We were all very tired that night, but we were gay over our supper, and it was most unusually late before I slept. Late as that was, however, I could see by its reflected light on the deck beams that my father's candle was burning still. And when I chanced to wake, long afterwards, I could hear, until I fell asleep again, the slight sound he made in walking softly up and down the poop deck--a lonely man who had not found rest as yet; who, despite bright flashes of gaiety, was far from happy, a fact better understood and more deeply regretted by his small son than he knew. V My first serious preoccupation regarding ways and means--the money question--began, I think, in the neighbourhood of my eleventh birthday, and has remained a more or less constant companion and bedfellow ever since. Now, as I write, I am perhaps freer than ever before from this sordid preoccupation; not by reason of fortunate investments and a plethoric bank balance, but because my needs now are singularly few and inexpensive, and the future--that Damoclean sword of civilised life--no longer stretches out before me, a long and arid expanse demanding provision. This preoccupation began for me in the week of my eleventh birthday, when my father asked me one evening if I thought we could manage now without Ted's services. 'It's not that I pay him much,' said my father, stroking his chin between thumb and forefinger, as his manner was when pondering such a point; 'but the fact is we can by no manner of juggling pretend to be able to afford even that little. Then, again, you see, the poor chap must eat. The fish he brings us are a real help, and no wage-earner I ever met could take pot-luck more cheerfully than Ted. What's more, I like him, you like him, and he is, I know, a most useful fellow to have about. But, take it any way one can, he must represent fifty pounds a year in our rate of expenditure, and-- Well, you see, Nick, we simply haven't got it to spend.' It was on the tip of my tongue, I remember, to ask my father why he did not send to the bank and ask for more money; and by that may be gauged the crudely unsophisticated stage of my development. But I must remember, too, that I bit back the question, and, ignorant of all detail though I was, felt intuitively sure, first, that the whole subject was a sore and difficult one for my father, and, secondly, that I must never ask for or expect anything calling for monetary expenditure. My vague feeling was that the World had somehow wronged my father by not providing him with more money. I felt instinctively that It never would give him any more; and that It had given him whatever he had, only as the result of personal sacrifices which should never have been demanded of him. I resented keenly what seemed to me the World's callous and unreasonable discourtesy to such a man as my father, whom, I thought, It should have delighted to honour.