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their liquid depths suggested the Spanish Armada to Mackellar, and he was weaving all sorts of romantic incidents into her imaginary genealogical tree, when, much to his disgust, a couple of engine-room artificers came in and spoiled the scene. Gulping down the tea which the mother had brewed for him, and swallowing an oatcake, he pressed half-a-crown on one of the children, and departed in an abstracted sort of way. When he arrived at the naval pier he fancied a number of officers were looking at him curiously. Fitz-Boodle said he was "tight."

The captain of the Alcibiades regarded him sternly. "What on earth do you mean by masquerading in that cap, Mackellar?" he demanded. "Take it off at once."

Mackellar uncapped, and, much to his amazement, found he was wearing an engine-room artificer's cap. In the uncertain light of the crofter's cottage he had mistaken it for his own.

"The captain wishes to see you in his cabin, sir," the sentry said to Mackellar a short time after he had returned on board.

The captain was in a peevish mood. Bad news had just come from his Southsea home, which he had not seen for many weary months. He stood in front of a long table in his fore-cabin, looking gaunt and worn. The commander was standing on his right.

“Will you explain, Mackellar,” the captain commanded, "your disgraceful conduct of this afternoon?"

Mackellar briefly narrated what had happened.

"I can't believe such a preposterous yarn," the captain said incredulously.

"You have no sound reason for doubting my word," Mackellar retorted passionately. "What's all the row about, anyway?" he asked. "My only offense consisted in wearing a

cap that had an inferior badge on it." "Commander," the captain ordered, "stop his leave."

"Very good, sir," answered the commander, rubbing his hands together briskly.

"Thank you, sir," Mackellar said hotly, as he was leaving the cabin.

"Commander," the captain roared in a voice choking with rage, “send him to his cabin!"

The staff-surgeon came below a few minutes later. "The captain has asked me to inform him, Mackellar," he said, "whether or not you were in an intoxicated condition this afternoon."

"Perhaps it's being exposed to the fumes of rum," Mackellar answered somewhat hysterically. The historic custom of serving out this potent spirit took place every morning outside the ship's office.

O'Brien laughed heartily. "Alcoholism has, as a rule, a more material basis than that, Mackellar,” he said. "However, we shall see in a moment."

The staff-surgeon thereupon proceeded to examine him. His diagnostic nostrils sniffed Mackellar's breath, and he placed a tiny instrument called an alcoholometer on his tongue. He asked him to say, "Around the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran."

Mackellar repeated this peculiar sentence in a clear, unfaltering voice, in which there was not the slightest thickness of speech.

"How about your wine bill?" the staff-surgeon asked.

"I've touched nothing but grapejuice since coming on board," answered Mackellar.

"Good!" O'Brien exclaimed. "You'll be pleased to hear I'll give you a certificate of sobriety any time you wish."

"I'm very much obliged to you, sir," said Mackellar, heaving a sigh of relief.

"Now, my lad," the staff-surgeon

said kindly, lighting a cigarette, "you may have your grievances; so have your messmates theirs. You haven't bent sufficiently to the spirit of the navy. You must bear in mind that, with the exception of the medical officer, all your other messmates came into the service as boys. It's the only thing they have ever known, and what you may regard lightly is a serious matter to them," O'Brien concluded.

"What am I to do, then, in the present instance?" Mackellar asked.

"You'll go to the captain in the morning, and tell him how sorry you are for the whole occurrence. In the meantime I'll smooth the way for you by impressing upon the skipper the fact that you haven't been long in the service," said O'Brien.

"I suppose I'll have to humble myself," Mackellar said dolefully. "It's the only way," said O'Brien. "The man with a stiff neck will have it broken every time in the navy."

Mackellar accordingly obeyed his mentor. The captain of the Alcibiades accepted the proffered olive-branch, and the incident was closed.

Somewhat chastened in spirit, Mackellar was beginning to absorb something of the discipline of the service, when he was called upon to decode the wireless messages which are received in cipher. He had had no training in this intricate work. A diploma in accountancy does not carry with it a knowledge of how to unravel the mysterious language of the fleet. Mackellar made a mistake which concerned ritual rather than fact. Unfortunately Fitz-Boodle was on watch on the bridge at the time, and the signal was taken to him. The error was discovered, and made the subject of caustic comment on the part of Fitz-Boodle.

"It's too bad, sir," the sallowfaced wine steward said to Mackellar,

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"Decoding?" said Mackellar. "That's right, sir. It's shocking. I say give a bloke a chance. supposing I were to complain of his discrepancies," the wine steward said. "The ward room, for instance, ought to close at 11 P.M., and yet he often keeps me and the master-at-arms up till after midnight. It's a bit 'ard, sir," concluded the little wine steward, whose job was all the more distasteful to him because he was a Good Templar, "considering we're turned out of our hammocks between 5 and 6 A.M."

