every ship he joined, had acquired the habit of a stooping, leisurely
condescension. His hair was scant and sandy, his flat cheeks were pale,
his bony wrists and long scholarly hands were pale, too, as though he
had lived all his life in the shade.

He smiled from on high at Jukes, and went on smoking and glancing about
quietly, in the manner of a kind uncle lending an ear to the tale of an
excited schoolboy. Then, greatly amused but impassive, he asked:

"And did you throw up the billet?"

"No," cried Jukes, raising a weary, discouraged voice above the harsh
buzz of the Nan-Shan's friction winches. All of them were hard at work,
snatching slings of cargo, high up, to the end of long derricks, only,
as it seemed, to let them rip down recklessly by the run. The cargo
chains groaned in the gins, clinked on coamings, rattled over the
side; and the whole ship quivered, with her long gray flanks smoking in
wreaths of steam. "No," cried Jukes, "I didn't. What's the good? I might
just as well fling my resignation at this bulkhead. I don't believe you
can make a man like that understand anything. He simply knocks me over."

At that moment Captain MacWhirr, back from the shore, crossed the deck,
umbrella in hand, escorted by a mournful, self-possessed Chinaman,
walking behind in paper-soled silk shoes, and who also carried an
umbrella.

The master of the Nan-Shan, speaking just audibly and gazing at his
boots as his manner was, remarked that it would be necessary to call
at Fu-chau this trip, and desired Mr. Rout to have steam up to-morrow
afternoon at one o'clock sharp. He pushed back his hat to wipe his