"We'll drop Slade. He's Miss O'Neill's man. If Miss O'Neill chooses to amuse herself by gunning for me, that's her concern. But I don't shoot back." Captain Image shook his head sadly. "Well, me lad, if you won't lift a hand to help yourself, I don't see there's anything more to be said." He put his pipe in his pocket, stood up and prepared to go. "Oh, by the way, did anyone tell you about old Swizzle-Stick Smith?" "Not dead, is he?" "Lord bless you, no, me lad. Very much the reverse. Look here, what was your idea of that man?" "In what way?" "What was he before he became the disreputable old palm oil ruffian you first knew at Malla-Nulla?" "Oh, I suppose he was less disreputable once. He'd let himself drift, that's all. One does get into frightfully slack ways in those lonely factories." "Did he strike you as the usual type of man a factory agent's made of?" "Why, no." "Gentleman, wasn't he, or had been once? Always used to hitch up the knees of his pyjamas when he sat down; spoke well; knew Latin; could swear round any man on the Coast when he was that side out; and had a pleasant way of making you feel you were dirt when the mood took him that way?" Carter laughed. "He had some characteristic little ways." "Ever strike you he'd been a soldier once?" "I suppose it did." "Well, me lad, when I was tied up by that Edmondson factory, a boat swung up to my ladder and a military party stepped out. Quite the swell, I can tell you: nobby white helmet, hair cut with scissors, smart gray mustache, gray imperial bristling underneath it, clean-shaved chin, white drill coat with concertina pockets, white drill pants with a crease down the shin, latest thing in pipe-clayed shoes. If it hadn't been for the old trick with the eye-glass and the black ribbon, I take my dick I shouldn't have known him. "'Hullo Swizzle-Stick Smith,' said I, 'you are a howler. Whose kit have you been robbing?' "'Captain Image,' says he, 'allow me--ar--to present to you Mr. Smith, a new acquaintance. It is not--ar--my wish to be mistaken for any of your discreditable--ar--pot companions of the past.' That to me, and on my own deck, me lad. What do you think of that?" "I bet you boiled." Captain Image scratched his head vexedly. "The rum part of it is, I didn't. Somehow I took the man at his own valuation. There didn't seem anything else left to do. He went into my chart house, and sat there as solid as if he'd been the governor of a colony with six letters after his name. Just drank one cocktail and took three swallows at it, I'll trouble you, and actually left a second to stand by itself on the tray. When I handed him the tobacco tin to see if he'd got that frowsy old pipe in his pocket, I'm hanged if he didn't pull out a book of cigarette papers and roll himself a smoke with those. Well, me lad, when I remembered Swizzle-Stick Smith's opinion of cigarettes, you might have knocked me down with a teaspoon."