e an errand
boy. Just fancy that! 'Can't he slip his anchors?' 'I dare say he can
slip them all right,' I said, 'but wouldn't he find them useful in
Genoa?' Which was where he was going. You read a lot in the papers about
what wonderful chaps they are, but ... I don't know."

They sat there, those two, getting themselves pleasantly communicative
on gin and bitters, swapping stories of the incompetence of others and
their own obscure virtues, until Mr. Spokesly realized he would have to
see the paymaster and discover what was to happen to him.

"Well," he said, "I must go. I suppose I'll see you again."

"I'm at the Olympos. I'll show you where to go. You'd better get a room
there, too, if you can. I think I'll get along now and see what my young
lordship is up to. Slipping some more anchors, I expect. See you later."

And he moved off, in his slovenly fitting uniform and large broad-toed
shoes. Mr. Spokesly watched him. There, he thought, went a man who'd had
a command for years. And treated like a dog! He would be like that
himself in twelve or fifteen years' time. These official people only
thought of themselves. The only thing to do was to take a leaf out of
their book and look after Number One. He went into the hotel.

He came out again in about a quarter of an hour. "So that's the way
we're treated," he muttered, walking away. "Anybody would think I'd
committed a crime, not going down with everybody else." This was rather
hard on a harassed paymaster who could do nothing for Mr. Spokesly save
advance him two hundred francs, as per regulations regarding distressed
ships' officers, and promise him a compassionate passage home at some
future date, unless Mr. Spokesly's owners authorized something more
generous. With the two hundred francs in his pocket he walked away with
the general idea of getting a suit of clothes. And then--perhaps it was
the backward glance he took as he stood at the upper end of the noisy,
dirty little Place de la Liberte and saw the sunlight dancing on the
green-black water and on the polished brass funnels of the launches;
perhaps it was the glimpse he caught of the far peaks of Thessaly that
gave him an uplifting of the heart. His mood changed. He saw the thing
suddenly not as a grievance but as an adventure, in which he would have
to decide for himself. These naval people were only cogs in wheels. If
they wanted him they could come for him. He recalled again the important
fact that with