Hallowell was the dreamer, the thinker. He was short, thick, rugged, and a trifle gray. His head and short beard were shot with silver, though his mustache was still black. There was something about him that reminded you of the gorilla. You were likely to carry this idea in your head until you knew him; then you understood that he was in the same category as the St. Bernard—the gentlest and friendliest dog in the world until thoroughly aroused. They called him a woman-hater with some justice, though no one in official Manila ever learned the true facts, not even Mathison, who surmised that Hallowell had run afoul some worthless woman and had got past the reefs by a hair.
Mathison was the man of action. He was tall, slender, and handsome, with a smooth olive skin. This deep color gave conspicuity to his gray eyes, the whites of which were dazzling. Every line and turn of his face gave you the impression that by nature he was amiable in the extreme. Given cause, he could be as savage and relentless as the gorilla his friend resembled.
Woman-shy, they called him, because they could find no other suitable name for the puzzle. He was always courteous when, by those accidents of chance called official receptions, he found himself among women. But there was always a cold reserve the brightest eyes could not batter down. Rest assured, there were many feminine campaigns. He was the combination of two things women prize highly, greedily or sentimentally—money and good looks.
What had the aspect of shyness was merely an idea, held to with surpassing resolution. I shall tell you about this idea later on. There are, here and there across this world, men like Mathison, who are neither mollycoddles nor sanctimonious nincompoops. They are not gregarious—the type from which explorers come, men who know how to live alone, to whom the most necessary and alluring thing in life is to overcome obstacles.
This resolution had toughened Mathison, morally and physically. Packed away in that lithe body of his was tremendous vitality. He was perfectly willing to be called woman-shy. Such a reputation was a considerable barricade. He was content to rest behind it. There had been battles, bitter conflicts. There are certain fires which hypnotize; one must reach out and touch them. I might say that this idea of his was always in a state of siege.
After this exposition, it sounds odd to remark that Mathison was as full of romance as a Chinese water-chestnut is of starch; that his day-dreams were peopled with lovely women. He never saw a beautiful woman that he did not immediately clothe her in his colorful imagination. He rescued her from Chinese pirates, he was shipwrecked and cast away on a desert island with her, he tore her from the hands of brigands or the latticed window of some rajah's haremlik; and he always married her in the end. Everything in him inclined toward the companionship of women, and he had built a Chinese wall around this inclination.
Among men, however, he was companionable, witty, humorous, and full of sound common sense. But no one ever called him Jack, not even Hallowell, the best friend he had. He was always John or Mathison to his equals and superiors, and "sir" to his subordinates. Hallowell, however, had compromised on "Mat." And yet Mathison bubbled with personal magnetism.
You never get deeply into a naval officer's character by rubbing elbows with him in wardrooms or officers' clubs. If you want to know the real man, go down into the boiler-rooms, the gun-rooms, anywhere but the quarter-deck. The rough-necks will tell you. They sometimes weigh you with a glance. Two things they require of you—absolute justice and firmness. That was Mathison to his men; and he always backed these attributes with a smiling eye. There was something in the snap of his voice that inclined men to obey him at once, without question; not that they were afraid of him, but that they knew he was right. In the navy—in all navies—there are underground wireless stations. A man's reputation travels from ship to ship, and when an officer is transferred the men try him out just to see if his crown is of tinsel or of gold.
A fighting-sailor with red blood, with a born gambler's interest in chance, winning or losing with a smile, as you shall see; thirty years of age, and no anchor to windward.
He never forgot anything. They said of him that he could hide his collar-button during a dream and go directly to it in the morning. Hallowell, however, was very absent-minded. Often he would go about the living-room in search of his pipe, in the end to find it dangling in his teeth. Or he would wash his face with his spectacles on and wonder what in thunderation ailed his sound eye.