"Come, come, Monsieur Pharos," I said, "you must not give way like this. I have been on deck, and I can assure you there is no immediate danger." As I said this I stooped and placed my hand upon his shoulder. He threw it off with a snarl and a snap of his teeth that was more like the action of a mad dog than that of a man. "You lie, you lie!" he cried in a paroxysm of rage and fear. "I am cursed, and I shall never see land again. But I will not die--I will not die! There must be some way of keeping the yacht afloat. The captain must find one. If any one is to be saved it must be me. Do you hear what I say? It must be me." For the abominable selfishness of this remark I could have struck him. "Are you a man that you can talk like this in the presence of a woman?" I cried. "For shame, sir, for shame! Get up and let me conduct you to your own cabin." With this I lifted him to his feet and, whether he liked it or not, half led and half dragged him along the saloon to his own quarters. Once there I placed him on his settee, but the next roll of the vessel brought him to the floor and left him crouching in the corner, still clutching the monkey, his knees almost level with his shoulders, and his awful face looking up at me between them. The whole affair was so detestable that my gorge rose at it, and when I left him I returned to the saloon with a greater detestation of him in my heart than I had felt before. I found the Fräulein Valerie seated at the table. "Fräulein," I said, seating myself beside her, "I am afraid you have been needlessly alarmed. As I said in there, I give you my word there is no immediate danger." "I _am_ frightened," she answered. "See how my hands are trembling. But it is not death I fear." "You fear that man," I said, nodding my head in the direction of the cabin I had just left; "but I assure you, you need not do so, for to-day, at least, he is harmless." "Ah! you do not know him as I do," she replied. "I have seen him like this before. As soon as the storm abates he will be himself again, and then he will hate us both the more for having been witnesses of his cowardice." Then, sinking her voice a little, she added: "I often wonder, Mr. Forrester, whether he can be human. If so, he must be the only one of his kind in the world, for Nature surely could not permit two such men to live." CHAPTER X.