"Let her out," he muttered, looking at his watch. "We've got four hours to daylight."
And the dawn found him there, still crouching motionless at the tiller, while behind them the mountains of Lesbos rose enormous, the sun rising over Asia. And ahead lay the dark sparkle of an empty sea.
CONCLUSION
"All I can say is," said the elderly lieutenant, and he applied himself assiduously to the trimming of his nails, "you were in luck all through."
"Yes," said Mr. Spokesly. "I suppose you can call it that."
He was not entirely satisfied that this constituted an adequate description of his experiences. Luck is a slippery word. As witness the old lieutenant, intent on his nails, like some red-nosed old animal engaged in furbishing his claws, who proceeded without looking up:
"Why, what else could you call it? You surely didn't want that woman hanging round your neck all your life like a mill-stone, did you? What if she did keep hold of the money? I call it cheap at the price. And suppose you'd brought her. How could you have squared things? I call it lucky."
Mr. Spokesly, however, did not feel that way. He looked round at the green expanse of St. James's Park and up towards the enormous arch which enshrines the dignity and cumbrous power of the Victorian Age, and wondered if the taste of life would ever come back. It was now eighteen months since he had experienced what the elderly lieutenant called uncommon luck, when a sloop of war, hurrying on her regular patrol from Lemnos to Malta had found him and Mr. Cassar in their boat some ten miles east of Psara Island, a black spot on a blue sea, over which there fluttered a patch of white. And on coming cautiously alongside, the commander of that sloop was surprised to discover a Maltee engineer somewhat in disarray through his struggles with his engine, and under a blanket in the bilge forward a sick Englishman.
For Mr. Spokesly had been sick. Looking back at it from this seat in St. James's Park, with his demobilization completed, he saw well enough that the culmination of the spiritual stresses under which he had been existing had been suddenly transmuted into a bodily collapse. As the sun rose over the Ægean, he had given the tiller to Mr. Cassar and lain down without a word. He had not cared whether he ever got up or not. He lay staring up at the extraordinary brilliance of the sky, his throat very sore, his eyes tired and smarting, a feverish tremor in his limbs, refusing food, and even when the engine stopped, giving no sign that he was aware of any change in their fortunes. It had only been when Mr. Cassar informed him of the sloop bearing down upon them that he rose on an elbow and croaked hoarsely: