Their reply came in due course.  They were greatly struck with my project; but considering that, notwithstanding the unfortunate difficulty with the bags (which they trusted I would know how to guard against in the future), the voyage showed a very fair profit, they thought it would be better to keep the ship in the sugar trade—­at least for the present.

I turned over the page and read on: 

“We have had a letter from our good friend Mr. Jacobus.  We are pleased to see how well you have hit it off with him; for, not to speak of his assistance in the unfortunate matter of the bags, he writes us that should you, by using all possible dispatch, manage to bring the ship back early in the season he would be able to give us a good rate of freight.  We have no doubt that your best endeavours . . . etc. . . etc.”

I dropped the letter and sat motionless for a long time.  Then I wrote my answer (it was a short one) and went ashore myself to post it.  But I passed one letter-box, then another, and in the end found myself going up Collins Street with the letter still in my pocket—­against my heart.  Collins Street at four o’clock in the afternoon is not exactly a desert solitude; but I had never felt more isolated from the rest of mankind as when I walked that day its crowded pavement, battling desperately with my thoughts and feeling already vanquished.

There came a moment when the awful tenacity of Jacobus, the man of one passion and of one idea, appeared to me almost heroic.  He had not given me up.  He had gone again to his odious brother.  And then he appeared to me odious himself.  Was it for his own sake or for the sake of the poor girl?  And on that last supposition the memory of the kiss which missed my lips appalled me; for whatever he had seen, or guessed at, or risked, he knew nothing of that.  Unless the girl had told him.  How could I go back to fan that fatal spark with my cold breath?  No, no, that unexpected kiss had to be paid for at its full price.

At the first letter-box I came to I stopped and reaching into my breast-pocket I took out the letter—­it was as if I were plucking out my very heart—­and dropped it through the slit.  Then I went straight on board.

I wondered what dreams I would have that night; but as it turned out I did not sleep at all.  At breakfast I informed Mr. Burns that I had resigned my command.

He dropped his knife and fork and looked at me with indignation.

“You have, sir!  I thought you loved the ship.”

“So I do, Burns,” I said.  “But the fact is that the Indian Ocean and everything that is in it has lost its charm for me.  I am going home as passenger by the Suez Canal.”

“Everything that is in it,” he repeated angrily.  “I’ve never heard anybody talk like this.  And to tell you the truth, sir, all the time we have been together I’ve never quite made you out.  What’s one ocean more than another?  Charm, indeed!”