From the bridge of the Tryapsic, the high place he had gained in
the competition of men, he stared at Dublin harbour opening out, at
the town obscured by the dark sky of the dreary wind-driven day,
and at the tangled tracery of spars and rigging of the harbour
shipping. Back from twice around the world he was, and from
interminable junketings up and down on far stretches, home-coming
to the wife he had not seen in eight-and-twenty months, and to the
child he had never seen and that was already walking and talking.
He saw the watch below of stokers and trimmers bobbing out of the
forecastle doors like rabbits from a warren and making their way
aft over the rusty deck to the mustering of the port doctor. They
were Chinese, with expressionless, Sphinx-like faces, and they
walked in peculiar shambling fashion, dragging their feet as if the
clumsy brogans were too heavy for their lean shanks.
He saw them and he did not see them, as he passed his hand beneath
his visored cap and scratched reflectively his mop of sandy hair.
For the scene before him was but the background in his brain for
the vision of peace that was his--a vision that was his often
during long nights on the bridge when the old Tryapsic wallowed on
the vexed ocean floor, her decks awash, her rigging thrumming in
the gale gusts or snow squalls or driving tropic rain.
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