End of the Tether

In those bygone days he had handled many thousands of pounds of his employers' money and of his own; he had attended faithfully, as by law a shipmaster is ex- pected to do, to the conflicting interests of owners, charterers, and underwriters. He had never lost a ship or consented to a shady transaction; and he had lasted well, outlasting in the end the conditions that had gone to the making of his name. He had buried his wife (in the Gulf of Petchili), had married off his daughter to the man of her unlucky choice, and had lost more than an ample competence in the crash of the notorious Tra- vancore and Deccan Banking Corporation, whose down- fall had shaken the East like an earthquake. And he was sixty-five years old.

II

His age sat lightly enough on him; and of his ruin he was not ashamed. He had not been alone to believe i