Fauntleroy. He slipped out unbeknownst to
the fairy, and I found him at the club an hour later playing billiards
with the marker."

The cavalier relaxed not a muscle of his sphinx-like gravity. "Never
know what to do with myself on leave," he observed in sepulchral tones.
"Always glad to get back. Like the fellow in the Bastille--what?" He
raised his empty tumbler and scanned the light through it with sombre
interest. "Long ship, this, James."

The phrase is an old Navy one, and signifies much the same thing as the
Governor of North Carolina said to the Governor of South Carolina.

"Sorry," apologised the host. "There isn't any more soda, I'm afraid,
but----"

"Don't mind water," said his guest, diluting his tot from the
water-bottle. He turned to the India-rubber Man.

"What ship're you going to?" he asked.

Standish named the ship to which he had been appointed. The other took a
sip of his whisky and water and nodded with the air of one whose worst
misgivings had been confirmed.

"I remember now: I saw your appointment. James and I belong to her.
We're going to be shipmates, then." He blew a cloud of smoke
ceilingwards. "It's all right in one of those new ships: no scuttles:
tinned air and electric light between decks: wake up every morning
feeling's if you'd been gassed. An' the turrets----" He plunged
gloomily into technicalities that conveyed the impression that the
interior of a turret of the latest design was the short cut to a lunatic
asylum. "I'm the Assistant Gunnery Lieutenant in our hooker, and I tell
you it's a dirty business."

"What d'you do for exercise?" queried the India-rubber Man when the
Assistant Gunnery Lieutenant lapsed again into gloomy silence.

"Plenty of that," said Thorogood. "Deck-hockey and medicine-ball--you
mark out a tennis-court on the quarter deck, you know, and heave a 9-lb.
ball over a 5 ft. net--foursomes. Fine exercise." He spoke with the
grave enthusiasm of the athlete, to whom the attainment of bodily fitness
is very near to godliness indeed. "You can get a game of rugger when the
weather is good enough to allow landing, and there's quite a decent
little 9-hole golf course. Oh, you can keep fit enough."

"How about the sailors--are they keeping cheery?"

Thorogood laughed. "They're amazing. Of course, we've got a real white
man for a Skipper--and the Commander, too: that goes a long way. And
they're away from drink and--other things that ain't