"What's it all mean, Soj? What's projection and bubbles full of smoke got to do with it? I'm a plain sailorman and I don't understand all this psychic business." Milsom chuckled. "I don't understand it either," he said, "and God knows I don't want to understand too much. But this all seems simple enough to me. The girl was thinking desperately hard about some fellow--the hum of the wheels and the telegraph wires have a hypnotic effect upon some temperaments, and she just unconsciously projected the figure of the man she was thinking about into the seat opposite her and in her imagination was having a chat with him. She was probably in love with the real individual and possibly wasn't getting much joy out of it. She didn't look happy." Voices from the ante-room were shouting Milsom's name: someone was strumming the piano. Milsom pushed back his chair. "But was he really there, though?" I queried, as we rose. The long messroom was empty save for the waiters and ourselves. The hubbub in the ante-room redoubled, and someone started a song. Milsom laughed. "How d'you mean? Of course he wasn't there really. Just because you think of someone it doesn't mean they dump themselves down in front of you. Think of someone now." I obeyed and stared hard at the portrait of an ensign of "The Noble Free and Spirited Manchester Corps of the Marines" hanging opposite. Milsom followed the direction of my eyes. "That wasn't a good choice," he said dryly. "That fellow has been sitting opposite us for the last half-hour. Ever since Markham vacated that chair!" It occurred to me that perhaps Milsom had had all the liqueur brandy to drink that was good for him. 3 It may or may not have been the effect of the old brandy, but in all the years Milsom and I were shipmates I never remember him in a mood of such sheer light-hearted reckless gaiety as that into which he seemed to slip on the threshold of the antechamber. A sing-song was in progress round the piano, but on his arrival the group turned and bellowed for "The Tuppeny Tube." "The Tuppeny Tube," it must be explained, was a song of his own invention, accompanied by a great deal of patter and not a little horseplay. In pantomime he herded the Public (the newly joined subalterns filled the rôle) into an imaginary overcrowded tube lift, and with clashing fire-irons imitated the closing and opening of the gates. His stentorian bellow of "'Urry up there, step smartly! Plenty of room in front!" was the gag that presently involved the Mess and its guests in a furious mêlée amid overturned card-tables and chairs. Little did we guess as we sprawled gasping, breathless with laughter and exertion, on the leather upholstered chesterfields, in what grim surroundings many of us were to hear again and thrill at that slogan.