He left them for a while, he said, “to join up." I believe he meant to do it, too, for there is something pathetically appealing in the atmosphere of late autumn in England. It goes to the heart. It is not quite so piercing a call as the early spring, when one's very soul goes out in a mystical, passionate union with the spirit of the land, but it is very strong, and Mr. Spokesly, without understanding it, felt the appeal. But at Paddington he stopped and had a drink. For all his years at sea, he was a Londoner at heart. He spoke the atrocious and barbarous jargon of her suburbs, he snuffed the creosote of her wooden streets and found it an admirable apéritif to his London beer. And while the blowsy spirit of London, the dear cockney-hearted town, ousted the gentler shade of England, Mr. Spokesly reflected that neither the army nor the navy would have any use for a man of commanding powers, a man whose will and memory had been miraculously developed. The army would not do, he was sure. The navy would probably put him in charge of a tug, for Mr. Spokesly had no illusions as to the reality of the difficulties of life in his own sphere. And he had been long enough at one thing to dread the wrench of beginning at the bottom somewhere else. This is the tragic side of military service in England, for most Englishmen are adaptable. Mr. Spokesly, for example, had gone to sea at the age of twelve. Unless he won a lottery prize he would be going to sea at seventy, if he lived so long. So he reflected, and the upshot was that he applied-quite humbly, for he had not as yet developed any enormous will power-and secured a billet as second officer on the Tanganyika.

He told his people and Ada that there was "a chance of a command," which, of course, was perfectly true. She regarded his large, heavy features and small, watchful eyes with ardent enthusiasm. "It is a man's work," she thrilled, softly,

eyes to enjoy the vision of him-strong in character, large in talent, irresistible in will power, commanding amid storms and possibly even shot and shell. . .

Having kept the middle watch, which is from twelve to four, Mr. Spokesly was sitting in his cabin abaft the bridge of the Tanganyika, his feet in a white-enameled bucket of hot water, contemplating the opposite bulkhead. He was thinking very hard, according to the system of the London School of Mnemonics. The key of this system was simplicity itself. You wanted to remember something which you had forgotten. Very well; you worked back on the lines of a dog following a scent. From what you were thinking at the present moment to what you were thinking when you came in the door, which would lead you by gentle gradations back to the item of which you were in search. Very simple. Unfortunately, Mr. Spokesly, in the course of these retrograde pilgrimages, was apt to come upon vast and trackless oceans of oblivion, bottomless gulfs of time in which, so far as he could recall, his intellectual faculties had been in a state of suspended animation. The London School of Mnemonics did not seem to allow sufficiently for the bridging of these gaps. It is true they said in Lesson Three, with gentle irony, Remember the chain of ideas is often faulty; there may be missing links.

Mr. Spokesly, who on this occasion was determined to remember what he was thinking of at the moment when the Old Man spoke sharply behind him and made him jump, was of the opinion that it was the chain that was often missing and that all he could discover were a few odd links! He lifted one foot out of the grateful warmth and felt the instep tenderly, breathing hard, with his tongue in one corner of his mouth, as his mind ran to and fro, nosing at the closed doors of the past. What was he thinking of? He remembered it it attracted him strangely, had given him a feeling of

pleasant anticipation as of a secret which he could unfold at his leisure. It was

. . . it was . . . He put his foot into the water again and frowned. He had been thinking of Ada, he recalled- Ah! Now he was on the track of it. He had been thinking, not of her, but of the melancholy fact communicated to him by his own sister, that Ada had no "dot," no money until her father died. Now how in the world did that come to react upon his mind as a pleasant thing? It was a monstrous thing that he should have capsized his future by such precipitate folly. Mr. Spokesly comprehended that what he was looking for was not a memory, but a mood.

He had been in a certain mood as he stood on the bridge that morning about half past three, his hand resting lightly on the rail, his eyes on the dim horizon, when the Old Man, in his irritating pinkstriped pajamas, had spoken sharply and made him jump. And that mood, the product of some overnight reflections on the subject of will power, had been rising like some vast billow of cumulous vapor touched with roseate hues from a hidden sun, and he had been just on the brink of some surprising discovery, when . . . It was very annoying, for the Old Man had been preoccupied by a really very petty matter, after all. (The word petty was a favorite with Mr. Spokesly.) It had, however, broken the spell, and here he was, a few hours later, hopelessly snarled up in all sorts of interminable strings of ideas. The business of thinking was not so easy as the London School of Mnemonics made out. Lifting his feet slowly up and down, he reached out and took Lesson Number Five from the holdall (with his initials in blue) which hung above his head. As he turned the richly printed pages, a delicious feeling of being cared for and caressed stole over him.

Never despair, said the lesson, gravely-Nil desperandum. Just as the darkest hour is before the dawn, so victory may crown your toil at the least likely

moment.

