"’For God’s sake, sing something!’ I cried, dashing out of my room—he was a brilliant musician. ’But if you go on whining like the wind through a knothole, I can’t be answerable for the consequences’ "’All right, Nicky, I’ll stop’ he had answered with a grin ’I’m a selfish ass, I know. But I’m not whining.... No, I don’t feel like singing to-night’ I realized now that, even then, he must have been in the toils of the tragedy. "So this was the end of a comradeship all too brief, as life goes. Friends are scarce enough, heaven knows, without a fellow’s losing one in such vague circumstances. But the years went by, and I didn’t hear a word from Bert. At first, I missed and worried about him acutely; then, little by little, he faded off into the background, as even the sharpest details of the great picture of life do if we keep moving. Perspectives change, too. I continued, of course, to think of him now and then, wondering what he might have lost or found. But I never felt occasion to doubt the nature of his quest; he had come into that heritage foreordained at the launching of his sensitive and romantic soul. Something had called him down the wind, some note, some fragrance, some face of beauty, some revelation of delight; and he’d gone out to find the answer and consummation—love or death—that hearts like his pursue" *III* Nichols reached for a cigar. "Ten years and more had gone by" he went on slowly "when, one voyage, I reached the Straits of Sunda, bound for Hong Kong and Amoy. The southwest monsoon was on the point of breaking; for several days we’d been treated to baffling winds. It was in the latter part of the afternoon that, favoured by an unexpected slant of offshore wind, I managed to fetch the anchorage here, slipped into Anjer Roads with quite a rush, and dropped my anchor in a berth abreast of the landing. I hadn’t been through Sunda for a couple of years. "The first boat that came off from shore—Reardon’s old whaleboat—brought me disappointing news. Reardon himself, it seemed, had been transferred to Batavia the year before, and the consulate had been discontinued; my letters, if any had been sent to Anjer, were being held in Batavia or Singapore. Old Sa-lee, Reardon’s boatswain, was still in charge of the boat, but seemed to be merely following a lifelong habit in coming off to every ship that called. He wanted to see his old friends, to gossip, and to bemoan the decline of human institutions. While we talked, leaning across the rail, he told me in the course of conversation that, some time after Reardon had left Anjer, the consulate bungalow had been occupied by a stranger. The fact wasn’t of sufficient interest to me just then to elicit an inquiry. I had just reached the realization, with a shock of deep regret, that Anjer the beautiful had taken its place with the rest of the world’s lost glories, that another page in the romantic annals of seafaring had closed.