I use that word rather than the word “flew,” because I have a distinct impression that, though uplifted by my aroused youth, my movements were deliberate enough.  To that mixed white, brown, and yellow portion of mankind, out abroad on their own affairs, I presented the appearance of a man walking rather sedately.  And nothing in the way of abstraction could have equalled my deep detachment from the forms and colours of this world.  It was, as it were, final.

And yet, suddenly, I recognized Hamilton.  I recognized him without effort, without a shock, without a start.  There he was, strolling toward the Harbour Office with his stiff, arrogant dignity.  His red face made him noticeable at a distance.  It flamed, over there, on the shady side of the street.

He had perceived me, too.  Something (unconscious exuberance of spirits perhaps) moved me to wave my hand to him elaborately.  This lapse from good taste happened before I was aware that I was capable of it.

The impact of my impudence stopped him short, much as a bullet might have done.  I verily believe he staggered, though as far as I could see he didn’t actually fall.  I had gone past in a moment and did not turn my head.  I had forgotten his existence.

The next ten minutes might have been ten seconds or ten centuries for all my consciousness had to do with it.  People might have been falling dead around me, houses crumbling, guns firing, I wouldn’t have known.  I was thinking:  “By Jove!  I have got it.” It being the command.  It had come about in a way utterly unforeseen in my modest day-dreams.

I perceived that my imagination had been running in conventional channels and that my hopes had always been drab stuff.  I had envisaged a command as a result of a slow course of promotion in the employ of some highly respectable firm.  The reward of faithful service.  Well, faithful service was all right.  One would naturally give that for one’s own sake, for the sake of the ship, for the love of the life of one’s choice; not for the sake of the reward.

There is something distasteful in the notion of a reward.

And now here I had my command, absolutely in my pocket, in a way undeniable indeed, but most unexpected; beyond my imaginings, outside all reasonable expectations, and even notwithstanding the existence of some sort of obscure intrigue to keep it away from me.  It is true that the intrigue was feeble, but it helped the feeling of wonder—­as if I had been specially destined for that ship I did not know, by some power higher than the prosaic agencies of the commercial world.

A strange sense of exultation began to creep into me.  If I had worked for that command ten years or more there would have been nothing of the kind.  I was a little frightened.

“Let us be calm,” I said to myself.

Outside the door of the Officers’ Home the wretched Steward seemed to be waiting for me.  There was a broad flight of a few steps, and he ran to and fro on the top of it as if chained there.  A distressed cur.  He looked as though his throat were too dry for him to bark.