Mr. Van Wyk demurred with unexpected acrimony.  Progressed in what? he wanted to know.

Why, in knowledge of truth, in decency, in justice, in order—­in honesty too, since men harmed each other mostly from ignorance.  It was, Captain Whalley concluded quaintly, more pleasant to live in.

Mr. Van Wyk whimsically would not admit that Mr. Massy, for instance, was more pleasant naturally than the Balinini pirates.

The river had not gained much by the change.  They were in their way every bit as honest.  Massy was less ferocious than Haji Daman no doubt, but . . .

“And what about you, my good sir?” Captain Whalley laughed a deep soft laugh. “You are an improvement, surely.”

He continued in a vein of pleasantry.  A good cigar was better than a knock on the head—­the sort of welcome he would have found on this river forty or fifty years ago.  Then leaning forward slightly, he became earnestly serious.  It seems as if, outside their own sea-gypsy tribes, these rovers had hated all mankind with an incomprehensible, bloodthirsty hatred.  Meantime their depredations had been stopped, and what was the consequence?  The new generation was orderly, peaceable, settled in prosperous villages.  He could speak from personal knowledge.  And even the few survivors of that time—­old men now—­had changed so much, that it would have been unkind to remember against them that they had ever slit a throat in their lives.  He had one especially in his mind’s eye:  a dignified, venerable headman of a certain large coast village about sixty miles sou’west of Tampasuk.  It did one’s heart good to see him—­to hear that man speak.  He might have been a ferocious savage once.  What men wanted was to be checked by superior intelligence, by superior knowledge, by superior force too—­yes, by force held in trust from God and sanctified by its use in accordance with His declared will.  Captain Whalley believed a disposition for good existed in every man, even if the world were not a very happy place as a whole.  In the wisdom of men he had not so much confidence.  The disposition had to be helped up pretty sharply sometimes, he admitted.  They might be silly, wrongheaded, unhappy; but naturally evil—­no.  There was at bottom a complete harmlessness at least . . .

“Is there?” Mr. Van Wyk snapped acrimoniously.

Captain Whalley laughed at the interjection, in the good humor of large, tolerating certitude.  He could look back at half a century, he pointed out.  The smoke oozed placidly through the white hairs hiding his kindly lips.

“At all events,” he resumed after a pause, “I am glad that they’ve had no time to do you much harm as yet.”

This allusion to his comparative youthfulness did not offend Mr. Van Wyk, who got up and wriggled his shoulders with an enigmatic half-smile.  They walked out together amicably into the starry night towards the river-side.  Their footsteps resounded unequally on the dark path.  At the shore end of the gangway the lantern, hung low to the handrail, threw a vivid light on the white legs and the big black feet of Mr. Massy waiting about anxiously.  From the waist upwards he remained shadowy, with a row of buttons gleaming up to the vague outline of his chin.