Dainopoulos a few hundred francs and would have
been at a loss even if that gentleman had suddenly produced a beautiful
and expensive woman for his amusement. He was ever dreaming of a
tremendous _affaire_, but he was too close-fisted a Norman from Darnetal
to spend much on a sweetheart.

"True," he remarked and then called out into the darkness. "Yes," he
said, turning his head into the light, "the _chaloupe_ is going off now.
Let your friend tell the patron the ship he wants." And he returned to
this desk, yawned, and took up a copy of _Excelsior_. What a life, eh,
my old one!

Mr. Spokesly pointed out the black bulk of the _Tanganyika_, and as the
launch slid along the grating, stepped up and reached his room. The
night-watchman said, "Chief steward he no back yet." Mr. Spokesly turned
in. He switched out his light and lay for a while thinking with more
precision and penetration than even the London School of Mnemonics would
have ventured to guarantee. He had some difficulty in identifying
himself with the man who had gone ashore with Archy Bates that evening.
And he slid away into the deep sleep of the healthy seafarer with a
novel notion forming at the back of his mind. Suppose he was ashore in
Saloniki, what would happen then? If by some turn of the wheel he found
himself there? He might be sick, for instance, and go to the hospital
and be left behind. There was no dream, but he saw it--a storm and great
toil and anxiety, and in the midst of it a girl awaiting the outcome of
his exertions with enigmatic amber eyes.

CHAPTER VI

Mr. Dainopoulos afterwards developed into an excellent diplomatist, his
principal virtue being a knack of gauging personal values and extracting
usefulness from apparently dry husks. He withdrew from the imaginative
sensualist who sat during the night in a highly varnished pine shack
brooding upon the exasperating proximity of inaccessible seraglios. A
useful instrument in many schemes, he did not merit a whole evening.
Like most sensualists of the grosser kind he was a bore, and Mr.
Dainopoulos had other clients. He picked his way out of the incredible
mire of the docks, and crossed over to the cleaner side of the road
which extended from Venizelos Street past the Custom House, and which
was being extensively remodelled by the army of occupation. Even as Mr.
Dainopoulos crossed he could see a number of industrious beings mounted
on newly erected telegraph poles, their movement