im for the
advice.

He gripped my extended arm warmly, and the end of our acquaintance came
suddenly in the words: "Good-night."

That was all he said: "Good-night." Nothing more. I don't know what I
intended to say, but surprise made me swallow it, whatever it was. I
choked slightly, and then exclaimed with a sort of nervous haste: "Oh!
Good-night, Captain Giles, good-night."

His movements were always deliberate, but his back had receded some
distance along the deserted quay before I collected myself enough to
follow his example and made a half turn in the direction of the jetty.

Only my movements were not deliberate. I hurried down to the steps, and
leaped into the launch. Before I had fairly landed in her sternsheets
the slim little craft darted away from the jetty with a sudden swirl of
her propeller and the hard, rapid puffing of the exhaust in her vaguely
gleaming brass funnel amidships.

The misty churning at her stern was the only sound in the world. The
shore lay plunged in the silence of the deeper slumber. I watched the
town recede still and soundless in the hot night, till the abrupt hail,
"Steam-launch, ahoy!" made me spin round face forward. We were close to
a white ghostly steamer. Lights shone on her decks, in her portholes.
And the same voice shouted from her:

"Is that our passenger?"

"It is," I yelled.

Her crew had been obviously on the jump. I could hear them running
about. The modern spirit of haste was loudly vocal in the orders to
"Heave away on the cable"--to "Lower the sideladder," and in urgent
requests to me to "Come along, sir! We have been delayed three hours for
you. . . . Our time is seven o'clock, you know!"

I stepped on the deck. I said "No! I don't know." The spirit of modern
hurry was embodied in a thin, long-armed, long-legged man, with a
closely clipped gray beard. His meagre hand was hot and dry. He declared
feverishly:

"I am hanged if I would have waited another five minutes Harbour-Master
or no Harbour-Master."

"That's your own business," I said. "I didn't ask you to wait for me."

"I hope you don't expect any supper," he burst out. "This isn't a
boarding-house afloat. You are the first passenger I ever had in my life
and I hope to goodness you will be the last."

I made no answer to this hospitable communication; and, indeed, he
didn't wait for any, bolting away on to his bridge to get his ship under
way.

The three days he had me on board he did not dep