breathing pretty loud--wrapped up in rugs and his eyes sticking out like a rabbit’s. He offered me drinks. I couldn’t accept ’em, of course. Then he said: ‘Well, Mr. Maddingham, I’m all in.’ I said I was glad to hear it. Then he told me he was seriously ill with a sudden attack of bronchial pneumonia, and he asked me to run him across to England to see his doctor in town. I said, of course, that was out of the question, _Hilarity_ being a man-of-war in commission. He couldn’t see it. He asked what had that to do with it? He thought this war was some sort of joke, and I had to repeat it all over again. He seemed rather afraid of dying (it’s no game for a middle-aged man, of course) and he hoisted himself up on one elbow and began calling me a murderer. I explained to him--perfectly politely--that I wasn’t in this job for fun. It was business. My orders were to see that he went to Antigua, and now that he wasn’t going to Antigua, and had sold his oil to us, that finished it as far as I was concerned. (Wasn’t that perfectly correct?) He said: ‘But that finishes me, too. I can’t get any doctor in this God-forsaken hole. I made sure you’d treat me properly as soon as I surrendered.’ I said there wasn’t any question of surrender. If he’d been a wounded belligerent, I might have taken him aboard, though I certainly shouldn’t have gone a yard out of my course to land him anywhere; but as it was, he was a neutral--altogether outside the game. You see my point? I tried awfully hard to make him understand it. He went on about his affairs all being at loose ends. He was a rich man--a million and a quarter, he said--and he wanted to redraft his will before he died. I told him a good many people were in his position just now--only they weren’t rich. He changed his tack then and appealed to me on the grounds of our common humanity. ‘Why, if you leave me now, Mr. Maddingham,’ he said, ‘you condemn me to death, just as surely as if you hanged me.’” “This _is_ interesting,” Portson murmured. “I never imagined you in this light before, Maddingham.” “I was surprised at myself--’give you my word. But I was perfectly polite. I said to him: ‘Try to be reasonable, sir. If you had got rid of your oil where it was wanted, you’d have condemned lots of people to death just as surely as if you’d drowned ’em.’ ‘Ah, but I didn’t,’ he said. ‘That ought to count in my favour.’ ‘That was no thanks to you,’ I said. ‘You weren’t given the chance. This is war, sir. If you make up your mind to that, you’ll see that the rest follows.’ ‘I didn’t imagine you’d take it as seriously as all that,’ he said--and he said it quite seriously, too. ‘Show a little consideration. Your side’s bound to win anyway.’ I said: ‘Look here! I’m a middle-aged man, and I don’t suppose my conscience is any clearer than yours in many respects, but this is business. I can do nothing for you.’” “You got that a bit mixed, I think,” said Tegg critically.