"I hear there’s a vacancy for a lieutenant in the Persian Gulf. I’m Martin—Paul Reginald Martin of the _Russell_, four years’ seniority next May—and I want to go there. My late captain gave me this for the Second Sea Lord;" and I handed him the envelope with the pencil note: "Give this chap the job if you can", and his signature. The secretary glanced at it, threw it on his desk, and looked at me suspiciously. "Yes, yes! I don’t know how he came to hear of it. Collingwood, of the _Bunder Abbas_, has died of sunstroke. Quite right! quite right! I’ll put your name down for her—if you wish." "Please!" I said. "Do you know what the job is?" he asked, as if, did I know, I should not be so keen to go. "Not in the least," I answered; "and I don’t mind, so long as I can get abroad and out of the Channel Fleet." He smiled unpleasantly. "It’s a patrolling job, and a lonely one." He said this as though—officially—he ought to warn me, though—individually—he didn’t care a button whether I went or not. That gave me some idea of the job. "The gunner’s gone mad too. We’ll have to send another out, I suppose—confound him!" I could not help smiling at the idea of a mad gunner being left there. He cut my smile short with a sharp: "I’ll put your name down. Good morning!" I backed clumsily out of the door. "What’s the _Bunder Abbas_?" I asked the porter outside. "The _Bunder Habbas_!" he corrected me, repeating the name to give himself time to think. "Something in the Persian Gulf?" I said, to aid his memory. But he didn’t know—none of the other porters knew; so he rang up some mysterious individual on the telephone. "There’s a gen’l’man ’ere wants to know what the _Bunder Habbas_ his. _Habbas—Bunder Habbas_—hout in the Persian Gulf." He had a slight argument about pronunciation and spelling, and then turned to me triumphantly. "She’s a harmed launch, sir, that’s what she his, a-looking out to stop them Arabs a-gun-running," and hastened to answer a bell, pocketing the half-crown I gave him. I hurried away down the corridor, and was so excited that I did not notice my former captain until he tapped me on the shoulder. "I’ve just come round," he said; "will see the Second Sea Lord myself—put in a word for you—thought I might fix it up at once—good luck to you if you get it." "Thank you very much, sir," I said gratefully, and hurried out into Whitehall. "Armed launch! Skipper of an armed launch—Collingwood dead of sunstroke—gunner gone mad," and I grinned to myself and walked along like a bird.