in a corner; the flat packing-case containing the portrait in oils and the three carbon photographs had been pushed under the bed.  He was tired of discussing terms, of assisting at surveys, of all the routine of the business.  What to the other parties was merely the sale of a ship was to him a momentous event involving a radically new view of existence.  He knew that after this ship there would be no other; and the hopes of his youth, the exercise of his abilities, every feeling and achievement of his manhood, had been indissolubly connected with ships.  He had served ships; he had owned ships; and even the years of his actual retirement from the sea had been made bearable by the idea that he had only to stretch out his hand full of money to get a ship.  He had been at liberty to feel as though he were the owner of all the ships in the world.  The selling of this one was weary work; but when she passed from him at last, when he signed the last receipt, it was as though all the ships had gone out of the world together, leaving him on the shore of inaccessible oceans with seven hundred pounds in his hands.

Striding firmly, without haste, along the quay, Captain Whalley averted his glances from the familiar roadstead.  Two generations of seamen born since his first day at sea stood between him and all these ships at the anchorage.  His own was sold, and he had been asking himself, What next?

From the feeling of loneliness, of inward emptiness,—­and of loss too, as if his very soul had been taken out of him forcibly,—­there had sprung at first a desire to start right off and join his daughter.  “Here are the last pence,” he would say to her; “take them, my dear.  And here’s your old father:  you must take him too.”

His soul recoiled, as if afraid of what lay hidden at the bottom of this impulse.  Give up!  Never!  When one is thoroughly weary all sorts of nonsense come into one’s head.  A pretty gift it would have been for a poor woman—­this seven hundred pounds with the incumbrance of a hale old fellow more than likely to last for years and years to come.  Was he not as fit to die in harness as any of the youngsters in charge of these anchored ships out yonder?  He was as solid now as ever he had been.  But as to who would give him work to do, that was another matter.  Were he, with his appearance and antecedents, to go about looking for a junior’s berth, people, he was afraid, would not take him seriously; or else if he succeeded in impressing them, he would maybe obtain their pity, which would be like stripping yourself naked to be kicked.  He was not anxious to give himself away for less than nothing.  He had no use for anybody’s pity.  On the other hand, a command—­the only thing he could try for with due regard for common decency—­was not likely to be lying in wait for him at the corner of the next street.  Commands don’t go a-begging nowadays.  Ever since he had come ashore to carry out the business of the