It would be difficult to find anywhere an individual who settles down to new surroundings, to luxury, or to privation so quickly, so easily, and with so little discussion as does your British Tommy or Jack Tar. Given a piece of good cake tobacco, a jack knife, and a pipe, he will, so long as he has a few boon companions, soon have the air humming with his yarns or his songs. In fact, both of these estimable beings are right good fellows. Let us descend, therefore, to the men's quarters aboard the great airship. Lined with sleeping bunks on either side, with huge windows which made it possible to provide the best of ventilation, furnished with electric radiators for use in cold latitudes, or when flying at a great altitude, the part assigned to the men was a paradise compared with the quarters they might have expected. And on the evening after the return of Joe and his party with the stout and nervous magnate, Hurst and Hawkins and their cronies were gathered together, smoking like chimneys and chattering like a cageful of monkeys. As might well be expected also, their superiors in the saloon came in for some discussion. "I was a talkin' of 'im," reiterated Hawkins, licking his lips, for he had removed his pipe for that particular reason; "of Mr. Alec Jardine; and I says as 'e's the boy fer a sailor. 'E's like Dicky, so 'e is, and Dicky's the properest sailor as ever I set eyes on." "To which I agrees," exclaimed Private Larkin, Jim Larkin as he was known, no less a person than Major Harvey's soldier servant. "'E's a sailor, 'e is. And p'raps 'ed make a soldier too, fer all I knows. But this here Alec, why, he's got the cut of a soldier, 'e 'as. Don't you deny it." He was almost ferocious as he addressed himself to Hawkins, and we must admit that one unaccustomed to those in the men's quarters might have even been alarmed. For Private Larkin was not blessed with the most attractive of countenances. To begin with, his head was remarkably big, too big for his body, and most of the head seemed to be composed of a pair of fat, bulging cheeks, above which were a couple of equally bulging eyes which had a most disagreeable habit of fixing upon people, staring them out of countenance, and then of squinting. They were at it now. Hawkins blew fiercely into his pipe. "Stow that 'ere squintin', shipmate," he growled. "A man ain't never sure what you're lookin' at. Fust it's 'is face. Then it's 'is boots, then it's--it's what not. Now, you nor I ain't likely to agree on that 'ere youngster. You says he'd make a soldier. I says as 'es fair cut out fer a sailor. Let's leave it at that in case we gets to quarrelling. Let's jaw about this here fat little feller, him as the papers called a sportsman." "Sportsman!" chimed in Hurst in his most scornful tones. "I like that. Sportsmen don't funk when it's a question of flying."