more the character of divorce--almost of
desertion. For no reason on which a sensible person could put a finger I
threw up my job--chucked my berth--left the ship of which the worst that
could be said was that she was a steamship and therefore, perhaps, not
entitled to that blind loyalty which. . . . However, it's no use trying
to put a gloss on what even at the time I myself half suspected to be a
caprice.

It was in an Eastern port. She was an Eastern ship, inasmuch as then
she belonged to that port. She traded among dark islands on a blue
reef-scarred sea, with the Red Ensign over the taffrail and at her
masthead a house-flag, also red, but with a green border and with a
white crescent in it. For an Arab owned her, and a Syed at that. Hence
the green border on the flag. He was the head of a great House of
Straits Arabs, but as loyal a subject of the complex British Empire as
you could find east of the Suez Canal. World politics did not trouble
him at all, but he had a great occult power amongst his own people.

It was all one to us who owned the ship. He had to employ white men in
the shipping part of his business, and many of those he so employed had
never set eyes on him from the first to the last day. I myself saw him
but once, quite accidentally on a wharf--an old, dark little man blind
in one eye, in a snowy robe and yellow slippers. He was having his hand
severely kissed by a crowd of Malay pilgrims to whom he had done some
favour, in the way of food and money. His alms-giving, I have heard, was
most extensive, covering almost the whole Archipelago. For isn't it said
that "The charitable man is the friend of Allah"?

Excellent (and picturesque) Arab owner, about whom one needed not to
trouble one's head, a most excellent Scottish ship--for she was that
from the keep up--excellent sea-boat, easy to keep clean, most handy in
every way, and if it had not been for her internal propulsion, worthy of
any man's love, I cherish to this day a profound respect for her memory.
As to the kind of trade she was engaged in and the character of my
shipmates, I could not have been happier if I had had the life and the
men made to my order by a benevolent Enchanter.

And suddenly I left all this. I left it in that, to us, inconsequential
manner in which a bird flies away from a comfortable branch. It was
as though all unknowing I had heard a whisper or seen something.
Well--perhaps! One day I was perfectly right and the next