V
As soon as he had come up quite close he said, mouth-
ing in a growl--
"What's this I hear, Whalley? Is it true you're sell-
ing the Fair Maid?"
Captain Whalley, looking away, said the thing was
done--money had been paid that morning; and the other
expressed at once his approbation of such an extremely
sensible proceeding. He had got out of his trap to
stretch his legs, he explained, on his way home to dinner.
Sir Frederick looked well at the end of his time. Didn't
he?
Captain Whalley could not say; had only noticed the
carriage going past.
The Master-Attendant, plunging his hands into the
pockets of an alpaca jacket inappropriately short and
tight for a man of his age and appearance, strutted
with a slight limp, and with his head reaching only to
the shoulder of Captain Whalley, who walked easily,
staring straight before him. They had been good com-
rades years ago, almost intimates. At the time when
Whalley commanded the renowned Condor, Eliott had
charge of the nearly as famous Ringdove for the same
owners; and when the appointment of Master-Attendant
was created, Whalley would have been the only other
serious candidate. But Captain Whalley, then in the
prime of life, was resolved to serve no one but his own
auspicious Fortune. Far away, tending his hot irons,
he was glad to hear the other had been successful. There
was a worldly suppleness in bluff Ned Eliott that would
serve him well in that sort of official appointment. And
they were so dissimilar at bottom that as they came
slowly to the end of the avenue before the Cathedral, it
had never come into Whalley's head that he might have
been in that man's place--provided for to the end of
his days.
The sacred edifice, standing in solemn isolation amongst
the converging avenues of enormous trees, as if to put
grave thoughts of heaven into the hours of ease, pre-
sented a closed Gothic portal to the light and glory of
the west. The glass of the rosace above the ogive glowed
like fiery coal in the deep carvings of a wheel of stone.
The two men faced about.
"I'll tell you what they ought to do next, Whalley,"
growled Captain Eliott suddenly.
"Well?"
"They ought to send a real live lord out here when
Sir Frederick's time is up. Eh?"
Captain Whalley perfunctorily did not see why a lord
of the right sort should not do as well as anyone else.
But this was not the other's point of view.
"No, no. Place runs itself. Nothing can stop it now.
Good enough for a lord," he growled in short sentences.
"Look at the changes in our time. We need a lord
here now. They have got a lord in Bombay."
He dined once or twice every year at the Government
House--a many-windowed, arcaded palace upon a hill
laid out in roads and gardens. And lately he had been
taking about a duke in his Master-Attendant's steam-
launch to visit the harbor improvements. Before that
he had "most obligingly" gone out in person to pick
out a good berth for the ducal yacht. Afterwards he
had an invitation to lunch on board. The duchess her-
self lunched with them. A big woman with a red face.
Complexion quite sunburnt. He should think ruined.
Very gracious manners. They were going on to
Japan. . . .
He ejaculated these details for Captain Whalley's edi-
fication, pausing to blow out his cheeks as if with a
pent-up sense of importance, and repeatedly protruding
his thick lips till the blunt crimson end of his nose seemed
to dip into the milk of his mustache. The place ran
itself; it was fit for any lord; it gave no trouble except
in its Marine department--in its Marine department he
repeated twice, and after a heavy snort began to relate
how the other day her Majesty's Consul-General in
French Cochin-China had cabled to him--in his official
capacity--asking for a qualified man to be sent over
to take charge of a Glasgow ship whose master had died
in Saigon.
"I sent word of it to the officers' quarters in the Sailors'
Home," he continued, while the limp in his gait seemed
to grow more accentuated with the increasing irritation
of his voice. "Place's full of them. Twice as many
men as there are berths going in the local trade. All
hungry for an easy job. Twice as many--and--What
d'you think, Whalley? . . ."
He stopped short; his hands clenched and thrust deeply
downwards, seemed ready to burst the pockets of his
jacket. A slight sigh escaped Captain Whalley.
"Hey? You would think they would be falling over
each other. Not a bit of it. Frightened to go home.
Nice and warm out here to lie about a veranda waiting
for a job. I sit and wait in my office. Nobody. What
did they suppose? That I was going to sit there like
a dummy with the Consul-General's cable before me?
Not likely. So I looked up a list of them I keep by
me and sent word for Hamilton--the worst loafer of
them all--and just made him go. Threatened to in-
struct the steward of the Sailors' Home to have him
turned out neck and crop. He did not think the berth
was good enough--if--you--please. 'I've your little
records by me,' said I. 'You came ashore here eighteen
months ago, and you haven't done six months' work
since. You are in debt for your board now at the Home,
and I suppose you reckon the Marine Office will pay in
the end. Eh? So it shall; but if you don't take this
chance, away you go to England, assisted passage, by
the first homeward steamer that comes along. You are
no better than a pauper. We don't want any white
paupers here.' I scared him. But look at the trouble
all this gave me."
"You would not have had any trouble," Captain Whal-
ley said almost involuntarily, "if you had sent for
me."
Captain Eliott was immensely amused; he shook with
laughter as he walked. But suddenly he stopped laugh-
ing. A vague recollection had crossed his mind. Hadn't
he heard it said at the time of the Travancore and Deccan
smash that poor Whalley had been cleaned out com-
pletely. "Fellow's hard up, by heavens!" he thought;
and at once he cast a sidelong upward glance at his
companion. But Captain Whalley was smiling austerely
straight before him, with a carriage of the head incon-
ceivable in a penniless man--and he became reassured.
Impossible. Could not have lost everything. That ship
had been only a hobby of his. And the reflection that
a man who had confessed to receiving that very morning
a presumably large sum of money was not likely to
spring upon him a demand for a small loan put him
entirely at his ease again. There had come a long pause
in their talk, however, and not knowing how to begin
again, he growled out soberly, "We old fellows ought
to take a rest now."
"The best thing for some of us would be to die at the
oar," Captain Whalley said negligently.
"Come, now. Aren't you a bit tired by this time of
the whole show?" muttered the other sullenly.
"Are you?"
Captain Eliott was. Infernally tired. He only hung
on to his berth so long in order to get his pension on the
highest scale before he went home. It would be no better
than poverty, anyhow; still, it was the only thing be-
tween him and the workhouse. And he had a family.
Three girls, as Whalley knew. He gave "Harry, old
boy," to understand that these three girls were a source
of the greatest anxiety and worry to him. Enough to
drive a man distracted.
"Why? What have they been doing now?" asked
Captain Whalley with a sort of amused absent-minded-
ness.
"Doing! Doing nothing. That's just it. Lawn-
tennis and silly novels from morning to night. . . ."
If one of them at least had been a boy. But all three!
And, as ill-luck would have it, there did not seem to be
any decent young fellows left in the world. When he
looked around in the club he saw only a lot of conceited
popinjays too selfish to think of making a good woman
happy. Extreme indigence stared him in the face with
all that crowd to keep at home. He had cherished the
idea of building himself a little house in the country--
in Surrey--to end his days in, but he was afraid it was
out of the question, . . . and his staring eyes rolled
upwards with such a pathetic anxiety that Captain Whal-
ley charitably nodded down at him, restraining a sort of
sickening desire to laugh.
"You must know what it is yourself, Harry. Girls
are the very devil for worry and anxiety."
"Ay! But mine is doing well," Captain Whalley pro-
nounced slowly, staring to the end of the avenue.
The Master-Attendant was glad to hear this. Uncom-
monly glad. He remembered her well. A pretty girl
she was.
Captain Whalley, stepping out carelessly, assented as
if in a dream.
"She was pretty."
The procession of carriages was breaking up.
One after another they left the file to go off at a trot,
animating the vast avenue with their scattered life and
movement; but soon the aspect of dignified solitude re-
turned and took possession of the straight wide road.
A syce in white stood at the head of a Burmah pony har-
nessed to a varnished two-wheel cart; and the whole thing
waiting by the curb seemed no bigger than a child's toy
forgotten under the soaring trees. Captain Eliott
waddled up to it and made as if to clamber in, but re-
frained; and keeping one hand resting easily on the
shaft, he changed the conversation from his pension, his
daughters, and his poverty back again to the only other
topic in the world--the Marine Office, the men and the
ships of the port.
