I was able to see in three days, and returned to duty, first offering to Captain Merwin from my cooler and saner viewpoint an apology for my manner, which he graciously accepted. But I made no apology to Mr. Butterell, nor even a withdrawal of my threat, preferring to let it hang over him as a possible deterrent. As it was a "watch and watch" ship, we met only at eight bells, to report the course, distance run, and the happenings of the last four hours, so that our strained relations did not matter. And that these relations should not suffer further straining, Captain Merwin, seeing me hopeless, decreed that the mate's log desk be placed in the passage between our rooms, so that I could enter up the log slate at the end of my watch without trespassing upon his atmosphere. As for Mabel, she had partaken of my blindness; she did not see me, even when she looked at me. But this gave me a larger opportunity to look at her, a dismal pleasure which I enjoyed to the utmost. I cannot describe in detail the peculiar grace, and charm, and beauty with which this girl appealed to me. All men know, and all men at some time in their lives invest some one woman with such attributes, which, perhaps, others cannot see. As a child, with yellow hair and sea-blue eyes, Mabel Merwin had seemed to me a creature lent from Heaven to lead me upward; now matured to perfect womanhood, her sea-blue eyes the same, but her hair darkened to a golden bronze and her creamy complexion to an orange tint by sun and wind, she was more than ever one of another world, unable to descend to my own. For mine was a world of outer and under darkness, of watch and worry, of work and dirt, of profane, hateful, jealous, and murderous thought which, without knowing it, I shared with the twin brothers. I could understand the baleful glitter in their eyes when they looked at the mate; but, uninformed at the time, nothing of the hungry adoration with which they regarded the girl. They were in separate watches, slept in separate forecastles, and did not meet except in the dog-watches, when the crew--an exceptionally fine and well-behaved body of men--policed them and kept them from fighting. In other respects they did well. Poorly educated, yet they were splendid material from which to develop the hardy, enduring deep-water sailor, and they advanced rapidly.