He tried to read in faces on
board the few outgoing ships the record of their success with a strange
envy. They were returning home! HOME! For sometimes--but seldom--he
thought of his own home and his past. It was a miserable past of forgery
and embezzlement that had culminated a career of youthful dissipation
and self-indulgence, and shut him out, forever, from the staid old
English cathedral town where he was born. He knew that his relations
believed and wished him dead. He thought of this past with little
pleasure, but with little remorse. Like most of his stamp, he believed
it was ill-luck, chance, somebody else's fault, but never his own
responsible action. He would not repent; he would be wiser only. And he
would not be retaken--alive!
Two or three months passed in this monotonous duty, in which he partly
recovered his strength and his nerves. He lost his furtive, restless,
watchful look; the bracing sea air and the burning sun put into his face
the healthy tan and the uplifted frankness of a sailor.
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