“That’s a good fellow—­a real good fellow”—­he swallowed down a belated sob—­“this Jacobus.”

And he told me in a low voice that Jacobus was the first man to board his ship on arrival, and, learning of their misfortune, had taken charge of everything, volunteered to attend to all routine business, carried off the ship’s papers on shore, arranged for the funeral—­

“A good fellow.  I was knocked over.  I had been looking at my wife for ten days.  And helpless.  Just you think of that!  The dear little chap died the very day we made the land.  How I managed to take the ship in God alone knows!  I couldn’t see anything; I couldn’t speak; I couldn’t. . . .  You’ve heard, perhaps, that we lost our mate overboard on the passage?  There was no one to do it for me.  And the poor woman nearly crazy down below there all alone with the . . .  By the Lord!  It isn’t fair.”

We walked in silence together.  I did not know how to part from him.  On the quay he let go my arm and struck fiercely his fist into the palm of his other hand.

“By God, it isn’t fair!” he cried again.  “Don’t you ever marry unless you can chuck the sea first. . . .  It isn’t fair.”

I had no intention to “chuck the sea,” and when he left me to go aboard his ship I felt convinced that I would never marry.  While I was waiting at the steps for Jacobus’s boatman, who had gone off somewhere, the captain of the Hilda joined me, a slender silk umbrella in his hand and the sharp points of his archaic, Gladstonian shirt-collar framing a small, clean-shaved, ruddy face.  It was wonderfully fresh for his age, beautifully modelled and lit up by remarkably clear blue eyes.  A lot of white hair, glossy like spun glass, curled upwards slightly under the brim of his valuable, ancient, panama hat with a broad black ribbon.  In the aspect of that vivacious, neat, little old man there was something quaintly angelic and also boyish.

He accosted me, as though he had been in the habit of seeing me every day of his life from my earliest childhood, with a whimsical remark on the appearance of a stout negro woman who was sitting upon a stool near the edge of the quay.  Presently he observed amiably that I had a very pretty little barque.

I returned this civil speech by saying readily: 

“Not so pretty as the Hilda.”

At once the corners of his clear-cut, sensitive mouth dropped dismally.

“Oh, dear!  I can hardly bear to look at her now.”

Did I know, he asked anxiously, that he had lost the figurehead of his ship; a woman in a blue tunic edged with gold, the face perhaps not so very, very pretty, but her bare white arms beautifully shaped and extended as if she were swimming?  Did I?  Who would have expected such a things . . .  After twenty years too!

Nobody could have guessed from his tone that the woman was made of wood; his trembling voice, his agitated manner gave to his lamentations a ludicrously scandalous flavour. . . .  Disappeared at night—­a clear fine night with just a slight swell—­in the gulf of Bengal.  Went off without a splash; no one in the ship could tell why, how, at what hour—­after twenty years last October. . . .  Did I ever hear! . . .