s some millions of cigarettes
to the Tommies in the trenches, proposed to make a test case of it.

"I have on me," he whispered, "four English sovereigns. I am not taking
them out of Italy, because until they crossed the border in my pocket,
they were not in Italy, and as I am now leaving Italy, one might say
they have never been in Italy. It's as though they were in bond. I am a
British subject, and this is not Italian, but British, gold. I shall
refuse to surrender my four sovereigns. I will make it a test case."

The untipped port officials were still jangling their swords, so I
advised the cigarette king to turn in his gold. Even a Greek steamer is
better than an Italian jail.

"I will make of it a test case," he repeated.

"Let George do it," I suggested.

At that moment, in the presence of all the passengers, they were
searching the person of another British subject, and an Ally. He was one
of Lady Paget's units. He was in uniform, and, as they ran itching
fingers over his body, he turned crimson, and the rest of us, pretending
not to witness his humiliation, ate ravenously of goat's cheese.

The cigarette king, breathing defiance, repeated: "I will make of it a
test case."

"Better let George do it," I urged.

And when his name was called, a name that is as well known from Kavalla
to Smyrna in tobacco-fields, sweetmeat shops, palaces, and mosques, as
at the Ritz and the Gaiety, the cigarette king wisely accepted for his
four sovereigns Italian lire. At their rate of exchange, too.

Later, off Capri, he asked: "When you advised me to let George make a
test case of it, to which of our fellow passengers did you refer?"

In the morning the _Adriaticus_ picked up the landfall of Messina, but,
instead of making fast to the quay, anchored her length from it. This
appeared to be a port regulation. It enables the boatman to earn a
living by charging passengers two francs for a round trip of fifty
yards. As the wrecked city seems to be populated only by boatmen, rowing
passengers ashore is the chief industry.

The stricken seaport looks as though as recently as last week the German
army had visited it. In France, although war still continues, towns
wrecked by the Germans are already rebuilt. But Messina, after four
years of peace, is still a ruin. But little effort has been made to
restore it. The post-cards that were printed at the moment of the
earthquake show her exactly as she is to-day. With, in the street