The misfortune was that his ill-moulded youth and his favourite reading had left him naked of morality. He was not in this respect much worse than the people whom he misled into war or than those whom he subjugated. He had only more concentrated will and energy and a keener appreciation of the means that would best satisfy his appetite for power. The complete suppression of the desire through thousands of years of his peasant ancestry made its ultimate manifestation on finding freedom of action all the more tremendous. It grew with growing self-confidence; and confidence grew with success. His bearing wholly altered during the wanderings of the _Daydream_ before I had abandoned her. He had grown erect and threw his great chest out and held his large head up till he overawed his persecutors. Seeing him only in a sitting position or looking only at his bust one would have guessed him to be of lofty stature. Yet like his father and mother he never rose above five feet in height; and as his face filled up with good fare and the knowledge of his own powers it grew handsome and calm, seldom showing the fierce brute slumbering underneath. His wonderful self-control and reserve held him silent in circumstances where speech or action would have revealed his innate folly or animality, and he learned the power of such reserve, allied with sudden and decisive action, over the wills of others; he saw that it throws an air of mystery round the individuality. So he refrained from action till he had complete control of the circumstances and had gathered such resources into his hands as would astonish his rivals or enemies; silently, unscrupulously, he got to know the cards they held in their hands, whilst he concealed his own under seeming inaction; then with a sudden and unnerving move he threw all his forces upon them and demoralised them. I had watched the method in the little intrigues and conspiracies on shipboard, and I knew when I observed him through the idrovamolan that he was the same Jock Drew, only more developed by his astonishing successes. He had found his opportunity when the _Daydream_ finally anchored in the chief harbour of Broolyi. There was much need of government after the plague; the monarch and his family had fled and finally perished; and the two rivals for the position were almost equally matched. There was prospect of a long civil war. The wiser and stronger counsellors set up a republic, but this was only a feeble stop-gap. The flames of civil war burst out in spite of it.