seemed always
to drop out like little accurately measured coins from some minting
machine. "They should not have changed from the old place if they wanted
a harbor that could be used in war-time. Here they must always keep at
least one dredge going out at the jetties. So the enemy blows up your
dredge and you are bottled in, or bottled out. It is very simple for the
enemy. And, for Kings Port, navy yards do not galvanize dead trade. It
was a gold brick. You have not been on the Hermana before?"

He knew that I had not, but he wishes to show her to me; and I
soon noted a difference as radical as it was diverting between this
banker-yachtsman's speech when he talked of affairs on land and when
he attempted to deal with nautical matters. The clear, dispassionate
finality of his tone when phosphates, or railroads, or navy yards, or
imperial loans were concerned, left him, and changed to something
very like a recitation of trigonometry well memorized but not at all
mastered; he could do that particular sum, but you mustn't stop him;
and I concluded that I would rather have Charley for my captain during
a panic in Wall Street than in a hurricane at sea. He, too, wore highly
pronounced sea clothes of the ornamental kind; and though they fitted
him physically, they hung baggily upon his unmarine spirit; giving him
the air, as it were, of a broiled quail served on oyster shells. Beverly
Rodgers, the consummate Beverly, was the only man of us whose clothes
seemed to belong to him; he looked as if he could sail a boat.

While the cabin boy continued to rush among the guests with siphons,
ice, and fresh refreshments, Charley became the Hermana's guidebook
for me; and our interview gave me, I may say, entertainment unalloyed,
although there lay all the while, beneath the entertainment, my sadness
and concern about John. Charley was owner of the Hermana, there was
no doubt of that; she had cost him (it was not long before he told me)
fifty thousand dollars, and to run her it cost him a thousand a month.
Yes, he was her owner, but there it stopped, no matter with how solemn
a face he inspected each part of her, or spoke of her details; he was as
much a passenger on her as myself; and this was as plain on the equally
solemn faces of his crew, from the sailing-master down through the two
quartermasters to the five deck-hands, as was the color of the
Hermana's stack, which was, of course, yellow. She was a pole-mast,
schooner-rigged ste