his hand, and he remembered dimly that he was to use it as a signal to the magic-lantern man. Some rows of figures appeared on a sheet behind him, these he tapped with the wand and read off mechanically. Then, forgetting to give any signal, he returned to the table and plunged once more into his notes again. This time he knew the red chalk was paper No. II, but he was unable to find it. He thought the audience began to fidget, and he hunted more wildly for the missing paper. They gave him a little cheer when he discovered it on the floor and began to read rapidly from it.

"It is worse than I expected," whispered Jacquetta to Miss Crawley.

Tom was watching his man intently. Generally he was of use at public affairs, and could keep a score, or hold tickets for a sweepstake, or collect subscriptions, or even elucidate order out of divergent Bridge scores. Tonight he felt utterly helpless. He watched Mr. Macpherson without ever taking his eyes off him, and at the back of his mind he had a desperate feeling that in the end he might have to carry Willie out.

"Mind you, that chap knows things," he said to himself over and over again. "He knows, perhaps, more than any other man in this room, and he can't get out a single word of it. He's as faltering as a man in a fog. getting worse!"

And he's

Mr. Macpherson's notes were now scattered broadcast on the table in front of him, some of them being placed over electric wires, and others on the tops of glasses and retorts: one or two had fluttered to the ground unnoticed, and this time the audience did not cheer. It is perhaps only in pantomime that the repetition of a joke is calculated entirely to satisfy the audience. At the Royal Institution it was held to be unnecessary. Mr. Macpherson's hearers, many of whom had congratulated themselves

on having been able to squeeze into the crowded theatre, were beginning to think that the evening might have been better spent. With all the will and all the concentration in the world they were unable to hold on to any meaning which the lecturer was trying to express. His hesitation had made them all nervous. They had seen him drink water three times, and wondered how much oftener he was going to do it. Whispers had gone about that this evening was to be an epoch-making one in the history of science: a great discovery was to have been given to the world. Reporters sharpened their pencils, and put down what they could amidst the hopeless jumble and confusion of facts. The magic-lantern sheet was once more illuminated: Mr. Macpherson clicked his little instrument and it was darkened again without any picture having been thrown upon it.

Miss Crawley had almost ceased to hear anything that was being said from the table. She had heard a whisper behind her by a disappointed scientific man whom she knew by sight, and a lady beside him had asked bluntly, "Why doesn't he get on?"

"We have here," began Mr. Macpherson laboriously, and he lifted first one paper and then another, and finally clicked his instrument for another exposure on the magic lantern screen. To this he had not led up in any way, but on the large sheet behind him were revealed some complicated figures, and he began to go laboriously through them.

Very softly Tom Beamish left Miss Crawley's side. She hardly knew he had quitted her until she saw him creep nimbly as a cat, and as fat men seem able to creep, down the narrow shallow steps that led between seats to the body of the hall. Perhaps some people thought that he was an attendant or an assistant professor. At any rate no one stopped him as, in the darkness of the

building-whose only light was now turned on to the screen where the professor stood-he crept slowly up to the table. He was always a deft man-one who wrote a good hand and tied his necktie well—and he gathered up every paper from the table neatly and silently, gathered up, too, all the papers from the floor, swiftly and neatly put a rubber band about them, and got back to his place again as Mr. Macpherson clicked and the light went on again.

Willie looked absently about him. For a moment he groped amongst the paraphernalia on the table, then laying his hands on the desk in front of him he began to speak. It is possible that he was not aware that his papers had been taken. He always spoke without notes at his class, and he may have imagined that he was at his class now. His students who adored him, and many of whom had obtained places in the upper gallery, signaled to each other not to cheer. No one felt in the least like cheering, being bored and depressed and not seeing the situation as the students saw it.

"This has never been properly understood," began Mr. Macpherson, in the old wilful voice of the Professor of Science who has plunged far further into mysteries than most men are able to follow him.

"He'll become dictatorial yet," said one of his Scottish students, "if only he can conquer the fatal humility of the scientific man."

The humility was not Overcome. Probably there never has been a place where such deep humility is exhibited as in the standing room behind the big table at the Royal Institution of London. William Macpherson seemed almost to feel his way as he went along, ready at any moment to hear that some fresh illumination had thrown his own discoveries into the shade. All the same, it was the voice of authority with which he spoke, and his listeners began

to lean forward eagerly. He never saw them: one idea alone possessed him and that was Scientific Truth, and to it he gave the fire of an inspired prophet. His voice, never very loud, took on a deeper tone; once or twice he emphasized a remark with a gesture. A burst of cheers hardly disturbed him. He gave his conclusions and prophesied near happenings; he had the conviction of discovery upon him, and never once did he hesitate in what he had to say. What he knew was true and part of something magnificent, something splendid and far-reaching and touched with inimitable possibilities. There was a sense abroad as he spoke that the world was rocking together to great music, and this callow-headed professor by the table had caught a note of it. One gas or another, one branch of science or another, what did they matter except that they were part of a tremendous whole? He was right back amongst elemental things, and he handled them reverently but with a master's hand. Figures became imbued with life-part of the life which was the whole-and color, sound, form, all yielded up their quota in the tremendous category.

