arbor master and was
calling various pilots, navigators, and odd fish of Torres Strait by
their handier names--especially the pilots. These were the rewards of
reputation, and they defined Thursday's acceptance of him up to that
night in the wet season when his visit ended....

A Saturday again. The northwest monsoon had broken with torrential
downpour, and now the island reeked in a steam bath, as if the young
moon had focused a sick, intolerable ray upon it. A high wind stormed
the sands and brought no relief. The quiver of the surf beat on the
senses like heat waves. A few thrashing pawpaws and palm tufts threw
shadows like tormented sleepers along the beach. But up in the town
Thursday took its usual "tangle," shouted and sang and drowned its fever
without assuagement in the periodic crisis of the fortune hunt. A
Brisbane steamer lay ready to depart with the morning tide. Meanwhile
her shore goers, "seeing a bit o' life," did their possible to keep up
the prevailing temperature. Only the long jetty was quiet. Here a man
might stand back and away from it all and hear the single note of its
turmoil and peer into the mist of its lights like a contemplative
Lucifer at the verge of some lesser inferno.

* * * * *

And in truth there stood such a man in much that manner. He had come
down soft-footed from the streets and, lingering to assure himself he
had not been followed, stepped out upon the jetty where he stayed
motionless and attentive. His glance roved from point to point, noting,
verifying. First the outward spread twinkle of the deserted lugger fleet
at anchor; then the bulk of the Brisbane steamer at the T head, with her
yellow cargo flares that showed loading still in progress: and the town,
all unconscious of him. Something sinister seemed to detach this big,
dim figure from the restlessness of the night; brooding apart there so
coolly alert and contained. He regarded Thursday for a while, and at
last, alone and with himself for confidant, he made a gesture as if to
seal its folly and its whole destiny with final contempt and triumph.

He was turning away with a swing of broad shoulders when another figure
slipped from the shadow and moved suddenly to confront him.

"Ah--Captain Wetherbee?"

Everywhere and always up and down the earth, and more particularly in
rather unhealthful corners of it, are men who have to go braced for that
questioning slur, that significant little d