ed my mind
on it at all, that the whole thing was a culminating irony, as,
indeed, was the savoury in its way. After the wreck of my pleasant
plans and the fiasco of my martyrdom, to be asked as consolation to
spend October freezing in the Baltic with an eccentric nonentity who
bored me! Yet, as I smoked my cigar in the ghastly splendour of the
empty smoking-room, the subject came up again. Was there anything in
it? There were certainly no alternatives at hand. And to bury myself
in the Baltic at this unearthly time of year had at least a smack of
tragic thoroughness about it.

I pulled out the letter again, and ran down its impulsive staccato
sentences, affecting to ignore what a gust of fresh air, high
spirits, and good fellowship this flimsy bit of paper wafted into the
jaded club-room. On reperusal, it was full of evil presage-- 'A 1
scenery'--but what of equinoctial storms and October fogs? Every sane
yachtsman was paying off his crew now. 'There ought to be
duck'--vague, very vague. 'If it gets cold enough' . . . cold and
yachting seemed to be a gratuitously monstrous union. His pals had
left him; why? 'Not the "yachting" brand'; and why not? As to the
size, comfort, and crew of the yacht--all cheerfully ignored; so many
maddening blanks. And, by the way, why in Heaven's name 'a prismatic
compass'? I fingered a few magazines, played a game of fifty with a
friendly old fogey, too importunate to be worth the labour of
resisting, and went back to my chambers to bed, ignorant that a
friendly Providence had come to my rescue; and, indeed, rather
resenting any clumsy attempt at such friendliness.

II. The 'Dulcibella'

THAT two days later I should be found pacing the deck of the Flushing
steamer with a ticket for Hamburg in my pocket may seem a strange
result, yet not so strange if you have divined my state of mind. You
will guess, at any rate, that I was armed with the conviction that I
was doing an act of obscure penance, rumours of which might call
attention to my lot and perhaps awaken remorse in the right quarter,
while it left me free to enjoy myself unobtrusively in the remote
event of enjoyment being possible.

The fact was that, at breakfast on the morning after the arrival of
the letter, I had still found that inexplicable lightening which I
mentioned before, and strong enough to warrant a revival of the pros
and cons. An important pro which I had not thought of before was that
after all it was a