The Shadow Line | Page 6

An exclamation of dismay escaped him when he heard that I had come
for a stay; but he could not deny that there were plenty of vacant rooms.

"Very well. Can you give me the one I had before?"
He emitted a faint moan from behind a pile of cardboard boxes on the
table, which might have contained gloves or handkerchies or neckties. I
wonder what the fellow did keep in them? There was a smell of
decaying coral, or Oriental dust of zoological speciments in that den of
his. I could only see the top of his head and his un- happy eyes levelled
at me over the barrier.
"It's only for a couple of days," I said, intending to cheer him up.
"Perhaps you would like to pay in advance?" he suggested eagerly.
"Certainly not!" I burst out directly I could speak. "Never heard of such
a thing! This is the most infernal cheek. . . ."
He had seized his head in both hands--a gesture of despair which
checked my indignation.
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Don't fly out like this. I am asking everybody."
"I don't believe it," I said bluntly.
"Well, I am going to. And if you gentlemen all agreed to pay in
advance I could make Hamil- ton pay up, too. He's always turning up
ashore dead broke, and even when he has some money he won't settle
his bills. I don't know what to do with him. He swears at me and tells
me I can't chuck a white man out into the street here. So if you only
would. . . ."
I was amazed. Incredulous, too. I suspected the fellow of gratuitous
impertinence. I told him with marked emphasis that I would see him
and Hamilton hanged first, and requested him to con- duct me to my
room with no more of his nonsense. He produced then a key from
somewhere and led the way out of his lair, giving me a vicious sidelong
look in passing.
"Any one I know staying here?" I asked him before he left my room.

He had recovered his usual pained impatient tone, and said that Captain
Giles was there, back from a Solo Sea trip. Two other guests were stay-
ing also. He paused. And, of course, Hamilton, he added.
"Oh, yes! Hamilton," I said, and the miserable creature took himself off
with a final groan.
His impudence still rankled when I came into the dining room at tiffin
time. He was there on duty overlooking the Chinamen servants. The
tiffin was laid on one end only of the long table, and the punkah was
stirring the hot air lazily--mostly above a barren waste of polished
wood.
We were four around the cloth. The dozing stranger from the chair was
one. Both his eyes were partly opened now, but they did not seem to
see anything. He was supine. The dignified person next him, with short
side whiskers and a carefully scraped chin, was, of course, Hamilton. I
have never seen any one so full of dignity for the station in life
Providence had been pleased to place him in. I had been told that he
regarded me as a rank outsider. He raised not only his eyes, but his
eyebrows as well, at the sound I made pulling back my chair.
Captain Giles was at the head of the table. I exchanged a few words of
greeting with him and sat down on his left. Stout and pale, with a great
shiny dome of a bald forehead and prominent brown eyes, he might
have been anything but a seaman. You would not have been surprised
to learn that he was an architect. To me (I know how absurd it is) to me
he looked like a church- warden. He had the appearance of a man from
whom you would expect sound advice, moral sentiments, with perhaps
a platitude or two thrown in on occasion, not from a desire to dazzle,
but from honest conviction.
Though very well known and appreciated in the shipping world, he had
no regular employment. He did not want it. He had his own peculiar
position. He was an expert. An expert in--how shall I say it?--in
intricate navigation. He was supposed to know more about remote and
im- perfectly charted parts of the Archipelago than any man living. His
brain must have been a perfect warehouse of reefs, positions, bearings,

images of headlands, shapes of obscure coasts, aspects of innumerable
islands, desert and otherwise. Any ship, for instance, bound on a trip to
Palawan or somewhere that way would have Captain Giles on board,
either in temporary command or "to assist the master." It was said that
he had a retaining fee from a wealthy firm of Chinese steamship
owners, in