I peeped in--she
keeps her door open for ventilation--and found her reading.
"Merely not sleepy," she assured me.
Nor in the heart of me do I believe she had any apprehension. She
does not know even now, I am confident, the Samurai's blunder--if
blunder it was. As she said, she was merely not sleepy, although
there is no telling in what occult ways she may have received though
not recognized Mr. Pike's anxiety.
At the head of the stairs, passing along the tiny hall to go out the
lee door of the chart-house, I glanced into the chart-room. On the
couch, lying on his back, his head uncomfortably high, I thought,
slept Captain West. The room was warm from the ascending heat of the
cabin, so that he lay unblanketed, fully dressed save for oilskins
and boots. He breathed easily and steadily, and the lean, ascetic
lines of his face seemed softened by the light of the low-turned
lamp. And that one glance restored to me all my surety and faith in
his wisdom, so that I laughed at myself for having left my warm bed
for a freezing trip on deck.
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