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dram for his friend and himself, he flung off his cap, muffler and overcoat and sat down.
    â€œPhew! I feel as if I were disrupting. This business has shaken me badly,” he exclaimed and drained his glass. Replacing the glass on the small cabin table, he once more sat down, thrust his hands into his pockets and stretched his legs out in front of him.
    â€œLet’s begin at the beginning,” he said. “Do you remember the exact time I left your cabin for a stroll round the deck, Algernon?”
    â€œWell, not the exact time, Ricky, but it must have been about quarter to one; perhaps a few minutes before.”
    â€œVery good. I immediately got out on deck and began to pace round the usual course. There’s a brass plate fixed up somewhere which tells you that so many times round the deck is one mile, but I never compute distance by such an abstract thing as measurement. Mathematical abstractions are the bane of modern thinking because they’re so illusorily concrete. I measure distance by feeling and know that I’ve walked far enough when I’m tired. My intention was to get thoroughly tired and then go to bed and fall asleep in spite of the ship’s siren. Well, I began to pace round the course, and around me was a globous world of mist, eerie and wonderful but damned cold. I don’t know how long I’d been tramping when I ran into one of the ship’s officers. I think it must have been the chief officer from the number of gold stripes on his sleeve. He looked a perfect zebra. He had evidently come down from the bridge, and after a cheery word disappeared into the officers’ quarters, which are, as you know, situated on this deck some distance nearer ‘the neb of the ship’ as Macpherson would probably say. There were no further interruptions to my pensive circumambulation until about one-thirty or perhaps a little later. As I came along the starboard deck, which is the right side looking forrard, in case you’re not sea-minded, I was surprised to see a man and woman locked in one another’s arms standing against the outer wall of our cabins not six paces from the door leading on to the deck. I couldn’t see them very clearly in the gloom, and with my customary delicacy I naturally didn’t go up and ask them what they thought of the political situation in Europe as a conversational gambit. I soon recovered from my surprise because it’s quite irrational to be surprised at anything lovers may do under divine impulse…”
    â€œI wish you’d cut out the embroidery, Ricky; I want to get at the facts,” interrupted Vereker impatiently.
    â€œSorry you object to my narrative style, Algernon, but you must remember it’s my profession to make dull facts interesting. A gripping serial isn’t a bald statement of facts; it wouldn’t pay at two guineas a thousand. Half the fun of eating a nut is cracking the shell.”
    â€œWell, get along and don’t make the shell too thick. What did you do after finding the couple—interlocked, so to speak?”
    â€œI proceeded on my way. I remember thinking that I might dig out Rosaura and ask her to come up and admire the fog. Concluded it was out of the question, so I wandered round to the port deck. Not wishing to embarrass the lovers on the starboard deck, I began a kind of sentry-go instead of completing the usual lap. I got tired of sentry-go, had enough of it during the war, so I glanced at my watch and found it was nearly two o’clock. I know half an hour’s a very short time to tell a girl you love her and persuade her you’re a superman, but I wasn’t going to let the couple make a golden age of it. Thought I’d reappear as a memory tickler. Remind them that life’s brief and one side of the promenade not long enough for exercise. When I turned on to the starboard deck I was surprised to see that the lovers had gone, and promptly quickened my