He proceeded to give instances of what was expected
of him; and his thick voice drowsed in the still air like
the obstinate droning of an enormous bumble-bee. Cap-
tain Whalley did not know what was the force or the
weakness that prevented him from saying good-night
and walking away. It was as though he had been too
tired to make the effort. How queer. More queer than
any of Ned's instances. Or was it that overpowering
sense of idleness alone that made him stand there and
listen to these stories. Nothing very real had ever
troubled Ned Eliott; and gradually he seemed to detect
deep in, as if wrapped up in the gross wheezy rumble,
something of the clear hearty voice of the young captain
of the Ringdove. He wondered if he too had changed to
the same extent; and it seemed to him that the voice of
his old chum had not changed so very much--that the
man was the same. Not a bad fellow the pleasant, jolly
Ned Eliott, friendly, well up to his business--and always
a bit of a humbug. He remembered how he used to
amuse his poor wife. She could read him like an open
book. When the Condor and the Ringdove happened to
be in port together, she would frequently ask him to
bring Captain Eliott to dinner. They had not met often
since those old days. Not once in five years, perhaps.
He regarded from under his white eyebrows this man
he could not bring himself to take into his confidence
at this juncture; and the other went on with his intimate
outpourings, and as remote from his hearer as though
he had been talking on a hill-top a mile away.
He was in a bit of a quandary now as to the steamer
Sofala. Ultimately every hitch in the port came into
his hands to undo. They would miss him when he was
gone in another eighteen months, and most likely some
retired naval officer had been pitchforked into the ap-
pointment--a man that would understand nothing and
care less. That steamer was a coasting craft having a
steady trade connection as far north as Tenasserim; but
the trouble was she could get no captain to take her
on her regular trip. Nobody would go in her. He
really had no power, of course, to order a man to take
a job. It was all very well to stretch a point on the
demand of a consul-general, but . . .
"What's the matter with the ship?" Captain Whalley
interrupted in measured tones.
"Nothing's the matter. Sound old steamer. Her
owner has been in my office this afternoon tearing his
hair."
"Is he a white man?" asked Whalley in an interested
voice.
"He calls himself a white man," answered the Master-
Attendant scornfully; "but if so, it's just skin-deep
and no more. I told him that to his face too."
"But who is he, then?"
"He's the chief engineer of her. See THAT, Harry?"
"I see," Captain Whalley said thoughtfully. "The
engineer. I see."
How the fellow came to be a shipowner at the same
time was quite a tale. He came out third in a home
ship nearly fifteen years ago, Captain Eliott remem-
bered, and got paid off after a bad sort of row both
with his skipper and his chief. Anyway, they seemed
jolly glad to get rid of him at all costs. Clearly a mu-
tinous sort of chap. Well, he remained out here, a per-
fect nuisance, everlastingly shipped and unshipped, un-
able to keep a berth very long; pretty nigh went
through every engine-room afloat belonging to the
colony. Then suddenly, "What do you think hap-
pened, Harry?"
Captain Whalley, who seemed lost in a mental effort
as of doing a sum in his head, gave a slight start. He
really couldn't imagine. The Master-Attendant's voice
vibrated dully with hoarse emphasis. The man actually
had the luck to win the second prize in the Manilla lot-
tery. All these engineers and officers of ships took
tickets in that gamble. It seemed to be a perfect mania
with them all.
Everybody expected now that he would take himself
off home with his money, and go to the devil in his own
way. Not at all. The Sofala, judged too small and
not quite modern enough for the sort of trade she was
in, could be got for a moderate price from her owners,
who had ordered a new steamer from Europe. He
rushed in and bought her. This man had never given
any signs of that sort of mental intoxication the mere
fact of getting hold of a large sum of money may pro-
duce--not till he got a ship of his own; but then he
went off his balance all at once: came bouncing into the
Marine Office on some transfer business, with his hat
hanging over his left eye and switching a little cane in
his hand, and told each one of the clerks separately that
"Nobody could put him out now. It was his turn.
