ven if there happens to be any end to it.

'My eyes met his for the first time at that inquiry. You must know
that everybody connected in any way with the sea was there, because the
affair had been notorious for days, ever since that mysterious cable
message came from Aden to start us all cackling. I say mysterious,
because it was so in a sense though it contained a naked fact, about
as naked and ugly as a fact can well be. The whole waterside talked
of nothing else. First thing in the morning as I was dressing in my
state-room, I would hear through the bulkhead my Parsee Dubash jabbering
about the Patna with the steward, while he drank a cup of tea,
by favour, in the pantry. No sooner on shore I would meet some
acquaintance, and the first remark would be, "Did you ever hear of
anything to beat this?" and according to his kind the man would smile
cynically, or look sad, or let out a swear or two. Complete strangers
would accost each other familiarly, just for the sake of easing their
minds on the subject: every confounded loafer in the town came in for
a harvest of drinks over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour
office, at every ship-broker's, at your agent's, from whites, from
natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting half naked on
the stone steps as you went up--by Jove! There was some indignation, not
a few jokes, and no end of discussions as to what had become of them,
you know. This went on for a couple of weeks or more, and the opinion
that whatever was mysterious in this affair would turn out to be tragic
as well, began to prevail, when one fine morning, as I was standing
in the shade by the steps of the harbour office, I perceived four men
walking towards me along the quay. I wondered for a while where that
queer lot had sprung from, and suddenly, I may say, I shouted to myself,
"Here they are!"

'There they were, sure enough, three of them as large as life, and one
much larger of girth than any living man has a right to be, just landed
with a good breakfast inside of them from an outward-bound Dale Line
steamer that had come in about an hour after sunrise. There could be no
mistake; I spotted the jolly skipper of the Patna at the first glance:
the fattest man in the whole blessed tropical belt clear round that good
old earth of ours. Moreover, nine months or so before, I had come
across him in Samarang. His steamer was loading in the Roads, and he was
abusing the tyrannical institution