inal groan.

His impudence still rankled when I came into the dining room at tiffin
time. He was there on duty overlooking the Chinamen servants. The tiffin
was laid on one end only of the long table, and the punkah was stirring
the hot air lazily--mostly above a barren waste of polished wood.

We were four around the cloth. The dozing stranger from the chair was
one. Both his eyes were partly opened now, but they did not seem to see
anything. He was supine. The dignified person next him, with short side
whiskers and a carefully scraped chin, was, of course, Hamilton. I have
never seen any one so full of dignity for the station in life Providence
had been pleased to place him in. I had been told that he regarded me as
a rank outsider. He raised not only his eyes, but his eyebrows as well,
at the sound I made pulling back my chair.

Captain Giles was at the head of the table. I exchanged a few words of
greeting with him and sat down on his left. Stout and pale, with a great
shiny dome of a bald forehead and prominent brown eyes, he might have
been anything but a seaman. You would not have been surprised to learn
that he was an architect. To me (I know how absurd it is) to me he
looked like a churchwarden. He had the appearance of a man from whom you
would expect sound advice, moral sentiments, with perhaps a platitude or
two thrown in on occasion, not from a desire to dazzle, but from honest
conviction.

Though very well known and appreciated in the shipping world, he had
no regular employment. He did not want it. He had his own peculiar
position. He was an expert. An expert in--how shall I say it?--in
intricate navigation. He was supposed to know more about remote and
imperfectly charted parts of the Archipelago than any man living. His
brain must have been a perfect warehouse of reefs, positions, bearings,
images of headlands, shapes of obscure coasts, aspects of innumerable
islands, desert and otherwise. Any ship, for instance, bound on a trip
to Palawan or somewhere that way would have Captain Giles on board,
either in temporary command or "to assist the master." It was said that
he had a retaining fee from a wealthy firm of Chinese steamship owners,
in view of such services. Besides, he was always ready to relieve any
man who wished to take a spell ashore for a time. No owner was ever
known to object to an arrangement of that sort. For it seemed to be the
established opinion at the port that Captain Giles was as