The snooker players, wearied of the decorum of the billiard room, presently rejoined the remainder, and in five minutes Milsom, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, had them dancing to his music. I don't dance: but I leaned over the back of the piano, sucking my pipe and watching his smiling, half-mocking face as he swayed dreamily to the music that tinkled out from underneath his fingers. His eyes were puckered up in the smoke of the cigar he kept screwed into the corner of his mouth, and as he played I saw him watching with a queer inscrutable smile the dancers revolving round him, Majors, Captains and Subalterns, aye and a couple of Colonels, for Havelock and Markham were footing it with the best of them. "This room has seen some good jamborees in its time, Hornby," he said after a while, speaking with the butt end of the cigar between his teeth. "I dare say men have carried worse memories across the Line than their last night in the old Mess before they sailed." He changed into another air, an old-fashioned valse with a slow haunting melody; the Bostoners and bunnyhuggers checked and picked up the altered step. "I envy you going back to sea," he went on. "It's a good life, afloat. A clean life.... Better'n mucking about ashore with women.... But our turn'll come." "You aren't due for sea yet, are you, Soj?" I asked. "I ain't _due_," he said slowly, nodding his head to the melody. "The others ain't due, but they're going ... some day...." "When are you going?" He shrugged his shoulders, and again the tune changed: "With me bundle on me shoulder Sure there's no man could be bolder" ... He raised his voice in song, and the dancers took up the words till the great hall rang with men's voices: "For I'm off to Philadelphia in the morning." The player brought down his hands in a crash of bass chords and rose laughing, amid a storm of protest. "No more. Fineesh.... Phew! It's a long ship, this." Havelock approached us, glass in hand. "Milsom," he said, "I take that last song as an augury." "Why?" asked Milsom, smiling. "Well, my old governor--he was a Marine, you know--told me that they sang that on the last guest night before the _Birkenhead_ sailed. The Marines didn't exactly disgrace themselves in the _Birkenhead_, and we'll hope your playing it to-night means the Corps are going to get another chance to show the sort of stuff they're made of." It was the first time I'd heard the loss of the _Birkenhead_ mentioned as other than a disaster: but that was Havelock's way of looking at things. "They're doing that all day long," said Milsom, "but I'll add 'Amen!'" 4