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By Root 21408 0

— it was like a new crusade northward into the timberlands. At this time his brother fell over the falls in Uganda; in his dream he saw the tiny figure, like a fly, fall and at once get smoothed out by the yellow claw of water. No: that was later when he was already staring along the sights of a carbine into the very brain-box of a Boer. He tries to remember exactly when it must have been, dropping his polished head into his hands; but the grey rollers intervene, the long effortless tides patrol the barrier between himself and his memory. That is why the phrase came to me: a sea-change for the old pirate: his skull looks palped and sucked down until only the thinnest integument separates his smile from the smile of the hidden skeleton. Observe the brain-case with its heavy indentations: the twigs of bone inside his wax fingers, the rods of tallow which support his quivering shins…. Really, as Clea has remarked, old Scobie is like some little old experimental engine left over from the last century, something as pathetic and friendly as Stephenson’s first Rocket.

He lives in his little slop ing attic like an anchorite. ‘An ancho-rite!’ that is another favourite phrase; he will pop his cheek vul-garly with his finger as he utters it, allowing his rolling eye to insinuate all the feminine indulgences he permits himself in secret. This is for Clea’s benefit, however; in the presence of ‘a perfect lady’ he feels obliged to assume a protective colouring which he sheds the moment she leaves. The truth is somewhat sadder. ‘I’ve

done quite a bit of scout-mastering’ he admits to me sotto voce

‘with the Hackney Troop. That was after I was invalided out. But I had to keep out of England, old boy. The strain was too much for me. Every week I expected to see a headline in the News of the World, “Another youthful victim of scoutmaster’s dirty wish.”

Down in Hackney things didn’t matter so much. My kids were experts in woodcraft. Proper young Etonians I used to call them. The scoutmaster before me got twenty years. It’s enough to make one have Doubts. These things made you think. Somehow I couldn’t settle down in Hackney. Mind you, I’m a bit past every-thing now but I do like to have my peace of mind — just in case. And somehow in England one doesn’t feel free any more. Look at the way they are pulling up clergymen, respected churchmen and so on. I used to lie awake worrying. Finally I came abroad as a private tooter — Tony Mannering, his father was an M.P., wanted an excuse to travel. They said he had to have a tooter. He wanted to go into the Navy. That’s how I fetched up here. I saw at once it was nice and free-and-easy here. Got a job right off with the Vice Squad under Nimrod Pasha. And here I am, dear boy. And no complaints do you see? Looking from east to west over this fertile Delta what do I see? Mile upon mile of angelic little black bottoms.’

The Egyptian Government, with the typical generous quixotry the Levant lavishes on any foreigner who shows a little warmth and friendliness, had offered him a means to live on in Alexandria. It is said that after his appointment to the Vice Squad vice assumed such alarming proportions that it was found necessary to up-grade and transfer him; but he himself always maintained that his trans-fer to the routine C.I.D. branch of the police had been a deserved promotion — and I for my part have never had the courage to tease him on the subject. His work is not onerous. For a couple of hours every morning he works in a ramshackle office in the upper quarter of the town, with the fleas jumping out of the rotten woodwork of his old-fashioned desk. He lunches modestly at the Lutetia and, funds permitting, buys himself an apple and a bottle of brandy for his evening meal there. The long fierce summer afternoons are spent in sleep, in turning over the newspapers which he borrows from a friendly Greek newsvendor. (As he reads the pulse in the top of his skull beats softly.) Ripeness is all.

The furnishing of his little room suggests a highly eclectic spirit; the few objects which adorn the anchorite