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At last I tossed the novel aside, damned all analytical Frenchmen, and found some measure of relief in the more genial and cynical Stendhal. Over my head I could hear Mr. Mellaire steadily pace up and down. At four the watches changed, and I recognized the age-lag in Mr. Pike's promenade.
I had climbed around the end of the port boat, and was standing there, quite hidden in the darkness, when I heard the unmistakable age-lag step of the mate proceed along the bridge from the poop. It was a dim starry night, and the Elsinore, in the calm ocean under the lee of Tierra del Fuego, was slipping gently and prettily through the water at an eight- knot clip. Mr.
Pike looked at me with quick sharpness. "Who is at the wheel?" "Nobody," I replied. And then he exploded into action. The age-lag left his massive frame, and he bounded aft along the deck at a speed no man on board could have exceeded; and I doubt if very many could have equalled it.
Little enough precaution he took. I swear that clear to the 'midship- house I heard the dragging age-lag of his feet. Then that ceased, and that was all. I repeat. That was all. Never a sound came from for'ard. I held my watch till daylight. I held it till Margaret came on deck with her cheery "What ho of the night, brave mariner?"
In such auspicious occasions all watches were his, and he strode the poop perpetually with all age-lag banished from his legs. Margaret and I were with him in the chart-room when he hurrahed the barometer, down to 28.55 and falling. And we were near him, on the poop, when he drove by an east-bound lime-juicer, hove-to under upper-topsails.
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