"Captain gone below?"
"Yes, sir," said the fellow who with a quid of tobacco bulging out his
left cheek kept his eyes on the compass card. "This minute. He
laughed."
"Laughed," repeated Powell incredulously. "Do you mean the captain did?
You must be mistaken. What would he want to laugh for?"
"Don't know, sir."
The elderly sailor displayed a profound indifference towards human
emotions. However, after a longish pause he conceded a few words more to
the second officer's weakness. "Yes. He was walking the deck as usual
when suddenly he laughed a little and made for the companion. Thought of
something funny all at once."
Something funny! That Mr. Powell could not believe. He did not ask
himself why, at the time. Funny thoughts come to men, though, in all
sorts of situations; they come to all sorts of men. Nevertheless Mr.
Powell was shocked to learn that Captain Anthony had laughed without
visible cause on a certain night. The impression for some reason was
disagreeable. And it was then, while finishing his watch, with the
chilly gusts of wind sweeping at him out of the darkness where the short
sea of the soundings growled spitefully all round the ship, that it
occurred to his unsophisticated mind that perhaps things are not what
they are confidently expected to be; that it was possible that Captain
Anthony was not a happy man . . . In so far you will perceive he was to a
certain extent prepared for the apoplectic and sensitive Franklin's
lamentations about his captain. And though he treated them with a
contempt which was in a great measure sincere, yet he admitted to me that
deep down within him an inexplicable and uneasy suspicion that all was
not well in that cabin, so unusually cut off from the rest of the ship,
came into being and grew against his will.