The riding lights of ships winked afar like setting stars, and the hills across the roadstead resembled rounded black masses of arrested thunder-clouds.
'"I couldn't clear out," Jim began.

"The skipper did--that's all very well for him.

I couldn't, and I wouldn't.

They all got out of it in one way or another, but it wouldn't do for me." 'I listened with concentrated attention, not daring to stir in my chair; I wanted to know--and to this day I don't know, I can only guess.

He would be confident and depressed all in the same breath, as if some conviction of innate blamelessness had checked the truth writhing within him at every turn.