Captain West's
mind seemed quite clear, and must have been quite clear, that last
afternoon when he wore the Elsinore and started the lee-shore drift.
In which case it was a blunder. The Samurai blundered, and his heart
destroyed him when he became aware of the blunder.
At any rate the thought of blunder never enters Margaret's head. She
accepts, as a matter of course, that it was all a part of the
oncoming termination of his sickness. And no one will ever undeceive
her. Neither Mr. Pike, Mr. Mellaire, nor I, among ourselves, mention
a whisper of what so narrowly missed causing disaster. In fact, Mr.
Pike does not talk about the matter at all.--And then, again, might
it not have been something different from heart disease? Or heart
disease complicated with something else that obscured his mind that
afternoon before his death? Well, no one knows, and I, for one,
shall not sit, even in secret judgment, on the event.
At midday of the day we clawed off Tierra Del Fuego the Elsinore was
rolling in a dead calm, and all afternoon she rolled, not a score of
miles off the land.
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