“I’ve been over there,” the young man said calmly.  “There’s my button, and my discharge is in my pocket—­with the names of places on it that you’ll likely never see.  I was in the Princess Pats—­you know what happened to the Pats.  You have hinted I was a slacker, that every man not in uniform is a slacker.  Let me tell you something.  I know your gabby kind.  The country’s full of such as you.  So’s England.  The war’s gone two years and you’re still here, going around telling other men to go to the front.  Go there yourself, and get a taste of it.  When you’ve put in fourteen months in hell like I did, you won’t go around peddling the brand of hot air you’ve shot into me, just now.”

“I didn’t know you were a returned man,” the sergeant said placatingly.  A pointed barb of resentment had crept into the other’s tone as he spoke.

“Well, I am,” the other snapped.  “And I’d advise you to get a new line of talk.  Don’t talk to me, anyway.  Beat it.  I’ve done my bit.”

The sergeant moved on without another word, and the other man likewise went his way, with just the merest suggestion of a limp.  And simultaneously the great doors of the bank swung open.  Thompson looked first after one man then after the other, and passed into the bank with a thoughtful look on his face.

He finished his business there.  Other things occupied his attention until noon.  He lunched.  After that he drove to Coal Harbor where the yachts lie and motor boats find mooring, and having a little time to spare before Tommy’s arrival, walked about the slips looking over the pleasure craft berthed thereat.  Boats appealed to Thompson.  He had taken some pleasant cruises with friends along the coast.  Some day he intended to have a cruising launch.  Tommy had already attained that distinction.  He owned a trim forty-footer, the Alert.  Thompson’s wanderings presently brought him to this packet.

A man sat under the awning over the after deck.  Thompson recognized in him the same individual upon whom the recruiting sergeant’s eloquence had been wasted that morning.  He was in clean overalls, a seaman’s peaked cap on his head.  Thompson had felt an impulse to speak to the man that morning.  If any legitimate excuse had offered he would have done so.  To find the man apparently at home on the boat in which he himself was taking brief passage was a coincidence of which Thompson proceeded to take immediate advantage.  He climbed into the cockpit.  The man looked at him questioningly.

“I’m going across the Inlet with Mr. Ashe,” Thompson explained.  “Are you on the Alert?”

“Engineer, skipper, and bo’sun too,” the man responded whimsically.  “Cook, captain, and the whole damn crew.”

They fell into talk.  The man was intelligent, but there was a queer abstraction sometimes in his manner.  Once the motor of a near-by craft fired with a staccato roar, and he jumped violently.  He looked at Thompson unsmiling.