wondered uneasily whether, judging by the man's form, he was not capable of the supreme offence of being sick at table. Yet, while all three of them at once recognised him as a first-class offence, they also perceived that his possible behaviour was a welcome counterirritation to the physical discomfort about them. Captain Field alone gave no indication of having formed any opinion whatsoever about the new arrival. He helped himself largely to fish, and his voice was cheerful. "Good-evening, Mr Hicks," he said. "Hope you're feeling better. We shan't get the wind again until you're all safely tucked up in your little white beds. I expect you appreciate the luxury of our little white beds, don't you, Mrs Manton ? " "Immeasurably," Mrs Manton declared, laughing. "Particularly their snowy white But it was evident that Hicks did not intend to be put off by flippancy and side-issues. He had been asked a question about his health, and he intended giving a suitable reply. "No, captain," he replied, "I'm not much better. I'm not really up to eating yet." At this Ward stirred anxiously. "But," Hicks went on, "I thought I'd have a try. Generally I'm a very good sailor. It's this wretched little boat." "Is it, now," Captain Field replied. "Personally, I should have guessed it was the sea." But Hicks was not the man to let a snub turn him from a topic of real interest. "Not at all," he declared. 'Boy, another peg, and don't drown it this time. As I was saying, when I'm on a real liner it can be as rough as it likes, and I don't feel it. Never have a qualm. Why, last time I came out from home, on the worst day, so the chief officer told me, that they had had for two years I performed at the ship's concert." "Good God!" Manton muttered, but his wife reproved him with a glance, and her face had suddenly assumed a strange solemnity. "Did you," she asked, almost wistfully-" did you by any chance recite, Mr Hicks?" "I did, madam," Hicks answered. Why" very interesting to spot the 'Gunga Din' recitation faces. We are not too bad at it, but you can probably pick out a brother Gunga Din-er at the first glance. It's very interesting." While the baiting of the offence was in progress, Manton watched Captain Field, interested to know how he would take it, and whether an occupation so eminently suitable for a vilely uncomfortable night would have to be abandoned. But he got nothing from the captain's face except the conviction that it would be mighty useful to a poker player. The burly skipper, his reddish complexion contrasting strongly with the heat-paled faces of the passengers, ate his dinner with cheerfulness, as though he were a man possessing the rare power of excluding from his thoughts all unpleasantness. He was obviously shrewd; he clearly missed nothing of what was going on about him; but he kept all comment on what he saw and heard away from the cheerful mask of his face. Manton began to like the man; and he remembered what Bunn had fulness showed the man's character; it was not an assumed mask. Could a prolonged experience of navigating the Hubert Hinton through the islands break down the cheerfulness and bring out the nerves! Manton, before he turned his attention again to the baiting of the offence, felt inclined to offer heavy odds against the ship. Hicks, having lowered his drink in two gulps, ordered another one, speaking with unnecessary sharpness to the barefooted, strong-smelling native steward, whose white drill coat exhibited many stains of spilled food. Whisky and annoyance had temporarily conquered his qualms. Of course not," Mrs Manton agreed, smiling sweetly at the offence. "I expect that sometimes you recite 'If,' don't you?" said about him, that he was "Sometimes, possibly," Ward a good fellow at his job, and that he had no nerves, the trouble that, sooner or later, in one form or another, gets hold of the majority of white men and women in the tropics. in the tropics. Idly, Manton decided that he was certainly efficient at his job-he had the face of a good sailor-and that nerves did never trouble him. The cheer argued. "But it's really always odds on Gunga Din' for the first number, isn't it, sir?" He turned eagerly to Hicks. "At heart, as Mrs Manton said, you are said, you are a true Gunga Din-er. I'm sure we can't be wrong. Hicks flushed, and the beads of moisture coalesced and the trickles ran all over his face. weeks ago. He was taken ill on the run back, and he asked to be put ashore at Sin Byu. You probably know that there's a hospital of sorts there. Bunn wanted to take him back to Rangoon. It wouldn't have made any difference. When he got into hospital he didn't like it. Nobody would; it's not cheerful. He was worrying; he knew what was coming to him. The doctor said it wasn't, but the doctor was a black, and his opinion didn't count. Dennis was moved into her bungalow and nursed by Mrs Manton. He was dying, and everybody knew it except the black doctor. Poor Dennis worried a lot. These people "My recitations were not the topic under discussion," he replied viciously. "I was telling the captain that it's this miserable little boat that affects me. I had to travel by it two or three months ago before the monsoon, and I was just the same. It's not