His cook was Chinese; his head diver a
Manilaman: the delicate lemon of Macao mingled with the saddle tints of
the Coromandel Coast about his decks, and for mate he found a stranded
West African negro who bore, in pathetic loyalty to some ironic crimp,
the name of Buttermilk. Still, such a mixture was ordinary enough at
Thursday.... Ordinary too was the fact--which again nobody noticed--that
they were all opium users, who do not talk, rather than drunkards, who
do.

This honest man had brought his honesty to the proper shop for face
value. His story began with that startling gesture at the Portugee's. It
continued in the epic strain of a halfpenny serial. The hero himself
might have filled a whole illustration; thewed like a colossus, crop
black hair in a point over the brow of a student; a smooth, long jaw
always strangely pallid, and gray eyes, inscrutable and ageless. With
his jungle step, with his thin ducks molded to the coiling muscles
underneath by the press of the southerly buster, when he came swinging
along the front the crowd parted left and right before him. Most crowds
must have done so; probably many had. But at Thursday he was almost an
institution....

"'Im? Cap'n of the _Fancy Free_, that flash little lugger out beyond.
'Ardest driver and str'itest Johnny in the fleet." Thus the inevitable
informing larrikin, eager to cadge a drink from the tourist on shore
leave. "E'd chyse you acrost the Pacific to p'y you tuppence 'e might
ha' owed you--that's 'is sort. And--my word!--'e's got a jab to the boko
you don't want to get p'id at no price! Wetherbee, they call 'im.
'Honest Wetherbee'--that's 'im."

For he lived to the title. If it is honest to abide by every hampering
regulation that makes you solid with the authorities; to split prices
over a bit of inferior shell; to lose two weeks with your outfit in
quarantine, voluntarily--that happened when the _Opalton_ brought a hot
cholera scare and her passenger list camped on Friday Island--to share
your stores with starving lighthouse keepers; to drink a set of hard
cases blind and stiff and then, departing clearheaded, settle the whole
damage yourself; to pay all bills square: in short, if it be the part of
honesty to give the cash and take the credit every time, Cap'n Wetherbee
played it. Amazingly--as a man might play an arduous game!

Within six months Port Kennedy and all thereabout would have sworn by
him; he had dined with the sub-collector and the h