cause my quarry looked so woe-begone. Miserable beggar!

I went for him without more ado. "I understand there was an official
communication to the Home from the Harbour Office this morning. Is that
so?"

Instead of telling me to mind my own business, as he might have done,
he began to whine with an undertone of impudence. He couldn't see me
anywhere this morning. He couldn't be expected to run all over the town
after me.

"Who wants you to?" I cried. And then my eyes became opened to the
inwardness of things and speeches the triviality of which had been so
baffling and tiresome.

I told him I wanted to know what was in that letter. My sternness of
tone and behaviour was only half assumed. Curiosity can be a very fierce
sentiment--at times.

He took refuge in a silly, muttering sulkiness. It was nothing to me, he
mumbled. I had told him I was going home. And since I was going home he
didn't see why he should. . . .

That was the line of his argument, and it was irrelevant enough to be
almost insulting. Insulting to one's intelligence, I mean.

In that twilight region between youth and maturity, in which I had my
being then, one is peculiarly sensitive to that kind of insult. I am
afraid my behaviour to the Steward became very rough indeed. But it
wasn't in him to face out anything or anybody. Drug habit or solitary
tippling, perhaps. And when I forgot myself so far as to swear at him he
broke down and began to shriek.

I don't mean to say that he made a great outcry. It was a cynical
shrieking confession, only faint--piteously faint. It wasn't very
coherent either, but sufficiently so to strike me dumb at first. I
turned my eyes from him in righteous indignation, and perceived Captain
Giles in the verandah doorway surveying quietly the scene, his own
handiwork, if I may express it in that way. His smouldering black pipe
was very noticeable in his big, paternal fist. So, too, was the glitter
of his heavy gold watch-chain across the breast of his white tunic.
He exhaled an atmosphere of virtuous sagacity serene enough for any
innocent soul to fly to confidently. I flew to him.

"You would never believe it," I cried. "It was a notification that a
master is wanted for some ship. There's a command apparently going about
and this fellow puts the thing in his pocket."

The Steward screamed out in accents of loud despair: "You will be the
death of me!"

The mighty slap he gave his wretched forehead was very loud, t