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 pink-striped 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 vapour 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 favourite 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 sombre 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 barrow-loads 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 their 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.

It will not do to laugh at such a discovery on the part of Mr. Spokesly. Only those who have had responsibility can be fully alive to the enormous significance of self-esteem in imposing authority upon a frivolous world. And it must be borne in mind that to Mr. Spokesly himself, at that moment, to fail in being a perfect officer was a failure in life. It was part of the creed of his "cloth" that each of them was without blemish until his license was cancelled by the invisible omnipotence of the law. It was, if you like, his ethic, the criterion of his integrity, the inexorable condition of carrying-on in his career. This ideal perfection of professional service resembles the giant fruits and immaculate fauna depicted on the labels of the canned articles—a grandiose conception of what was within. Just as nobody really believes that apples and salmon are like that and yet would refuse to buy a can without some such symbol, so Mr. Spokesly would have found his services quite unmarketable if he had discarded the polite fiction that he was, as far as was humanly possible, incapable of improvement. It was the aura, moreover, which distinguished him and all other officers from the riff-raff which nowadays go to sea and ape their betters—the parsons and surgeons, the wireless operators and engineers. They were common clay, mere ephemeral puppets, without hope of command, minions to take orders, necessary evils in an age of mechanism and high-speed commerce. It was an article of Mr. Spokesly's creed that "the cloth" should stand by each other. He was revolving this assumption in his mind as he rubbed the towel gently to and fro, and it occurred to him in his slow way that if he were to adopt the modern ideas of the London School of Mnemonics, if he were to devote every fibre of his being to forging ahead, gaining promotion, proving himself a superior article with a brain which was the efficient instrument of an indomitable will, then the obsolete idea of professional solidarity would have to go overboard. And just at that moment, with the consciousness of that petty mistake casting a shadow on his soul and the sharp rebuke of the Old Man rankling below, Mr. Spokesly was quite prepared to jettison anything that stood in the way of what he vaguely formulated as "his gettin' on." Mr. Spokesly's conceptions of advancement were of course largely but not entirely circumscribed by his profession. His allusions in conversation with Mr. Chippenham to "soft things" were understood to refer to shore jobs connected with shipping and transport. At one time the fairy-tale fortune of a shipmate who had married a shipowner's daughter had turned his thoughts that way. But not for long. Mr. Spokesly had a feeling that to marry into a job had its drawbacks. He felt "there was a string to it." And come what might, in his own hazy, amorphous fashion he desired to be captain of his soul. Had he the power at that moment of calling up Destiny, he would have made quite modest demands of her. Of course, a command, a fine large modern steamer, twin-screw, trading for choice in the Pacific, where as he knew very well a commander had pickings that placed him in a few years beyond the reach of penury at any rate.... Ada could come out. She would do justice to such a position out East. And when the war was over they could come home and have a little place up the river at Bourne End ... nothing very great, of course, but just right for Captain and Mrs. Spokesly. The dream was so very fair, so possible yet so utterly improbable, that his mouth drew down tremulously at the corners as he stared at the bulkhead. His eyes grew tired and smarted. Ah! Money! How often he had mouthed in jest that sorry proverb about the lack of money being the root of all evil! And how true it was, after all. Suddenly he stood up and became aware of someone in the alleyway outside his window. With a sense of relief, for his reflections had become almost inconveniently sombre and ingrowing, he saw it was someone 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 Archy 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 mere assimilative organisms, stomachs to be filled or doctored. Archy 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. Archy Bates liked Mr. Spokesly's society. Without in the least understanding how or