sea-sickness at all. It's the stuffiness and the smell and the dirt. Yes, captain, I'm bound to say it. The dirt. As a passenger who pays for decent accommodation, it's my duty to say it. And it's worse than it was. Three months ago the other captain used to apologise for the food, and go on at the stewards about the dirt. Yes, things were better then. nis, that was the other captain's he indicated name. What's become him?" Den of the other passengers-" and others in the station tried to cheer him up. They didn't succeed. He died on the third evening. Next morning the white residents got the usual notice, and that evening just before sundown. Manton here, and Ward and the other men stood in clean white suits, wearing collars and black ties, under umbrellas in the rain. The D.C. read the service, and the body was put into a shallow trench half full of muddy water. Then Manton and the others hurried off to the club and made it a peg instead of a half peg in order to get the taste away. And Dennis was left to himself." There was silence in the evilsmelling saloon, while from the night outside the swirl of water rushing past the ship's side and the thrash of seas at the had departed bows sounded noisily. The "What," he asked, with something of an effort-" what did he really die of?" Captain Field looked at him and hesitated a moment before he answered, but when he spoke he gave his reply with absolute and complete assur ance. "Nerves," he said; "simply with self-consciousness murand wholly nerves.' Hicks stared; then, without a word of muttered excuse, slid out of his chair and disappeared down the alley-way to his cabin. Captain Field nodded towards the passage. Another case of them," he commented; "trying the whisky cure too." 66 During the war," Manton declared, without apologising for that well-known opening, "I saw a fellow, a great Hercules of a ranker officer, who had got and earned the D.C.M., faint when the M.O. gave us some pointers as to what to do if we caught it in the neck in the forthcoming show. It's funny." mured of our dear brother here departed," declared that they were. But Mrs Manton was not satisfied. She saw a man, emaciated beyond belief, lying in a stifling bare bedroom high and open to the roof, a man obviously dying, whose mind was tortured with terror at what must come. "But why did you insist that he worried?" she asked, and her voice was troubled. "You weren't there. You couldn't have known. Perhaps if he hadn't so muchbut he did, and there it is." "Of course he did," Captain Field stated, and the unconquerable quiet cheerfulness of the man gave a sort of whole"I was afraid," said Ward, someness to his talk, as though there were fresh clean air somewhere about. "And that is why I say he died of nerves. He did. I knew him for years. We were apprentices together. Later I was fourth officer to his third on the home run. Then we both came together every now and again out here. Now I've got his job, and mean to hold it down. He was the best fellow imaginable, but he always was touched in the nerves, and the war and this climate did the rest." "Is it true," Ward asked, "that he had inherited property at home and could have retired if he had wanted to Bunn told me something of the kind." "Quite," Captain Field replied. "Poor Dennis. He was the damnedest sort of fool. Soon after the war he came into a decent property somewhere in the west country. I never saw it, but he showed me some photographs. You know the sort of thing. Old, grey, stone farmhouse, mullion windows, roof covered with lichen; and lawns, smooth lawns, and roses, and lush, green meadows all buttercups and peace. He " "Shut up," Mrs Manton interrupted curtly, and her eyes, as she stared across the hot saloon out to the dark tumble of sea beyond the open door, were hungry. "Yes, captain," Ward agreed, "give the sweating exiles a chance on a night like this. All reference to green meadows is barred." 66 Sorry, good people," Captain Field apologised, "but I want you to realise it, then you'll see the madness of the business. Dennis had all that no, I won't go into details; but it's July now, and you can picture it." "We might be able to," Mrs Manton admitted, and murmured to herself, "buttercups and peace. Yes, we might." 66 Dennis was a bachelor," the captain continued. His people were all dead; he had no ties and no obligations. He came into this place, and money enough to let him live comfortably on it and pay for his amateur farming. For thirty years he had yapped about the days when he would leave the sea and settle in the west; and when they came, came when he wasn't fifty, he stuck them for something under a year." "Call of the sea?" Manton asked. "It seems incredible under the circumstances." "Not on your life, sir," Captain Field told him. "Nothing so sane as that. The call of his twelfth cousin twentyfour times removed. He was right bang out of the inheriting business, and never expected anything; but the war thinned a fine standing crop of relatives, and he moved up and up till some old lady snuffed out and he stepped in. Dennis loved it when he had it, loved it. He told me so. But it appears that somebody at some time had sold some fields that had gone with the place since the |