the bridge, but before anybody could answer Massy was sure
to have already scrambled ashore over the rail and pushed in, squeezing
the palms of his hands together, bowing his sleek head as if gummed all
over the top with black threads and tapes. And he would be so enraged
at the necessity of having to offer such an explanation that his moaning
would be positively pitiful, while all the time he tried to compose his
big lips into a smile.

"No, Mr. Van Wyk. You would not believe it. I couldn't get one of those
wretches to take the ship out. Not a single one of the lazy beasts could
be induced, and the law, you know, Mr. Van Wyk . . ."

He moaned at great length apologetically; the words conspiracy, plot,
envy, came out prominently, whined with greater energy. Mr. Van Wyk,
examining with a faint grimace his polished finger-nails, would say,
"H'm. Very unfortunate," and turn his back on him.

Fastidious, clever, slightly skeptical, accustomed to the best society
(he had held a much-envied shore appointment at the Ministry of Marine
for a year preceding his retreat from his profession and from Europe),
he possessed a latent warmth of feeling and a capacity for sympathy
which were concealed by a sort of haughty, arbitrary indifference of
manner arising from his early training; and by a something an enemy
might have called foppish, in his aspect--like a distorted echo of past
elegance. He managed to keep an almost military discipline amongst the
coolies of the estate he had dragged into the light of day out of the
tangle and shadows of the jungle; and the white shirt he put on every
evening with its stiff glossy front and high collar looked as if he had
meant to preserve the decent ceremony of evening-dress, but had wound
a thick crimson sash above his hips as a concession to the wilderness,
once his adversary, now his vanquished companion.

Moreover, it was a hygienic precaution. Worn wide open in front, a short
jacket of some airy silken stuff floated from his shoulders. His fluffy,
fair hair, thin at the top, curled slightly at the sides; a carefully
arranged mustache, an ungarnished forehead, the gleam of low patent
shoes peeping under the wide bottom of trowsers cut straight from the
same stuff as the gossamer coat, completed a figure recalling, with its
sash, a pirate chief of romance, and at the same time the elegance of
a slightly bald dandy indulging, in seclusion, a taste for unorthodox
costume.

It was his even