Gerrit Ammidon made no answer; there was nothing to be said. He was shaken by a burning anger at the cupidity, the ugly commercial grasping, to which his father had been sacrificed. A gulf opened between him and his brother and James Saltonstone; he was as different from them as the sea was from the land, as the wind-swept deck of the _Nautilus_ was from this dry building with its stifling papers and greed. He might be in the service of the firm--Gerrit was not incorporated in the partnership--he might carry their cargoes for the multiplication of the profit, but his essential service and responsibility, his life, were addressed to another and infinitely higher and more difficult consummation than the stowed kegs of Spanish dollars, the bills of sale. This was composed of the struggle with the immeasurable elements of the seas and winds, the safety of lives, the endless trying of his endurance and will and luck. "Now," he spoke with a perceptible bitterness, "you can have your way without interference, without his mixing up your papers or making the blunders of a slow sort of honesty." "I am under no obligation to your judgment or opinion," William replied stiffly. "There are always complications you will never penetrate nor carry. At present your assistance is more necessary than any display of temper." The funeral gathered and ebbed in a long procession of carriages through a sultry noon, the services at the grave concluded by the symbolic dropping of the earth on Jeremy Ammidon's coffin lowered into the deep narrow clay pit. The large varied throng lingered for a breath, as if unable to take their attention from the raw opening that had absorbed the shipmaster, and then there was a determined and reassuring commonplace murmur, a hurrying away into the vital warmth of the day. The evening was the loveliest summer and the garden of Java Head could afford: a slow moon disentangled itself from the indigo foliage at the back of the stable and soared with an increasing brilliancy, bathing the sod and summerhouse and poplars, the metallic box borders and spiked flower beds, in a crystal clearness. The Ammidons sat about the willow, Rhoda with a hand affectionately on her husband's arm, the children--Laurel and Janet staying without remark long past their accustomed hours for bed--still and white under the blanching moon. Gerrit intently studied his wife, Taou Yuen, in a concentrated manner. She, too, was in white, the Chinese mark of sorrow.