ler on a cattle steamer. Ever been on a
cattleman?"

"Huh!" The head clerk was scowling tremendously.

"No? You ought to try one sometime. Some are all right, but some
are"--he looked sidewise at the stenographer--"well, no matter. One
night two sweet-tempered, light-complexioned coal-passers hit me
together, one with a shovel, the other with a slice-bar. It was the
slice-bar, I think, that got me. I didn't see it coming--or going
either--but probably it was the slice-bar." He bent his neck and parted
the heavy black hair. A white welt showed through the hair.

The head clerk flashed an enlightening wink toward the second head
clerk; but the second clerk, seeming to be less interested than
formerly, the wink was flashed over to the stenographer; but as she,
too, seemed preoccupied, the head clerk, rather less buoyantly,
inquired, "And what did you do to the two coal-passers?"

"For what I did to them--after I came to--I had to jump into the Mersey
and swim ashore. British justice, you know. Inflexible!--especially to a
foreigner who cracks a couple of domestic skulls."

"And then?"

"English navy."

The head clerk began to flash again. "And what, may I arsk, was
wrong--haw, haw!--wrong with the sair-vice?"

The new-comer almost smiled. "The grub, for one thing. My word, the
grub! Blow me for a bleedin' Dutchman, but I couldn't go the grub;
y'know. An' a man's a man, with a man's 'eart an' feelin's, even if
'e's nowt but a sailor, ain't he now? You're bloody well right 'e is.
But I took a fall out of a submarine before I quit. 'Ave you seen
'em--the little black chaps wot goes down an' comes up like bloomin'
little poppusses?"

The head clerk unobtrusively relapsed into his every-day speech. "And
weren't they exciting enough for you?"

"The one I was in was. But you see, sir, she sunk one d'y an' all 'ands
with 'er."

"Evidently you didn't sink with her. Or maybe you're amphibious?"

"Amphibious? Oh, I s'y now, but that's a good one. My word! But you was
jokin', wasn't you, sir? Of course you was. No, hi 'appened to be ashore
that d'y, sir. A mistike, sir, you see. But such a turn of wit as you
'ave, sir!"

The head clerk suddenly shed his smile. "Never mind about my wit. What
then? You deserted?"

"Not hexactly, sir. I was hofficially dead, sir. Ought to 'ave been at
the bottom, sir. O yes, sir. An' when I comes along an' declares myself,
they said I was a himposter--himposin' on honest people, sir--m