The remark about the weather and the women was addressed to a man who
leaned against the rail. Indeed, there was no one else near--and the
man made no reply. He was twenty-five or thirty years younger than Mr.
Mangles, and looked like an Englishman, but not aggressively so. The
large majority of Britons are offensively British. Germans are no
better; so it must be racial, this offensiveness. A Frenchman is at
his worst, only comically French--a matter of a smile; but Teutonic
characteristics are conducive to hostility.

The man who leaned against the rail near to Joseph P. Mangles was six
feet high, and rather heavily built, but, like many big men, he seemed
to take up no more than his due share of room in this crowded world.
There was nothing distinctive about his dress. His demeanor was quiet.
When he spoke he was habitually asked to repeat his remark, which he
did, with patience, in the same soft, inaudible voice.

There were two men on board this great steamer who were not business
men--Joseph P. Mangles and Reginald Cartoner; and, like two ships on a
sea of commercial interests, they had drifted together during the four
days that had elapsed since their departure from New York. Neither made
anything, or sold anything, or had a card in his waistcoat-pocket ready
for production at a moment's notice, setting forth name and address and
trade. Neither was to be suspected of a desire to repel advances, and
yet both were difficult to get on with. For human confidences must
be mutual. It is only to God that man can continue telling, telling,
telling, and getting never a word in return. These two men had nothing
to tell their fellows about themselves; so the other passengers drifted
away into those closely linked corporations characteristic of steamer
life and left them to themselves--to each other.