pressed, I would have burst into tears simply. I was young enough for
that.

Next day the Captain and I transacted our business in the Harbour
Office. It was a lofty, big, cool, white room, where the screened light
of day glowed serenely. Everybody in it--the officials, the public--were
in white. Only the heavy polished desks gleamed darkly in a central
avenue, and some papers lying on them were blue. Enormous punkahs sent
from on high a gentle draught through that immaculate interior and upon
our perspiring heads.

The official behind the desk we approached grinned amiably and kept it
up till, in answer to his perfunctory question, "Sign off and on again?"
my Captain answered, "No! Signing off for good." And then his grin
vanished in sudden solemnity. He did not look at me again till he
handed me my papers with a sorrowful expression, as if they had been my
passports for Hades.

While I was putting them away he murmured some question to the Captain,
and I heard the latter answer good-humouredly:

"No. He leaves us to go home."

"Oh!" the other exclaimed, nodding mournfully over my sad condition.

I didn't know him outside the official building, but he leaned forward
the desk to shake hands with me, compassionately, as one would with some
poor devil going out to be hanged; and I am afraid I performed my part
ungraciously, in the hardened manner of an impenitent criminal.