Malaysia, where they drink more than is good for them. I believe it. He tosses about his obiter dicta as if he were pope of the human intellect. A garrulous pope. Surely the mind of a judge, when exposed, is a dreadful thing!     

       Go where I will, of an evening, there is no peace for me. In the “social hall” some ungoverned young thing is eternally at the piano—“On the Mississippi” and “The Robert E. Lee” and the other musical literature of the turkey trot. I could not possibly sit five minutes there without shrieking. Outside, on deck, it has been raw and chill for a week, with rain penetrating my clothing and misting the lenses of my spectacles and rousing my slumbering rheumatism. And you can not sit long in a stuffy cabin, with the port screwed fast; it is unpleasant enough sleeping there.... So I have huddled myself each night in a corner of the smoking-room. I have played at dominoes. I have played at solitaire with cards. And I loathe games! But anything is a relief that will divert my mind, even for an instant now and then, from thoughts of that loose, throaty voice, and of the truly awful mind that animates it.     

       Few of the passengers ever give me more than a nod; for I am not what is called a “mixer.” Except the Port Watch. He has looked confidingly at me twice over his siphon. But I have not encouraged him, for he has an over-intense eye and the flush of drink is on his cheek. Every day, hours on end, he paces the deck; hence his nickname. He is, like myself, a lonely man; and a little wild—distinctly a little wild.     

       Sir Robert outdid himself this evening. No man could possibly know so much. I have made a list (not complete, of course) of the subjects on which he speaks with dogmatic authority—very positive, very technical, with a glib use of catch phrases, with emphasis always on the peculiarly significant point in the matter. The list runs:     

       Aëronautics; the American temperament as affected by immigration; archery; art; ballistics; dog-breeding; engineering (civil and military); ethnology; folk-lore of all nations; geology; horticulture; inferiority of Latin peoples (particularly the French); laces and embroideries; modern accounting; navigation (which he explained last night in detail to the Chief Officer, a silent person); psychology (all branches); Roman law; rugs (and textiles generally); Weltpolitik; wireless telegraphy;     

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