It had been a lazy day on board. The crew had recovered from their
sickness, but there was nothing for them to do, and as orientals they
were quite content to do nothing. Only the Babu remained off duty, in
addition to the watch below. Desmond visited him, and persuaded him to
take some food; but nothing would induce him to come on deck; the mere
sight of the sea, he said, would externalize his interior.
It was Desmond's trick at the wheel between eight and midnight. Gulam
Abdullah was on the lookout; the rest of the crew were forward squatting
on the deck in a circle around Fuzl Khan. Desmond, thinking of other
things, heard dully, as from a great distance, the drone of the
Gujarati's voice. He was talking more freely and continuously than was
usual with him; ordinarily his manner was morose; he was a man of few
words, and those not too carefully chosen. So prolonged was the
monotonous murmur, however, that Desmond by and by found himself
wondering what was the subject of his lengthy discourse; he even strained
his ears to catch, if it might be, some fragments of it; but nothing came
into distinctness out of the low-pitched tone.
Occasionally it was broken by the voice of one of the others; now and
again there was a brief interval of silence; then the Gujarati began
again. Desmond's thoughts were once more diverted to his own strange
fate. Little more than a year before, he had been a boy, with no more
experience than was to be gained within the narrow circuit of a country
farm.
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