He listened to the sounds of scrubbing outside, vigorous thumps and kicks as the mops went to and fro. There were voices, too, the ingenuous bawlings of that bosun, offensively active. An unwarrantable intrusion! Quite unnecessary, all this waste of soap and soda. Captain Rannie began to revive: the white tabloid he had swallowed as the door closed behind Mr. Spokesly was getting its work in. He felt better. He would go ashore and explain to Mr. Dainopoulos that this sort of thing could not go on. He examined himself in the glass with stern attention. His gray hair, parted just off the middle, was touched with a brush. Good. He was ready. He lit a cigarette. He unlocked the door and went out. Up on deck Captain Rannie was immediately aware of a novel state of affairs. It was so long since he had experienced the sensation he could scarcely identify it. There was someone in charge. The old accommodation-ladder, untouched since the time of Spiteri's advent, was down and the teak steps hastily scrubbed. Made fast to the grating was his boat, washed and with a red and yellow flag on the stern-seat. Mr. Spokesly in a pair of the bosun's rubber boots and with his coat off, came up, blowing a whistle. A young Norwegian came clattering up the ladder from the fore-deck. "Go and wash your face," said Mr. Spokesly. "And take the cap'en ashore." Captain Rannie, as he sat with the tiller in his hand and watched the young Norwegian pulling with all his might, felt extraordinarily proud. That was the way to handle these people. He had been right after all. Be firm. New blood, a tight hand. Some respect now for the master of the vessel. And no intimacy. "Take the captain ashore." Brief, curt, attentive. That, he held, was the thing. To dwell apart, within a shining envelope of secular discipline, unquestioned, unhampered, and unloved--that in Captain Rannie's mind was the priceless privilege of command. CHAPTER XI Mrs. Dainopoulos, who was born Alice Thompson, lay on her Tottenham Court Road sofa with a Scotch plaid rug over her, looking out across the sunlit Gulf whenever she raised her eyes from her book. It is not extraordinary that she should have been fond of reading. Suffering actual pain only occasionally, she would have found time hang most heavily but for this divine opiate, whereby the gentle and gracious figures of sentimental fiction were gathered about her and lived out their brief lives in that deserted theatre of the ancient gods, between the silent ravines of the Chalcidice and the distant summits of Thessaly.