m the mountain, seemed to stream out
of that open window he had left. Suddenly, with a resolute movement, he
turned and bent to the business of steering. The boat was moving through
the water.

"Let her out," he muttered, looking at his watch. "We've got four hours
to daylight."

And the dawn found him there, still crouching motionless at the tiller,
while behind them the mountains of Lesbos rose enormous, the sun rising
over Asia. And ahead lay the dark sparkle of an empty sea.

CONCLUSION

"All I can say is," said the elderly lieutenant, and he applied himself
assiduously to the trimming of his nails, "you were in luck all
through."

"Yes," said Mr. Spokesly. "I suppose you can call it that."

He was not entirely satisfied that this constituted an adequate
description of his experiences. Luck is a slippery word. As witness the
old lieutenant, intent on his nails, like some red-nosed old animal
engaged in furbishing his claws, who proceeded without looking up:

"Why, what else could you call it? You surely didn't want that woman
hanging round your neck all your life like a mill-stone, did you? What
if she did keep hold of the money? I call it cheap at the price. And
suppose you'd brought her. How could you have squared things? _I_ call
it lucky."

Mr. Spokesly, however, did not feel that way. He looked round at the
green expanse of St. James's Park and up towards the enormous arch which
enshrines the dignity and cumbrous power of the Victorian Age, and
wondered if the taste of life would ever come back. It was now eighteen
months since he had experienced what the elderly lieutenant called
uncommon luck, when a sloop of war, hurrying on her regular patrol from
Lemnos to Malta had found him and Mr. Cassar in their boat some ten
miles east of Psara Island, a black spot on a blue sea, over which there
fluttered a patch of white. And on coming cautiously alongside, the
commander of that sloop was surprised to discover a Maltee engineer
somewhat in disarray through his struggles with his engine, and under a
blanket in the bilge forward a sick Englishman.

For Mr. Spokesly had been sick. Looking back at it from this seat in St.
James's Park, with his demobilization completed, he saw well enough that
the culmination of the spiritual stresses under which he had been
existing had been suddenly transmuted into a bodily collapse. As the sun
rose over the AEgean, he had given the tiller to Mr. Cassar and lain dow