‘No--no--look here,’ said the mate, holding out his hand for the box, ‘I must tell the skipper, you know,’ and he put the box away in his pocket. ‘But you will see, it will be ãll right, he will leave the whole rãcket in my hands; he hates a fuss, you know, that old fallow. Besides, it wasn’t rrãally the opium at the end, you know, it was the heat--his hãart was so weakenéd, you see.’ He got up and looked earnestly, with narrowed eyes, at the dead man’s wasted figure. ‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘it was a little joke, the breeze would have savéd him, you know, ... but it will be ãll right,--failure of the hãart from the heat ... and then we shall put him over the side; anyway there will be no post-mortem. Nobody will come in here, you see, except the skipper, and the box will be in my pocket,--the wind will take away the smell in time.’ There was a faint, sweet, sickly smell as of drugs in the close air of the confined space. ‘So be it!’ said young Raymond, moving from his station against the cabin wall. ‘Let us put him to rest, though; his face haunts me, even when I don’t look at it,’ and he shuddered; ‘the light is too cruel.’ Keeping his head averted, he took a handkerchief from a drawer, and covered the dead man’s face. The flaming East was sending a shaft of orange light through the open port-hole full upon it, and the effect was not pretty. ‘When did he go?’ I said, breaking the silence that followed. ‘I don’t know,’ said the mate, ‘but it could not have been long before the breeze came, anyway--he was hardly cold, you know.’ Young Raymond faced round to the light with strained eyes. ‘_I_ know,’ he said suddenly, ‘_I_ know, I saw him go, I saw it all. I shall never get it out of my head--never! never!’ The mate looked at him half cynically, half concernedly. ‘Hãng it all, my dear fallow,’ he said, ‘death is not an aymiable joker, when you are not uséd to him, you know; but you musn’t let him play with your narves.’ ‘Nerves!’ said young Raymond hoarsely, ‘you shall tell me if it _is_ nerves, Armand, for, by George! I should like to know.’ ‘Well?’ said the mate; he had seated himself again in his favourite attitude. The world seemed suddenly enclosed within the walls of this wooden crib, time was annihilated, everything stood still, there was no longer anything outside--just the cabin--we three--and the dead man. I felt giddy and stifled, but the moment young Raymond began to speak, all that feeling merged in wonder at the intense earnestness in his face and the tones of his voice. ‘After we left _him_, last night,’ he said, ‘I slung my hammock on the main deck, starboard side, just where the gymnastic bars are rigged by the main mast; it seemed cooler there than on the poop. Cotter came out on watch just after I turned in, so it was about midnight, I suppose. I couldn’t get the idea of _him_ out of my head;’ he avoided looking at the dead man always, and stared straight in front of him.