nd get some clothes," he explained. "I simply can't go
round like this, you know. Suppose I look in at the hotel this evening,
eh?"

"Do!" said the lieutenant with dreamy cordiality. "Very thing. Tell the
waiter, will you? I think I'll have another before I go round to lunch."

It was just about this time that a keen-faced naval man, engaged in
mending the shaft of a groggy driver with some plasticine and a strip of
insulating tape, made a remark to a young sub-lieutenant with features
of almost girlish delicacy, who was assisting.

"One of your people," he said crisply, "is continually pestering me.
Middle-aged. Lieutenant Reserve. Smells abominably of cough-drops. Wants
to go home. Is he any use?"

"Not in the least," said the young sub-lieutenant with equal crispness.
"He might be if he didn't get half-stewed every day. The cough-drops are
to conceal...."

"Oh, obviously!" said the Captain of the Base. "I knew that, thank you.
But look here. Just give him a hint, will you, that there's too much to
do just now in my office to have him coming in two or three times a week
with a long yarn."

"What shall I do with him?" asked the sub-lieutenant deferentially.

The captain took a stance and swung the club.

"Don't care what you do with him," he said, taking a deep breath. "Lock
him up, send him out in a transport, make him run round and round the
White Tower, so long as he doesn't come to my office."

"Right-o, sir. He shall run round and round the White Tower for the
duration of the war. He'll do less harm there than anywhere else."

CHAPTER IX

When Mr. Spokesly had left his friend to have one more, he experienced
that comfortable feeling of having left someone behind which is one of
the most tangible and gratifying results of getting on both in the world
and in life. The incident crystallized for him, so to speak, the gaseous
and indefinable emotions which had been passing through his mind since
he had been fished out of the water. Avoiding the callous brutality of
the expressed sentiment, he derived a silent and subtle satisfaction
from the workings of a fate which had singled him out to survive a
ship's company of men as deserving as he, but who were now none the less
out of the running. Mr. McGinnis, who had obligingly died a startling
but convenient death, had merely gone before. He would be waiting, no
doubt, on the Dark Shore, his pink jaws going continually, ready to
navigate them to their l