End of the Tether | Page 8

limited himself to six a day. He never told her of his
difficulties, and she never enlarged upon her struggle to live. Their
confidence in each other needed no ex- planations, and their perfect
understanding endured without protestations of gratitude or regret. He
would have been shocked if she had taken it into her head to thank him
in so many words, but he found it perfectly natural that she should tell
him she needed two hundred pounds.
He had come in with the Fair Maid in ballast to look for a freight in the
Sofala's port of registry, and her letter met him there. Its tenor was that
it was no use mincing matters. Her only resource was in opening a

boarding-house, for which the prospects, she judged, were good. Good
enough, at any rate, to make her tell him frankly that with two hundred
pounds she could make a start. He had torn the envelope open, hastily,
on deck, where it was handed to him by the ship- chandler's runner,
who had brought his mail at the mo- ment of anchoring. For the second
time in his life he was appalled, and remained stock-still at the cabin
door with the paper trembling between his fingers. Open a
boarding-house! Two hundred pounds for a start! The only resource!
And he did not know where to lay his hands on two hundred pence.
All that night Captain Whalley walked the poop of his anchored ship,
as though he had been about to close with the land in thick weather,
and uncertain of his position after a run of many gray days without a
sight of sun, moon, or stars. The black night twinkled with the guiding
lights of seamen and the steady straight lines of lights on shore; and all
around the Fair Maid the riding lights of ships cast trembling trails
upon the water of the roadstead. Captain Whalley saw not a gleam
anywhere till the dawn broke and he found out that his clothing was
soaked through with the heavy dew.
His ship was awake. He stopped short, stroked his wet beard, and
descended the poop ladder backwards, with tired feet. At the sight of
him the chief officer, lounging about sleepily on the quarterdeck,
remained open-mouthed in the middle of a great early-morning yawn.
"Good morning to you," pronounced Captain Whal- ley solemnly,
passing into the cabin. But he checked himself in the doorway, and
without looking back, "By the bye," he said, "there should be an empty
wooden case put away in the lazarette. It has not been broken up--has
it?"
The mate shut his mouth, and then asked as if dazed, "What empty case,
sir?"
"A big flat packing-case belonging to that painting in my room. Let it
be taken up on deck and tell the carpenter to look it over. I may want to
use it before long."
The chief officer did not stir a limb till he had heard the door of the
captain's state-room slam within the cuddy. Then he beckoned aft the
second mate with his forefinger to tell him that there was something "in
the wind."
When the bell rang Captain Whalley's authoritative voice boomed out

through a closed door, "Sit down and don't wait for me." And his
impressed officers took their places, exchanging looks and whispers
across the table. What! No breakfast? And after apparently knock- ing
about all night on deck, too! Clearly, there was something in the wind.
In the skylight above their heads, bowed earnestly over the plates, three
wire cages rocked and rattled to the restless jumping of the hungry
canaries; and they could detect the sounds of their "old man's"
deliberate movements within his state-room. Cap- tain Whalley was
methodically winding up the chro- nometers, dusting the portrait of his
late wife, getting a clean white shirt out of the drawers, making himself
ready in his punctilious unhurried manner to go ashore. He could not
have swallowed a single mouthful of food that morning. He had made
up his mind to sell the Fair Maid.
III
Just at that time the Japanese were casting far and wide for ships of
European build, and he had no diffi- culty in finding a purchaser, a
speculator who drove a hard bargain, but paid cash down for the Fair
Maid, with a view to a profitable resale. Thus it came about that
Captain Whalley found himself on a certain after- noon descending the
steps of one of the most important post-offices of the East with a slip of
bluish paper in his hand. This was the receipt of a registered letter en-
closing a draft for two hundred pounds, and addressed to Melbourne.
Captain Whalley pushed the paper into his waistcoat-pocket, took his
stick from under his arm,