The End of the Tether

“Why, yes. Only look at the way he walks.” Mr. Van Wyk took him up in a perfectly cool and undoubting tone. “The question, however, is whether your sense of duty does not carry...

His coat was unbuttoned; he shot the bolt of the door (there was no other opening), and, squatting before the scrap-heap, began to pack his pockets with pieces of iron. He packe...

For a long time after the course of the steamer _Sofala_ had been altered for the land, the low swampy coast had retained its appearance of a mere smudge of darkness beyond a be...

“You may expect some rare fooling with the engines, Jack,” he bellowed. The space into which he stared was deep and full of gloom; and the gray gleams of steel down there seemed...

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 e...

He frowned a little, nodding in tiny affirmative jerks. They all were going in for it; a third of the wages paid to ships’ officers (“in my port,” he snorted) went to Manilla. I...

A pilot sees better than a stranger, because his local knowledge, like a sharper vision, completes the shapes of things hurriedly glimpsed; penetrates the veils of mist spread o...

Captain Whalley had lifted his head to look, and his mind, disturbed in its meditation, turned with wonder (as men’s minds will do) to matters of no importance. It struck him th...

His eyes began to shine. He insisted. A simple statement,--and he thought to himself that he would manage somehow to stick in his berth as long as it suited him. He would make h...

The chief officer did not stir a limb till he had heard the door of the captain’s state-room slam within the cuddy. Then he beckoned aft the second mate with his forefinger to t...

Whether it was fortune or seclusion from his kind that Mr. Van Wyk sought, he could not have pitched upon a better place. Even the mail-boats of the subsidized company calling o...

Grave and smiling he watched Massy come down step by step; when the chief engineer had reached the deck he swung about, and they found themselves face to face. Matched as to hei...

“Perfectly true,” assented the lawyer. “The old fellow looked as though he had come into the world full-grown and with that long beard. I could never, somehow, imagine him eithe...