About noon a woman came in and fed the old man with a spoon out of a cup. Selby rose to go. "I’ll come again," he said, touching the passive hands covered with faint blue tattooing. "I’ll come and see you again this evening." The old man roused himself from his reveries. "Come again," he repeated, "that’s right, come again—soon. When she’s gone—she an’ her fussin’ about," and for the first time an expression came into his eyes, as he watched the woman with the cup, an expression of malevolence. "I don’t hold with women ... fussin’ round. An’ I’ve got something to tell you: something pressin’. You must come soon; I’m slippin’ my cable.... Navy beef _an’_ the rheumatics—an’ it’s to your advantage...." The shadows of the alders by the river were lengthening when Selby again walked up the bricked path leading to the cottage. The old man was still lying in contemplation of his hands: the grandfather clock had stopped, and there was a great stillness in the little room. His gaze was so vacant and the silence remained unbroken so long that Selby doubted if the old man recognised him. "I’ve come back, you see. I’ve come to see you again." Still the figure in the bed said nothing, staring dully at his visitor. "I’ve come to see you again," Selby repeated. "It’s to your advantage," said the old man. His voice was weaker, and it was evident that he was, as he said, slipping his cable fast. "Give me that there ditty-box," continued the thin, toneless voice. Selby looked round the room, and espied on a corner of the chest of drawers the scrubbed wooden "ditty-box" in which sailors keep their more intimate and personal possessions: he fetched it and placed it on the patchwork quilt; the old man fumbled ineffectually with the lid. "Tip ’em out," he said at length, and Selby inverted the box to allow a heap of papers and odds and ends to slide on to the old man’s hands. It was a pathetic collection, the flotsam and jetsam of a sailor’s life: faded photographs, certificates from Captains scarcely memories with the present generation, a frayed parchment, letters tied up with an old knife-lanyard, a lock of hair from which the curl had not quite departed ... ghost of a day when perhaps the old man did "hold with" women. At length he found what he wanted, a soiled sheet of paper that had been folded and refolded many times. "Here!" he said, and extended it to Selby. It was a printed form, discoloured with age, printed in old-fashioned type, and appeared to relate to details of prison routine and the number of prisoners victualled. Selby turned it over: on the back, drawn in ink that was now faded and rusty, was a clumsy arrow showing the points of the compass; beneath that a number of oblong figures arranged haphazard and enclosed by a line. One of the figures was marked with a cross.