Marine Office will pay in the end.
Eh? So it shall; but if you don't take this chance, away you go to
England, assisted passage, by the first homeward steamer that comes
along. You are no better than a pauper. We don't want any white paupers
here.' I scared him. But look at the trouble all this gave me."

"You would not have had any trouble," Captain Whalley said almost
involuntarily, "if you had sent for me."

Captain Eliott was immensely amused; he shook with laughter as he
walked. But suddenly he stopped laughing. A vague recollection had
crossed his mind. Hadn't he heard it said at the time of the Travancore
and Deccan smash that poor Whalley had been cleaned out completely.
"Fellow's hard up, by heavens!" he thought; and at once he cast a
sidelong upward glance at his companion. But Captain Whalley was smiling
austerely straight before him, with a carriage of the head inconceivable
in a penniless man--and he became reassured. Impossible. Could not
have lost everything. That ship had been only a hobby of his. And the
reflection that a man who had confessed to receiving that very morning a
presumably large sum of money was not likely to spring upon him a demand
for a small loan put him entirely at his ease again. There had come a
long pause in their talk, however, and not knowing how to begin again,
he growled out soberly, "We old fellows ought to take a rest now."

"The best thing for some of us would be to die at the oar," Captain
Whalley said negligently.

"Come, now. Aren't you a bit tired by this time of the whole show?"
muttered the other sullenly.

"Are you?"

Captain Eliott was. Infernally tired. He only hung on to his berth so
long in order to get his pension on the highest scale before he went
home. It would be no better than poverty, anyhow; still, it was the only
thing between him and the workhouse. And he had a family. Three girls,
as Whalley knew. He gave "Harry, old boy," to understand that these
three girls were a source of the greatest anxiety and worry to him.
Enough to drive a man distracted.

"Why? What have they been doing now?" asked Captain Whalley with a sort
of amused absent-mindedness.

"Doing! Doing nothing. That's just it. Lawn-tennis and silly novels from
morning to night. . . ."

If one of them at least had been a boy. But all three! And, as ill-luck
would have it, there did not seem to be any decent young fellows left
in the world. When he looked around in the club he saw on