"I remember you, Dawson," said the Commandant kindly, "and am proud to see one of us become so great a man. By the regulations a temporary officer should wear khaki." "No khaki for me, sir, please," implored Dawson. "I should not feel that I belonged to the old Corps in khaki. In my time it was the red parade tunic or the sea-service blue." "Wear any kit you please. This is your day, not mine. I have been ordered to place myself and all Chatham at your disposal, though what your particular game is I have not a notion. I won't ask any questions now, but please come and dine with me in mess when you return, and let me have the whole story." "I will, sir," cried Dawson heartily, "and thank you very much. I have waited at the mess, but never dined with it The old Corps is going with me to do a pretty bit of work, different from anything that it has ever done before." "That would not be easy; we have been in every scrap on land or sea since the year dot." Dawson looked round carefully, and then whispered, "Those eighty Marines of mine are going to cut off a snake's head and stop a bloody revolution. They've done that sort of thing many times at the ends of the earth, but never, I believe, in England." "I wish that I were again a lieutenant," growled the Commandant, "for then I would volunteer to come with you." "You shall choose my second-in-command yourself, sir," conceded Dawson handsomely. Captain Dawson chose his men with discrimination. All those above five years' service were paraded in the barrack square, and Dawson, assisted by the Commandant, to whom his men were as his own children, picked out the eighty lucky ones at leisure. Those who were rejected shrugged their stiff square shoulders and predicted disaster for the expedition. In one small detail Dawson changed his plans. He had intended to take two sergeants only, but in Chatham there were four who had served with him in the ranks, and he could not withstand their pleadings. When all was settled, Dawson went to the Commandant's quarters to be introduced to his second-in-command, and surprised there that officer endeavouring to squeeze his rather middle-aged figure within the buttoned limits of a subaltern's tunic. Since the senior officers of Marines never go to sea, the Commandant's own official uniform was the field-service khaki of a Staff officer. "It is all right," explained he, laughing. "I have become a lieutenant again, and am going north with you. But I wish that your friend the mess-sergeant had a pattern B tunic which would meet round my middle. My young men must be devilish slim nowadays. I have been on to the A.-G. by 'phone. He pretends to be derisory, but I am convinced that really he is desperately jealous. He would love to go too. You seem, my good Dawson, to have stirred up Whitehall and Spring Gardens in a manner most emphatic." "But you can't serve under me, sir," cried Dawson, aghast.