s much as possible, to avoid exasperating Massy needlessly.
No fuss! Let it all happen naturally.

Mr. Van Wyk all through the dinner was conscious of a sense of isolation
that invades sometimes the closeness of human intercourse. Captain
Whalley failed lamentably and obviously in his attempts to eat
something. He seemed overcome by a strange absentmindedness. His hand
would hover irresolutely, as if left without guidance by a preoccupied
mind. Mr. Van Wyk had heard him coming up from a long way off in the
profound stillness of the river-side, and had noticed the irresolute
character of the footfalls. The toe of his boot had struck the bottom
stair as though he had come along mooning with his head in the air
right up to the steps of the veranda. Had the captain of the Sofala been
another sort of man he would have suspected the work of age there. But
one glance at him was enough. Time--after, indeed, marking him for its
own--had given him up to his usefulness, in which his simple faith would
see a proof of Divine mercy. "How could I contrive to warn him?" Mr. Van
Wyk wondered, as if Captain Whalley had been miles and miles away, out
of sight and earshot of all evil. He was sickened by an immense disgust
of Sterne. To even mention his threat to a man like Whalley would be
positively indecent. There was something more vile and insulting in
its hint than in a definite charge of crime--the debasing taint of
blackmailing. "What could anyone bring against him?" he asked himself.
This was a limpid personality. "And for what object?" The Power that man
trusted had thought fit to leave him nothing on earth that envy could
lay hold of, except a bare crust of bread.

"Won't you try some of this?" he asked, pushing a dish slightly.
Suddenly it seemed to Mr. Van Wyk that Sterne might possibly be coveting
the command of the Sofala. His cynicism was quite startled by what
looked like a proof that no man may count himself safe from his kind
unless in the very abyss of misery. An intrigue of that sort was hardly
worth troubling about, he judged; but still, with such a fool as Massy
to deal with, Whalley ought to and must be warned.

At this moment Captain Whalley, bolt upright, the deep cavities of the
eyes overhung by a bushy frown, and one large brown hand resting on each
side of his empty plate, spoke across the tablecloth abruptly--"Mr. Van
Wyk, you've always treated me with the most humane consideration."

"My dear captain, you m