While at sea Fitz-Boodle "ran in" the wine-room steward. In other words, he had him reported to the corporal of the watch. The latter called the master-at-arms, who took the wine steward before the officer on the bridge, and explained his misdemeanor to him. The officer ordered the master-at-arms to put his name in the commander's report.

Such cases are usually heard by the commander at eleven o'clock in the morning. On that occasion the commander deals out rough justice from behind a small table, which is usually placed near the ward-room door. The master-at-arms calls out the names of delinquents, who appear before the commander, cap in hand.

"What's the charge?" the commander inquired in the case of Martin, the wine-room steward, referring to his clean record before him.

Fitz-Boodle fell in before the commander, and saluted.

"Shortly after midnight last night, sir," said Fitz-Boodle, "I had occasion to pass near where this man slings his hammock. I called out 'Gangway,' in order that he might make way. Instead of doing so, he was insolent, and swore at me."

"What have you got to say in an

swer to this serious charge, Martin?" the commander asked the wine-room steward.

"It isn't true, sir. I gave way immediately without saying a single word. Indeed, sir, I was too tired for anything. Mr. Mackellar will confirm what I say," the wine-room steward declared.

Mackellar was called.

"I was on my way for'ard to the decoding-office about the time mentioned," Mackellar began, "and as I approached the vicinity of Martin's hammock I struck my head against a stanchion. I swore in a rather loud Chambers's Journal.

voice. It was not Martin who swore, sir; it was I," Mackellar said, "and I had every reason for doing so," he concluded, rubbing the side of his head ruefully.

"I'm quite sure it was Martin," Fitz-Boodle persisted.

"Inasmuch as there is some doubt about the matter, I'll let you off with a caution this time, Martin," said the commander, marking his decision opposite the wine-steward's name in the "doomsday book." "As for you, Mr. Mackellar," he concluded, "you'll please practise self-restraint in future."

(To be continued.)

ON RETAIL DEALING IN COAL. AN AMATEUR'S EXPERIMENT.

A woman who still clung to the old belief that English folk have more common sense than other folk, was sorely troubled in her mind last winter. For, in that long cruel spell, when everything was frozen, and the East wind cut as a knife, she found scores of little children sitting in rooms where there was not even a live cinder. Their fingers and noses were blue with cold; their whole bodies indeed were on the shiver; while as for their nerves, they were all ajar, and with them of course their tempers.

Now no little child can be cold even for a day without suffering in health, as well as in temper; and many of these mites had been cold for weeks. That the whole set of them should be more or less run down was, therefore, a foregone conclusion; and run down they certainly were. For the most part, indeed, they were just in the state to "take" anything, from measles to consumption. And all because day in day out they were cold; all because they must sit in rooms

without fires, as their mothers could not buy coal.

Yet, curiously enough, there was coal to be bought, and most of their mothers had the money to buy it. That this woman knew: she saw the coal almost every day, huge truck loads, and she could handle the money if she chose. She was puzzled, therefore, as well as troubled. For, let her try as she would, she could not shut her eyes to the fact that no nation, that had any common sense at all, would ever allow, even in war time, its little children, they on whom its whole future depends, to be robbed of their health and strength through going without fires, when there was both coal wherewith to make fires for them, and money at hand where with to pay for the coal. There must be some mistake somewhere, something wrong, she decided; and, being of the sort that cannot just stand and wait, she promptly set to work to try to find out what and where.

First she turned to the mothers of the half-frozen children.

"How is it you cannot buy coal?" she asked them. "You have money enough, I know."

"Buy coal?” one mother after another replied. "How can one buy coal? There's never a coal cart comes this way nowadays. There's not been one for weeks."

"They go up the high road fast enough," one of the women remarked bitterly. "There's folk up there as can buy their tons. But they won't come here. They don't want to be bothered with us as can only buy hundredweights."

"But what about the hawkers? Where are they?" she inquired.

"They ain't agoing to hawk coal at 1s. 10d. a hundredweight. It ain't likely," she was informed derisively. "Mebbe they'd come if they could ask half a crown."

"And I'd be glad if they could," a poor die-away creature added with a sigh. "I'd a sight rather go without me dinner any day, than without a fire.” "But is there no coal at the Railway Depot? Could you not send for it there?"

"There's nobody to send, and it's no good sending, or going either, for that matter," one of the mothers retorted sullenly. "There's not been a bit of coal there this week. I waited about at the depot for hours the other day, and I couldn't get even a handful of dust."

