eau from
beneath the lid of which protruded three or four corners of scribbling
paper, and lastly my eyes fell upon the offending beer-barrel in a dark
alcove. The basin set below the tap, in order to catch the drip, was
nearly full. In four months' time the room would be flooded with sour
and horrible beer. Full of the thought, I deposited the letters in the
drawer with the rest of the correspondence, and, leaving the flat,
summoned the lift, and in Jaffery's name presented a delighted porter
with the contents of a nine-gallon cask. I went away in the rich glow
that mantles from man's heart to check when he knows that he has made a
friend for life. It was only afterwards, when I got home, and hung the
labelled key on my library wall, that I realised that old Jaffery and
myself had, at least, one thing in common--videlicet, the keyless habit.
I had often suspected that deep in our souls lurked some hidden
_trait-d'union_. Now I had found it.

And looking back on that wreck of a room, I reflected how congenial
Jaffery must have found his surroundings on board the _Vesta_. The
weather had changed from summer calm to storm. The gentleman from the
meteorological office who writes for the newspapers talked about
cyclonic disturbances, and reported gales in the channel and on the west
coasts of France. The same was likely to continue. The wind blew hard
enough in Berkshire, what must it have done in the Bay of Biscay? As a
matter of fact, as we learned from a picture postcard from Jaffery and a
short letter from Liosha posted at Bordeaux, and from their lips
considerably later--for impossible as it may seem, they did not go to
the bottom or die of scurvy or the cannibal's pole-axe--they had made
their way from Havre in an ever-increasing tempest, during which they
apparently had not slept or put on a dry rag. Heavy seas washed the
deck, and kept out the galley fires, so that warm food had not been
procurable. It seemed that every horror I had prophesied had come to
pass. I should have pitied them, but for the blatant joyousness of their
communications. "I was not seasick a minute, and I have never been so
happy in my life," wrote Liosha. "Hilary should have been with us,"
wrote Jaffery. "It would have made a man of him. Liosha in splendid
fettle. She goes about in men's clothes and oilskins and can turn her
hand to anything when she isn't lashed to a stanchion." You can just
imagine them having cast off all semblance of Chris