* * * * * In the year 1907 John Fanshawe Dawnay-Devenish arrived in a certain Far Eastern port, deck passenger aboard a Dutch tramp out of Batavia. The Volendam mate accompanied him to the gang-plank, shaking a size eleven fist: "Now yous, get, see?... an' iv yous gome bag...!" He ground his horse-teeth and made unpleasant noises in his throat. "Shouldn't dream of risking it, old dear," replied John Fanshawe pleasantly, "not on your venerable coffee-grinder anyhow--not until she gets a navigator." He kissed his nicotined fingers to the exploding Hollander and strolled off down the wharf, whistling "_Nun trink ich Schnapps_." Arrived in the European quarter he smoothed what creases he could out of his sole suit of drills, whitened his soggy topee and frayed canvas shoes with a piece of chalk purloined from a billiard saloon, bluffed a drink out of an inebriated ship's engineer and snatched a free lunch on the strength of it. Thus fortified he visited the British Consul, and by means of somewhat soiled letters proved that he really was a Dawnay-Devenish of the Dorset Dawnay-Devenishes (who should be in no way confused with the Devenish-Dawnays of Chipping-Banbury or the Devenishe d'Awnay-Dawnays of Upper Tooting; the Dorset branch alone possessing the privilege, granted by letters patent of ETHELRED the Unready, of drinking the King's bathwater every Maunday Tuesday of Leap Year). Awed by the name--was there not a Dawnay-Devenish occupying a plump armchair in the Colonial Office at the time?--the Consul parted with five hundred dollars (Mex.). Next time the yield was not so satisfactory, not by two hundred and fifty dollars. At the end of a month, the Consul having proved a broken reed only good for five-dollar touches at considerable intervals, it behoved our hero to seek some fresh source of income. He cast up-river in search of it and disappeared from civilised ken for seven merciful years. In June, 1914, he beat back into port in a fancifully decorated junk, minus one ear and two fingers, but plus a cargo of jingling genuine money. He hired the bridal suite in the leading hotel, got hold of a fleet of motor cars and a host of boon companions, lived on a diet of champagne cocktails and splashed himself about with the carefree abandon of a dancing dervish. By the middle of July he was "on the beach" again and once more began to haunt the Consular office babbling of his influential relations and his "temporary embarrassment."