ing, an anticipation of the next week and perhaps month.
But of the years he did not dare to think just yet.

Because, once established there, he had sought, as a homing pigeon its
cotes, to find Ada. He had written, full of weariness and a sort of
gentle contrition, and implored her to write. He had missed all the
mails since the _Tanganyika_ had gone--she must make allowances for the
hazards of the sea, and try again. He had put a shy, boyish postscript
to it, a genuine afterthought--"I want so much to see you again," and
mailed it on the Marseilles boat.

To that there had come nothing in reply save a letter from her married
sister, who evaded the subject for three pages and finally explained
that her own husband was missing and Ada was married. The paper had
distinctly said all were lost on the _Tanganyika_. Ada's husband was a
manufacturer of munitions in the Midlands, making a colossal income, she
believed. They lived in a magnificent old mansion in the West Riding.
The writer of the letter was going up to spend a week with them and
would be sure to mention him. She had already sent on his letter and Ada
had asked her to write.

There it was, then. Both ends of the cord on which he had been
precariously balanced had been cut down, and he had had no interior
buoyancy which could have kept him from hitting the earth with
conclusive violence. And near the earth for a long time he had remained,
very much in doubt whether he would ever go about again with the old
confidence. Possibly he would never have done so, had not an accident
sent him out to sea on patrol service. Here came relief in the shape of
that active enemy he had preferred to his bureaucratic and scornful
government. Here was an invisible and tireless adversary, waiting days,
weeks, and possibly months for his chance, and smashing home at last
with horrible thoroughness. This, in Mr. Spokesly's present condition,
was a tonic. He got finally into a strange, shuttle-like contraption
with twin gasolene-engines, a pop-gun, and a crew of six. They went out
in this water-roach and performed a number of deeds which were
eventually incorporated in official reports and extracted by inaccurate
special correspondents whose duty it was to explain naval occasions to
beleaguered England, an England whose neglect of seamen was almost
sublime until the food-ships were threatened.

So he had found a niche again in life, and very slowly the dead flat
look in his face g