“_You_ weren’t in the dock. They held a court-martial on me to find out how often I’d sworn at the poor injured Neutral, and whether I’d given him hot-water bottles and tucked him up at night. It’s all very fine to laugh, but they treated me like a pickpocket. There were two fat-headed civilian judges and that blackguard Tegg in the conspiracy. A cursed lawyer defended my Neutral and he made fun of _me_. He dragged in everything the Neutral had told him about my blood-pressures on the Carlsbad trip. And that’s what you get for trying to serve your country in your old age!” Maddingham emptied and refilled his glass. “We _did_ give you rather a grilling,” said Tegg placidly. “It’s the national sense of fair play.” “I could have stood it all if it hadn’t been for the Neutral. We dined at the same hotel while this court-martial was going on, and he used to come over to my table and sympathise with me! He told me that I was fighting for his ideals and the uplift of democracy, but I must respect the Law of Nations!” “And we respected ’em,” said Tegg. “His papers were perfectly correct; the Court discharged him. We had to consider existing political relations. I _told_ Maddingham so at the hotel and he----” Again Maddingham turned to the others. “I couldn’t make up my mind about Tegg at the Inquiry,” he explained. “He had the air of a decent sailor-man, but he talked like a poisonous politician.” “I was,” Tegg returned. “I had been ordered to change into that rig. So I changed.” Maddingham ran one fat square hand through his crisped hair and looked up under his eyebrows like a shy child, while the others lay back and laughed. “I suppose I ought to have been on to the joke,” he stammered, “but I’d blacked myself all over for the part of Lootenant-Commander R.N.V.R. in time of war, and I’d given up thinking as a banker. If it had been put before me as a business proposition I might have done better.” “I thought you were playing up to me and the judges all the time,” said Tegg. “I never dreamed you took it seriously.” “Well, I’ve been trained to look on the law as serious. I’ve had to pay for some of it in my time, you know.” “I’m sorry,” said Tegg. “We were obliged to let that oily beggar go--for reasons, but, as I told Maddingham, the night the award was given, _his_ duty was to see that he was properly directed to Antigua.” “Naturally,” Portson observed. “That being the Neutral’s declared destination. And what did Maddingham do? Shut up, Maddingham!” Said Tegg, with downcast eyes: “Maddingham took my hand and squeezed it; he looked lovingly into my eyes (he _did_!); he turned plum-colour, and he said: ‘I will’--just like a bridegroom at the altar. It makes me feel shy to think of it even now. I didn’t see him after that till the evening when _Hilarity_ was pulling out of the Basin, and Maddingham was cursing the tug-master.”