FROM THE LIFE
The captain let him be. He sat, crouched, a figure of despair in the desolate moonlight, his mouth in his hands. The waves broke and broke before him, falling forward in a hissing sprawl on the pebbles.
"I went away," he said, talking to the water. "I shipped an' went away—an' no one knowed about it aboard an' I lay awake nights thinkin' of it—because no one knowed. An' they was hot nights—hot an' still. An' I heard some one turnin' over an' talkin' to himself. An' no one said a word, an' I had to bite into my blanket to keep from— There was a man named Durkin. Him an' me had a watch together. An' I wanted some one to ask. I wanted some one to—to— No one knowed about it. We was frien's—him an' me. An' I told him. I told him. An' there it was again. I could hear them whisperin' behind my back. I could see them lookin' at me when they thought I wasn't takin' notice. An' no one said a word about it. An' the little spot on the back o' my hand kep' spreadin'—bare—till the hair was all off. An' off my arm."
He held his hands out and looked at them.
"There, on the back—like where there'd been—there'd been blood—a little round spot, it began. Greasy." He clapped his hands to his face again, as if to cover his eyes against the sight of them. "An' they seen it!" he cried. "They seen it an' knowed what it was. An' I went ashore an' got away an' I didn't come back. But I knowed it!"
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