He

Ten o'clock struck, but neither he nor his audience noted the hour. was like a preacher with some message to deliver, and he was not to be straitened by the hands of a clock!

Tom Beamish was not cheering as other people did. He sat crushing Willie Macpherson's notes together in his big hands. Once, when the lights were on, Miss Crawley turning to look at him thought there were tears in his eyes, and he said "Poor Bill!" in excuse for himself. There were others in the hall who perhaps hardly knew why they cheered, except that there comes a time when even the most insensible person realizes that knowledge only comes with struggles and pains and disappointments such as no one who has not worked knows anything about. Willie

Macpherson soared far away over most

of the heads of his audience before he had finished, but the gray-headed men with the pink faces in the front row were nodding delightedly. They understood. They had handled difficult things themselves. They had given their lives to big things and had felt the awe of them.

There would probably be forty or fifty lines in some little-wanted space in tomorrow's news-sheets about Professor Macpherson's lecture. And very few people would read it. The normal man does not think.

But some of those who were present that night knew that something had been found, some definite thing had been taken from the Unknown which surrounds us and in which we live quite unconsciously and happily, little caring of what the Unknown consists, and they were aware, even if they had never understood it before, that the work of a pioneer is difficult and the untrodden way is long.

"Come, Julia, put on your cloak," said Tom briskly.

The lecture was over, and people began to stream into the library of the building, and to adjourn to partake of coffee in the professor's rooms above.

Tom bustled his ladies into the motor car which had waited a good half hour, and said he was going to walk home and that probably Willie would be detained till late at the Institution. Jacquetta stopped at Dover Street to pick up some friends who were taking her to a party, and Miss Crawley drove home alone. The lights from the streets seemed to race past her in a confused way as her car glided noiselessly over the wide streets. She leaned back in her carriage from a desire that no should see her face, and looked out with unseeing eyes at the crowded street through which she passed.

one

"It isn't the same man," she kept repeating to herself, "it isn't the same man." She felt bewildered and shaken.

There had been a tremendous driving force behind Mr. Macpherson tonightsomething which had got beyond the man himself and discounted altogether the things which were held to be his personality-his shyness, his hesitation, and his diffidence. He had come into his own tonight, and he had come into it triumphantly. He had soared to worlds of which she herself had never dreamed, and had handled big subjects with as great ease as she handled teacups, and almost with as great a sense of familiarity. The words, even, he had used had often been beyond her comprehension, as he explained and demonstrated, his nervous hands meanwhile touching first this thing and then that, as he made experiments and toyed with forces and elemental things. She realized in a way that she had never done before that there is another world quite close to us, of which she and others knew very little, and that in this world this hesitating and timid man was a person of authority. His eagerness had made her long for a wider knowledge, and his rapid eloquence had swept her off her feet. His explanations had become, as he proceeded, lucid and touched with eloquence, and even as he felt his way and acknowledged his inability to find this road or that, his hearers knew that he was marching on, miles ahead of most of them, and with a burning torch to light them on their way.

He might weigh stars and bathe himself in colors and set flames leaping at his words. Others had done this before. In Willie Macpherson there was something inspired tonight, which raised his audience out of themselves and gave to his subject a sense of living. Miss Crawley, leaning back in her motor car, seemed to see him once more with the queer low lights on the table throwing shadows upwards on his face, while his hands touched objects on the table lightly but firmly. She saw his

head thrown back, and heard him explaining laws and giving directions, and she heard once again the roar that went up from the crowded theatre as he gave his own great discovery to the world, and saw the crowds surround him when he had finished.

bewilderment. She wondered which was the man she knew, the one who had taken her hands in the drawing room and kissed them, or the professor with the cheering crowds about him, or Willie Macpherson who played Bridge so badly in her drawing-room.

She wondered, too, which she wanted

S. Macnaughtan.

VI. "..

THE KING'S HIGHWAY!"

To come into harbor for a short time is always good; especially so after a long spell at sea in the equinoctial gale season. And this morning, as we approach our base and have just opened the hatches and scuttles after eleven days "battened down"-eleven days of life (with a very small "") on tinned air and tinned everything-the distant land looks tantalizingly beautiful. Daylight came with a gorgeous dawn, and now the scene is superb, with the near hills in their proper colors of green and brown, and those of the middle distances changing, as the light each moment grows stronger, from gray to wonderful blends of mauve and purple; while capping them all far away stand the distant mountains, sombre in their misty neutral tints.

