the loss of the _Tanganyika_ he became exactly what he
had so greatly desired--a free agent, so long as he did not press his
claim for passage home. There was nothing in his way now except this
life-long habit of going to somebody for orders. Men had made great
fortunes, he had heard, by being cast adrift in a foreign port in some
such fashion. And others, he reflected cynically, had come down in the
world to be weak-kneed bummers and drink-cadgers. There it was again. It
rested with the man himself. What was it the little green books of the
London School of Mnemonics had said? Mr. Spokesly laughed shortly as he
thought of them lying at the bottom of the sea. A good place for them.
Lot of rubbish, if the truth were known. Fat lot of use they were now,
for instance. That chap Dainopoulos was worth a ton of scientific
flub-dub about training one's memory. Why not go and see Dainopoulos
now? See if his talk about a job would amount to anything. And Mrs.
Dainopoulos. And Evanthia Solaris. He drew a deep breath and looked out
across the dancing sea. A battalion began to march along the quay, drums
and fifes thudding and squeaking behind them, a long line of khaki
figures with overcoats curled in a thick band across their bodies, hung
all over with an extraordinary assortment of utensils. Going up to the
front, he reflected, to be shot or dismembered or racked with dysentery.
They got the glory, too. They were "the boys at the front," and they
filled the public eye. They and the navy. They had pensions provided and
so on. Mr. Spokesly was not a trustworthy authority on the business and
emoluments of soldiering. He held always the civilian's point of view.
He had been brought up among a class of people who kept silent on the
subject if a member of their family enlisted. Even the war, which
abolished the necessity for shame, did not eradicate the fundamental
animosity of these middle-class folk towards the military. Mr. Spokesly
himself had an old aunt, who lived on her husband's insurance money at
Hendon, who still alluded to "the red-coats," though scarlet had been
abolished. It was, like their terror of dear bread, in their blood. They
were individualists, these bourgeois from whom Mr. Spokesly came. They
were the folk whose relatives were established in distant colonies where
they had raised families of tall sons who had come back into the fight
so changed in character that the people of England did not know them.
They were t