" He sniffed the bouquet of his wine and drank. "It is rare
moments like this--bizarre, incredible, what you like--that
compensate for the tedium of years."
His disengaged hand had fallen to the side of the chair, and I now
observed in dismay that a scarf belonging to Joyce's wife had been
left lying in the chair, and that his fingers were absently twisting
the silken fringe.
"I wonder that you stick it out, as you do, on this island," I
forced myself to observe, seeking safety in the commonplace, while
my eyes, as if fascinated, watched his fingers toying with the ends
of the scarf. I was forced to accept the innuendo beneath his
enigmatic utterances. His utter baseness and depravity, born perhaps
of a diseased mind, I could understand. I had led him to bait a trap
with the fiction of his own death, but he could not know that it had
been already sprung upon his unsuspecting victims.
He seemed to regard me with contemptuous pity. "Naturally, you wonder.
A mere skipper like yourself fails to understand--many things. What
can you know of life cooped up in this schooner? You touch only the
surface of things just as this confounded boat of yours skims only
the top of the water. Once in a lifetime you may come to real grips
with life--strike bottom, eh?--as your schooner has done now.
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