The woman, more puzzled than ever, made her way to the depot in question, to see for herself the state of things there. She found quite a little company assembled, although it was Saturday morning. There were old women, young women, women with babies, boys and girls, little and big, with two or three old men. Some had perambulators with them, go-carts, or barrows; others had pails, baskets, or sacks;

others again, old table-cloths, curtains, or even paper bags. It was a pitiable sight; for it was bitterly cold, drizzling with rain too; and they were all waiting for coal. And there was no coal; and whether coal would or would not come that day, no one was quite sure.

From this depot she went to another some two miles away; and there she saw, as she had often seen before, coal in abundance, a long row of trucks and tons in every truck. There, however, she saw no would-be buyers, none at least but two little girls, and they had no right to be there. No would-be buyers are admitted to this depot, it seems. These two had just slipped in that morning, before it was quite light, one of the coal heavers told her.

"And they won't go away," he added ruefully. "We can't get 'em to go away. They says as they must 'ave coal, and it ain't no good telling 'em as they can't. There they sit all 'uddled up in their pram. They're 'alf froze, poor little beggars. And it ain't as if they 'adn't got the money!"

As he stood there, rubbing his head, he too thought, it was easy to see, that there was something wrong somewhere.

"What are you going to do with all that coal?" the woman asked him. There were several heavily laden carts standing ready to start.

"Oh, we 'ave a lot of big orders in just now," he replied. "Them as 'ave money are laying in a stock now, as there's a chance, as they think, of a coal famine. There's twenty ton going to one 'ouse, and its cellars ain't empty now; and there's nine ton going to another, and there enough went last week for six months."

She did not wait to hear more. To send coal to persons who did not need it, while persons who did need it, and could pay for it, were clamoring for it, struck her as being such an utterly

senseless proceeding that she betook herself to the manager of the Coal Company for an explanation.

"Yes, it does seem rather absurd," the manager admitted. "But what can we do? These people are our regular customers. If they order coal, we must send them coal, if we have it, as much as they choose to order. We can't afford to offend our customers. If there is any limiting to be done, it is the Government who must do it; and they ought to do it. The present state of things is disgraceful; and, what is not fair, the blame of it falls on us. We are attacked at every turn. I would rather be in the trenches any day than in this office. It's never free from women and children clamoring for coal."

"Why should you not take the clamorers on as customers, and supply them with coal?" she asked him. "They would pay you for it just as your other customers do."

That was quite impossible he declared emphatically. His firm sold coal only by the ton, and these people could not buy a ton; they had nowhere where they could house so much, and could not pay for so much all at once. "Most of them buy their coal in driblets," he added, "a hundredweight at a time, a sack at most; and that is a line of business we cannot touch. The delivery is the difficulty. We cannot send our carts wandering round with hundredweights, especially not in war time. It is harder now to get carts and carters than it is to get coal. We would gladly help small buyers if we could; but we cannot. The Government must help them, or better still the local authorities. It's their business, not ours. There's no reason why they should not buy coal wholesale and distribute it-sell and deliver it in small quantities. It would mean a lot of trouble for them, of course; still they could do it if they chose to

take the trouble. But they won't, of that you may be sure."

Of that she was sure, so sure that, as she saw no other means of getting it done, she there and then decided, her heart sinking the while, it must be confessed, to try to do it herself. Nay, more, she set to work that very day to do it in a humble tentative fashion. It seemed to her that a ton of coal might be delivered just as easily and as quickly to ten cottages, or even ten little tenements, as to one large house, or flat, providing the cottages were all close together, the tenements all in the same block. For, if they were close together, as coal is delivered in sacks, no more labor would be entailed by carrying one sack, that is two hundredweights, into ten cottages or tenements, than by carrying ten sacks into one house or flat. She asked the manager if it were not so; and he assured her that it was.

"But where would you find ten cottages all close together?" he inquired. "And even if you did find them, do you suppose that the people who live in them would all wish to buy coal on the same day?"

"I must see to that," she replied. "The point for you is this: If I do find the cottages, and the cottagers are willing all to buy their coal on the same day, will you undertake to sell it to them, a ton at a time; and to deliver it to them, to put it into their coal sheds for them, just as you put it into the coal cellars of your richer customers?"

He hesitated. The delivery was not the only difficulty, it seemed: he had his doubts as to whether folk who buy coal by the sack would pay for it, whether dealing with them, in fact, would not mean bad debts. He was willing to sell the coal to her and deliver it to them; but beyond that he would not go. And to that she agreed gladly, for the delivery was

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