um-bowl. The Carreras
perfume, mingled with fresh tobacco, was never burdensome, and unlike
any other. The silk handkerchief was as much a feature of the Captain's
appearance as the skull-cap. To it was due the really remarkable polish
of the perfect clays so regularly cushioned in his palm. Always for
dinner, the Captain's toilet was fresh throughout. Invariably, too, he
brought with him an unfolded handkerchief upon which he placed, at the
farther end of the table when the weather was fair (and in the socket
of the fruit-bowl when the weather-frames were on), a ready-filled
pipe. This he took to hand when coffee was brought.

His voice was seldom raised. He found great difficulty in expressing
himself, except upon affairs of the ship; yet, queerly enough, there
were times when he seemed deeply eager to say the things which came of
his endless silences. As unlikely a man as you would find in the
Pacific, or any other merchant-service, was this Carreras; a gentleman,
if a very bashful one; a deeply-read and kindly man, although it was
quite as difficult for him to extend a generous action, directly to be
found out,--and his mind was continually furnishing inclinations of
this sort,--as it was to express his thoughts. Either brought on a
nervous tension which left him shaken and drained. The right woman
would have adored Captain Carreras, and doubtless would have called
forth from his breast a love of heroic dimension; but she would have
been forced to do the winning; to speak and take the initiative in all
but the giving of happiness. Temperate for a bachelor, clean
throughout, charmingly innocent of the world, and a splendid seaman. To
one of fine sensibilities, there was something about the person of
Captain Carreras of softly glowing warmth, and rarely tender.

Bedient had been with him as cook for over a year, during which the
_Truxton_ had swung down to Australia and New South Wales, and called
at half the Asiatic and insular ports from Vladivostok to Bombay. Since
he was a little chap (back of which were the New York memories, vague,
but strange and persistent), there had always been some ship for
Bedient, but the _Truxton_ was by far the happiest.... It was from the
_Truxton_ just a few months before that he had gone ashore day after
day for a fortnight at Adelaide; and a wee woman five years older, and
a cycle wiser, had invariably been waiting with new mysteries in her
house.... Moreover, on the _Truxton_, he