It could happen some night, Ben knew, out of a silence like this. The unknowable driven brain could abruptly decide that Ben Cory must no longer live. What is madness?... After the decision, execution--but not immediate, perhaps. It did not seem to be Shawn's way to kill with his own hand. He was capable of it. Joey Mills had told Ben how, in the battle with the _Schouven_, Shawn had boarded the sloop with the rest, two pistols in his belt. Disdaining a cutlass after the pistols were empty, Shawn went in howling with his short knife, and that on a tall Dutchman with long arms--as if, Mills muttered, death was a nothing to Captain Shawn, or welcome. But Shawn wasn't for dying that day. Quite gently Shawn asked; "All quiet, Ben?" "Yea, quiet." Not "Yea, sir." Not "Yea, Captain." The self clinging to integrity will snatch at trivia. But for Ben there was a kind of upside-down shame in reflecting that anyone else aboard who omitted the formula of humility would very quickly be instructed with a rope's end. And so, Ben Cory thought, it seems Ben Cory doth care about the opinion of others, be they only the rats aboard a pirate ketch, the which would be dem'd good and comical--could I be telling it to Ru before the fire in Uncle John's library, and sweet Kate maybe bringing us a plate of---- "Ben, who's aloft?" "Manuel." "Have you chanced to look aft, the last half-hour, boy?" "No. Watching the bow, so to keep the bearing you ordered." "Then give me the helm, and take this glass"--Shawn's voice was rising curiously--"and look well abaft, and tell me what you see at all." "Where away?" "God damn it," said Shawn, still rather softly, "find it yourself!" He thrust the spyglass into Ben's hand and snatched the tiller, humming in his teeth and not pleasantly. Ben searched the northwestern arc, and found nothing but empty sea. Something to throw him off his guard?--he lowered the glass quickly, but Shawn was not even watching him. Shawn was staring forward, head high, the moon's whiteness displaying his face, cold and suffering and proud. "I don't find anything." "Look again." "I see the stars, a quiet sea, and not another thing." "Judah!" Marsh hurried aft. "Take the glass, Mr. Marsh. See what you can find to the northwest." Ben stood away from them. He saw Marsh stiffen with uneasiness or bewilderment; fidget, and mutter, and rub the glass with an end of his shirt. "Mr. Shawn, sir, my one glim a'n't too sharp." Shawn immensely filled his lungs and slowly let the breath go. "You too maybe?... Well--it may be gone." It might be easier, Ben thought, to endure the ache of waiting if Shawn himself would look aft again, but he would not. "Was it a sail, Captain?"