He glanced across the study with furtive dislike at the author of all this misery. It was hard to believe that he had really done it to look at him now. Day had finished his task (he was extraordinarily quick at figures) and was leaning back in his seat with his lips pursed up in a soundless whistle, staring at the flies on the ceiling with a sort of far-away smile in his eyes. Of course he had done it! Didn't the captain as good as say he'd done it? He was doubtless planning some fresh devilment. His dislike of Day crystallised to hatred. He had rather admired him before all this took place; admired his cool impudence, his quick tongue, his superlative cleverness at games. Now he hated him, and wanted to do something that would proclaim his feelings to the Universe.... Perpetuate---- An idea smote him and his face brightened. With the aid of a book of logarithmic tables and an instrument box he built up a not too obvious barricade screening him from casual observation. Then, drawing a knife from his pocket, he cleared a little space on his desk and set to work, whittling unobtrusively. In a quarter of an hour it was done, and with ink and spittle the newly-cut wood anointed to a semblance of age. Feeling better, he resumed his navigation. * * * * * * The daylight had gone from the outside world and there was only firelight in the room. The little desk I had bought earlier in the day still stood in the corner where I had deposited it, and as I lay half-dozing in the saddlebag chair, the mocking flames played strange tricks. It seemed as if another figure were in the room--a restless, uneasy shadow among the shadows, and ever and again it seemed to hover round the desk. I lay with my eyes half closed, identifying one by one the familiar objects of the room, and gradually the presence of this shadow puzzled me to wakefulness. The poker, left carelessly between the bars of the grate, dropped a few inches, and the handle struck the fender with a little rattle. The fire spluttered and flared brightly, so that I saw the figure by the desk distinctly. It was a tall, gaunt man in a uniform I didn't recognise for the moment--a ragged, mud-stained jacket and baggy trousers. Then I remembered seeing a regiment of them on the march once near Algiers. It was the uniform of the Foreign Legion. The figure was bending over the desk tracing something on it with a lean forefinger. I sat upright, and as I moved the tall man turned his face towards me. There was a grimy stained bandage round his head, and it was twenty years since I had seen him, but I recognised the queer pale eyes and thin lips. "Day!" I exclaimed. "Yes," he said. It gave me an inexplicable shiver down the back to hear him speak. "But I didn't do it. I didn't cut Windsails down." He fingered the surface of the desk like a lost soul feeling for the latch of Heaven's gate.