Captain Whalley, smiling too, shook his head.  “God forbid!”

He thought that perhaps on the whole he deserved something better than to die in such sentiments.  The time of course would have to come, and he trusted to his Maker to provide a manner of going out of which he need not be ashamed.  For the rest he hoped he would live to a hundred if need be:  other men had been known; it would be no miracle.  He expected no miracles.

The pronounced, argumentative tone caused Mr. Van Wyk to raise his head and look at him steadily.  Captain Whalley was gazing fixedly with a rapt expression, as though he had seen his Creator’s favorable decree written in mysterious characters on the wall.  He kept perfectly motionless for a few seconds, then got his vast bulk on to his feet so impetuously that Mr. Van Wyk was startled.

He struck first a heavy blow on his inflated chest:  and, throwing out horizontally a big arm that remained steady, extended in the air like the limb of a tree on a windless day—­

“Not a pain or an ache there.  Can you see this shake in the least?”

His voice was low, in an awing, confident contrast with the headlong emphasis of his movements.  He sat down abruptly.

“This isn’t to boast of it, you know.  I am nothing,” he said in his effortless strong voice, that seemed to come out as naturally as a river flows.  He picked up the stump of the cigar he had laid aside, and added peacefully, with a slight nod, “As it happens, my life is necessary; it isn’t my own, it isn’t—­God knows.”

He did not say much for the rest of the evening, but several times Mr. Van Wyk detected a faint smile of assurance flitting under the heavy mustache.

Later on Captain Whalley would now and then consent to dine “at the house.”  He could even be induced to drink a glass of wine.  “Don’t think I am afraid of it, my good sir,” he explained.  “There was a very good reason why I should give it up.”

On another occasion, leaning back at ease, he remarked, “You have treated me most—­most humanely, my dear Mr. Van Wyk, from the very first.”

“You’ll admit there was some merit,” Mr. Van Wyk hinted slyly.  “An associate of that excellent Massy. . . .  Well, well, my dear captain, I won’t say a word against him.”

“It would be no use your saying anything against him,” Captain Whalley affirmed a little moodily.  “As I’ve told you before, my life—­my work, is necessary, not for myself alone.  I can’t choose” . . .  He paused, turned the glass before him right round. . . .  “I have an only child—­a daughter.”

The ample downward sweep of his arm over the table seemed to suggest a small girl at a vast distance.  “I hope to see her once more before I die.  Meantime it’s enough to know that she has me sound and solid, thank God.  You can’t understand how one feels.  Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh; the very image of my poor wife.  Well, she . . .”