"What's your name?"
"Bounce, sir." He stood up very straight, his piercing eyes resting with steady persistence on Carstairs' face.
The name seemed remarkably appropriate. The whole man was suggestive of indiarubber.
"Been a sailor or soldier, haven't you?"
"Sailor, sir. I done twelve year in the navy."
"Did you?" Carstairs looked at him, thoughtfully. "I've got an uncle in the navy."
"What name did you say, sir?"
"Carstairs."
"Carstairs, I knows him. Commander Carstairs. I was with him in the 'Mediterranean.' Nice bloke he was. You ask him if he remembers Bounce, sir, Algernon Edward Bounce, A.B., light-weight champion boxer of the Mediterranean Fleet. He was there when I won it at Malta."
The man's manner was exceedingly civil and respectful, but there was something about it that kept irresistibly before your mind all the time that he was an independent unit, a man. After twelve years of the sternest discipline in the world this man was as free as the air he breathed, there was no sign of servility. The thought passed through Carstairs' mind, as he looked at him, that this breed, truly, never could be slaves.