“You know, Harkness, that’s the hardest thing of all to bear,” he said, while his thin fingers stroked his bristly chin ruminatingly, and the drawn lines of his gaunt face enhanced his habitual gravity. “If there were only some way of getting word to them, it wouldn’t be so bad. But I might be dead for all they know--and would you believe it, Harkness, sometimes it seems to me as if I’m actually in my tomb.” And the Captain averted his gaze, and after staring into vacancy for an indeterminate period, he continued, speaking more rapidly, and almost with brusqueness, “Now you see why I’m so anxious to get back! For my own part, it wouldn’t matter so much, but I can’t help thinking it must be Hell for those waiting up there!” And he concluded by drawing vivid pictures of blue-eyed Martha, his wife, and of the auburn-haired six-year-old Ellen, who was waiting for the father that would never come back. To all this I listened earnestly; and when Gavison had finished, I tried to say whatever I could by way of consolation. And in order to make his woes seem less by comparison, I exaggerated my own; I discoursed upon the misfortune of being sundered from my old father and mother (who, as a matter of fact, had previously been sundered from me by death), and dilated upon my grief at losing Alma Huntley--although, to tell the truth, she had been almost driven out of my thoughts by the proximity of one even fairer than she. It was from the time of our mutual confessions that my real friendship with Gavison dated. Not unnaturally, we now lost sight of our former positions as superior officer and subordinate, and began to act unrestrainedly toward one another as man to man. And while I was on terms of fellowship with all the crew and intimate with several, my attachment to Gavison became the closest of all; and often of an afternoon, when he had completed the day’s studies, or of an evening before the great golden orbs had been extinguished, we might have been seen strolling together along the winding colonnades, or seated on seaweed cushions in a marble hall, discussing the art or the odd ways of Atlantis, practicing the Atlantean speech, exchanging reminiscences of the world we had left, or merely absorbed in one of those long silences that marked our queer acquaintanceship. CHAPTER XV The Pageant of the Good Destruction