I had expressly stipulated with Mr. Harrison, when engaging passage,
that the one thing I could not possibly consider was the skipper of
the Elsinore taking his wife on the voyage. And Mr. Harrison had
smiled and assured me that Captain West would sail unaccompanied by a
wife.

"It's his daughter," the pilot replied under his breath. "Come to
see him off, I fancy. His wife died over a year ago. They say that
is what sent him back to sea. He'd retired, you know."

Captain West advanced to meet me, and before our outstretched hands
touched, before his face broke from repose to greeting and the lips
moved to speech, I got the first astonishing impact of his
personality. Long, lean, in his face a touch of race I as yet could
only sense, he was as cool as the day was cold, as poised as a king
or emperor, as remote as the farthest fixed star, as neutral as a
proposition of Euclid. And then, just ere our hands met, a twinkle
of--oh--such distant and controlled geniality quickened the many tiny
wrinkles in the corner of the eyes; the clear blue of the eyes was
suffused by an almost colourful warmth; the face, too, seemed
similarly to suffuse; the thin lips, harsh-set the instant before,
were as gracious as Bernhardt's when she moulds sound into speech.

So curiously was I affected by this first glimpse of Captain West
that I was aware of expecting to fall from his lips I knew not what
words of untold beneficence and wisdom. Yet he uttered most
commonplace regrets at the delay in a voice provocative of fresh
surprise to me. It was low and gentle, almost too low, yet clear as
a bell and touched with a faint reminiscent twang of old New England.