Chapter 2

His age sat lightly enough on him; and of his ruin he was not ashamed.
He had not been alone to believe in the stability of the Banking
Corporation. Men whose judgment in matters of finance was as expert as
his seamanship had commended the prudence of his investments, and had
themselves lost much money in the great failure. The only difference
between him and them was that he had lost his all. And yet not his all.
There had remained to him from his lost fortune a very pretty little
bark, Fair Maid, which he had bought to occupy his leisure of a retired
sailor--"to play with," as he expressed it himself.

He had formally declared himself tired of the sea the year preceding his
daughter's marriage. But after the young couple had gone to settle in
Melbourne he found out that he could not make himself happy on shore. He
was too much of a merchant sea-captain for mere yachting to satisfy him.
He wanted the illusion of affairs; and his acquisition of the Fair
Maid preserved the continuity of his life. He introduced her to his
acquaintances in various ports as "my last command." When he grew too
old to be trusted with a ship, he would lay her up and go ashore to be
buried, leaving directions in his will to have the bark towed out and
scuttled decently in deep water on the day of the funeral. His daughter
would not grudge him the satisfaction of knowing that no stranger would
handle his last command after him. With the fortune he was able to leave
her, the value of a 500-ton bark was neither here nor there. All this
would be said with a jocular twinkle in his eye: the vigorous old man
had too much vitality for the sentimentalism of regret; and a little
wistfully withal, because he was at home in life, taking a genuine
pleasure in its feelings and its possessions; in the dignity of his
reputation and his wealth, in his love for his daughter, and in his
satisfaction with the ship--the plaything of his lonely leisure.

He had the cabin arranged in accordance with his simple ideal of comfort
at sea. A big bookcase (he was a great reader) occupied one side of his
stateroom; the portrait of his late wife, a flat bituminous oil-painting
representing the profile and one long black ringlet of a young woman,
faced his bed-place. Three chronometers ticked him to sleep and greeted
him on waking with the tiny competition of their beats. He rose at five
every day. The officer of the morning watch, drinking his early cup
of coffee aft by the wheel, would hear through the wide orifice of the
copper ventilators all the splashings, blowings, and splutterings of
his captain's toilet. These noises would be followed by a sustained
deep murmur of the Lord's Prayer recited in a loud earnest voice. Five
minutes