rd to
say against him. He continued:

"I remember him first coming ashore here some years ago. Seems only the
other day. He was a nice boy. Oh! these nice boys!"

I could not help laughing aloud. He looked startled, then joined in the
laugh. "No! No! I didn't mean that," he cried. "What I meant is that
some of them do go soft mighty quick out here."

Jocularly I suggested the beastly heat as the first cause. But Captain
Giles disclosed himself possessed of a deeper philosophy. Things out
East were made easy for white men. That was all right. The difficulty
was to go on keeping white, and some of these nice boys did not know
how. He gave me a searching look, and in a benevolent, heavy-uncle
manner asked point blank:

"Why did you throw up your berth?"

I became angry all of a sudden; for you can understand how exasperating
such a question was to a man who didn't know. I said to myself that I
ought to shut up that moralist; and to him aloud I said with challenging
politeness:

"Why . . . ? Do you disapprove?"

He was too disconcerted to do more than mutter confusedly: "I! . . . In
a general way. . ." and then gave me up. But he retired in good order,
under the cover of a heavily humorous remark that he, too, was getting
soft, and that this was his time for taking his little siesta--when he
was on shore. "Very bad habit. Very bad habit."

There was a simplicity in the man which would have disarmed a touchiness
even more youthful than mine. So when next day at tiffin he bent his
head toward me and said that he had met my late Captain last evening,
adding in an undertone: "He's very sorry you left. He had never had a
mate that suited him so well," I answered him earnestly, without any
affectation, that I certainly hadn't been so comfortable in any ship or
with any commander in all my sea-going days.

"Well--then," he murmured.

"Haven't you heard, Captain Giles, that I intend to go home?"

"Yes," he said benevolently. "I have heard that sort of thing so often
before."

"What of that?" I cried. I thought he was the most dull, unimaginative
man I had ever met. I don't know what more I would have said, but the
much-belated Hamilton came in just then and took his usual seat. So I
dropped into a mumble.

"Anyhow, you shall see it done this time."

Hamilton, beautifully shaved, gave Captain Giles a curt nod, but didn't
even condescend to raise his eyebrows at me; and when he spoke it was
only to tell the Chief S