air.  Their foliage clipped out between the uprights made as if several frames of thick unstirring leaves reflecting the lamplight in a green glow.  Through the opening at his elbow Captain Whalley could see the gangway lantern of the Sofala burning dim by the shore, the shadowy masses of the town beyond the open lustrous darkness of the river, and, as if hung along the straight edge of the projecting eaves, a narrow black strip of the night sky full of stars—­resplendent.  The famous cigar in hand he had a moment of complacency.

“A trifle.  Somebody must lead the way.  I just showed that the thing could be done; but you men brought up to the use of steam cannot conceive the vast importance of my bit of venturesomeness to the Eastern trade of the time.  Why, that new route reduced the average time of a southern passage by eleven days for more than half the year.  Eleven days!  It’s on record.  But the remarkable thing—­speaking to a sailor—­I should say was . . .”

He talked well, without egotism, professionally.  The powerful voice, produced without effort, filled the bungalow even into the empty rooms with a deep and limpid resonance, seemed to make a stillness outside; and Mr. Van Wyk was surprised by the serene quality of its tone, like the perfection of manly gentleness.  Nursing one small foot, in a silk sock and a patent leather shoe, on his knee, he was immensely entertained.  It was as if nobody could talk like this now, and the overshadowed eyes, the flowing white beard, the big frame, the serenity, the whole temper of the man, were an amazing survival from the prehistoric times of the world coming up to him out of the sea.

Captain Whalley had been also the pioneer of the early trade in the Gulf of Pe-tchi-li.  He even found occasion to mention that he had buried his “dear wife” there six-and-twenty years ago.  Mr. Van Wyk, impassive, could not help speculating in his mind swiftly as to the sort of woman that would mate with such a man.  Did they make an adventurous and well-matched pair?  No.  Very possible she had been small, frail, no doubt very feminine—­or most likely commonplace with domestic instincts, utterly insignificant.  But Captain Whalley was no garrulous bore, and shaking his head as if to dissipate the momentary gloom that had settled on his handsome old face, he alluded conversationally to Mr. Van Wyk’s solitude.

Mr. Van Wyk affirmed that sometimes he had more company than he wanted.  He mentioned smilingly some of the peculiarities of his intercourse with “My Sultan.”  He made his visits in force.  Those people damaged his grass plot in front (it was not easy to obtain some approach to a lawn in the tropics) and the other day had broken down some rare bushes he had planted over there.  And Captain Whalley remembered immediately that, in ’forty-seven, the then Sultan, “this man’s grandfather,” had been notorious as a great protector of the piratical fleets of praus from farther East.  They had a safe refuge in the river at Batu Beru.  He financed more especially a Balinini chief called Haji Daman.  Captain Whalley, nodding significantly his bushy white eyebrows, had very good reason to know something of that.  The world had progressed since that time.