And so it was! With a feeling of som

ber triumph, Mr. Spokesly "saw the connection," as he would have said. He saw that the importance of that lost mood lay in the petty annoyance that followed. For the Old Man had called him down about a mistake. A trifle. A petty detail. A bagatelle. It only showed, he thought, the narrowness of mind of some commanders. Now he ...

But with really remarkable resolution Mr. Spokesly pulled himself up and concentrated upon the serious side of the question. There had been a mistake. It was as though the Old Man's quiet sharpness had gouged a great hole in Mr. Spokesly's self-esteem, and he had been unconsciously busy ever since, bringing excuse after excuse, like barrowloads of earth, in a vain attempt to fill it up. It was still a yawning hiatus in the otherwise flawless perfection of his conduct as an officer. He had made a mistake. And the London School of Mnemonics promised that whoever followed its course made no mistake. He felt chastened as he habituated himself to this feeling that perhaps he was not a perfect officer. He took his feet out of the lukewarm water and reached for a towel.

Suddenly he stood up and became aware of some one in the alleyway outside his window. With a sense of relief, for his reflections had become almost inconveniently somber and ingrowing, he saw it was some one he already knew in a friendly way, though he still addressed him as "Stooard.”

There is much in a name, much more in a mode of address. When Archie Bates, the chief steward of the Tanganyika, turned round and hoisted himself so that he could look into Mr. Spokesly's port, their friendship was just at the point when the abrupt unveiling of some common aspiration would change "Stooard" into "Bates" or "Mister." For a steward on a ship is unplaced. The office is nothing, the personality everything. He may be the confidential agent of the commander or he may be the boon companion of the cook. To him most men are merely assimilative organisms, stom

achs to be filled or doctored. Archie Bates was, like another Bates of greater renown, a naturalist. He studied the habits of the animals around him. He fed them or filled them with liquor, according to their desires, and watched the result. It might almost be said that he acted the part of tempter to mankind, bribing them into friendship or possibly only a useful silence. It is a sad but solid fact that he nearly always succeeded.

But he liked Mr. Spokesly. One of the disconcerting things about the wicked is their extreme humanity. Archie Bates liked Mr. Spokesly's society. Without in the least understanding how or why, he enjoyed talking to him, appreciated his point of view, and would have been glad to repay confidence with confidence. He was always deferential to officers, never forgetting their potentialities as to future command. He respected their reserve until they knew him intimately. He was always willing to wait. His discretion was boundless. He knew his own value. Friends of his had no reason to regret it. That third engineer, a coarse fellow, one of the few irreconcilables, had called him a flunky. Well, the third engineer paid dearly for that in trouble. over petty details-soap, towels, and so forth. But with "gentlemen" Archie Bates felt himself breathing a larger air. You could do something with a gentleman. And Mr. Spokesly, in the chief steward's estimation, was just that kind of man. So, in the lull of activity before lunch he came along to see if Mr. Spokesly felt like a little social diversion.

"Busy?" he inquired, thrusting his curiously ill-balanced features into the port and smiling. Mr. Bates's smile was unfortunate. Without being in any way insincere, it gave one the illusion that it was fitted on over his real face. A long, sharp nose projecting straight out from a receding brow nestled in a pomatumed and waxed mustache, and his eyes, of an opaque hazel, became the glinting centers of scores of tiny radiating lines. His chin, blue with shaving, and his gray

hair carefully parted in the middle, made up a physiognomy that might have belonged either to a bartender or to a ward politician. And there was a good deal of both in Archie Bates.

To the inquiry Mr. Spokesly shook his head. The steward gave a sharp look each way, and then made a complicated gesture that was a silent and discreet invitation.

"Oh, well." Mr. Spokesly shrugged his shoulders and pulled down the corners of his mouth. The face at the window tittered so violently that the owner of it nearly lost his balance and put up his hand to support himself.

"Come on, old chap. I've got half an hour to spare."

“Oh, all right, Bates. Sha'n't be a minute."

The face, like a satiric mask, suddenly vanished.

Mr. Spokesly put on his socks and slippers and, lighting a cigarette, prepared to go along. He liked the steward, and he felt lonely. It so happened that, quite apart from his intrinsic greatness, Mr. Spokesly was very much alone on the Tanganyika. Mr. Chippenham was too young, the chief officer-a gnarled, round-shouldered ancient-was too old, the commander too distant. There remained only the chief engineer, a robust gentleman who conversed hospitably on all subjects in a loud voice, but invited no confidences. And it was confidences Mr. Spokesly really wanted to give. He wanted to impress his ideals and superior views of life upon a sympathetic and receptive mind.

II

"You will be pleased to hear, sweetheart, that I have already got promotion. I am now chief officer, next to the captain. I dare say in a short time your only will be comsevering with the course you gave me, and I ing home to take a command. I am perfind it a great assistance. Of course I have a great deal more to do now, especially as the last man was scarcely up to his work. While as for the captain, I may as well tell you . . .