They carried on their discussion standing where they had come face to face.  Mr. Van Wyk observed his visitor with attention.  Then at last, as if forced out of his reserve—­

“I am surprised that you should intercede for such a confounded fool.”

This outbreak was almost complimentary, as if its meaning had been, “That such a man as you should intercede!” Captain Whalley let it pass by without flinching.  One would have thought he had heard nothing.  He simply went on to state that he was personally interested in putting things straight between them.  Personally . . .

But Mr. Van Wyk, really carried away by his disgust with Massy, became very incisive—­

“Indeed—­if I am to be frank with you—­his whole character does not seem to me particularly estimable or trustworthy . . .”

Captain Whalley, always straight, seemed to grow an inch taller and broader, as if the girth of his chest had suddenly expanded under his beard.

“My dear sir, you don’t think I came here to discuss a man with whom I am—­I am—­h’m—­closely associated.”

A sort of solemn silence lasted for a moment.  He was not used to asking favors, but the importance he attached to this affair had made him willing to try. . . .  Mr. Van Wyk, favorably impressed, and suddenly mollified by a desire to laugh, interrupted—­

“That’s all right if you make it a personal matter; but you can do no less than sit down and smoke a cigar with me.”

A slight pause, then Captain Whalley stepped forward heavily.  As to the regularity of the service, for the future he made himself responsible for it; and his name was Whalley—­perhaps to a sailor (he was speaking to a sailor, was he not?) not altogether unfamiliar.  There was a lighthouse now, on an island.  Maybe Mr. Van Wyk himself . . .

“Oh yes.  Oh indeed.”  Mr. Van Wyk caught on at once.  He indicated a chair.  How very interesting.  For his own part he had seen some service in the last Acheen War, but had never been so far East.  Whalley Island?  Of course.  Now that was very interesting.  What changes his guest must have seen since.

“I can look further back even—­on a whole half-century.”

Captain Whalley expanded a bit.  The flavor of a good cigar (it was a weakness) had gone straight to his heart, also the civility of that young man.  There was something in that accidental contact of which he had been starved in his years of struggle.

The front wall retreating made a square recess furnished like a room.  A lamp with a milky glass shade, suspended below the slope of the high roof at the end of a slender brass chain, threw a bright round of light upon a little table bearing an open book and an ivory paper-knife.  And, in the translucent shadows beyond, other tables could be seen, a number of easy-chairs of various shapes, with a great profusion of skin rugs strewn on the teakwood planking all over the veranda.  The flowering creepers scented the