ship seemed to leap suddenly forward. In a few seconds, even as I
coiled my line, the bow wash broadened to a roaring water. The white
of it glimmered and boiled, and spun away from us streaked with fires.
Across the stars above us the mists from the smoke-stack stretched in a
broad cloud. Below me the engines trampled thunderously. Ahead there
were the lights, and the figure of the look-out, and the rush and hurry
of the water. Astern, far astern already, were the port, the ships at
anchor, and the winking light on the Point. A bugle abaft called the
passengers to dinner, and I watched them as they went from their
cabins. A lady, in blue gown, with a shawl round her head, was talking
to a man in evening dress. "Isn't it interesting," she remarked, "to
hear them making the soundings?" The white shirt was politely
non-committal. "Aft there, two of you," said a hard voice, "and trice
the ladder up. Smartly now." The lady in the blue dress stopped to
watch us.

I did not see the umbrella-man again until the next day, when I passed
him on the hurricane deck. He was looking at the coast through a pair
of binoculars. We were running to the north, in perfect Pacific
weather, under a soft blue sky that was patrolled by little soft white
clouds. The land lay broad to starboard, a land of yellow hills with
surf-beaten outliers of black reef. Here and there we passed villages
in the watered valleys, each with its whitewashed church and copper
smeltry. The umbrella-man was looking beyond these, at the hills.

He was a little man, this man who had prodded me, with a long, pale
face and pale eyes, a long reddish beard, and hair rather darker, both
hair and beard being sparse. He was a fidgety person, always twitching
with his hands, and he walked with something of a strut, as though the
earth belonged to him. He snapped-to the case of his binoculars as
though he had sheathed a sword.

Later in the day, after supper, in the second dog-watch, as I sat
smoking on the fore-coamings, he came up to me and spoke to me. "You
know zees coas'?" he asked. Yes, I knew the coast. "What you zink?"
he asked; "you like 'eem?" No, I didn't like 'eem. "Ah," he said,
"You 'ave been wizzin?" I asked him what he meant. "Wizzin," he
repeated, "wizzen, in ze contry. You 'ave know ze land, ze peoples?"
I growled that I had been within, to Lima, and to Santiago, and that I
had been ashore at the Chincha Islands. "Ah," he said,