ut ship-chandler and
everybody else, but he must leave with his friends for Port Said at once
and catch the homeward-bound mail-boat. His presence is urgently
demanded on business in London. The company gape. But our friend, the
Italian journalist, doesn't go in for gaping. His business is, after
all, news, and he burrows round, interviewing and telegraphing brothers
of the craft until he lays bare the rather pathetic story. He doesn't
tell it among his friends in the Land of Egypt. At any rate, he says he
doesn't. He saves it for his home paper and lavished a lot of literary
skill upon it. I imagine he got a good deal of fun out of my brother
while he stayed in Cairo.

"And so, you see, my successful brother had experienced a serious
set-back. I had a grim feeling that the women, 'our women,' as he had
called them, would feel it far more in their seclusion in Surbiton than
he would in his seclusion in--wherever he was. My feelings, in fact,
were so grim that Rosa was perplexed, but I told her how my mother was
now dead and I had no one in the world save herself. But at times I
thought of our affairs gloomily. It seemed a poor end to our parents'
fine dreams for the future--him so seriously set back, you may say, and
me ploughing the ocean....

"And then it so happened that I got a chance of promotion on the spot.
I'd been Second of the old _Corydon_ a good while, when the _Callisto_,
a cattle-boat, came in from the Argentine. The chief had taken sick and
been buried at sea. The owners telegraphed I was to take the post, and
they would send out another Second. It was very exciting, of course,
getting in charge at last. It is extraordinary, the weight of
responsibility that settles down on you all at once. Matters that you
used to settle out of hand assume a new aspect when you yourself become
the ultimate authority. It doesn't matter how hard a man has to work as
Second, or what his troubles may be, he's always got the Chief behind
him. He can sleep easy and deep, as he generally does, poor chap. But
the Chief is different. He becomes a fatalist. He can't sleep. He has to
make his decisions and keep his forebodings locked in his own breast. He
becomes preoccupied with an absurd weight of care. He realizes that he
cannot step round the corner and get the overlooker's advice. He is
alone on the wide sea, and if he cannot solve his own problems, none can
help him. And that is good spiritual discipline for a young man. He