was open to him no longer to take a boat at the jetty

and get himself pulled off to her when the evening came.
To no ship. Perhaps never more. Before the sale was

concluded, and till the purchase-money had been paid,
he had spent daily some time on board the Fair Maid.

The money had been paid this very morning, and now,
all at once, there was positively no ship that he could

go on board of when he liked; no ship that would need
his presence in order to do her work--to live. It seemed

an incredible state of affairs, something too bizarre to
last. And the sea was full of craft of all sorts. There

was that prau lying so still swathed in her shroud of
sewn palm-leaves--she too had her indispensable man.

They lived through each other, this Malay he had never
seen, and this high-sterned thing of no size that seemed

to be resting after a long journey. And of all the ships
in sight, near and far, each was provided with a man,

the man without whom the finest ship is a dead thing,
a floating and purposeless log.

After his one glance at the roadstead he went on, since
there was nothing to turn back for, and the time must

be got through somehow. The avenues of big trees ran
straight over the Esplanade, cutting each other at di-

verse angles, columnar below and luxuriant above. The
interlaced boughs high up there seemed to slumber; not

a leaf stirred overhead: and the reedy cast-iron lamp-
posts in the middle of the road, gilt like scepters,

diminished in a long perspective, with their globes of
white porcelain atop, resembling a barbarous decoration

of ostriches' eggs displayed in a row. The flaming sky
kindled a tiny crimson spark upon the glistening sur-

face of each glassy shell.
With his chin sunk a little, his hands behind his back,

and the end of his stick marking the gravel with a faint
wavering line at his heels, Captain Whalley reflected

that if a ship without a man was like a body without
a soul, a sailor without a ship was of not much more

account in this world than an aimless log adrift upon the
sea. The log might be sound enough by itself, tough

of fiber, and hard to destroy--but what of that! And
a sudden sense of irremediable idleness weighted his feet

like a great fatigue.
A succession of open carriages came bowling along the

newly opened sea-road. You could see across the wide
grass-plots the discs of vibration made by the spokes.

The bright domes of the parasols swayed lightly out-
wards like full-blown blossoms on the rim of a vase; and

the quiet sheet of dark-blue water, crossed by a bar of
purple, made a background for the spinning wheels and

the high action of the horses, whilst the turbaned heads
of the Indian servants elevated above the line of the sea

horizon glided rapidly on the paler blue of the sky. In
an open space near the little bridge each turn-out trotted

smartly in a wide curve away from the sunset; then pull-
ing up sharp, entered the main alley in a long slow-

moving file with the great red stillness of the sky at
the back. The trunks of mighty trees stood all touched

with red on the same side, the air seemed aflame under
the high foliage, the very ground under the hoofs of the

horses was red. The wheels turned solemnly; one after
another the sunshades drooped, folding their colors like

gorgeous flowers shutting their petals at the end of the
day. In the whole half-mile of human beings no voice

uttered a distinct word, only a faint thudding noise went
on mingled with slight jingling sounds, and the motion-

less heads and shoulders of men and women sitting in
couples emerged stolidly above the lowered hoods--as if

wooden. But one carriage and pair coming late did not
join the line.

It fled along in a noiseless roll; but on entering the
avenue one of the dark bays snorted, arching his neck

and shying against the steel-tipped pole; a flake of
foam fell from the bit upon the point of a satiny shoul-

der, and the dusky face of the coachman leaned for-
ward at once over the hands taking a fresh grip of the

reins. It was a long dark-green landau, having a digni-
fied and buoyantmotion between the sharply curved

C-springs, and a sort of strictly official majesty in its
supreme elegance. It seemed more roomy than is usual,

its horses seemed slightly bigger, the appointments a
shade more perfect, the servants perched somewhat

higher on the box. The dresses of three women--two
young and pretty, and one, handsome, large, of mature

age--seemed to fill completely the shallow body of the
carriage. The fourth face was that of a man, heavy

lidded, distinguished and sallow, with a somber, thick,
iron-gray imperial and mustaches, which somehow had

the air of solid appendages. His Excellency--
The rapid motion of that one equipage made all the

others appear utterly inferior, blighted, and reduced to
crawl painfully at a snail's pace. The landau distanced

the whole file in a sort of sustained rush; the features
of the occupant whirling out of sight left behind an

impression of fixed stares and impassive vacancy; and
after it had vanished in full flight as it were, notwith-

standing the long line of vehicles hugging the curb at
a walk, the whole lofty vista of the avenue seemed to lie

open and emptied of life in the enlarged impression of
an august solitude.

Captain Whalley had lifted his head to look, and his
mind, disturbed in its meditation, turned with wonder

(as men's minds will do) to matters of no importance.
It struck him that it was to this port, where he had

just sold his last ship, that he had come with the very
first he had ever owned, and with his head full of a plan

for opening a new trade with a distant part of the
Archipelago. The then governor had given him no end

of encouragement. No Excellency he--this Mr. Den-
ham--this governor with his jacket off; a man who

tended night and day, so to speak, the growing pros-
perity of the settlement with the self-forgetful devotion

of a nurse for a child she loves; a lone bachelor who
lived as in a camp with the few servants and his three

dogs in what was called then the Government Bungalow:
a low-roofed structure on the half-cleared slope of a

hill, with a new flagstaff in front and a police orderly
on the veranda. He remembered toiling up that hill

under a heavy sun for his audience; the unfurnished
aspect of the cool shaded room; the long table covered

at one end with piles of papers, and with two guns, a
brass telescope, a small bottle of oil with a feather stuck

in the neck at the other--and the flattering attention
given to him by the man in power. It was an under-

taking full of risk he had come to expound, but a twenty
minutes' talk in the Government Bungalow on the hill

had made it go smoothly from the start. And as he
was retiring Mr. Denham, already seated before the

papers, called out after him, "Next month the Dido
starts for a cruise that way, and I shall request her

captain officially to give you a look in and see how
you get on." The Dido was one of the smart frigates on

the China station--and five-and-thirty years make a big
slice of time. Five-and-thirty years ago an enterprise

like his had for the colony enough importance to be