Page:'Twixt land and sea - tales (IA twixtlandseatale00conr).pdf/248

 from the effects of his peculiar psychology looked at him with a dumb, beseeching expression.

“What’s the matter?” Jasper asked.

“I wonder how this will end?” said he of the beautiful voice, which had even fascinated the steady Freya herself. But where was its charming timbre now? These words had sounded like a raven’s croak.

“You are ill,” said Jasper positively.

“I wish I were dead!” was the startling statement uttered by Schultz talking to himself in the extremity of some mysterious trouble. Jasper gave him a keen glance, but this was not the time to investigate the morbid outbreak of a feverish man. He did not look as though he were actually delirious, and that for the moment must suffice, Schultz made a dart forward.

“That fellow means harm!” he said desperately. “He means harm to you, Captain Allen. I feel it, and”

He choked with inexplicable emotion.

“All right, Schultz. I won’t give him an opening.” Jasper cut him short and swung himself into the boat.

On board the Neptun Heemskirk, standing straddle-legs in the flood of moonlight, his inky shadow falling right across the quarter-deck, made no sign at his approach, but secretly he felt something like the heave of the sea in his chest at the sight of that man. Jasper waited before him in silence.

Brought face to face in direct personal contact, they fell at once into the manner of their casual meetings in old Nelson’s bungalow. They ignored each other's existenceHeemskirk moodily; Jasper, with a perfectly colourless quietness.