He proceeded to give instances of what was expected of him; and his thick voice drowsed in the still air like the obstinate droning of an enormous bumble-bee.  Captain Whalley did not know what was the force or the weakness that prevented him from saying good-night and walking away.  It was as though he had been too tired to make the effort.  How queer.  More queer than any of Ned’s instances.  Or was it that overpowering sense of idleness alone that made him stand there and listen to these stories.  Nothing very real had ever troubled Ned Eliott; and gradually he seemed to detect deep in, as if wrapped up in the gross wheezy rumble, something of the clear hearty voice of the young captain of the Ringdove.  He wondered if he too had changed to the same extent; and it seemed to him that the voice of his old chum had not changed so very much—­that the man was the same.  Not a bad fellow the pleasant, jolly Ned Eliott, friendly, well up to his business—­and always a bit of a humbug.  He remembered how he used to amuse his poor wife.  She could read him like an open book.  When the Condor and the Ringdove happened to be in port together, she would frequently ask him to bring Captain Eliott to dinner.  They had not met often since those old days.  Not once in five years, perhaps.  He regarded from under his white eyebrows this man he could not bring himself to take into his confidence at this juncture; and the other went on with his intimate outpourings, and as remote from his hearer as though he had been talking on a hill-top a mile away.

He was in a bit of a quandary now as to the steamer Sofala.  Ultimately every hitch in the port came into his hands to undo.  They would miss him when he was gone in another eighteen months, and most likely some retired naval officer had been pitchforked into the appointment—­a man that would understand nothing and care less.  That steamer was a coasting craft having a steady trade connection as far north as Tenasserim; but the trouble was she could get no captain to take her on her regular trip.  Nobody would go in her.  He really had no power, of course, to order a man to take a job.  It was all very well to stretch a point on the demand of a consul-general, but . . .

“What’s the matter with the ship?” Captain Whalley interrupted in measured tones.

“Nothing’s the matter.  Sound old steamer.  Her owner has been in my office this afternoon tearing his hair.”

“Is he a white man?” asked Whalley in an interested voice.

“He calls himself a white man,” answered the Master-Attendant scornfully; “but if so, it’s just skin-deep and no more.  I told him that to his face too.”

“But who is he, then?”

“He’s the chief engineer of her.  See that, Harry?”

“I see,” Captain Whalley said thoughtfully.  “The engineer.  I see.”