However, as George’s vigour was restored by the good food he ate in enormous quantities, he could not forbear to think of Arabella or to talk of her. He spoke quite simply of her to a company of officers, and they roared with laughter and found it was the best story they had ever heard. When the officers were not telling droll stories, they were playing cards or ball games or boasting one against the other or talking about money. George asked what money was, and they showed him some. He was disappointed. He had expected something much more remarkable because they had been so excited about it. They told him he must have money, and Colonel Sir Gerard Schweinfleisch gave him a sovereign. A man in the street asked George to lend him a sovereign and George gave it to him. The officers were highly amused. The adventurers had not been in Cecilia above a week when the town was besieged and presently bombarded. Except that there was a shortage of food and that every day at least thirty persons were killed, there was no change in the life of the place. The officers told droll stories and played cards or ball games or boasted one against the other or talked about money. They ate, drank, slept, and quarrelled, and George found them not so very much unlike himself except that he was serious about his love for Arabella, while they laughed. He asked Siebenhaar what civilisation was. Said the philosopher with a wave of his hand: “They have built a lot of houses.” “But the ships out there are knocking them down.” “They have made railways from one town to another.” “But the black men have torn the railways up.” (For the native tribes had risen.) Said Siebenhaar: “No one can define civilisation. It means doing things.” “Why?” “Thou art the greatest of men,” replied Siebenhaar, and his face beamed approbation and love upon his friend. But to put an unanswerable question to Siebenhaar was to set him off on his theories. “First,” he said, “the stomach must be fed. Two men working together can procure more food than two men working separately. That is as far as we have got. Until the two men trust each other we are not likely to get any further. Until then they will steal each other’s tools, goods, women, and squabble over the proceeds of their work and make the world a hell for the young. When one man steals or murders it is a crime: when forty million men steal, murder, rape, burn, destroy, pillage, sack, oppress, they are making glorious history, a lot of money, and, if they like to call it so, an Empire. But Empire and petty thefts are both occasioned by the lamentable distrust of the two men of our postulate.” “But for Arabella,” said George, “I could wish I had never left my island.”