“Will you remember her face?” I asked.

“And why wouldn’t I?  By the stars of God, there’s only one of it in the world,” he answered.

The welcome we got when we were brought to was enough to make a vain man proud, and a modest one ashamed, and perhaps I should have had a little of both feelings if the right woman had been there to share them.

My state-room was on the promenade deck, and I stood at the door of it as long as I dared, raising my cap at the call of my name, but feeling as if I were the loneliest man in the world, God help me!

O’Sullivan had not returned when Treacle came to say that everything was ready, and it was time to go ashore.

I will not say that I was not happy to be home; I will not pretend that the warm-hearted welcome did not touch me; but God knows there was a moment when, for want of a face I did not see, I could have turned about and gone back to the South Pole there and then, without an instant’s hesitation.

When I got ashore I had as much as I could do to stand four-square to the storm of hand-shaking that fell on me.  And perhaps if I had been in better trim I should have found lots of fun in the boyish delight of my shipmates in being back, with old Treacle shaking hands with everybody from the Mayor of the town to the messenger-boys (crying “What cheer, matey?"), while the scientific staff were bringing up their wives to be introduced to me, just as the lower-form fellows used to do with their big sisters at school.

At last O’Sullivan came back with a long face to say he could see nothing of my dear one, and then I braced myself and said: 

“Never mind!  She’ll be waiting for us in London perhaps.”

It took a shocking time to pass through the Customs, but we got off at last in a special train commissioned by our chairman—­half of our company with their wives and a good many reporters having crammed themselves into the big saloon carriage reserved for me.

At the last moment somebody threw a sheaf of evening papers through my window, and as soon as we were well away I took up one of them and tried to read it, but column after column fell blank on my eyes, for my mind was full of other matters.

The talk in the carriage, too, did not interest me in the least.  It was about the big, hustling, resonant world, general elections, the fall of ministries, Acts of Parliament, and the Lord knows what—­things that had looked important when we were in the dumb solitude of Winter Quarters, but seemed to be of no account now when I was hungering for something else.

At last I got a quiet pressman in a corner and questioned him about Ellan.

“That’s my native island, you know—­anything going on there?”

The reporter said yes, there was some commotion about the failure of banks, with the whole island under a cloud, and its biggest financial man gone smash.

“Is his name O’Neill?” I asked.