turned up east of Suez Canal and swept up all the crumbs.  They prowled on the cheap to and fro along the coast and between the islands, like a lot of sharks in the water ready to snap up anything you let drop.  And then the high old times were over for good; for years the Sofala had made no more, he judged, than a fair living.  Captain Eliott looked upon it as his duty in every way to assist an English ship to hold her own; and it stood to reason that if for want of a captain the Sofala began to miss her trips she would very soon lose her trade.  There was the quandary.  The man was too impracticable.  “Too much of a beggar on horseback from the first,” he explained.  “Seemed to grow worse as the time went on.  In the last three years he’s run through eleven skippers; he had tried every single man here, outside of the regular lines.  I had warned him before that this would not do.  And now, of course, no one will look at the Sofala.  I had one or two men up at my office and talked to them; but, as they said to me, what was the good of taking the berth to lead a regular dog’s life for a month and then get the sack at the end of the first trip?  The fellow, of course, told me it was all nonsense; there has been a plot hatching for years against him.  And now it had come.  All the horrid sailors in the port had conspired to bring him to his knees, because he was an engineer.”

Captain Eliott emitted a throaty chuckle.

“And the fact is, that if he misses a couple more trips he need never trouble himself to start again.  He won’t find any cargo in his old trade.  There’s too much competition nowadays for people to keep their stuff lying about for a ship that does not turn up when she’s expected.  It’s a bad lookout for him.  He swears he will shut himself on board and starve to death in his cabin rather than sell her—­even if he could find a buyer.  And that’s not likely in the least.  Not even the Japs would give her insured value for her.  It isn’t like selling sailing-ships.  Steamers do get out of date, besides getting old.”

“He must have laid by a good bit of money though,” observed Captain Whalley quietly.

The Harbor-master puffed out his purple cheeks to an amazing size.

“Not a stiver, Harry.  Not—­a—­single—­sti-ver.”

He waited; but as Captain Whalley, stroking his beard slowly, looked down on the ground without a word, he tapped him on the forearm, tiptoed, and said in a hoarse whisper—­

“The Manilla lottery has been eating him up.”

He frowned a little, nodding in tiny affirmative jerks.  They all were going in for it; a third of the wages paid to ships’ officers ("in my port,” he snorted) went to Manilla.  It was a mania.  That fellow Massy had been bitten by it like the rest of them from the first; but after winning once he seemed to have persuaded himself he had only to try again to get another big prize.  He had taken dozens and scores of tickets for every drawing since.  What with this vice and his ignorance of affairs, ever since he had improvidently bought that steamer he had been more or less short of money.