No homeward-bound mail-boat was due for three or four days. Being now a
man without a ship, and having for a time broken my connection with the
sea--become, in fact, a mere potential passenger--it would have been
more appropriate perhaps if I had gone to stay at an hotel. There it
was, too, within a stone's throw of the Harbour Office, low, but somehow
palatial, displaying its white, pillared pavilions surrounded by trim
grass plots. I would have felt a passenger indeed in there! I gave it a
hostile glance and directed my steps toward the Officers' Sailors' Home.

I walked in the sunshine, disregarding it, and in the shade of the big
trees on the esplanade without enjoying it. The heat of the tropical
East descended through the leafy boughs, enveloping my thinly-clad body,
clinging to my rebellious discontent, as if to rob it of its freedom.

The Officers' Home was a large bungalow with a wide verandah and a
curiously suburban-looking little garden of bushes and a few trees
between it and the street. That institution partook somewhat of the
character of a residential club, but with a slightly Governmental
flavour about it, because it was administered by the Harbour Office. Its
manager was officially styled Chief Steward. He was an unhappy, wizened
little man, who if put into a jockey's rig would have looked the part to
perfection. But it was obvious that at some time or other in his life,
in some capacity or other, he had been connected with the sea. Possibly
in the comprehensive capacity of a failure.

I should have thought his employment a very easy one, but he used to
affirm for some reason or other that his job would be the death of him
some day. It was rather mysterious. Perhaps everything naturally was too
much trouble for him. He certainly seemed to hate having people in the
house.