There was a very good
reason why I should give it up."

On another occasion, leaning back at ease, he remarked, "You have
treated me most--most humanely, my dear Mr. Van Wyk, from the very
first."

"You'll admit there was some merit," Mr. Van Wyk hinted slyly. "An
associate of that excellent Massy. . . . Well, well, my dear captain, I
won't say a word against him."

"It would be no use your saying anything against him," Captain Whalley
affirmed a little moodily. "As I've told you before, my life--my work,
is necessary, not for myself alone. I can't choose" . . . He paused,
turned the glass before him right round. . . . "I have an only child--a
daughter."

The ample downward sweep of his arm over the table seemed to suggest
a small girl at a vast distance. "I hope to see her once more before I
die. Meantime it's enough to know that she has me sound and solid, thank
God. You can't understand how one feels. Bone of my bone, flesh of my
flesh; the very image of my poor wife. Well, she . . ."

Again he paused, then pronounced stoically the words, "She has a hard
struggle."

And his head fell on his breast, his eyebrows remained knitted, as by
an effort of meditation. But generally his mind seemed steeped in the
serenity of boundless trust in a higher power. Mr. Van Wyk wondered
sometimes how much of it was due to the splendid vitality of the man,
to the bodily vigor which seems to impart something of its force to the
soul. But he had learned to like him very much.

XIII

This was the reason why Mr. Sterne's confidential communication,
delivered hurriedly on the shore alongside the dark silent ship,
had disturbed his equanimity. It was the most incomprehensible and
unexpected thing that could happen; and the perturbation of his spirit
was so great that, forgetting all about his letters, he ran rapidly up
the bridge ladder.

The portable table was being put together for dinner to the left of the
wheel by two pig-tailed "boys," who as usual snarled at each other
over the job, while another, a doleful, burly, very yellow Chinaman,
resembling Mr. Massy, waited apathetically with the cloth over his arm
and a pile of thick dinner-plates against his chest. A common cabin lamp
with its globe missing, brought up from below, had been hooked to the
wooden framework of the awning; the side-screens had been lowered all
round; Captain Whalley filling the depths of the wicker-chair seemed to
sit benumbed in a canvas tent crud