bit of my own back by defrauding the government or classing
myself with the unorganised leeches on Society, nothing I know is going
to stop my doing it!"

Phinuit knocked the ashes out of a cold pipe at which he had been
sucking for some time, rose, and stretched.

"The worst of it is," he said in a serious turn--"I mean, looking at
the thing from my bourgeois viewpoint of 1914--the War, but more
particularly the antics of the various governments after the War,
turned out several million of men in my frame of mind the world over.
We went into the thing deluded by patriotic bunk and the promise that
it was a war to end war; we came out to find the old men more firmly
entrenched in the seats of the mighty than ever and stubbornly bent on
perpetuating precisely the same rotten conditions that make wars
inevitable. What Germany did to the treaty that guaranteed Belgium's
neutrality was child's-play compared to what the governments of the
warring nations have done to their covenants with their own people. And
if anybody should ask you, you can safely promise them that several
million soreheads like myself are what the politicians call 'a menace
to the established social order'."

Clear daylight filled the ports. The traffic on deck nearly deserved
the name of din. Commands and calls were being bawled in English,
French, and polyglot profanity. A donkey-engine was rumbling, a winch
clattering, a capstan-pawl clanking. Alongside a tug was panting
hoarsely. The engine room telegraph jangled furiously, the fabric of
the Sybarite shuddered and gathered way.

"We're off," yawned Phinuit. "Now will you be reasonable and go to
bed?"

"You may, monsieur," said Lanyard, getting up. "For my part, I shall go
on deck, if you don't mind, and stop there till the pilot leaves us."

"Fair enough!"

"But one moment more. You have been extraordinarily frank, but you have
forgotten one element, to me of some importance: you have not told me
what my part is in this insane adventure."

"That's not my business to tell you," Phinuit replied promptly. "When
anything as important as that comes out, it won't be through my
babbling. Anyhow, Liane may have changed her mind since last reports.
And so, as far as I'm concerned, your present status is simply that of
her pet protege. What it is to be hereafter you'll learn from her, I
suppose, soon enough.... Le's go!"

XXII

OUT OF SOUNDINGS

When finally Lanyard did consent to seek h