Who can tell? There may have been others as anxious to look on the green
slopes of Mount Edgecumbe as the man with the mahogany-coloured face who
stood ever smoking--smoking--always at the forward starboard corner of
the hurricane deck. His story had not leaked out, because only two men on
board knew it--men with no conversational leaks whatever. He had made no
other friends. But many watched him half interestedly, and perhaps a few
divined the great calm impatience beneath the suppressed quiet of his
manner.
"That man--Jem Agar--is dangerous," the Doctor had said to the Captain
more than once, and Mark Ruthine was not often egregiously mistaken in
such matters.
"Um!" replied the Captain of the _Mahanaddy_. "There is an uncanny calm."
They were talking about him now as the Captain--his own pilot for
Plymouth and the Channel--walked slowly backwards and forwards on the
bridge. It seemed quite natural for the Doctor to be sitting on the rail
by the engine-room telegraph. The passengers and the men were quite
accustomed to it.
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