To the left of it the yellow coastline and the green
olive-trees and palms stretched up against the sky, and beneath him
scores of shrieking blacks fought in their boats for a place beside
the steamer's companion-way. He jumped into one of these open wherries
and fell sprawling among his baggage, and laughed lightly as a boy as
the boatman set him on his feet again, and then threw them from under
him with a quick stroke of the oars. The high, narrow pier was crowded
with excited customs officers in ragged uniforms and dirty turbans,
and with a few foreign residents looking for arriving passengers.
Holcombe had his feet on the upper steps of the ladder, and was
ascending slowly. There was a fat, heavily built man in blue serge
leaning across the railing of the pier. He was looking down, and as
his eyes met Holcombe's face his own straightened into lines of
amazement and most evident terror. Holcombe stopped at the sight, and
stared back wondering. And then the lapping waters beneath him and the
white town at his side faded away, and he was back in the hot, crowded
court-room with this man's face before him. Meakim, the fourth of the
Police Commissioners, confronted him, and saw in his presence nothing
but a menace to himself.
Holcombe came up the last steps of the stairs, and stopped at their
top. His instinct and life's tradition made him despise the man, and
to this was added the selfish disgust that his holiday should have
been so soon robbed of its character by this reminder of all that he
had been told to put behind him.
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