I must write of him with much delicacy and restraint, for his friendship is too rich a privilege to be imperilled. His sense of humour is dangerously subtle. Cæsar is twenty-three, and I am—well, fully twice his age—yet he bears himself as if he were infinitely my senior in years and experience. And he is right. What in all my toll of wasted years can be set beside those crowded twenty-two months of his, now ended and done with? The fire of his life glowed during those months with the white intensity of an electric arc; in a moment it went black when the current was cut off; he was left groping in the darkness for matches and tallow candles. I dare not sympathise with him openly, though I feel deeply, for he would laugh and call me a silly old buffer—a term which I dread above all others. * * * * * The variegated career of Lieutenant Cæsar fills me with the deepest envy. When the war broke out he was a classical scholar at Oxford, one of the bright spirits of his year. His first in Greats, his prospects of the Ireland, his almost certain Fellowship—he threw them up. The Army had no interest for him, but to the Navy he was bound by links of family association. To the Navy therefore he turned, and prevailed upon a somewhat reluctant Admiralty to gazette him as a Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. “A classical scholar,” argued Whitehall, “is about as much use to us as a ruddy poet. What can this young man do away from his books?” Cæsar rapidly marshalled his poor accomplishments. He could row—no use, we are in the steam and petrol age; he had been a sergeant of O.T.C.—no thanks, try the Royal Naval Division; he could drive a motor-car and was a tolerable engineer. At last some faint impression was made. Did he understand the engines of a motor-boat? It appeared that he did; was, in fact, a mildly enthusiastic member of the Royal Motor Boat Club at Southampton. “Now you’re talking,” said Whitehall. “Why didn’t you say this at once instead of wasting our time over your useless frillings?” The official wheels stirred, and within two or three weeks Cæsar found himself gazetted, and dropped into a fine big motor patrol boat, which the Admiralty had commandeered and turned to the protection of battleships from submarines. At that time we had not a safe harbour anywhere except on the South Coast, where they did not happen to be wanted. For many months Cæsar patrolled by night and day deep cold harbours on the east coast of Scotland, hunting periscopes. It was an arduous but exhilarating service. His immediate chief, a Lieutenant R.N.V.R., was a benevolent American, the late owner of the boat. He had handed her over without payment in return for a lieutenant’s commission. “I was once,” he declared, “a two-striper in Uncle Sam’s Navy. I got too rich for my health, chucked the Service, and have been eating myself out of shape. Take the boat but, for God’s sake, give me the job of running her.