than the others--he singled me out. Keeping at my side, he renewed
his thanks, which I listened to in a gloomy, conscience-stricken
silence. Suddenly he slipped one hand under my arm and waved the
other after a tall, stout figure walking away by itself down a
street in a flutter of thin, grey garments:

"That's a good fellow--a real good fellow"--he swallowed down a
belated sob--"this Jacobus."

And he told me in a low voice that Jacobus was the first man to
board his ship on arrival, and, learning of their misfortune, had
taken charge of everything, volunteered to attend to all routine
business, carried off the ship's papers on shore, arranged for the
funeral--

"A good fellow. I was knocked over. I had been looking at my wife
for ten days. And helpless. Just you think of that! The dear
little chap died the very day we made the land. How I managed to
take the ship in God alone knows! I couldn't see anything; I
couldn't speak; I couldn't. . . . You've heard, perhaps, that we
lost our mate overboard on the passage? There was no one to do it
for me. And the poor woman nearly crazy down below there all alone
with the . . . By the Lord! It isn't fair."

We walked in silence together. I did not know how to part from
him. On the quay he let go my arm and struck fiercely his fist
into the palm of his other hand.

"By God, it isn't fair!" he cried again. "Don't you ever marry
unless you can chuck the sea first. . . . It isn't fair."