tering dismally with a
candle amongst the enormous shadows, thrown on all sides by the skeleton
limbs of machinery, Massy had been struck dumb by astonishment in the
presence of that imposing old man with a beard like a silver plate,
towering in the dusk rendered lurid by the expiring flames of sunset.

"Want to see me on business? What business? I am doing no business.
Can't you see that this ship is laid up?" Massy had turned at bay before
the pursuing irony of his disaster. Afterwards he could not believe his
ears. What was that old fellow getting at? Things don't happen that way.
It was a dream. He would presently wake up and find the man vanished
like a shape of mist. The gravity, the dignity, the firm and courteous
tone of that athletic old stranger impressed Massy. He was almost
afraid. But it was no dream. Five hundred pounds are no dream. At once
he became suspicious. What did it mean? Of course it was an offer to
catch hold of for dear life. But what could there be behind?

Before they had parted, after appointing a meeting in a solicitor's
office early on the morrow, Massy was asking himself, What is his
motive? He spent the night in hammering out the clauses of the
agreement--a unique instrument of its sort whose tenor got bruited
abroad somehow and became the talk and wonder of the port.

Massy's object had been to secure for himself as many ways as possible
of getting rid of his partner without being called upon at once to pay
back his share. Captain Whalley's efforts were directed to making the
money secure. Was it not Ivy's money--a part of her fortune whose only
other asset was the time-defying body of her old father? Sure of his
forbearance in the strength of his love for her, he accepted, with
stately serenity, Massy's stupidly cunning paragraphs against his
incompetence, his dishonesty, his drunkenness, for the sake of other
stringent stipulations. At the end of three years he was at liberty to
withdraw from the partnership, taking his money with him. Provision was
made for forming a fund to pay him off. But if he left the Sofala before
the term, from whatever cause (barring death), Massy was to have a whole
year for paying. "Illness?" the lawyer had suggested: a young man fresh
from Europe and not overburdened with business, who was rather amused.
Massy began to whine unctuously, "How could he be expected? . . ."

"Let that go," Captain Whalley had said with a superb confidence in his
body. "Acts