his conduct were just as obscure.
"I may be catching myself any time doing things of which I have no
conception," he thought. And as he was passing near the mizzen-mast he
perceived a coil of rope left lying on the deck by the oversight of the
sweepers. By an impulse which had nothing mysterious in it, he stooped
as he went by with the intention of picking it up and hanging it up on
its proper pin. This movement brought his head down to the level of the
glazed end of the after skylight--the lighted skylight of the most
private part of the saloon, consecrated to the exclusiveness of Captain
Anthony's married life; the part, let me remind you, cut off from the
rest of that forbidden space by a pair of heavy curtains. I mention
these curtains because at this point Mr. Powell himself recalled the
existence of that unusual arrangement to my mind.
He recalled them with simple-minded compunction at that distance of time.
He said: "You understand that directly I stooped to pick up that coil of
running gear--the spanker foot-outhaul, it was--I perceived that I could
see right into that part of the saloon the curtains were meant to make
particularly private. Do you understand me?" he insisted.