He turned his back towards the town, directing his glance in a circle.  The afternoon, although toning to dusk, was kept bright by the scouring of a keen wind, and he noted the guard-ship on his right at its old moorings, the funnels rising like solid yellow columns from within a stockade of masts; thence he looked across the water to the yellowing woods of Mount Edgcumbe, watched for a moment or so the brown sails of the fishing-smacks dancing a chassez-croisez in the Sound, and turned back to face the hill-side.  A fellow-passenger, hustled past him by half a dozen importunate children, extricated a hand to wave, and shouted a cheery ‘See you in town, Drake.’  Drake roused himself with a start and took a step in the same direction; he was confronted by a man in a Norfolk jacket and tweed knickerbockers, who, standing by, had caught the name.

‘Captain Stephen Drake?’

‘Yes.  Why?’

The man mopped a perspiring face.

’I was afraid I had missed you.  I should have gone out on the tender, only I was late.  Can you spare me a moment?  You have time.’

‘Certainly,’ answered Drake, with a look of inquiry.

The man in the knickerbockers led the way along the quay until he came to an angle between an unused derrick and a wall.

‘We shall not be disturbed here,’ he said, and he drew an oblong note-book and a cedar-wood pencil from his pocket.

‘I begin to understand,’ said Drake, with a laugh.

‘You can have no objection?’

There was the suavity of the dentist who holds the forceps behind his back in the tone of the speaker’s voice.

‘On the contrary, a little notoriety will be helpful to me too.’

That word ‘too’ jarred on the reporter, suggesting a flippancy which he felt to be entirely out of place.  The feeling, however, was quickly swallowed up in the satisfaction which he experienced at obtaining so easily a result which had threatened the need of diplomacy.

‘O si sic omnes!’ he exclaimed, and made a note of the quotation upon the top of the open leaf.

‘Surely the quotation is rather hackneyed to begin with?’ suggested Drake with a perfectly serious inquisitiveness.  The reporter looked at him suspiciously.

‘We have to consider our readers,’ he replied with some asperity.

‘By the way, what paper do you represent?’

The reporter hesitated a little.

‘The Evening Meteor,’ he admitted reluctantly, keeping a watchful eye upon his questioner.  He saw the lips join in a hard line, and began to wonder whether, after all, the need for diplomacy had passed.

‘I begin to appreciate the meaning of journalistic enterprise,’ said Drake.  ’Your editor makes a violent attack upon me, and then sends a member of his staff to interview me the moment I set foot in England.’

’You hardly take the correct view, if I may say so.  Our chief when he made the attacks acted under a sense of responsibility, and he thought it only fair that you should have the earliest possible opportunity of making your defence.’