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was no fool. Matters were soon arranged, especially as Tony, dazzled by the sea, felt less inclined than usual for his precocious haggling. The pay was so tiny as to be almost non-existent, but—the Mediterranean and a dozen queer ports he had not seen! Besides, he would be learning to “do something.”

The next few months were full of colour, and pleasant enough. There was always something for Tony to do, and sometimes a great deal. He was glad to sleep at odd moments, but he enjoyed it more than he had enjoyed, for example, the lessons which his adored and ineffectual mother had tried to teach him. The small crew was composed of black-haired and voluble men who looked brutally piratical and were very much the reverse. They liked Tony, and were willing to teach him—anything connected with sailors’ work interested him profoundly. He learnt a good deal, and grew taller, stronger, and browner.

So much for the summer and autumn. Towards the end of November, Agatha Wilcox, having walked down the coast about a mile from Smyrna, suddenly came upon a little boy in a béret, apparently a French sailor-boy, only he was very small for that—perched on a high rock and occupied in staring at the sea. She stopped dead. It was a surprising vision in that place. Tony turned his head and met her astonished gaze.

“Hullo!” said he.

“Why, you speak English?”

“I am English.” Pause. “Why?”

“You funny little boy! Because you don’t look a bit English—and what are you doing here?”

Tony resented intrusions into his private affairs, and that he did not look English was a sore point; so it was curtly that he answered:

“Having a holiday.”