but keeps sweet the kernel of its servants' soul. The old sea;

the sea of many years ago, whose servants were devoted slaves and
went from youth to age or to a sudden grave without needing to

open the book of life, because they could look at eternity
reflected on the element that gave the life and dealt the death.

Like a beautiful and unscrupulous woman, the sea of the past was
glorious in its smiles, irresistible in its anger, capricious,

enticing, illogical, irresponsible; a thing to love, a thing to
fear. It cast a spell, it gave joy, it lulled gently into

boundless faith; then with quick and causeless anger it killed.
But its cruelty was redeemed by the charm of its inscrutable

mystery, by the immensity of its promise, by the supreme witchery
of its possible favour. Strong men with childlike hearts were

faithful to it, were content to live by its grace--to die by its
will. That was the sea before the time when the French mind set

the Egyptian muscle in motion and produced a dismal but
profitable ditch. Then a great pall of smoke sent out by

countless steam-boats was spread over the restless mirror of the
Infinite. The hand of the engineer tore down the veil of the

terrible beauty in order that greedy and faithless landlubbers
might pocket dividends. The mystery was destroyed. Like all

mysteries, it lived only in the hearts of its worshippers. The
hearts changed; the men changed. The once loving and devoted

servants went out armed with fire and iron, and conquering the
fear of their own hearts became a calculating crowd of cold and

exacting masters. The sea of the past was an incomparably
beautiful mistress, with inscrutable face, with cruel and

promising eyes. The sea of to-day is a used-up drudge, wrinkled
and defaced by the churned-up wakes of brutal propellers, robbed

of the enslaving charm of its vastness, stripped of its beauty,
of its mystery and of its promise.

Tom Lingard was a master, a lover, a servant of the sea. The sea
took him young, fashioned him body and soul; gave him his fierce

aspect, his loud voice, his fearless eyes, his stupidly guileless
heart. Generously it gave him his absurd faith in himself, his

universal love of creation, his wide indulgence, his contemptuous
severity, his straightforward simplicity of motive and honesty of

aim. Having made him what he was, womanlike, the sea served him
humbly and let him bask unharmed in the sunshine of its terribly

uncertain favour. Tom Lingard grew rich on the sea and by the
sea. He loved it with the ardentaffection of a lover, he made

light of it with the assurance of perfect mastery, he feared it
with the wise fear of a brave man, and he took liberties with it

as a spoiled child might do with a paternal and good-natured
ogre. He was grateful to it, with the gratitude of an honest

heart. His greatest pride lay in his profoundconviction of its
faithfulness--in the deep sense of his unerring knowledge of its

treachery.
The little brig Flash was the instrument of Lingard's fortune.

They came north together--both young--out of an Australian port,
and after a very few years there was not a white man in the

islands, from Palembang to Ternate, from Ombawa to Palawan, that
did not know Captain Tom and his lucky craft. He was liked for

his recklessgenerosity, for his unswerving honesty, and at first
was a little feared on account of his violenttemper. Very soon,

however, they found him out, and the word went round that Captain
Tom's fury was less dangerous than many a man's smile. He

prospered greatly. After his first--and successful--fight with
the sea robbers, when he rescued, as rumour had it, the yacht of

some big wig from home, somewhere down Carimata way, his great
popularity began. As years went on it grew apace. Always

visiting out-of-the-way places of that part of the world, always
in search of new markets for his cargoes--not so much for profit

as for the pleasure of finding them--he soon became known to the
Malays, and by his successful recklessness in several encounters

with pirates, established the terror of his name. Those white
men with whom he had business, and who naturally were on the

look-out for his weaknesses, could easily see that it was enough
to give him his Malay title to flatter him greatly. So when there

was anything to be gained by it, and sometimes out of pure and
unprofitable good nature, they would drop the ceremonious

"Captain Lingard" and address him half seriously as Rajah
Laut--the King of the Sea.

He carried the name bravely on his broad shoulders. He had
carried it many years already when the boy Willems ran barefooted

on the deck of the ship Kosmopoliet IV. in Samarang roads,
looking with innocent eyes on the strange shore and objurgating

his immediate surroundings with blasphemous lips, while his
childish brain worked upon the heroic idea of running away. From

the poop of the Flash Lingard saw in the early morning the Dutch
ship get lumberingly under weigh, bound for the eastern ports.

Very late in the evening of the same day he stood on the quay of
the landing canal, ready to go on board of his brig. The night

was starry and clear; the little custom-house building was shut
up, and as the gharry that brought him down disappeared up the

long avenue of dusty trees leading to the town, Lingard thought
himself alone on the quay. He roused up his sleeping boat-crew

and stood waiting for them to get ready, when he felt a tug at
his coat and a thin voice said, very distinctly--

"English captain."
Lingard turned round quickly, and what seemed to be a very lean

boy jumped back with commendable activity.
"Who are you? Where do you spring from?" asked Lingard, in

startled surprise.
From a safe distance the boy pointed toward a cargo lighter

moored to the quay.
"Been hiding there, have you?" said Lingard. "Well, what do you

want? Speak out, confound you. You did not come here to scare
me to death, for fun, did you?"

The boy tried to explain in imperfect English, but very soon
Lingard interrupted him.

"I see," he exclaimed, "you ran away from the big ship that
sailed this morning. Well, why don't you go to your countrymen

here?"
"Ship gone only a little way--to Sourabaya. Make me go back to

the ship," explained the boy.
"Best thing for you," affirmed Lingard with conviction.

"No," retorted the boy; "me want stop here; not want go home.
Get money here; home no good."

"This beats all my going a-fishing," commented the astonished
Lingard. "It's money you want? Well! well! And you were not

afraid to run away, you bag of bones, you!"
The boy intimated that he was frightened of nothing but of being

sent back to the ship. Lingard looked at him in meditative
silence.

"Come closer," he said at last. He took the boy by the chin, and
turning up his face gave him a searching look. "How old are

you?"
"Seventeen."

"There's not much of you for seventeen. Are you hungry?"
"A little."

"Will you come with me, in that brig there?"
The boy moved without a word towards the boat and scrambled into

the bows.
"Knows his place," muttered Lingard to himself as he stepped

heavily into the stern sheets and took up the yoke lines. "Give
way there."

The Malay boat crew lay back together, and the gig sprang away
from the quay heading towards the brig's riding light.

Such was the beginning of Willems' career.
Lingard learned in half an hour all that there was of Willems'

commonplace story. Father outdoor clerk of some ship-broker in
Rotterdam; mother dead. The boy quick in learning, but idle in