"What's that, dear? Oh! She wants to know if you'll stand the musician something, seeing you haven't been here before. It's usual."
Mr. Spokesly, without changing his expression, put down a ten-franc note extra.
"You give me a leetle tip?" said the waiter, watching the money going back into his victim's pocket. But he had postponed his own private piracy too long.
"I'll give you a bunt on the nose if you don't get away," muttered Mr. Spokesly. And he added to his friend: "I must go. May not see you again, eh?"
"Very likely not, very likely not. You see, I may be transferred to the Red Sea Patrol."
"Well, so long. Good luck."
He breathed more freely when he got outside. Sixty francs for a quart of carbonated bilge and a racket like nothing on earth.
He was mortified at seeing an Englishman posing as a fool like that, but he was honest enough to admit to himself that he had been that Englishman over and over again.
"Why do we do it?" he wondered as he was borne swiftly over the water by the launch. And the married men, he reflected, were always the worst.
"Where's your ship?" growled the petty officer, sidling along the engine house and taking one of Mr. Spokesly's cigarettes.