d
married a shipowner's daughter had turned his thoughts that way. But not
for long. Mr. Spokesly had a feeling that to marry into a job had its
drawbacks. He felt "there was a string to it." And come what might, in
his own hazy, amorphous fashion he desired to be captain of his soul.
Had he the power at that moment of calling up Destiny, he would have
made quite modest demands of her. Of course, a command, a fine large
modern steamer, twin-screw, trading for choice in the Pacific, where as
he knew very well a commander had pickings that placed him in a few
years beyond the reach of penury at any rate.... Ada could come out. She
would do justice to such a position out East. And when the war was
over they could come home and have a little place up the river at Bourne
End ... nothing very great, of course, but just right for Captain and
Mrs. Spokesly. The dream was so very fair, so possible yet so utterly
improbable, that his mouth drew down tremulously at the corners as he
stared at the bulkhead. His eyes grew tired and smarted. Ah! Money! How
often he had mouthed in jest that sorry proverb about the lack of money
being the root of all evil! And how true it was, after all. Suddenly he
stood up and became aware of someone in the alleyway outside his window.
With a sense of relief, for his reflections had become almost
inconveniently sombre and ingrowing, he saw it was someone he already
knew in a friendly way, though he still addressed him as "Stooard."

There is much in a name, much more in a mode of address. When Archy
Bates, the chief steward of the _Tanganyika_, turned round and hoisted
himself so that he could look into Mr. Spokesly's port, their friendship
was just at the point when the abrupt unveiling of some common
aspiration would change "Stooard" into "Bates" or "Mister." For a
steward on a ship is unplaced. The office is nothing, the personality
everything. He may be the confidential agent of the commander or he may
be the boon companion of the cook. To him most men are mere assimilative
organisms, stomachs to be filled or doctored. Archy Bates was, like
another Bates of greater renown, a naturalist. He studied the habits of
the animals around him. He fed them or filled them with liquor,
according to their desires, and watched the result. It might almost be
said that he acted the part of Tempter to mankind, bribing them into
friendship or possibly only a useful silence. It is a sad but solid fact
that he nearl