"Whisht, Ben! You'll be telling me your great-uncle gave me no promise hard and fast, but I know men's hearts. But for Jenks, I'd've had my way, and glory in it for Mr. Kenny as well as me, don't you doubt it. It wasn't to be. When he took on that agent Hanson, sure my voice was plain enough, I could see how they'd been planning it all the while. You see now, don't you? Had I not taken _Artemis_ from him, Jenks would have her now the other side of the Horn, and Boston would never see her again. But I, Ben--why, I shall give her back the name of _Artemis_, and I'll send her home, when she's taken us to the new country...." In the silence Ben caught the glint of something--merely the copper farthing; at length Shawn spoke again, quietly: "True, Ben--nothing before you now but the Line, and the South Atlantic, and the Horn. Nothing below you but the Atlantic. And once on a time wasn't I a boy of your age who believed that God was over me?" He was moving away. Ben thought he might be weeping, but his voice often sounded so when his eyes were dry. "And over you, over all that breathe. Oh, but in those days I was that young and foolish you wouldn't know the misguided thoughts that would seize hold of me and deceive, for the voices I heard then were not God's voice, they were far other. Maybe even now I'm not certain of anything, except that I cannot die until I've looked again on the color of the western sea." He returned swift and silent out of the shadow and stood close to the helm, eyes level with Ben's; no taller than Ben. Not even as tall, perhaps. "What now? Why did I say that, Ben? Why did I say, the _color_ of the western sea?" Ben supposed his right hand could flash away from the tiller to his belt, if it must. "How could I know why you say any of the things you do?" "Ah? But you must sail with me, all the way. Will you not say it? Will you be forcing me to destroy you? Then I'll be alone, Ben. These men with us--what are they but phantoms, all of 'em? Knife 'em, they'd bleed smoke--not blood, Ben--smoke, and drift away downwind. None aboard but you and me, now that's no lie...." But Ben, for sheer pity and disgust, terror and bewilderment, self-blame and homesickness and again pity, could not speak at all, and Shawn moved away, himself like smoke, past another black shadow by the mizzen that must have heard all he said; at this Shawn snarled: "If the wind changes, Mr. Marsh, you needn't be calling me--I shall know it." Under Ben's hand beautiful _Diana_ ran southward, cutting away the miles with a timeless whisper at her bow; but during the night the wind fell off, the air growing dull, silent, and in the morning dead. The sun rose on sails become slack, bemused in idleness on a mirror sea. * * * * * "I wondered, in fact, that she had not long ago destroyed herself in one of those seizures."