He took the foot of the table growling between his teeth.
"Unless you have a few thousands put away some-where. I haven't."
Mr. Van Wyk dined in his thoroughly lit-up bunga-low, putting a point of splendor in the night of his clearing above the dark bank of the river. Afterwards he sat down to his piano, and in a pause he became aware of slow footsteps passing on the path along the front.
A plank or two creaked under a heavy tread; he swung half round on the music-stool, listening with his finger-tips at rest on the keyboard. His little terrier barked violently, backing in from the veranda. A deep voice apologized gravely for "this intrusion." He walked out quickly.
At the head of the steps the patriarchal figure, who was the new captain of the Sofala apparently (he had seen a round dozen of them, but not one of that sort), towered without advancing. The little dog barked un-ceasingly, till a flick of Mr. Van Wyk's handkerchief made him spring aside into silence. Captain Whalley, opening the matter, was met by a punctiliously polite but determined opposition.
They carried on their discussion standing where they had come face to face. Mr. Van Wyk observed his visitor with attention. Then at last, as if forced out of his reserve--"I am surprised that you should intercede for such a confounded fool."
This outbreak was almost complimentary, as if its meaning had been, "That such a man as you should intercede!" Captain Whalley let it pass by without flinching. One would have thought he had heard noth-ing. He simply went on to state that he was personally interested in putting things straight between them.
Personally . . .
But Mr. Van Wyk, really carried away by his disgust with Massy, became very incisive--"Indeed--if I am to be frank with you--his whole character does not seem to me particularly estimable or trustworthy . . ."
Captain Whalley, always straight, seemed to grow an inch taller and broader, as if the girth of his chest had suddenly expanded under his beard.
"My dear sir, you don't think I came here to discuss a man with whom I am--I am--h'm--closely asso-ciated."
A sort of solemn silence lasted for a moment. He was not used to asking favors, but the importance he at-tached to this affair had made him willing to try. . . .
Mr. Van Wyk, favorably impressed, and suddenly mol-lified by a desire to laugh, interrupted--"That's all right if you make it a personal matter; but you can do no less than sit down and smoke a cigar with me."
A slight pause, then Captain Whalley stepped forward heavily. As to the regularity of the service, for the future he made himself responsible for it; and his name was Whalley--perhaps to a sailor (he was speaking to a sailor, was he not?) not altogether unfamiliar. There was a lighthouse now, on an island. Maybe Mr. Van Wyk himself . . .
"Oh yes. Oh indeed." Mr. Van Wyk caught on at once. He indicated a chair. How very interesting.
For his own part he had seen some service in the last Acheen War, but had never been so far East. Whalley Island? Of course. Now that was very interesting.
What changes his guest must have seen since.
"I can look further back even--on a whole half-century."
Captain Whalley expanded a bit. The flavor of a good cigar (it was a weakness) had gone straight to his heart, also the civility of that young man. There was something in that accidental contact of which he had been starved in his years of struggle.
The front wall retreating made a square recess fur-nished like a room. A lamp with a milky glass shade, suspended below the slope of the high roof at the end of a slender brass chain, threw a bright round of light upon a little table bearing an open book and an ivory paper-knife. And, in the translucent shadows beyond, other tables could be seen, a number of easy-chairs of various shapes, with a great profusion of skin rugs strewn on the teakwood planking all over the veranda.
The flowering creepers scented the air. Their foliage clipped out between the uprights made as if several frames of thick unstirring leaves reflecting the lamp-light in a green glow. Through the opening at his elbow Captain Whalley could see the gangway lantern of the Sofala burning dim by the shore, the shadowy masses of the town beyond the open lustrous darkness of the river, and, as if hung along the straight edge of the projecting eaves, a narrow black strip of the night sky full of stars--resplendent. The famous cigar in hand he had a moment of complacency.
"A trifle. Somebody must lead the way. I just showed that the thing could be done; but you men brought up to the use of steam cannot conceive the vast importance of my bit of venturesomeness to the Eastern trade of the time. Why, that new route reduced the average time of a southern passage by eleven days for more than half the year. Eleven days!
It's on record. But the remarkable thing--speaking to a sailor--I should say was . . ."
He talked well, without egotism, professionally. The powerful voice, produced without effort, filled the bungalow even into the empty rooms with a deep and limpid resonance, seemed to make a stillness outside; and Mr. Van Wyk was surprised by the serene quality of its tone, like the perfection of manly gentleness.
Nursing one small foot, in a silk sock and a patent leather shoe, on his knee, he was immensely entertained.
It was as if nobody could talk like this now, and the overshadowed eyes, the flowing white beard, the big frame, the serenity, the whole temper of the man, were an amazing survival from the prehistoric times of the world coming up to him out of the sea.
Captain Whalley had been also the pioneer of the early trade in the Gulf of Pe-tchi-li. He even found occasion to mention that he had buried his "dear wife" there six-and-twenty years ago. Mr. Van Wyk, impassive, could not help speculating in his mind swiftly as to the sort of woman that would mate with such a man.
Did they make an adventurous and well-matched pair?
