This Rimmle was one of those who held Captain Blaise for a sort of idol.  I had seen dozens of the kind before.  Great hours for them when they could sit in with the famous Captain Blaise, and so now, with the agent bound to talk of the West Coast trade, lawful and otherwise, Captain Blaise was making but slow headway.

I was thinking of stepping up on deck to stretch my legs, when the conversation took a sudden shift.  “Captain”—­Rimmle put the question hesitatingly—­“I thought I had seen the last of you.  May I ask what lured you back?”

Captain Blaise had decanted another bottle and was viewing the rich-colored bubbles as he held the carafe up against the light.  Such little things afforded him keen pleasure.  He set the carafe down—­softly—­only to ask by way of reply:  “Rimmle, what is it always brings men back?”

Rimmle laid his head to one side and nodded shrewdly.  “As far as my experience goes, Captain, it is one of three things.”

“And which of the three is my failing?” Captain Blaise was absently filling their glasses.

“M-m—­It cannot be money—­you never cared for that.  You who have made fortunes and spent them as fast as you made them—­no, it cannot be money.  And then your newly acquired property in the States—­”

“My newly acquired—­What of that?”

“Why, the rumor is out that you fell heir to a great estate in the States—­on the banks of the Mississippi or the Ohio, or some outlandish name of a river in the States.”

“Oh, a rumor!  Go on.”

“And as for the drink—­it must be a great occasion, indeed, Captain, when you take more than is good for a man.  And so—­”

“We can never take too much drink in good company, Rimmle.  And so drink up—­here’s health!  And so you think it must be—­” He smiled faintly at the agent.  “And yet who should know better than you that all the gold I ever gave for a woman’s favor would not suffice to keep the poorest of them in cambric handkerchiefs.”

“As to that”—­the agent pursed up his full moist lips—­“it is true; the kind who looked for money were never your kind.  And yet that kind sometimes cost men a hundred times more in the end.”

Captain Blaise bent deferentially toward the agent.  “You think that, Rimmle—­truly?”

Rimmle bowed wisely.

Captain Blaise continued to regard him in the most friendly way, and yet with an air of doubt, as if debating how far to discuss matters of this kind with him.  And then, leaning yet further forward and speaking rapidly, energetically:  “And agreeing that it is so, who is it that ever regrets the price?  D’y’ think that I, even though I be what I be, that I—­Why, Rimmle, even you who live to amass money”—­Rimmle flushed—­“even you have had your days when—­To be sure you have had.”  Rimmle beamed.  “And so, Rimmle, you can believe possibly that Captain Blaise may yet have his immortal hour, and cherish the hope