‘Dis thing had to hãppen, you know,’ said the mate at last. ‘It was written, you see, there’--he raised a hand and pointed to the still face. ‘_I_ knew it a long time. I think I knew it when he first came on board at Adelayde; he walkéd down the quay, you know, with that fatiguéd walk he had, poor fallow, and it was written in his eyes--they were quite hunted, you know. _I’ve_ rrãally been the doctor on the old galley this journey, you know, _he_ wasn’t fit for it. Hãng it all, I have been doseing the shellbacks, you know, poor devils--ah--ha!’ he laughed that sudden spontaneous laugh that must have come from his lips even in death, if an idea had commended itself to his sardonic humour. ‘The skipper should never have taken him on board, you know; but the old fallow was in a hole, he had to get off, and he had to have a doctor. The old galley is an invalid ship, you know, and so she has to have a doctor and a cow,--that blessed cow hasn’t given anny milk, still she hãs four legs, you know--and _I_ am the doctor.’ He gnawed at his moustache and muttered some words under his breath. Then young Raymond spoke for the first time. ‘Did you know that?’ he said, pointing with a shrinking gesture to the opium box in the mate’s hand. ‘After Cape Town, I knew it. Guessed it when he came on board, you know, and shut himself into his cabin for two days. I got in once, and then I saw what the trouble was, you know. I lookéd for that’--he held up the box--‘but dosé fallows are so cunning. _He_ knew it too, he knew he was going to hand in his checks, you know. He uséd to talk to me, and he often said, “_If_ I get home.”’ The mate paused. ‘Well! that is ãll over, it had to hãppen, you know.’ His voice and face and the resigned dejection of his whole figure embodied the word ‘Kismet’; the threads of the situation, for the moment, had slipped through his fingers. He sat quite quiet, staring mournfully in front of him, but the leg beneath his clasped hands never ceased a second in its nervous movement. The tramp above, and the ‘lip-lip’ of the little green waves against the ship’s side, were still the only sounds that broke in on the early silence. ‘For the sake of his people,’ said young Raymond suddenly, taking the little box from the mate’s hand. ‘Yes, he had an ayged father, you know, a parson in Yorkshire, he was going home to him--after seven years--that is harrd, you know,’ the mate said dreamily. ‘Well?’ said Raymond impatiently, and he put the hand that held the box through the open port-hole.