high palisades of the metal-hued maize. Upon the next corner he
encountered Captain Hahn, swollen and pompous and perfect.

"Well?" said Captain Hahn, exhaling his words as a pricked bladder
exhales air. "Well, you searched those villages, did you?"

Jovannic saluted mechanically. Life his own life clogged his feet; to
act was like wading in treacle. He had an impulse of utter wild
rebellion, of ferocious self-assertion. Then:

"Zu Befehl, Herr Hauptmann!" he said, and saluted.

II

THE DAGO

Eight bells had sounded, and in the little triangular fo'c'sle of the
Anna Maria the men of the port watch were waiting for their dinner.
The daylight which entered by the open hatch overhead spread a carpet
of light at the foot of the ladder, which slid upon the deck to the
heave and fall of the old barque's blunt bows, and left in shadow the
double row of bunks and the chests on which the men sat. From his
seat nearest the ladder, Bill, the ship's inevitable Cockney, raised
his flat voice in complaint.

"That bloomin' Dago takes 'is time over fetchin' the hash," he said.
"'E wants wakin' up a bit that's wot 'e wants."

Sprawling on the edge of his bunk forward, Dan, the oldest man in the
ship, took his pipe from his lips in the deliberate way in which he
did everything. Short in stature and huge in frame, the mass of him,
even in that half-darkness of the fo'c'sle, showed somehow majestic
and powerful.

"The mate came after 'im about somethin' or other," he said in his
deep, slow tones.

"That's right," said another seaman. "It was about spillin' some tar
on the deck, an' now the Dago's got to stop up this arternoon an'
holystone it clean in his watch below."

"Bloomin' fool," growled the Cockney. But it was the wrong word, and
the others were silent.

A man in trouble with an officer, though he be no seaman and a Dago,
may always count on the sympathy of the fo'c'sle.

"'E ain't fit to paddle a bumboat," the Cockney went on. "Can't go
aloft, can't stand 'is wheel, can't even fetch the hash to time."

"Yes!" Dan shifted slowly, and the younger man stopped short. "You
better slip along to the galley, Bill, an' see about that grub."

The Cockney swore, but rose from his seat. Dan was not to be
disobeyed in the fo'c'sle. But at that moment the hatch above was
darkened.

"'Ere's the Dago," cried Bill. "Where you bin, you bloomin' fool?"

A bare foot came over the combing, feeling vaguely for the steps of
t