enigmatically from under his well-hung brows, and replied: "Brains put
out to seed, morals put out to vegetate--that's 'lost.'"

"What about fifth officers?"

"Fifth officers work like navvies, and haven't time for foolishness.
They've got to walk the bridge, and practise the boats, and be
responsible for luggage--and here I am talking to you like an infallible
undergraduate, while the lascars are in endless confusion with a half-
dozen pieces of baggage, and the first officer foams because I'm not
there to set them right. I leave you to your dreams. Good-bye."

Hungerford was younger than myself, but he knew the world, and I was
flattered by these uncommon remarks, because he talked to no one else
on the ship in the same way. He never sought to make friends, had a
thorough contempt for social trifling, and shrugged his shoulders at the
"swagger" of some of the other officers. I think he longed for a
different kind of sea-life, so accustomed had he been to adventurous and
hardy ways. He had entered the Occidental service because he had fallen
in love with a pretty girl, and thought it his duty to become a
"regular," and thus have the chance of seeing her every three months in
London. He had conceived a liking for me, reciprocated on my part; the
more so, because I knew that behind his blunt exterior there was a warm
and manly heart. When he left me I went to my cabin and prepared for
dinner, laughing as I did so at his keen, uncompromising criticism, which
I knew was correct enough; for of all official posts that of a ship-
surgeon is least calculated to make a man take a pride in existence.
At its best, it is assisting in the movement of a panorama; at its worst,
worse than a vegetation. Hungerford's solicitude for myself, however,
was misplaced, because this one voyage would end my career as ship-