It was like an inscription on a tomb.  The Wild Rose was dead, and so was Captain H. C. Jorgenson, and the sextant case was all that was left of them.  Old Jorgenson, gaunt and mute, would turn up at meal times on board any trading vessel in the Roads, and the stewards—­Chinamen or mulattos—­would sulkily put on an extra plate without waiting for orders.  When the seamen traders foregathered noisily round a glittering cluster of bottles and glasses on a lighted verandah, old Jorgenson would emerge up the stairs as if from a dark sea, and, stepping up with a kind of tottering jauntiness, would help himself in the first tumbler to hand.

“I drink to you all.  No—­no chair.”

He would stand silent over the talking group.  His taciturnity was as eloquent as the repeated warning of the slave of the feast.  His flesh had gone the way of all flesh, his spirit had sunk in the turmoil of his past, but his immense and bony frame survived as if made of iron.  His hands trembled but his eyes were steady.  He was supposed to know details about the end of mysterious men and of mysterious enterprises.  He was an evident failure himself, but he was believed to know secrets that would make the fortune of any man; yet there was also a general impression that his knowledge was not of that nature which would make it profitable for a moderately prudent person.

This powerful skeleton, dressed in faded blue serge and without any kind of linen, existed anyhow.  Sometimes, if offered the job, he piloted a home ship through the Straits of Rhio, after, however, assuring the captain: 

“You don’t want a pilot; a man could go through with his eyes shut.  But if you want me, I’ll come.  Ten dollars.”

Then, after seeing his charge clear of the last island of the group he would go back thirty miles in a canoe, with two old Malays who seemed to be in some way his followers.  To travel thirty miles at sea under the equatorial sun and in a cranky dug-out where once down you must not move, is an achievement that requires the endurance of a fakir and the virtue of a salamander.  Ten dollars was cheap and generally he was in demand.  When times were hard he would borrow five dollars from any of the adventurers with the remark: 

“I can’t pay you back, very soon, but the girl must eat, and if you want to know anything, I can tell you.”

It was remarkable that nobody ever smiled at that “anything.”  The usual thing was to say: 

“Thank you, old man; when I am pushed for a bit of information I’ll come to you.”

Jorgenson nodded then and would say:  “Remember that unless you young chaps are like we men who ranged about here years ago, what I could tell you would be worse than poison.”