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For the first time in his life, Tony started off with “enough money to mention,” as he told Alison. He took a cheap train to New York, but when there he picked up a ship, the s.s. Matapan, and worked his passage to the Port of London from motives of economy and pleasure. He always loved the sea, he was craving for physical work again, and besides, it was always well to save money when one could. Berths weren’t always so easy to get. . . . But it was much easier to get signed on on the Matapan than it had been on his first venture. Tony was bigger and stronger now, a tall boy for his sixteen years, and he obviously knew what he was about. As he reflected, without bitterness, the less you need work, the easier it is to get it.

At London he left the Matapan and had the luck to be taken on one of the big liners about to sail on her periodical Mediterranean cruise. It was mainly because “they liked the look of him.” He knew this, and that he was lucky to be there at all, up in the aristocracy of merchant ships, although he had some small experience now and a good record. It was when you had to admit that you had never done that kind of work before—(how lame it always sounded!) that billets were hard to get.

But this one was particularly pleasant and comfortable, and it was good to see the Mediterranean again, improbably blue—a queer turquoise shade that Tony had never seen in any other part of the world—and to call at many varied ports, some of which reminded him of far-off, desperate