Now Ivor had stepped across the deck, honestly intending to ask the probable extent of the punishment the Captain would award him for breaking his leave. The suddenness with which the Master-at-Arms turned jarred his jangled nerves; the sour face opposite him was the face of the man who, on the Lower Deck, represented Law, Order, and Justice, things Ivor knew to be perverse and monstrous mockeries. His brain swam with the fumes of the thirty-six hours’ debauch, reawakened by his messmate’s rum. A sudden insane rage closed down on him like a mist, leaving him conscious only of the Master-at-Arms’ face, as in the centre of a partly fogged negative, very distinct, and for an instant imperturbable and maddening.... Yet, as Ivor struck, fair and true between the eyes, he somehow realised that not even now had he got level with Fate. *IV.* A man seated in the foremost cell raised an unshaven face from his hands as the sullen report of a gun reached him through the open scuttle. For a while he speculated dully what it was for; then with curious disinterestedness remembered that it was the court-martial gun, and that he, Ivor Jenkins, was that day to be tried for an offence the extreme penalty for which is Death. They said he’d slogged the Jauntie. For a while he had been, dazed and incredulous, but as the testimony of innumerable witnesses seemed to leave no doubt about the matter, Ivor accepted the intelligence with stoical unconcern. Personally he had no recollection of anything save a great uproar and a sea of excited faces appearing suddenly on all sides out of a red mist.... However, there were the witnesses, and, moreover, there was still an unexplained tenderness about his knuckles. "I pleads guilty," was all the prisoner’s friend (a puzzled and genuinely sympathetic Engineer Lieutenant) could get out of him. "Well, I should have thought you were the last man to have done such a thing in the whole of the ship’s company." "Same ’ere, sir," said Ivor, and fell a-coughing. Subsequent proceedings bewildered and finally bored him. They thrust documents upon him, wherein he found his name coupled to the incomprehensible prefix "For that he," and his misdemeanour described in a style worthy of the ’Police Budget.’ The Chaplain visited him and spoke words of reproof in a kindly and mechanical tone. For the rest, he was left to himself throughout the long days; to cough and cough again, to watch the light grow and fade, to count the stars in the barred circle of the scuttle, and to the recollection of green, slanting eyes vexed by dusty sunlight in their depths.... * * * * * "Have you any objection to any members of this Court?"