“Oh, come …”
“I say yes. All very well for a doctor to talk like that, when his job’s just guesswork, but it beats me to hear an engineer doing it.”
“Playing with words, doctor?” suggested the Altair’s master; “taking soundings with words, and finding no bottom?”
Hullo, thought the doctor, more in this chap than I supposed. He felt more at home.
“It can be a very dangerous game,” he said. “Find the right set of words, and you can make almost anything with them, a steam-engine, God, a war, or a pleasant little suggestion programme than he did of one of God’s own creatures. Three ladies in particular knew that he was a villain who did not believe they had seen a man fall into the sea.”
“More like a ghost story than anything else,” grumbled Captain Bennett.
“It is a ghost story,” answered the doctor.
“But,” asked Jimmy, “something must have been seen by those ladies?”
The doctor admitted it. “Yes, sir, I daresay. People do see things, then give names to them.”
After they had solemnly considered the prospect of a world of intangibilities in which names and portents permuted in a dumb and dizzy flux, names and meanings differing for all who were looking on, Bennett spoke.
“Right you are, I give it to you, doctor. I won’t argue. But thank God one thing with a name is all right—money. You can’t deny that. You just let me have that, and you can keep the rest of the words, or what you call ’em. The only voyage I hanker after more than the usual charter is the one in the books, one of those treasure island hurroos. I’d sign on for that like a cabin boy with his first bolster.
“But if treasure is not the same as money …” the surgeon began.
“None of that, now. Of course it is. No good trying to pretend I don’t know the ace of trumps when there’s a name to it. Doctor, you can count money, which is treasure, and what more do you want?”
“We’ll call it a go, captain. But I hope I’m with you when you count treasure and stow it. I’d like to see it done. But a chart for hidden bullion! That’s enough to poison any desert island! I thought that was only a yarn for pirates and boys.”
The surgeon rose. Jimmy looked round at him. A short fellow with a big bald head. A grey moustache. A sad but quizzical face. The surgeon paused with his hands on the back of his chair. He appeared to find inspiration in the seat of it. “I’ve never heard of a chart for the things I want. I don’t believe I can have it, unless I make it myself, and then the next man couldn’t read it. If he did, he’d want something else. Morning, captain, I’ll see you at the shipping office presently. Sign on at two-thirty, don’t we?”
The master of the Altair was listening, and smiling ironically, while idly balancing his spoon on the edge of his cup. Then he, too, left the table, but without a word.
Colet soon followed. A clear decision had come to him to return to the office. There was no hurry, but he was going. Perhaps Perriam wasn’t dead. And if he were, that was an inquisition he could face. Just see what would happen. Bound to be interesting. He went up to his bedroom. That surgeon was a good doctor. There was no name to him, but he was one of the fraternity. How surprised he would be if he knew that his demeanour and chance words had prompted a decision in a stranger about a quite irrelevant matter. Colet was passing an open door and glanced in. The Altair’s master was there, considering, with his hands in his pockets, a large example of Kuan-yin. Jimmy was brought up. “Hullo,” he said to himself, and then would have gone on. But the man inside saw him. “That took my eye,” Colet apologised. “It’s a beauty. May I look?”
“Come in, come in. It is a good one?”
“I like it. I’ve never seen a better one. It’s a beautiful figure. But only one or two men know this stuff.”
“Are you interested in it?”
“Yes, but I don’t know anything about it. It’s different from Staffordshire ware, that’s all.”
The stranger shyly confessed that, when in London, he himself had paid furtive visits to the British Museum, he did not quite know why, to look at Chinese bowls. “There’s something about them,” he ventured.
“There is. They’re the same as some music, I suppose. There’s no reason in it, but it means something.”
They approved each other, and showed it. They had confessed a common frailty. Colet handled the figure, while they speculated over her quality, and the nature of her attraction.
“We had better not look for reason in it,” said the stranger. “For instance, just now she’s a bit of a nuisance. I’m leaving here, but now I can’t go to my ship till this afternoon. I’ve been called by phone to town. And there it is. I can’t lug her about. I don’t like trusting rough hands with her, but I shall have to risk it.”
Jimmy was jolted by a thoughtless impulse. He might as well finish with a useless friendly act. Was it the word to say? “Where is your ship? Could I take it along? It would be safe with me. It’s all one what time I get to the city today.”
The sailor gave Jimmy a direct glance. Then he pouted at Kuan-yin. “That’s very good of you. But it’s too much to expect of a stranger.”
“Not a stranger,” said, Jimmy. “I mean, I know her. I’ve got one—I had one—rather like it. No trouble to see that good thing is safe. If it would help of course. Is your ship far from here?”
“I should be grateful, sir, I must say. The steamer Altair.
