“One of the queerest specimens I know,” retorted Dr. Mark Ruthine, who was fingering a pen and looking longingly towards the inkstand. The Captain--a man of renowned discretion--quietly departed. There is no more distrustful man than the simple gentleman of honour who finds himself deceived and tricked. It is as if the bottom suddenly fell out of his trust in all mankind, and there is nothing left but a mocking void. Jem Agar lay on his mattress beneath the awning, and stared hard at a bright star near the horizon. He was realising that life is, after all, a sorry thing of chance, and that all his world might be hanging at that moment on the word of an untrustworthy man. Before morning he had determined to telegraph from Malta to Seymour Michael to meet him at Plymouth on the arrival of the _Mahanaddy_ at that port. CHAPTER XXVI BALANCING ACCOUNTS And yet God has not said a word. One fine morning in June the _Mahanaddy_ steamed with stately deliberation into the calm water inside Plymouth breakwater. Many writers love to dwell with pathetic insistence on incidents of a departure; but there is also pathos--perhaps deeper and truer because more subtle--in the arrival of the homeward-board ship. 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. This friendship was a matter of history to the homeless world of men and women who travelled east and west through the Suez Canal. “He has asked me,” the Doctor was saying, “to go ashore with him at Plymouth; I don't know why. I imagine he is a little bit afraid of wringing Seymour Michael's neck.” “Just as likely as not,” observed the Captain. “It would be a good thing done, but don't let Agar do it.” “May I leave the ship at Plymouth?” asked Mark Ruthine, with a quiet air of obedience which seemed to be accepted with the gravity with which it was offered. “I don't see why you should not,” was the reply. “Everybody goes ashore there except about half a dozen men, who certainly will not want your services.”