for the sake of the ship, for the love of the life of one's choice; not
for the sake of the reward.

There is something distasteful in the notion of a reward.

And now here I had my command, absolutely in my pocket, in a way
undeniable indeed, but most unexpected; beyond my imaginings, outside
all reasonable expectations, and even notwithstanding the existence of
some sort of obscure intrigue to keep it away from me. It is true that
the intrigue was feeble, but it helped the feeling of wonder--as if I
had been specially destined for that ship I did not know, by some power
higher than the prosaic agencies of the commercial world.

A strange sense of exultation began to creep into me. If I had worked
for that command ten years or more there would have been nothing of the
kind. I was a little frightened.

"Let us be calm," I said to myself.

Outside the door of the Officers' Home the wretched Steward seemed to be
waiting for me. There was a broad flight of a few steps, and he ran
to and fro on the top of it as if chained there. A distressed cur. He
looked as though his throat were too dry for him to bark.

I regret to say I stopped before going in. There had been a revolution
in my moral nature. He waited open-mouthed, breathless, while I looked
at him for half a minute.

"And you thought you could keep me out of it," I said scathingly.

"You said you were going home," he squeaked miserably. "You said so. You
said so."

"I wonder what Captain Ellis will have to say to that excuse," I uttered
slowly with a sinister meaning.

His lower jaw had been trembling all the time and his voice was like the
bleating of a sick goat. "You have given me away? You have done for me?"

Neither his distress nor yet the sheer absurdity of it was able to
disarm me. It was the first instance of harm being attempted to be done
to me--at any rate, the first I had ever found out. And I was still
young enough, still too much on this side of the shadow line, not to be
surprised and indignant at such things.

I gazed at him inflexibly. Let the beggar suffer. He slapped his
forehead and I passed in, pursued, into the dining room, by his screech:
"I always said you'd be the death of me."

This clamour not only overtook me, but went ahead as it were on to the
verandah and brought out Captain Giles.

He stood before me in the doorway in all the commonplace solidity of
his wisdom. The gold chain glittered on his breast. He clutched a
smou