The Knight - Chapter 3 Devoted Servants And The Light of a Flare

All this the goggle-eyed mate had said in a resentful and melancholy
voice, with pauses, to the gentle murmur of the sea. It was for him a
bitter sort of pleasure to have a fresh pair of ears, a newcomer, to whom
he could repeat all these matters of grief and suspicion talked over
endlessly by the band of Captain Anthony's faithful subordinates. It was
evidently so refreshing to his worried spirit that it made him forget the
advisability of a little caution with a complete stranger. But really
with Mr. Powell there was no danger. Amused, at first, at these plaints,
he provoked them for fun. Afterwards, turning them over in his mind, he
became impressed, and as the impression grew stronger with the days his
resolution to keep it to himself grew stronger too.

* * * * *

What made it all the easier to keep--I mean the resolution--was that
Powell's sentiment of amused surprise at what struck him at first as mere
absurdity was not unmingled with indignation. And his years were too
few, his position too novel, his reliance on his own opinion not yet firm
enough to allow him to express it with any effect. And then--what would
have been the use, anyhow--and where was the necessity?

But this thing, familiar and mysterious at the same time, occupied his
imagination. The solitude of the sea intensifies the thoughts and the
facts of one's experience which seems to lie at the very centre of the
world, as the ship which carries one always remains the centre figure of
the round horizon. He viewed the apoplectic, goggle-eyed mate and the
saturnine, heavy-eyed steward as the victims of a peculiar and secret
form of lunacy which poisoned their lives. But he did not give them his
sympathy on that account. No. That strange affliction awakened in him a
sort of suspicious wonder.