addressing an immense open-air meeting. "Well, what is it now?" And he struck a match and lit his pipe.

Mr. Spokesly explained that he wanted it mended.

"Oh, you want it mended. Well, why don't you ship a tinker, my fine fellow? Eh? Why not indent for a tinker? You've got a carpenter and a lamp trimmer and a bo'sun and a squad of quartermasters. What's a tinker more or less?" And sitting back in his swivel chair and blowing great clouds, he looked maliciously at Mr. Spokesly. The chief was a man with an atmosphere. He had an immense experience, which he kept to himself save at the hour of need. He had an admirable staff who did just what he wanted without any rhetoric. Save at times like the present moment, when Mr. Spokesly, though he was quite unaware of it, was very much de trop owing to a breakdown in the engine room, the chief was a tolerant and breezy example of the old school. Just now, with the sweat cooling on his back and a battered binnacle offered to him for repair, he took refuge in dry malice. He studied Mr. Spokesly mercilessly. He was, or at any rate he looked, perfectly aware of the extreme unfitness of Mr. Spokesly's bodily frame, for Mr. Spokesly had done no real work since he had passed for second mate eleven years before. The chief himself was inclined to obesity, for he verged on fifty and his frame was of the herculean type, needing much nourishment and upholstery. But there was a difference between the huge, red-freckled and hirsute masses upon his bones and the soft puffiness of Mr. Spokesly's fatty degeneration. The latter's double chin was in singular contrast with the massive and muscular salience that gave the chief's face an expression of indomitable vigour. He sat there, tipping himself slightly back in his swivel chair, looking quizzically at Mr. Spokesly through the tobacco smoke. Mr. Spokesly was annoyed. The chief had always been a decent sort, he had imagined, and here he was jibbing at a little thing like this. After all, it was the engineer's business to do these things. He, an officer, couldn't be expected to attend to petty details.... A short figure with a towel over his naked shoulders appeared abruptly out of the engine room and passed along the alleyway. The chief called in his stentorian tones, which issued from between twisted and broken teeth, "Hi, Mr. Tolleshunt, here's a job for ye. Mate wants a binnacle fixed." And Mr. Spokesly's mind became easy. A voice from behind a slammed door said that the mate could take his binnacle and chase himself round the deck with it, and the chief cackled. Mr. Tolleshunt came out of his room again on his way to the bathroom. He was a young man with a thick white neck, and black eyes set in a dirty, dead-white face which bore an expression of smouldering rage. This, however, was merely an index of character which, like many such indexes, was misleading. Mr. Tolleshunt was not ill-tempered, but he had a morbid passion for efficiency. He was an idealist, with a practical working ideal. He was not prepared to accept anything in the world as an adequate substitute for achievement. He had seen through Mr. Spokesly at once, for your idealist is often a clairvoyant of character. And as he passed along to his bath, his black eyes smouldered upon the chief officer, who remembered the many insults he had swallowed from this dirty engineer, and hated him. Suddenly Mr. Tolleshunt paused, with his hand on the bathroom door, and looked back. His dead-white face, the firm modelling of cheek and chin curiously exaggerated by the black smears of grease, broke into a grim smile as he spoke.