he is “on deck”; but my Jim, for the most part, skulked down below as though he had been a stowaway.  He infected me so that I avoided speaking on professional matters, such as would suggest themselves naturally to two sailors during a passage.  For whole days we did not exchange a word; I felt extremely unwilling to give orders to my officers in his presence.  Often, when alone with him on deck or in the cabin, we didn’t know what to do with our eyes.

’I placed him with De Jongh, as you know, glad enough to dispose of him in any way, yet persuaded that his position was now growing intolerable.  He had lost some of that elasticity which had enabled him to rebound back into his uncompromising position after every overthrow.  One day, coming ashore, I saw him standing on the quay; the water of the roadstead and the sea in the offing made one smooth ascending plane, and the outermost ships at anchor seemed to ride motionless in the sky.  He was waiting for his boat, which was being loaded at our feet with packages of small stores for some vessel ready to leave.  After exchanging greetings, we remained silent—­side by side.  “Jove!” he said suddenly, “this is killing work.”

’He smiled at me; I must say he generally could manage a smile.  I made no reply.  I knew very well he was not alluding to his duties; he had an easy time of it with De Jongh.  Nevertheless, as soon as he had spoken I became completely convinced that the work was killing.  I did not even look at him.  “Would you like,” said I, “to leave this part of the world altogether; try California or the West Coast?  I’ll see what I can do . . .”  He interrupted me a little scornfully.  “What difference would it make?” . . .  I felt at once convinced that he was right.  It would make no difference; it was not relief he wanted; I seemed to perceive dimly that what he wanted, what he was, as it were, waiting for, was something not easy to define—­something in the nature of an opportunity.  I had given him many opportunities, but they had been merely opportunities to earn his bread.  Yet what more could any man do?  The position struck me as hopeless, and poor Brierly’s saying recurred to me, “Let him creep twenty feet underground and stay there.”  Better that, I thought, than this waiting above ground for the impossible.  Yet one could not be sure even of that.  There and then, before his boat was three oars’ lengths away from the quay, I had made up my mind to go and consult Stein in the evening.

’This Stein was a wealthy and respected merchant.  His “house” (because it was a house, Stein & Co., and there was some sort of partner who, as Stein said, “looked after the Moluccas”) had a large inter-island business, with a lot of trading posts established in the most out-of-the-way places for collecting the produce.  His wealth and his respectability were not exactly the reasons why I was anxious to seek his advice.  I desired to confide my difficulty to him because he was one of the most