It would have had to come to that in the end! It was fortunate she had
forced his hand. In another year or two it would have been an utterly
barren sale. To keep the ship going he had been involving himself deeper
every year. He was defenseless before the insidious work of adversity,
to whose more open assaults he could present a firm front; like a
cliff that stands unmoved the open battering of the sea, with a lofty
ignorance of the treacherous backwash undermining its base. As it was,
every liability satisfied, her request answered, and owing no man a
penny, there remained to him from the proceeds a sum of five hundred
pounds put away safely. In addition he had upon his person some forty
odd dollars--enough to pay his hotel bill, providing he did not linger
too long in the modest bedroom where he had taken refuge.

Scantily furnished, and with a waxed floor, it opened into one of
the side-verandas. The straggling building of bricks, as airy as a
bird-cage, resounded with the incessant flapping of rattan screens
worried by the wind between the white-washed square pillars of the
sea-front. The rooms were lofty, a ripple of sunshine flowed over the
ceilings; and the periodical invasions of tourists from some passenger
steamer in the harbor flitted through the wind-swept dusk of the
apartments with the tumult of their unfamiliar voices and impermanent
presences, like relays of migratory shades condemned to speed headlong
round the earth without leaving a trace. The babble of their irruptions
ebbed out as suddenly as it had arisen; the draughty corridors and
the long chairs of the verandas knew their sight-seeing hurry or
their prostrate repose no more; and Captain Whalley, substantial and
dignified, left well-nigh alone in the vast hotel by each light-hearted
skurry, felt more and more like a stranded tourist with no aim in view,
like a forlorn traveler without a home. In the solitude of his room he
smoked thoughtfully, gazing at the two sea-chests which held all that he