sunken dry cheeks, a forehead like an arch of bone, and a thick short
gray beard. A long faded lock of hair had been hastily brushed forward
and an incongruously bright knitted scarf drawn about his shoulders.

Jeremy Ammidon concealed his dismay not only at Barzil's wrecked being
but at the dismal aspect of the interior, the worn rugs with their pieces
of once bright material frayed and loose, the splitting veneer of an old
chest of drawers and blistered mirror above a dusty iron grate. "You have
got in among the rocks!" he exclaimed. "Still they tell me you've
weathered the worst. Copper bound and oak ribs. Don't build them like
that to-day."

Barzil Dunsack's eyes were bright and searching behind steel-rimmed
spectacles, and he studied Jeremy without replying. "Well, isn't there a
salute in you?" the latter demanded, incensed. "I'm not a Malay proa."

The grim shadow of a smile dawned on Barzil's countenance. "I mind one
hanging on our quarter by Formosa," he returned; "I trained a cannon aft
and fired a shot, when she sheered off. That was in the _Flora_ in
'ninety-seven."

A long silence enveloped them. Jeremy's mind was thronged with memories
of ports and storms, mates and ships and logged days. "Remember Oahu like
it was when we first made it," he queried, "and the Kanaka girls swimming
out to the ship with hybiscus flowers in their hair? Yes, and the
anchorage at Tahiti with the swells pounding on the coral reef and
Papeete under the mountain? It was nice there in the afternoon, lying off
the beach with the white cottages among the palms and orange trees and
the band playing in the grove by Government House."