“The lines deepened on the second mate’s shrewd face, and a doubtful look wrinkled his narrow brows, as his eyes watched mine, as if to fathom how far he might trust me in such a matter. It would not do, however, and I saw that he felt compelled to speak, at all risks, like a frank fellow, as he was, who had strong doubts of dark deeds done in the craft—he could not tell exactly how—and was taking the first good chance that turned up, of easing his mind. There was a look of honest trouble about his twinkling blue eyes, and beardless swarthy cheek, which, combined with his Yankee shrewdness—setting aside the stuff about the ghost—made me repeat the question in a sharper tone, as my mind again reverted to something I had heard before. “‘The truth is, sir,’ said he, ‘I was convinced from the first, that Mrs. Catherton came on board against her will. Something seemed wrong between them from the start; for I remember, just after she was getting over her sea-sickness, I began to observe the traces of tears on her face, as she often came hurriedly up on the poop, when he was in the after cabin. It was even a matter of talk for’ard, before the blacksmith’s forge was off deck,[7] that he treated her ill; and as this belief gradually worked aft, from _that_ end of the ship, before we had harpooned a single whale, you may swear that it was true. I heard him, myself, from the sail-room, one morning when he made sure I was asleep in the house on deck, twitting her with her want of faith toward him, and telling her how smoothly she had carried it on for years, while he was at sea—she praying and moaning all the time, and calling on God to witness her innocence; while the very sound of her voice—to say nothing of her tears and her prayers—was enough to move the heart of a Turk to believe her. She could not abide the sight of the mate; and the worst of it was, he seemed to know well enough in his heart what it was for—in short, sir, I had sailed with Jinney before, and had ought to know him. As sure as every man’s conscience is an inward comforter or a scourge of scorpions in this life, according as he listens to its voice or not, so sure that man hated himself as he went about the decks. It was noticed by all hands that he never spoke to her, nor she to him, although she used to sit, for hours at a time, on the poop, with a book on her knees, watching, as we drove along, something you could not see in the wake of the ship, or it might be a gull, hovering over the track of foam; or a Mother Carey’s chicken walking the sprays. All this time we were taking whales, and as the captain showed nothing of the tyrant in his usage of the crew, and the Tartar was a better found ship than I ever had the luck to have been in before, the people had nothing to grumble about, except the matters aft, which, to be sure, was no concern of theirs. Either Captain Catherton, or Jinney, or the mulatto, were always