Hillyard’s face changed.  He had the spark of the true wanderer within him.  Even recollections of days long gone could blow it into clear, red flame.  All the long glowing days on the hot stones of the water-side, the glitter of the Mediterranean purple-blue under the sun, the coming of night and the sudden twinkling of lights in the cave-dwellings above Almeria and across the bay from Aguilas, the plunge into the warm sea at midnight, the glorious evenings at water-side cafes when he had half a dozen coppers in his pocket; the good nature of the people!  All these recollections swept back on him in a rush.  The actual hardships, the hunger, the biting winds of January under a steel-cold sky, these things were all forgotten.  He remembered the freedom.

“There weren’t any hours to the day,” he cried, and spoke the creed of all the wanderers in the world.  “I saw the finest bull-fights in the world, and made money out of them by selling dulces and membrilla and almond rock from Alicante.  Oh, the life wasn’t so bad.  But it came to an end.  A shipping agent at Alicante used me as a messenger, and finally, since I knew English and no one else in his office did, turned me into a shipping clerk.”

Hillyard had quite forgotten Commodore Graham, who sat patiently twiddling his thumbs throughout the autobiography, and now came with something of a start to a recognition of where he sat.  He sprang up and reached for his hat.

“So, you see, you might as well ask a Chinaman at Stepney what he knows of England as ask me what I know of Spain.  I am just wasting your time.  But I have to thank you,” and he bowed with a winning pleasantness, “for reviving in me some very happy recollections which were growing dim.”

The Commodore, however, did not stir.

“But it is possible,” he said quietly, “that you do know the very places which interest me—­the people too.”

Hillyard looked at the Commodore.  He put down his hat and resumed his seat.

“For instance?”

“The Columbretes.”

Hillyard laughed.

“Islands sixty miles from Valencia.”

“With a lighthouse,” interrupted Graham.

“And a little tumble-down inn with a vine for an awning.”

“Oh!  I didn’t know there was an inn,” said Graham.  “Already you have told me something.”

“I fished round the Columbretes all one summer,” said Hillyard, with a laugh.

Graham nodded two or three times quickly.

“And the Balearics?”

“I worked on one of Island Line ships between Barcelona and Palma through a winter.”

“There’s a big wireless,” said Commodore Graham.

“At Soller.  On the other side of Mallorca from Palma.  You cross a wonderful pass by the old monastery where Georges Sand and Chopin stayed and quarrelled.”

The literary reminiscence left Commodore Graham unmoved.

“Did you ever go to Iviza?”