s across the sea. But Mr.
Spokesly, sitting there with his telescope, which revealed nothing, was
not criticizing the business men. He was admiring them, and wishing the
military and political and naval men could be half as clever at their
game as the business man was at his. It was a confusing and
kaleidoscopic problem, this of money. As soon as you got a lot of it, he
reflected, the value of it went down until you had only a little and
then the value of it went a little lower. And then, when you were
occupied in some way which prevented your making very much, the value
crept slowly up again. That is, unless you were a business man, when of
course you turned your money over and scored both ways.

Keeping company with these general fancies in Mr. Spokesly's mind was a
speculation concerning his own part in Evanthia's adventure. He looked
at his watch. Ten o'clock. By looking hard through the telescope he
could make out a faint radiance from the upper window of the Dainopoulos
house. No doubt it was closed and they were sitting there as usual with
one of the Malleotis family to keep them company. Then what was he
supposed to do? In the novels he had read, the hero with projecting jaw
and remarkable accuracy with firearms was never in any doubt about what
he was to do.

It was at this moment that he thought of the bosun.

He liked that person more than he would have admitted. Invariably
toiling at something in his immense canvas apron, the bosun's globular
eyes were charged with an expression of patient amazement at a
troublesome world. If Diogenes, who lived in these parts, had revisited
his ancient haunts and encountered Joseph Plouff, he would have made the
acquaintance of a peculiar type of honest man. The bosun was honest, but
he had been born without the divine gift of a bushel to conceal the
blaze of his probity. But in spite of his virtue Mr. Spokesly found him
congenial. In the midst of the little community of seamen, he was the
only one who spoke even passable English. He was the man-of-all-work,
bosun, carpenter, lamp-trimmer, winchman, storekeeper, and sometimes
acting second mate. For the engineer, with his Egyptian donkeyman and
two Maltee firemen, Plouff and his Scandinavian sailors had a fierce
contempt. For "the captinne," Plouff entertained an amusing reverence,
as though Captain Rannie's mastery of monologue appealed to the voluble
creature. In his own heart, however, there was neither bitterness nor