“Once more, then.  What am I to call you?”

Ha!  Massy.  Again.  The weariness of it crushed his heart—­and the pain of shame was almost more than he could bear without crying out.

“Well.  Is it to be ‘partner’ still?”

“You don’t know what you ask.”

“I know what I want . . .”

Massy stepped in and closed the door.

“. . .  And I am going to have a try for it with you once more.”

His whine was half persuasive, half menacing.

“For it’s no manner of use to tell me that you are poor.  You don’t spend anything on yourself, that’s true enough; but there’s another name for that.  You think you are going to have what you want out of me for three years, and then cast me off without hearing what I think of you.  You think I would have submitted to your airs if I had known you had only a beggarly five hundred pounds in the world.  You ought to have told me.”

“Perhaps,” said Captain Whalley, bowing his head.  “And yet it has saved you.” . . .  Massy laughed scornfully. . . .  “I have told you often enough since.”

“And I don’t believe you now.  When I think how I let you lord it over my ship!  Do you remember how you used to bullyrag me about my coat and your bridge?  It was in his way. His bridge!  ’And I won’t be a party to this—­and I couldn’t think of doing that.’  Honest man!  And now it all comes out.  ’I am poor, and I can’t.  I have only this five hundred in the world.’”

He contemplated the immobility of Captain Whalley, that seemed to present an inconquerable obstacle in his path.  His face took a mournful cast.

“You are a hard man.”

“Enough,” said Captain Whalley, turning upon him.  “You shall get nothing from me, because I have nothing of mine to give away now.”

“Tell that to the marines!”

Mr. Massy, going out, looked back once; then the door closed, and Captain Whalley, alone, sat as still as before.  He had nothing of his own—­even his past of honor, of truth, of just pride, was gone.  All his spotless life had fallen into the abyss.  He had said his last good-by to it.  But what belonged to her, that he meant to save.  Only a little money.  He would take it to her in his own hands—­this last gift of a man that had lasted too long.  And an immense and fierce impulse, the very passion of paternity, flamed up with all the unquenched vigor of his worthless life in a desire to see her face.

Just across the deck Massy had gone straight to his cabin, struck a light, and hunted up the note of the dreamed number whose figures had flamed up also with the fierceness of another passion.  He must contrive somehow not to miss a drawing.  That number meant something.  But what expedient could he contrive to keep himself going?

“Wretched miser!” he mumbled.