There was no one over him on earth, and there never
would be either." He swaggered and strutted between
the desks, talking at the top of his voice, and trembling
like a leaf all the while, so that the current business
of the office was suspended for the time he was in there,
and everybody in the big room stood open-mouthed
looking at his antics. Afterwards he could be seen
during the hottest hours of the day with his face as
red as fire rushing along up and down the quays to look
at his ship from different points of view: he seemed
inclined to stop every stranger he came across just to
let them know "that there would be no longer anyone
over him; he had bought a ship; nobody on earth could
put him out of his engine-room now."
Good bargain as she was, the price of the Sofala took
up pretty near all the lottery-money. He had left him-
self no capital to work with. That did not matter so
much, for these were the halcyon days of steam coasting
trade, before some of the home shipping firms had
thought of establishing local fleets to feed their main
lines. These, when once organized, took the biggest
slices out of that cake, of course; and by-and-by a squad
of confounded German tramps turned up east of Suez
Canal and swept up all the crumbs. They prowled on
the cheap to and fro along the coast and between the
islands, like a lot of sharks in the water ready to snap
up anything you let drop. And then the high old times
were over for good; for years the Sofala had made no
more, he judged, than a fair living. Captain Eliott
looked upon it as his duty in every way to assist an
English ship to hold her own; and it stood to reason
that if for want of a captain the Sofala began to miss
her trips she would very soon lose her trade. There was
the quandary. The man was too impracticable. "Too
much of a beggar on horseback from the first," he ex-
plained. "Seemed to grow worse as the time went on.
In the last three years he's run through eleven skippers;
he had tried every single man here, outside of the regu-
lar lines. I had warned him before that this would not
do. And now, of course, no one will look at the Sofala.
I had one or two men up at my office and talked to
them; but, as they said to me, what was the good of
taking the berth to lead a regular dog's life for a
month and then get the sack at the end of the first trip?
The fellow, of course, told me it was all nonsense; there
has been a plot hatching for years against him. And
now it had come. All the horrid sailors in the port had
conspired to bring him to his knees, because he was an
engineer."
Captain Eliott emitted a throaty chuckle.
"And the fact is, that if he misses a couple more trips
he need never trouble himself to start again. He won't
find any cargo in his old trade. There's too much com-
petition nowadays for people to keep their stuff lying
about for a ship that does not turn up when she's ex-
pected. It's a bad lookout for him. He swears he will
shut himself on board and starve to death in his cabin
rather than sell her--even if he could find a buyer. And
that's not likely in the least. Not even the Japs would
give her insured value for her. It isn't like selling
sailing-ships. Steamers DO get out of date, besides get-
ting old."
"He must have laid by a good bit of money though,"
observed Captain Whalley quietly.
The Harbor-master puffed out his purple cheeks to
an amazing size.
"Not a stiver, Harry. Not--a--single--sti-ver."
He waited; but as Captain Whalley, stroking his
beard slowly, looked down on the ground without a
word, he tapped him on the forearm, tiptoed, and said
in a hoarse whisper--
"The Manilla lottery has been eating him up."
He frowned a little, nodding in tiny affirmative jerks.
They all were going in for it; a third of the wages
paid to ships' officers ("in my port," he snorted) went
to Manilla. It was a mania. That fellow Massy had
been bitten by it like the rest of them from the first;
but after winning once he seemed to have persuaded
himself he had only to try again to get another big
prize. He had taken dozens and scores of tickets for
every drawing since. What with this vice and his ig-
norance of affairs, ever since he had improvidently
bought that steamer he had been more or less short of
money.
This, in Captain Eliott's opinion, gave an opening
for a sensible sailor-man with a few pounds to step in
and save that fool from the consequences of his folly.
