, wild
talk, speculative talk, imaginative discussions, logical and
illogical. But, boiled down to its basic ingredients, the wildest
imagination on board the _Volhynia_ admitted war to be an
impossibility of modern times, and that, ultimately, diplomacy would
settle what certainly appeared to be the ugliest international
situation in a hundred years.

At the bottom of his heart Neeland believed this, too; wished for it
when his higher and more educated spiritual self was flatly
interrogated; and yet, in the everyday, impulsive ego of James
Neeland, the drop of Irish had begun to sing and seethe with the
atavistic instinct for a row.

War? He didn't know what it meant, of course. It made good poetry and
interesting fiction; it rendered history amusing; made dry facts
succulent.

Preparations for war in Europe, which had been going on for fifty
years, were most valuable, too, in contributing the brilliant hues of
uniforms to an otherwise sombre civilian world, and investing
commonplace and sober cities with the omnipresent looming mystery of
fortifications.

To a painter, war seemed to be a dramatic and gorgeous affair; to a
young man it appealed as all excitement appeals. The sportsman in him
desired to witness a scrap; his artist's imagination was aroused; the
gambler in him speculated as to the outcome of such a war. And the
seething, surging drop of Irish fizzed and purred and coaxed for a
chance to edge sideways into any fight which God in His mercy might
provide for a decent gossoon who had never yet had the pleasure of a
broken head.

"Not," thought Neeland to himself, "that I'll go trailing my coat
tails. I'll go about my own business, of course--but somebody may hit
me a crack at that!"

He thought of Ilse Dumont and of the man with the golden beard,
realising that he had had a wonderful time, after all; sorry in his
heart that it was all over and that the _Volhynia_ was due to let go
her mudhooks in the Mersey about three o'clock the next morning.

As he leaned on the deck rail in the soft July darkness, he could see
the lights of the destroyers to port and starboard, see strings of
jewel-like signals flash, twinkle, fade, and flash again.

All around him along the deck passengers were promenading, girls in
evening gowns or in summer white; men in evening dress or reefed in
blue as nautically as possible; old ladies toddling, swathed in veils,
old gentlemen in dinner coats and sporting headgear--eve