r was wearing all he wore when he left the pub.

He drew nearer. It was no ghost. It was himself, even to the rose in his
coat. He hailed Phyllis. She was talking to another skipper. The other
skipper turned to see who was butting in, and seeing who it was, said:
"To Egypt and back in seven hours--the quickest voyage ever I 'eard of!"
Which comment so depressed the voyager that he refused to say anything
about what had happened, except that five miles outside of the harbor he
had been torpedoed, and they had to take to the boats in a hurry.

The foregoing is by way of introducing the captain who commented on the
quick voyage. A few mornings later I was up at the Admiralty House when
he came into the waiting-room, let himself carefully down into a
mahogany chair, dropped his new soft gray hat into his lap, and looked
around.

"A solemn place, ain't it? Would they 'ang a chap, d'y' think, if he was
to 'ave a bit of a smoke for 'imself while waitin'?"

I said that I thought the fashion nowadays was to take a man out and
stand him up against the wall and shoot him.

He was tall, heavily built, fresh-colored, with a way of seeming to
reflect deeply before he replied to anything. By and by he said: "Oh,
aye!" and lit his cigarette, but had not taken the second puff when the
doorkeeper's feet sounded outside, at which sound he pinched the
cigarette hurriedly by the neck, and looked around for somewhere to dump
it. There was no ash-tray, and the table being bare mahogany, the floor
all polished wood, the fireplace with no fire in it, so brassy and shiny
that to put anything there would be treason--he dropped the cigarette
into his hat.

The doorkeeper smelled something, but he wasn't one who looked on lowly
things when he walked, and so did not see the little spiral of smoke
curling up from the hat.

My seafarer was in a great stew. To sit there and watch him was to warm
up to him. There he was, a man who regularly faced death by more ways
than one at sea, but now in deep fear that this shore-going flunky would
catch him smoking a surreptitious cigarette. He stared determinedly at
every place except at his hat until the doorkeeper had passed on.

When he looked at his hat the cigarette had burned a hole in it. He
viewed the hat sadly. "No gainsayin' it, war is 'ell, ain't it? I paid
fourteen bob for that 'at three days back in Cardiff."

I went out to help him buy a new hat. Hat stores were scarce, but life
does not e