Stackhouse loved his little facts like these, all matters of preparation of fish and flesh and fowl; the intricate processes of fattening, curing, softening, corking and all the science of the stores.... “There was a certain goose which I found in Hakodate--not from the Japanese, but from a Chino there----”.... “And once upon a time in Mindanao, they baked a fish for me with heated stones in the ground. Wrapped in leaves, it was, and covered first in clay. You should see the scales and skin come off with the clay--and the inner barts a little ball, when it was finished. And the dining of that evening. Ah, the sharb eyes of the little nigger girls--you would believe?”.... Such were the stories in the long feeding--but the stories on deck were the stories of the death of men. In the usual mess the chat was perfunctory on Bellair’s part, since he granted that the preacher and the Faraway woman (he called her so in his thoughts from her distant-searching on deck) were so well adjusted to each other. He granted this, and much beside concerning the two, from pure fancy. Never once had they disregarded him, or engaged in conversation that would leave him dangling, though many times his own thoughts were apart. The _Jade_ had been three weeks out of Savannah, in the southern Caribbean, a superb mid-afternoon, when Bellair, turning at the rail, found Fleury at his side. He had just been wondering if he had better go below and read awhile by the open port, or start the monologue of Stackhouse for the rest of the day. The latter was enjoyable enough, but Bellair disliked to drink anything so early.... “One must be bolite.” It happened right for the first conversation with Fleury. He had never known a preacher whose talk touched the core of things. Preachers had always shown a softness of training on the actualities, and left Bellair sceptical of the rest. A minister had once told him: “What force for good we get to be in mid-life, is in spite of our ecclesiastical training, not because of it.” Bellair had often thought of that. Yet, he had given much secret thought to religious things, not counting himself a specialist, however, seldom opening the subject. Certainly at Lot & Company’s, no one had marked this proclivity. He had the idea that a man must come up through men, and through the real problems of men, if he would become a moving force for good in the world; that no training apart among texts and tracts and tenets would get him power. Very clearly he saw that a man must go apart to fix his ideals, but that he should seek his wilderness after learning the world, not after prolonged second-hand contacts with books. “The big job ahead is for some one who can show the human family that it’s all of a piece, and that we’re all out after the same thing,” he remarked. “A Unifier,” Fleury suggested. “Yes. Just so long as we have to hate one cult or sect, because we love another, we’re lost to the whole beauty of the scheme----”