Read it through once

I remember the point when I first heard of him. We talked little then; the men's voices were low, and there was that kind of hush that comes over the deck of a ship in a tropical night. The captain's eyes were fixed upon the horizon; now and then he would glance at the figure of the manager, a pale, saturnine man who had come out in charge of a concern dealing in ivory. The talk drifted to business, to the difficulties of navigation here, to the folly of those who went in for wild adventure.