The lady Aurora was quick to notice the change in Greaves. Her lids moved swiftly upon her eyes, and their lashes were a veil, and she had an art of glancing without seeming to glance. She did not like him, and would not appear to see him more often than courtesy obliged. Her rapid glances, therefore, on occasions when she would have found other occupation for her eyes, told me that she was struck by the man’s looks, that she wondered at them and guessed their significance. I was no doctor. For all I could tell she might have some knowledge under that head. I fancied this from her manner of looking at Greaves. So one day, when she and I were alone in the cabin, Bol on the lookout above, and the captain in his berth, I endeavored to converse with her about my friend; but to no purpose. Intelligibility vanished in signs, shakes of the head, dumb pointings to the brow and ribs. She had, indeed, picked up a little English. She was able to pronounce the names of various articles of food, also had several English nautical terms at her tongue’s end; but when it came to trying to talk about Greaves’ state of health, there was nothing for it but to crook our brows, hunch our backs, and work meaning into nonsense with postures. Yet I managed to discover that the lady and I were agreed in this; that Greaves had received some internal injury from his fall, that it was slowly sickening him, and affecting his mind. Nevertheless, he went about as usual, punctually took sights, attended at meals, was up and down during the day and night. He was very rational in all the orders he gave to the men, in all direct instructions to me respecting shipboard discipline and routine. It was by fits and starts that his growing wildness showed, and always when he had me alone; and then the matter of his discourse was dreams and religion and death. Not that he talked as though he supposed his end was approaching; upon his words lay no shadow of the melancholy that is cast by the dread event when the heart knows, dimly and mysteriously, that it is coming. He chattered as if for argument’s sake; postulated to disprove his own assertions, but he was seldom logical, often devout, filled to the very twang of his nose with fervor, and at other times, and on a sudden, as impious as young John Bunyan.