But it was quite suddenly, while I sat all intent upon wind and sails, that the true meaning of Sangree’s remark about the animal flared up in me with its full import. For his admission that he knew it was in pain and starved was in reality nothing more or less than a revelation of his deeper self. It was in the nature of a confession. He was speaking of something that he knew positively, something that was beyond question or argument, something that had to do directly with himself. “Poor starved beast” he had called it in words that had “come out of their own accord,” and there had not been the slightest evidence of any desire to conceal or explain away. He had spoken instinctively⁠—from his heart, and as though about his own self.

And half an hour before sunset we raced through the narrow opening of the lagoon and saw the smoke of the dinner-fire blowing here and there among the trees, and the figures of Joan and the Bo’sun’s Mate running down to meet us at the landing stage.