"Looking at your watch, eh?" said his friend Perkins, as he reached Peter's chair for about the hundredth time. "Ah! you're fast, I see. Haven't altered your watch yet? They've put the ship's clock back again this morning; nearly half-an-hour it was this time--it was rather less yesterday and the day before: we shall go on gaining so much extra time a day, I suppose, till we get to Gib." "You don't mean to tell me that!" exclaimed Peter, with a half-suppressed groan. If the time had seemed tedious and interminable enough before, how much more so was it now! How infinitely greater would the effort be to fix his thoughts resolutely on Buckle, and ignore the very existence of his distracting neighbours, now that it was to be daily prolonged in this exasperating manner! "You don't seem to appreciate the arrangement?" remarked the Manager, as he allowed himself to drop cautiously--for he was a bulky man--into a hammock-chair beside Tourmalin. "Appreciate it!" said Peter, with strong disgust. "Aren't there enough half-hours, and confoundedly long ones, too, in the day as it is, without having extra ones forced on you like this? And giving it to us in the daytime, too! They might at least put the clock back at night, when it wouldn't so much matter. I do think it's very bad management, I must say!" His companion began a long explanation about the meridian, and sun's time, and ship's time, and Greenwich time, to which Peter gave but a very intermittent attention, so stupefied did he feel at this unwelcome discovery. "It's a curious thing to think of," the other was saying thoughtfully, "that a man, by simply making a voyage like this, should make a clear gain of several hours which he would never have had at all if he had stayed at home!" "I would much rather be without them" said Peter. "I find it quite difficult enough to spend the time as it is; and how on earth I can spend any more, I don't know!" "Why spend it, then?" asked his friend quietly. "What else am I to do with it?" "What else? See here, my friend; when you have an amount of spare cash that you've no immediate use for, you don't let it lie idle at home, do you? You pay it in to your credit at a bank, and let it remain on deposit till you _do_ want it--eh? Well, then, why not treat your spare time as you would your spare cash. Do you see what I mean?" "Not altogether," confessed Peter, considerably puzzled. "It's simple enough nowadays. For instance, the establishment I have the honour to be connected with--the Anglo-Australian Joint Stock Time Bank Limited--confines itself, as you are doubtless aware, almost entirely to that class of business." "Ah!" said Peter, no more enlightened than before, "does it indeed? Would you mind explaining what particular class of business it carries on? I don't quite understand."