He longed, as he lay awake at night, to see the Captain.

He seemed to have always in front of his eyes the great wall of a chest with the blue ship on it, and the bolster legs, and the gigantic hands.

Strangest of all was the sense of evil that came with the attraction.
He longed to be in the man's company as he longed to do something that he had been always told not to do, and when he caught sight of him a sudden, hot, choking hand was pressed upon his heart, and he was terrified, delighted, frightened, ashamed, all in one.

The Captain always alluded to the things that he would tell him, would show him one day--"When you come to my little place I'll teach yer a thing or two"-- and Jeremy would wonder for hours what this little place would be like and what the Captain would teach him.

Meanwhile, he saw him everywhere, even when he was not there--behind lamp-posts, at street corners, behind the old woman's umbrella in the market-place, peering round the statues in the Cathedral, jerking up his head from behind chimney pots, looking through the nursery windows just when dusk was coming on, in the passages, under stairs, out in the dark garden--and always behind him that horrid dream of the dead-white road and the shingly Cove...