but he says the row that burst out in there was so awful that he couldn’t collect his senses sufficiently to remember the spelling of his own name.  Archie’s the most sensitive shipping-master in the two hemispheres.  He declares he felt as though he had thrown a man to a hungry lion.  No doubt the noise was great.  I heard it down below, and I have every reason to believe it was heard clear across the Esplanade as far as the band-stand.  Old father Elliot had a great stock of words and could shout—­and didn’t mind who he shouted at either.  He would have shouted at the Viceroy himself.  As he used to tell me:  “I am as high as I can get; my pension is safe.  I’ve a few pounds laid by, and if they don’t like my notions of duty I would just as soon go home as not.  I am an old man, and I have always spoken my mind.  All I care for now is to see my girls married before I die.”  He was a little crazy on that point.  His three daughters were awfully nice, though they resembled him amazingly, and on the mornings he woke up with a gloomy view of their matrimonial prospects the office would read it in his eye and tremble, because, they said, he was sure to have somebody for breakfast.  However, that morning he did not eat the renegade, but, if I may be allowed to carry on the metaphor, chewed him up very small, so to speak, and—­ah! ejected him again.

’Thus in a very few moments I saw his monstrous bulk descend in haste and stand still on the outer steps.  He had stopped close to me for the purpose of profound meditation:  his large purple cheeks quivered.  He was biting his thumb, and after a while noticed me with a sidelong vexed look.  The other three chaps that had landed with him made a little group waiting at some distance.  There was a sallow-faced, mean little chap with his arm in a sling, and a long individual in a blue flannel coat, as dry as a chip and no stouter than a broomstick, with drooping grey moustaches, who looked about him with an air of jaunty imbecility.  The third was an upstanding, broad-shouldered youth, with his hands in his pockets, turning his back on the other two who appeared to be talking together earnestly.  He stared across the empty Esplanade.  A ramshackle gharry, all dust and venetian blinds, pulled up short opposite the group, and the driver, throwing up his right foot over his knee, gave himself up to the critical examination of his toes.  The young chap, making no movement, not even stirring his head, just stared into the sunshine.  This was my first view of Jim.  He looked as unconcerned and unapproachable as only the young can look.  There he stood, clean-limbed, clean-faced, firm on his feet, as promising a boy as the sun ever shone on; and, looking at him, knowing all he knew and a little more too, I was as angry as though I had detected him trying to get something out of me by false pretences.  He had no business to look so sound.  I thought to myself—­well, if this sort can go wrong like that . . . and I felt