Somers knew the attitude, and was not going to be drawn. He talked freely and pleasantly enough--but never as Jack wanted. He knew well enough what Jack wanted: which was that they should talk together as man to man--as pals, you know, with a little difference. But Somers would never be pals with any man. It wasn’t in his nature. He talked pleasantly and familiarly--fascinating to Victoria, who sat with her brown eyes watching him, while she clung to Jack’s arm on the sofa. When Somers was talking and telling, it was fascinating, and his quick, mobile face changed and seemed full of magic. Perhaps it was difficult to locate any definite _Somers_, any one individual in all this ripple of animation and communication. The man himself seemed lost in the bright aura of his rapid consciousness. This fascinated Victoria: she of course imagined some sort of God in the fiery bush. But Jack was mistrustful. He mistrusted all this bright quickness. If there was an individual inside the brightly-burning bush of consciousness, let him come out, man to man. Even if it was a sort of God in the bush, let him come out, man to man. Otherwise let him be considered a sort of mountebank, a show-man, too clever by half. Somers knew pretty well Jack’s estimation of him. Jack, sitting there smoking his little short pipe, with his lovely wife in her pink georgette frock hanging on to his side, and the watchful look on his face, was the manly man, the consciously manly man. And he had just a bit of contempt for the brilliant little fellow opposite, and he felt just a bit uneasy because the same little fellow laughed at his “manliness,” knowing it didn’t go right through. It takes more than “manliness” to make a man. Somers’ very brilliance had an overtone of contempt in it, for the other man. The women, of course, not demanding any orthodox “manliness,” didn’t mind the knock at Jack’s particular sort. And to them Somers’ chief fascination lay in the fact that he was never “pals.” They were too deeply women to care for the sham of pals. So Jack went home after a whisky and soda with his nose a little bit out of joint. The little man was never going to be pals, that was the first fact to be digested. And he couldn’t be despised as a softy, he was too keen; he just laughed at the other man’s attempt at despising him. Yet Jack did want to get at him, somehow or other. CHAP: III. LARBOARD WATCH AHOY!