a partner?
Was he being taken for a fool? Not a single one of that contemptible lot
ashore at the "Home" had twopence in his pocket to bless himself with.
The very native curs in the bazaar knew that much. . . . "And it's true
enough, Harry," rumbled Captain Eliott judicially. "They are much more
likely one and all to owe money to the Chinamen in Denham Road for the
clothes on their backs. 'Well,' said I, 'you make too much noise over it
for my taste, Mr. Massy. Good morning.' He banged the door after him; he
dared to bang my door, confound his cheek!"

The head of the Marine department was out of breath with indignation;
then recollecting himself as it were, "I'll end by being late to
dinner--yarning with you here . . . wife doesn't like it."

He clambered ponderously into the trap; leaned out sideways, and only
then wondered wheezily what on earth Captain Whalley could have been
doing with himself of late. They had had no sight of each other for
years and years till the other day when he had seen him unexpectedly in
the office.

What on earth . . .

Captain Whalley seemed to be smiling to himself in his white beard.

"The earth is big," he said vaguely.

The other, as if to test the statement, stared all round from his
driving-seat. The Esplanade was very quiet; only from afar, from very
far, a long way from the seashore, across the stretches of grass,
through the long ranges of trees, came faintly the toot--toot--toot of
the cable car beginning to roll before the empty peristyle of the Public
Library on its three-mile journey to the New Harbor Docks.

"Doesn't seem to be so much room on it," growled the Master-Attendant,
"since these Germans came along shouldering us at every turn. It was not
so in our time."

He fell into deep thought, breathing stertorously, as though he had been
taking a nap open-eyed. Perhaps he too, on his side, had detected in the
silent pilgrim-like figure, standing there by the wheel, like an arrested
wayfarer, the buried lineaments of the features belonging to the young
captain of the Condor. Good fellow--Harry Whalley--never very talkative.
You never knew what he was up to--a bit too off-hand with people of
consequence, and apt to take a wrong view of a fellow's actions. Fact
was he had a too good opinion of himself. He would have liked to tell
him to get in and drive him home to dinner. But one never knew. Wife
would not like it.

"And it's funny to think, Harry," he went on in