This Jorgenson knew things that had happened a long time ago, and lived
amongst men efficient in meeting the accidents of the day, but who did
not care what would happen to-morrow and who had no time to remember
yesterday. Strictly speaking, he did not live amongst them. He only
appeared there from time to time. He lived in the native quarter, with
a native woman, in a native house standing in the middle of a plot
of fenced ground where grew plantains, and furnished only with mats,
cooking pots, a queer fishing net on two sticks, and a small mahogany
case with a lock and a silver plate engraved with the words "Captain H.
C. Jorgenson. Barque Wild Rose."

It was like an inscription on a tomb. The Wild Rose was dead, and so was
Captain H. C. Jorgenson, and the sextant case was all that was left
of them. Old Jorgenson, gaunt and mute, would turn up at meal times on
board any trading vessel in the Roads, and the stewards--Chinamen
or mulattos--would sulkily put on an extra plate without waiting for
orders. When the seamen traders foregathered noisily round a glittering
cluster of bottles and glasses on a lighted verandah, old Jorgenson
would emerge up the stairs as if from a dark sea, and, stepping up with
a kind of tottering jauntiness, would help himself in the first tumbler
to hand.

"I drink to you all. No--no chair."

He would stand silent over the talking group. His taciturnity was as
eloquent as the repeated warning of the slave of the feast. His flesh
had gone the way of all flesh, his spirit had sunk in the turmoil of his
past, but his immense and bony frame survived as if made of iron. His
hands trembled but his eyes were steady. He was supposed to know details
about the end of mysterious men and of mysterious enterprises. He was an