"I meant to do it," he went on, "and I had my razor ready. I was going to keep you all in suspense for a bit. And then, suddenly, before I touched it, the lanyard broke. I think Windsails cut off the frayed ends afterwards. He hated us all." There was a dark stain on the left breast of Day's jacket that seemed to be spreading slowly. "I came back to tell you," he said, his voice sounding faint and far away. "I don't care what the others think. But this----" Again he fingered the desk. Within reach of my hand was an electric desk lamp, one of those portable things with a switch at the base. I reached out and turned it on, flooding the room with light. The desk was there all right, but I was alone. Carrying the lamp in my hand, I rose and crossed over to examine my purchase again. Yes, there were the words, crossed and recrossed by faintly scratched names and dates, covered by successive layers of varnish, but still plain to read, deep carven in the wood: DAY IS A SCAB The room was half full of smoke when I had finished, and the acrid smell of burning presently brought an alarmed housemaid to the threshold. "It's nothing," I reassured her. "I was only doing a little poker-work on this desk." I replaced the fireiron in the fender, and opened the window to let the smoke out as the maid withdrew. An uneasy wind was fretting the invisible rhododendrons with the threat of rain on the morrow. "I'm sorry, Day," I said to the darkened universe. "But it's all right now. I've burnt it out." IX THE ENGLISH WAY (1917) 1 The Quartermaster of the Watch pushed aside the tarpaulin cover to the Wardroom hatchway and whistled softly through his teeth. "Mail," he said to the Officers' Steward, who stepped out of the diminutive pantry in answer to the summons, and, bending down, thrust a bundle of sodden envelopes into the outstretched hand. It was snowing hard, and the whaler that brought off the Destroyer's Christmas mail had shipped sufficient water to call for a muttered protest from beneath the sou'-wester of the stroke oar. "I don' mind wettin' my blinking shirt," he muttered, as he tugged at the oar, "not so long as we brings 'ope 'an' comfort. But if them perishin' mail-bags is goin' to sit in a pool o' water--what the 'ell's the use? No one can't read a letter wot's bin soaked in the Norf Sea for a hour!" The whaler's crew murmured concurrence. The Coxswain, nursing the mail-bags on his knee with a hand on each and his elbow on the tiller, bade the crew chuck their weight into their oars and mind their ensanguined business--what time he, the Coxswain, would mind his. This admirably adjusted division of labour brought them eventually alongside, and the mail inboard.