It's all a pretty image of life without the real heart
and soul of life. To a man with too strong desires who came here and
lived close to nature, strange things might happen." "Let her out a bit," I shouted to Sangree, who was coming aft. "The
wind's gusty and we've got hardly any ballast." He went back to the bows, and Dr. Silence continued--

"Here, I mean, a long sojourn would lead to deterioration, to
degeneration. The place is utterly unsoftened by human influences, by
any humanising associations of history, good or bad. This landscape has
never awakened into life; it's still dreaming in its primitive sleep." "In time," I put in, "you mean a man living here might become brutal?" "The passions would run wild, selfishness become supreme, the instincts
coarsen and turn savage probably." "But--"

"In other places just as wild, parts of Italy for instance, where there
are other moderating influences, it could not happen. The character
might grow wild, savage too in a sense, but with a human wildness one
could understand and deal with. But here, in a hard place like this, it
might be otherwise." He spoke slowly, weighing his words carefully. I looked at him with many questions in my eyes, and a precautionary cry
to Sangree to stay in the fore part of the boat, out of earshot. "First of all there would come callousness to pain, and indifference to
the rights of others. Then the soul would turn savage, not from
passionate human causes, or with enthusiasm, but by deadening down into
a kind of cold, primitive, emotionless savagery--by turning, like the
landscape, soulless." "And a man with strong desires, you say, might change?" "Without being aware of it, yes; he might turn savage, his instincts and
desires turn animal. And if"--he lowered his voice and turned for a
moment towards the bows, and then continued in his most weighty
manner--"owing to delicate health or other predisposing causes, his
Double--you know what I mean, of course--his etheric Body of Desire, or
astral body, as some term it--that part in which the emotions, passions
and desires reside--if this, I say, were for some constitutional reason
loosely joined to his physical organism, there might well take place an
occasional projection--"

Sangree came aft with a sudden rush, his face aflame, but whether with
wind or sun, or with what he had heard, I cannot say. In my surprise I
let the tiller slip and the cutter gave a great plunge as she came
sharply into the wind and flung us all together in a heap on the bottom. Sangree said nothing, but while he scrambled up and made the jib sheet
fast my companion found a moment to add to his unfinished sentence the
words, too low for any ear but mine--

"Entirely unknown to himself, however." We righted the boat and laughed, and then Sangree produced the map and
explained exactly where we were. Far away on the horizon, across an open
stretch of water, lay a blue cluster of islands with our crescent-shaped
home among them and the safe anchorage of the lagoon. An hour with this
wind would get us there comfortably, and while Dr. Silence and Sangree
fell into conversation, I sat and pondered over the strange suggestions
that had just been put into my mind concerning the "Double," and the
possible form it might assume when dissociated temporarily from the
physical body. The whole way home these two chatted, and John Silence was as gentle and
sympathetic as a woman. I did not hear much of their talk, for the wind
grew occasionally to the force of a hurricane and the sails and tiller
absorbed my attention; but I could see that Sangree was pleased and
happy, and was pouring out intimate revelations to his companion in the
way that most people did--when John Silence wished them to do so. 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. V

Everything changed from the moment John Silence set foot on that island;
it was like the effect produced by calling in some big doctor, some
great arbiter of life and death, for consultation. The sense of gravity
increased a hundredfold. Even inanimate objects took upon themselves a
subtle alteration, for the setting of the adventure--this deserted bit
of sea with its hundreds of uninhabited islands--somehow turned sombre. An element that was mysterious, and in a sense disheartening, crept
unbidden into the severity of grey rock and dark pine forest and took
the sparkle from the sunshine and the sea. I, at least, was keenly aware of the change, for my whole being shifted,
as it were, a degree higher, becoming keyed up and alert. The figures
from the background of the stage moved forward a little into the
light--nearer to the inevitable action. In a word this man's arrival
intensified the whole affair. And, looking back down the years to the time when all this happened, it
is clear to me that he had a pretty sharp idea of the meaning of it from
the very beginning. How much he knew beforehand by his strange divining
powers, it is impossible to say, but from the moment he came upon the
scene and caught within himself the note of what was going on amongst
us, he undoubtedly held the true solution of the puzzle and had no need
to ask questions. And this certitude it was that set him in such an
atmosphere of power and made us all look to him instinctively; for he
took no tentative steps, made no false moves, and while the rest of us
floundered he moved straight to the climax. He was indeed a true diviner
of souls. I can now read into his behaviour a good deal that puzzled me at the
time, for though I had dimly guessed the solution, I had no idea how he
would deal with it. And the conversations I can reproduce almost
verbatim, for, according to my invariable habit, I kept full notes of
all he said. To Mrs. Maloney, foolish and dazed; to Joan, alarmed, yet plucky; and to
the clergyman, moved by his daughter's distress below his usual shallow
emotions, he gave the best possible treatment in the best possible way,
yet all so easily and simply as to make it appear naturally spontaneous.