her of them would have invited the other to his
home, had the opportunity served. That did not matter. He had had some
experience of officers quite different from Mr. McGinnis, clever, gay
young men, "good mixers," passengers' favourites, and he had discovered
that a man may be a brilliant social success and a useless incumbrance
at the same time. To state the problem to himself was difficult, but it
was forced upon him irresistibly when he endeavoured to formulate his
mature conclusions upon the subject of Mr. Spokesly. His chief officer
was his chief concern. Of the others he was able to set down a fairly
just and intelligible estimate. Young Chippenham was a bundle of amiable
possibilities. He would have to get his certificates before the company
would make him or break him. The chief engineer was at the other end of
the scale. His name was made. Behind him was a career of solid
responsibility, of grave crises met and mastered with cool generalship
and unbeatable energy. He was one of those men who carry in their own
personality the prestige of a race, a nation, and a learned profession.
Of the others it would be safe to take his verdict. Mr. Spokesly,
therefore, remained the chief source of anxiety. For it was not a simple
question of bearing witness to Mr. Spokesly's ability as a seaman, as a
navigator, or as a desirable junior officer. The tremendous
responsibility from which Captain Meredith shrank was twofold. On the
one hand, he had to accept the onus of recommending his chief officer
for a command. On the other lay the grave danger of injustice to a
brother professional. Mr. Spokesly was a man no longer in his first
youth, no doubt engaged to be married, with ambitions and aspirations
with which Captain Meredith had the deepest sympathy. It was no small
matter to stop a man's promotion. He remembered how he himself, piqued
at some ungenerous act of the company, had talked of resignation, and
his commander had taken him by the arm and muttered contemptuously, "And
spoil yourself for life, eh?" And when asked "How?" that same shipmaster
had drawn a brutal picture of a man throwing up a billet just as he was
getting a name, entering another employ as a junior, spending years
working up to chief mate again, only to find about a score of active,
intelligent, and experienced officers on the list ahead of him, and
gradually resigning himself to the colourless existence of an elderly
failure. Captain Meredith was not th