A bugle abaft called the
passengers to dinner, and I watched them as they went from their
cabins. A lady, in blue gown, with a shawl round her head, was talking
to a man in evening dress. "Isn't it interesting," she remarked, "to
hear them making the soundings?" The white shirt was politely
non-committal. "Aft there, two of you," said a hard voice, "and trice
the ladder up. Smartly now." The lady in the blue dress stopped to
watch us.
I did not see the umbrella-man again until the next day, when I passed
him on the hurricane deck. He was looking at the coast through a pair
of binoculars. We were running to the north, in perfect Pacific
weather, under a soft blue sky that was patrolled by little soft white
clouds. The land lay broad to starboard, a land of yellow hills with
surf-beaten outliers of black reef. Here and there we passed villages
in the watered valleys, each with its whitewashed church and copper
smeltry. The umbrella-man was looking beyond these, at the hills.
He was a little man, this man who had prodded me, with a long, pale
face and pale eyes, a long reddish beard, and hair rather darker, both
hair and beard being sparse.
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