It was his craze to quarrel with his captains. He had
had some really good men too, who would have been
too glad to stay if he would only let them. But no. He
seemed to think he was no owner unless he was kicking
somebody out in the morning and having a row with
the new man in the evening. What was wanted for him
was a master with a couple of hundred or so to take
an interest in the ship on proper conditions. You don't
discharge a man for no fault, only because of the fun
of telling him to pack up his traps and go ashore, when
you know that in that case you are bound to buy back
his share. On the other hand, a fellow with an interest
in the ship is not likely to throw up his job in a huff
about a trifle. He had told Massy that. He had said:
"'This won't do, Mr. Massy. We are getting very
sick of you here in the Marine Office. What you must
do now is to try whether you could get a sailor to join
you as partner. That seems to be the only way.' And
that was sound advice, Harry."
Captain Whalley, leaning on his stick, was perfectly
still all over, and his hand, arrested in the act of strok-
ing, grasped his whole beard. And what did the fellow
say to that?
The fellow had the audacity to fly out at the Master-
Attendant. He had received the advice in a most im-
pudent manner. "I didn't come here to be laughed at,"
he had shrieked. "I appeal to you as an Englishman
and a shipowner brought to the verge of ruin by an
illegal conspiracy of your beggarly sailors, and all you
condescend to do for me is to tell me to go and get a
partner!" . . . The fellow had presumed to stamp
with rage on the floor of the private office. Where was
he going to get a partner? Was he being taken for
a fool? Not a single one of that contemptible lot ashore
at the "Home" had twopence in his pocket to bless
himself with. The very native curs in the bazaar knew
that much. . . . "And it's true enough, Harry," rum-
bled Captain Eliott judicially. "They are much more
likely one and all to owe money to the Chinamen in
Denham Road for the clothes on their backs. 'Well,'
said I, 'you make too much noise over it for my taste,
Mr. Massy. Good morning.' He banged the door after
him; he dared to bang my door, confound his cheek!"
The head of the Marine department was out of breath
with indignation; then recollecting himself as it were,
"I'll end by being late to dinner--yarning with you
here . . . wife doesn't like it."
He clambered ponderously into the trap; leaned out
sideways, and only then wondered wheezily what on
earth Captain Whalley could have been doing with
himself of late. They had had no sight of each other
for years and years till the other day when he had seen
him unexpectedly in the office.
What on earth . . .
Captain Whalley seemed to be smiling to himself in his
white beard.
"The earth is big," he said vaguely.
The other, as if to test the statement, stared all round
from his driving-seat. The Esplanade was very quiet;
only from afar, from very far, a long way from the sea-
shore, across the stretches of grass, through the long
ranges of trees, came faintly the toot--toot--toot of
the cable car beginning to roll before the empty peristyle
of the Public Library on its three-mile journey to the
New Harbor Docks.
"Doesn't seem to be so much room on it," growled the
Master-Attendant, "since these Germans came along
shouldering us at every turn. It was not so in our
time."
He fell into deep thought, breathing stertorously, as
though he had been taking a nap open-eyed. Perhaps
he too, on his side, had detected in the silent pilgrim-
like figure, standing there by the wheel, like an arrested
wayfarer, the buried lineaments of the features belong-
ing to the young captain of the Condor. Good fellow--
Harry Whalley--never very talkative. You never
knew what he was up to--a bit too off-hand with people
of consequence, and apt to take a wrong view of a fel-
low's actions. Fact was he had a too good opinion of
himself. He would have liked to tell him to get in and
drive him home to dinner. But one never knew. Wife
would not like it.
"And it's funny to think, Harry," he went on in a
big, subdued drone, "that of all the people on it there
seems only you and I left to remember this part of the
world as it used to be . . ."
He was ready to indulge in the sweetness of a senti-
mental mood had it not struck him suddenly that Cap-
tain Whalley, unstirring and without a word, seemed
to be awaiting something--perhaps expecting . . . He
gathered the reins at once and burst out in bluff, hearty
growls--
"Ha! My dear boy. The men we have known--the
ships we've sailed--ay! and the things we've done . . ."
The pony plunged--the syce skipped out of the way.
Captain Whalley raised his arm.
"Good-by."
