The inhabitants had prepared a vocal and instrumental concert with the assistance of local artists, and I lit a cigar while they made me repeat for the fiftieth time the adventure of the _Pamir_ and the _Mer-Morte_. It seems the newspapers are not sufficient for the colonists in this country; however, one must be polite and I was doing my level best, all the time keeping my eye on Fourgues, who was talking in a corner with the aide-de-camp of the Naval Brass Hat who was tapping him on the shoulder as though he were telling him a good joke. But I could see that Fourgues was finding it anything but funny. He chewed the end of his cigar without having lit it and kept his hands in his pockets, which is a trick he has to keep himself from gesticulating too much when he is mad. When the aide-de-camp left him, he came straight over to me and said: “Let’s get out of this, or I shall explode!” I should have preferred to stay, because it’s really rather flattering to be treated like a hero; but Fourgues pulled me by the sleeve and we hooked it from the crowd of swells. On the way back to the _Pamir_, he pondered a long time. He would stop and then go on again. I followed and said not a word. Finally he let it all out: “Do you know what he told me, that gold-braided humbug? He said that as I had no confidence in the way the sea was patrolled and was afraid of submarines, they were going to load the _Pamir_ with firewood for the Army of the East. In that way, he said, if a submarine rakes you or torpedoes you--which is improbable--you will float, my dear Fourgues--you will float--because wood is lighter than water. Because wood is lighter than water, because wood is----” I believe Fourgues repeated it fifty-one times, his arms folded, and fairly snorting, he was so wild. When we were on board, he offered me a glass of old brandy from his home to make up for the liqueurs he had made me miss, and a cigar, a Havana from salvage stock, which was not bad at all. And then he didn’t open his mouth again, but started trying to read his fortune cards to see if the _Pamir_ would be sunk or not before the end of the year. All his attempts failed and he wasn’t satisfied at all. Finally he counted the cards and saw that one was missing, the nine of clubs, which he found in the card-box. So he chucked them all into the air and sent me to bed. “Only, my boy,” he said, “as they are giving us two thousand cubic metres of wood to carry to keep us from sinking, do me the favour of pinching a few feet of it. We’ll make some rafts. If they won’t give me wireless or guns, that’s that. I can’t buy them in a bazaar, but if a submarine sends a torpedo amidships, I don’t intend that we shall all go to feed the crabs. Do you twig?”