On entering it I thought he must be feeling pleased. It was as still as
a tomb. I could see no one in the living rooms; and the verandah, too,
was empty, except for a man at the far end dozing prone in a long chair.
At the noise of my footsteps he opened one horribly fish-like eye. He
was a stranger to me. I retreated from there, and crossing the dining
room--a very bare apartment with a motionless punkah hanging over the
centre table--I knocked at a door labelled in black letters: "Chief
Steward."

The answer to my knock being a vexed and doleful plaint: "Oh, dear! Oh,
dear! What is it now?" I went in at once.

It was a strange room to find in the tropics. Twilight and stuffiness
reigned in there. The fellow had hung enormously ample, dusty, cheap
lace curtains over his windows, which were shut. Piles of cardboard
boxes, such as milliners and dressmakers use in Europe, cumbered the
corners; and by some means he had procured for himself the sort of
furniture that might have come out of a respectable parlour in the East
End of London--a horsehair sofa, arm-chairs of the same. I glimpsed
grimy antimacassars scattered over that horrid upholstery, which
was awe-inspiring, insomuch that one could not guess what mysterious
accident, need, or fancy had collected it there. Its owner had taken
off his tunic, and in white trousers and a thin, short-sleeved singlet
prowled behind the chair-backs nursing his meagre elbows.

An exclamation of dismay escaped him when he heard that I had come for a
stay; but he could not deny that there were plenty of vacant rooms.

"Very well. Can you give me the one I had before?"