During the last eleven days we have been on patrol work; have been, in fact, in charge of a certain patrol composed of a sister ship and a nondescript collection of small gunboats. On the surface, not a very appropriate duty for a vessel of our size and importance, but one needs to look a long way below the surface these times. Canada's sons are crossing the ocean just now. Verbum sal sapienti.

Life on such work is apt to be rather dull and monotonous, for it is somewhat difficult to enter into the routine with

quite the same zest as usual, when it is known that the operation on which the ship is engaged is what the authorities call merely a "precautionary measure."

But it is only right to take the rough with the smooth, and we cannot expect to be always doing the same sort of "stunt" as our last one, when we appeared off Heligoland again and openly offered battle to the enemy-but to no effect. It was a wonderful sight that day when, after all hopes of a "scrap" had been abandoned, practically the whole of the striking force of the British Navy assembled in a few square miles of the North Sea, and then, under the supreme command, proceeded to manœuvre and exercise just as in peacetime.

What a landsman's feelings would have been, could he have been present, it is impossible to guess. The ordinary Spithead review, with the ships anchored in seemingly endless lines, is impressive beyond words, but here, with the flower of the Empire's naval might cleared for action, was a scene to baffle adequate description. Would that the Kaiser might have had just one glimpse; perhaps he would have described it after the fashion of impressionable peopletoo beautiful to be seen twice in a lifetime.

So the exploit from which we are returning seemed very drab in compari

son, and of course dirty weather always brings to the fore the gray side of things. Most people's ideas of "dirty weather" consist of a hazy remembrance of the sight (if they were not actual sufferers, in which case they shared the feelings) of a large number of greenfaced individuals being solicitously tended in their infirmity by sympathetic stewards. But if they rack their brains still further they will remember that the general life of the ship went on much as before; that for the unafflicted things were (save for the motion) just as nice and comfortable, meals just as tasty and well served, life just as interesting as in the days when a calm sea and an azure sky were all that the universe had as far as the horizon to offer. That is dirty weather de luxe.

For it is very different with us, where as regards the ship's construction alone comfort has to go by the board in favor of efficiency-as is but right. We are lucky in one way, though, for there are not many of the green-visaged brigade in our midst. Even if there happen from time to time to be a few, they are not allowed to be drones in consequence; however green they may become, still they have to remain workers.

But taken on the whole, our life during a prolonged spell of gales is—rotten. The motion, though all part of the day's work, puts a premium on most recreations. Exercise is impossible, for the upper deck is sea- and spray-swept, and an unnecessary visit to it only invites a wet back. Writing, when half one's thoughts are centered or preventing the inkpot gracefully gliding to the deck, is too tedious to be indulged in more than necessary (but of course we all use fountain pens-vide the advertisements in the press!). Meals are beastly. atmosphere in the living spaces iswell, it just is not! And everything one touches is clammy and sticky. The tout ensemble is inclined, to say the least, to make one a trifle peevish, and

The

of the customary alleviations to the trivial round there remain but twothe one literary (reading), the other rhetorical (discussions, arguments, and yarns).

And that makes it necessary to introduce fully a fresh personage: Sinbad the Sailor he is called in the wardroom; Cargo Bill is his nickname on the lower deck; Lieutenant George Henry Marks, Royal Naval Reserve, is how the Navy List describes him. Sinbad is our great "yarnster."

It would be hard to find anyone more vitriolic in his sentiments against the Germans than Sinbad. Perhaps this is for the reason that before the war he was regularly sailing in and out of Hamburg on the West African trade, and the worthy Hamburgers apparently did not like to have the peace and quietness of the "Bier Halle" invaded by the rowdy Englander. For when Sinbad and his confrères went in for what he styles a "rough house," evidently they made the fat, beer-swilling Germans sit up "some."

But it is when Sinbad talks of his dealings with the West African nigger that he is most amusing.

By now we know his views so wellthat you cannot rule a nigger by kindness. Probably he is right, and he has a long first-hand experience of the western African coast on which to base his opinions, but we always disagree on principle for argument's sake.

"Come across a nigger in your path," he says, "and get out of his way: a look of contempt at once passes over that black man's face as he says to himself, 'Dat man, he 'fraid ob me.' But go straight on, and if he does not move off give him a jolly good kick: 'Ah,' says the nigger, 'dat man my master; he proper white man!'"

But there are different grades of white men in the nigger mind, apparently, and Sinbad illustrated this by a little story.