nto a mess with his anchors when making a
flying moor in a roadstead full of ships. I asked myself, seeing him
there apparently so much at ease--is he silly? is he callous? He seemed
ready to start whistling a tune. And note, I did not care a rap about
the behaviour of the other two. Their persons somehow fitted the tale
that was public property, and was going to be the subject of an official
inquiry. "That old mad rogue upstairs called me a hound," said the
captain of the Patna. I can't tell whether he recognised me--I rather
think he did; but at any rate our glances met. He glared--I smiled;
hound was the very mildest epithet that had reached me through the open
window. "Did he?" I said from some strange inability to hold my tongue.
He nodded, bit his thumb again, swore under his breath: then lifting his
head and looking at me with sullen and passionate impudence--"Bah! the
Pacific is big, my friendt. You damned Englishmen can do your worst; I
know where there's plenty room for a man like me: I am well aguaindt
in Apia, in Honolulu, in . . ." He paused reflectively, while without
effort I could depict to myself the sort of people he was "aguaindt"
with in those places. I won't make a secret of it that I had been
"aguaindt" with not a few of that sort myself. There are times when
a man must act as though life were equally sweet in any company. I've
known such a time, and, what's more, I shan't now pretend to pull a long
face over my necessity, because a good many of that bad company from
want of moral--moral--what shall I say?--posture, or from some other
equally profound cause, were twice as instructive and twenty times more
amusing than the usual respectable thief of commerce you fellows ask
to sit at your table without any real necessity--from habit, from
cowardice, from good-nature, from a hundred sneaking and inadequate
reasons.

'"You Englishmen are all rogues," went on my patriotic Flensborg or
Stettin Australian. I really don't recollect now what decent little
port on the shores of the Baltic was defiled by being the nest of that
precious bird. "What are you to shout? Eh? You tell me? You no better
than other people, and that old rogue he make Gottam fuss with me." His
thick carcass trembled on its legs that were like a pair of pillars; it
trembled from head to foot. "That's what you English always make--make
a tam' fuss--for any little thing, because I was not born in your
tam' country. Take away my certificat