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.