“The earth is big,” he said vaguely.

The other, as if to test the statement, stared all round from his driving-seat.  The Esplanade was very quiet; only from afar, from very far, a long way from the seashore, across the stretches of grass, through the long ranges of trees, came faintly the toot—­toot—­toot of the cable car beginning to roll before the empty peristyle of the Public Library on its three-mile journey to the New Harbor Docks.

“Doesn’t seem to be so much room on it,” growled the Master-Attendant, “since these Germans came along shouldering us at every turn.  It was not so in our time.”

He fell into deep thought, breathing stertorously, as though he had been taking a nap open-eyed.  Perhaps he too, on his side, had detected in the silent pilgrim-like figure, standing there by the wheel, like an arrested wayfarer, the buried lineaments of the features belonging to the young captain of the Condor.  Good fellow—­Harry Whalley—­never very talkative.  You never knew what he was up to—­a bit too off-hand with people of consequence, and apt to take a wrong view of a fellow’s actions.  Fact was he had a too good opinion of himself.  He would have liked to tell him to get in and drive him home to dinner.  But one never knew.  Wife would not like it.

“And it’s funny to think, Harry,” he went on in a big, subdued drone, “that of all the people on it there seems only you and I left to remember this part of the world as it used to be . . .”

He was ready to indulge in the sweetness of a sentimental mood had it not struck him suddenly that Captain Whalley, unstirring and without a word, seemed to be awaiting something—­perhaps expecting . . .  He gathered the reins at once and burst out in bluff, hearty growls—­

“Ha!  My dear boy.  The men we have known—­the ships we’ve sailed—­ay! and the things we’ve done . . .”

The pony plunged—­the syce skipped out of the way.  Captain Whalley raised his arm.

“Good-by.”

VI

The sun had set.  And when, after drilling a deep hole with his stick, he moved from that spot the night had massed its army of shadows under the trees.  They filled the eastern ends of the avenues as if only waiting the signal for a general advance upon the open spaces of the world; they were gathering low between the deep stone-faced banks of the canal.  The Malay prau, half-concealed under the arch of the bridge, had not altered its position a quarter of an inch.  For a long time Captain Whalley stared down over the parapet, till at last the floating immobility of that beshrouded thing seemed to grow upon him into something inexplicable and alarming.  The twilight abandoned the zenith; its reflected gleams left the world below, and the water of the canal seemed to turn into pitch.  Captain Whalley crossed it.