lley laughed a deep soft
laugh. "_You_ are an improvement, surely."

He continued in a vein of pleasantry. A good cigar was better than a
knock on the head--the sort of welcome he would have found on this
river forty or fifty years ago. Then leaning forward slightly, he became
earnestly serious. It seems as if, outside their own sea-gypsy
tribes, these rovers had hated all mankind with an incomprehensible,
bloodthirsty hatred. Meantime their depredations had been stopped, and
what was the consequence? The new generation was orderly, peaceable,
settled in prosperous villages. He could speak from personal knowledge.
And even the few survivors of that time--old men now--had changed so
much, that it would have been unkind to remember against them that they
had ever slit a throat in their lives. He had one especially in his
mind's eye: a dignified, venerable headman of a certain large coast
village about sixty miles sou'west of Tampasuk. It did one's heart
good to see him--to hear that man speak. He might have been a ferocious
savage once. What men wanted was to be checked by superior intelligence,
by superior knowledge, by superior force too--yes, by force held in
trust from God and sanctified by its use in accordance with His declared
will. Captain Whalley believed a disposition for good existed in every
man, even if the world were not a very happy place as a whole. In the
wisdom of men he had not so much confidence. The disposition had to be
helped up pretty sharply sometimes, he admitted. They might be silly,
wrongheaded, unhappy; but naturally evil--no. There was at bottom a
complete harmlessness at least . . .

"Is there?" Mr. Van Wyk snapped acrimoniously.

Captain Whalley laughed at the interjection, in the good humor of large,
tolerating certitude. He could look back at half a century, he pointed
out. The smoke oozed placidly through the white hairs hiding his kindly
lips.

"At all events," he resumed after a pause, "I am glad that they've had
no time to do you much harm as yet."

This allusion to his comparative youthfulness did not offend Mr. Van
Wyk, who got up and wriggled his shoulders with an enigmatic half-smile.
They walked out together amicably into the starry night towards the
river-side. Their footsteps resounded unequally on the dark path. At the
shore end of the gangway the lantern, hung low to the handrail, threw
a vivid light on the white legs and the big black feet of Mr. Massy
waiting about an