lofty Who Hen Kang. There they had hoped to revel in the gorgeous glades, eating pine-apples and coco-nuts till the services of the sick-bay staff might have to be called into requisition. The prospect, ignoring the consequences of their injudicious appetites, was most alluring; till almost on the eve of the anticipated picnic came this disconcerting message that the French instructor was about to come off to the ship.  

French lessons with the temperature at ninety-eight in the shade! This ordeal was sufficient to crush even the resistance of a punch-ball, let alone a dozen irresponsible midshipmen.  

Such terrors did not exist for Rear-Admiral Maynebrace. He had forgotten all the foreign languages that had been dinned into his head forty years ago, and since the King's Regulations say nothing about flag officers polishing up their French, Maynebrace felt no qualms. As it happened he had an invitation to meet the Governor.  

With due ceremony the Admiral was piped over the side and his motor-pinnace landed him at the Kelang Steps. Somehow there was no conveyance in waiting, not even a rickshaw, so Maynebrace and his flag-lieutenant had to walk.  

On his way through the dockyard the Admiral's attention was directed towards an individual who, even amidst the quaintly-costumed inhabitants of Singapore, looked singularly bizarre.  

The person who attracted the notice of the mighty Maynebrace was tall, inclined to corpulence, and bowed in the shoulders. His sun-dried face was partly concealed by a bristling black moustache and an imperial. His hair, or at least what was visible outside a top hat of wondrous style, was grey.  

A white waistcoat, buttoned almost to bursting strain over his embonpoint and fitting where it touched elsewhere, was cut deeply at the throat, revealing a wide, turned-down collar and an enormous red silk tie. His frock coat was of a late nineteenth century pattern; while his trousers, baggy fore and aft, were at one time "white ducks": now they were saffron colour. Sky-blue socks and brown canvas shoes completed the extraordinary "get-up."  

As this remarkable personage passed the Admiral he hesitated a moment, then removing his "stove-pipe" made a most elaborate bow, a compliment that Maynebrace returned by stiffly bringing his right hand up to the edge of his white-covered peaked cap.  

"Rummy codger," remarked the Admiral.  

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