How the fellow came to be a shipowner at the same time was quite a tale.  He came out third in a home ship nearly fifteen years ago, Captain Eliott remembered, and got paid off after a bad sort of row both with his skipper and his chief.  Anyway, they seemed jolly glad to get rid of him at all costs.  Clearly a mutinous sort of chap.  Well, he remained out here, a perfect nuisance, everlastingly shipped and unshipped, unable to keep a berth very long; pretty nigh went through every engine-room afloat belonging to the colony.  Then suddenly, “What do you think happened, Harry?”

Captain Whalley, who seemed lost in a mental effort as of doing a sum in his head, gave a slight start.  He really couldn’t imagine.  The Master-Attendant’s voice vibrated dully with hoarse emphasis.  The man actually had the luck to win the second prize in the Manilla lottery.  All these engineers and officers of ships took tickets in that gamble.  It seemed to be a perfect mania with them all.

Everybody expected now that he would take himself off home with his money, and go to the devil in his own way.  Not at all.  The Sofala, judged too small and not quite modern enough for the sort of trade she was in, could be got for a moderate price from her owners, who had ordered a new steamer from Europe.  He rushed in and bought her.  This man had never given any signs of that sort of mental intoxication the mere fact of getting hold of a large sum of money may produce—­not till he got a ship of his own; but then he went off his balance all at once:  came bouncing into the Marine Office on some transfer business, with his hat hanging over his left eye and switching a little cane in his hand, and told each one of the clerks separately that “Nobody could put him out now.  It was his turn.  There was no one over him on earth, and there never would be either.”  He swaggered and strutted between the desks, talking at the top of his voice, and trembling like a leaf all the while, so that the current business of the office was suspended for the time he was in there, and everybody in the big room stood open-mouthed looking at his antics.  Afterwards he could be seen during the hottest hours of the day with his face as red as fire rushing along up and down the quays to look at his ship from different points of view:  he seemed inclined to stop every stranger he came across just to let them know “that there would be no longer anyone over him; he had bought a ship; nobody on earth could put him out of his engine-room now.”

Good bargain as she was, the price of the Sofala took up pretty near all the lottery-money.  He had left himself no capital to work with.  That did not matter so much, for these were the halcyon days of steam coasting trade, before some of the home shipping firms had thought of establishing local fleets to feed their main lines.  These, when once organized, took the biggest slices out of that cake, of course; and by-and-by a squad of confounded German tramps