natural
conclusion. An unexpected lift of the water washed off the _Heart's
Desire_, rolled her about, and left her broken on the mud. I met the
journalists in a group on their way to the afternoon train, their faces
still reflecting the brightness of an excellent entertainment. Hopkins
took me aside. "I've made it right with old Pascoe. He hasn't lost
anything by it, you can be sure of that." But I was looking for the
cobbler, and all I wished to learn was the place where I was likely to
find him. They did not know that.

Late that evening I was still looking for him, and it had been raining
for hours. The streets of the village were dark and deserted. Passing
one of the many inns, which were the only illumination of the village,
I stumbled over a shadow on the cobbles outside. In the glow of a
match I found Pascoe, drunk, with his necessary stick beside him,
broken.

V. The Master

This master of a ship I remember first as a slim lad, with a shy smile,
and large hands that were lonely beyond his outgrown reefer jacket.
His cap was always too small for him, and the soiled frontal badge of
his line became a coloured button beyond his forelock. He used to come
home occasionally--and it was always when we were on the point of
forgetting him altogether. He came with a huge bolster in a cab, as
though out of the past and nowhere. There is a tradition, a book
tradition, that the boy apprenticed to the sea acquires saucy eyes, and
a self-reliance always ready to dare to that bleak extreme the very
thought of which horrifies those who are lawful and cautious. They
know better who live where the ships are. He used to bring his young
shipmates to see us, and they were like himself. Their eyes were
downcast. They showed no self-reliance. Their shyness and politeness,
when the occasion was quite simple, were absurdly incommensurate even
with modesty. Their sisters, not nearly so polite, used to mock them.

As our own shy lad was never with us for long, his departure being as
abrupt and unannounced as his appearance, we could willingly endure
him. But he was extraneous to the household. He had the impeding
nature of a new and superfluous piece of furniture which is in the way,
yet never knows it, and placidly stays where it is, in its wooden
manner, till it is placed elsewhere. There was a morning when, as he
was leaving the house, during one of his brief visits to his home, I
noticed to my astonish