Chapter 1 - Page 2

a man of the best intentions and
was polite and courteous even to courtliness. There was a soft and
finish about his manners which made whatever place he happened to be in
seem for the moment a drawing room. He avoided the smoking room. He had
no vices. He did not smoke or chew tobacco or take snuff; he did not
swear, or use slang or rude, or coarse, or indelicate language, or make
puns, or tell anecdotes, or laugh intemperately, or raise his voice above
the moderate pitch enjoined by the canons of good form. When he gave an
order, his manner modified it into a request. After dinner he and his
officers joined the ladies and gentlemen in the ladies' saloon, and
shared in the singing and piano playing, and helped turn the music. He
had a sweet and sympathetic tenor voice, and used it with taste and
effect the music he played whist there, always with the same partner and
opponents, until the ladies' bedtime. The electric lights burned there
as late as the ladies and their friends might desire; but they were not
allowed to burn in the smoking-room after eleven. There were many laws
on the ship's statute book of course; but so far as I could see, this and
one other were the only ones that were rigidly enforced. The captain
explained that he enforced this one because his own cabin adjoined the
smoking-room, and the smell of tobacco smoke made him sick. I did not
see how our smoke could reach him, for the smoking-room and his cabin
were on the upper deck, targets for all the winds that blew; and besides
there was no crack of communication between them, no opening of any sort
in the solid intervening bulkhead. Still, to a delicate stomach even
imaginary smoke can convey damage.

The captain, with his gentle nature, his polish, his sweetness, his moral
and verbal purity, seemed pathetically out of place in his rude and
autocratic vocation. It seemed another instance of the irony of fate.

He was going home under a cloud. The passengers knew about his trouble,
and were sorry for him. Approaching Vancouver through a narrow and
difficult passage densely befogged with smoke from the forest fires, he
had had the ill-luck to lose his bearings and get his ship on the rocks.
A matter like this would rank merely as an error with you and me; it
ranks as a crime with the directors of steamship companies. The captain
had been tried by the Admiralty Court at Vancouver, and its verdict had
acquitted him of blame. But that was insufficient comfort. A sterner
court would examine the case in Sydney--the Court of Directors, the lords
of a company in whose ships the captain had served as mate a number of
years. This was his first voyage as captain.

The officers of our ship were hearty and companionable young men, and
they