"I hardly know," I said.
He took his shot. He made a little break. At the end of it, chalking his cue, he said:
"I do. I believe if things are coming to you, you can't escape them."
That was all. He said nothing more. When we had finished the game he went up to bed, and I never saw him again. I shall never know what strange emotion impelled him to put that sudden question to a stranger.
XLI
THE SKIPPER
I knew he was drunk.
He was a skipper of the new school, a neat little man, clean-shaven, who might easily have passed for the commander of a submarine. In his cabin there hung a beautiful new coat with gold braid on it, the uniform which for its good service in the war has been granted to the mercantile marine, but he was shy of using it; it seemed absurd when he was no more than captain of a small boat on the Yangtze; and he stood on his bridge in a neat brown suit and a homburg hat; you could almost see yourself in his admirably polished shoes. His eyes were clear and bright and his skin was fresh. Though he had been at sea for twenty years and could not have been much less than forty he did not look more than twenty-eight. You might be sure that he was a clean-living fellow, as healthy in mind as he was in body, and the depravity of the East of which they talk had left him untouched. He had a pleasant taste in light literature and the works of E.V. Lucas adorned his book-case. In his cabin you saw a photograph of a football team in which he figured and two of a young woman with neatly waved hair whom it was possible enough he was engaged to.
I knew he was drunk, but I did not think he was very drunk, till he asked me suddenly:
"What is democracy?"