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and Nash’s ten minutes later to pick up his parcel of shirts, with the neat array of little eylet holes under the arms and the stand-away sweat-proof collars, he was a normal and collected man again.
    The afternoon was naturally a busy one, far too busy for any misgivings or regrets. Mr. Govern emerged at ten-minute intervals from the glass-domed inner room, his office coat rucked across his shoulders, to make sure that nothing had been forgotten. “I don’t want to find that anything’s been left in the air when I get in on Monday,” he kept saying. “Go over everything just as though you weren’t ever coming back again.” All the same, it was Mr. Govern who glanced at his watch shortly after five and told Dunnett that if there were any private matters that he wanted to attend to he might as well get along now. And so the handshaking began.
    Mr. Fryze was very dignified about it. He left the fireplace, in front of which he was accustomed to stand, and came half-way towards the door. At that point he stopped and Dunnett wondered if that were to be all. But just at that moment a pale, bony hand came out from the starched shirt cuff and offered itself to be shaken. Harold took it with some misgivings : it was an old, withered hand, cold and lifeless. And there was a ceremonial flavour to it all: he made it evident that he did not go around offering his hand to everyone.
    With Mr. Govern it was different, it was the firm hand-shake that exists between men of the world. He handed over the advance expenses, £50 in sterling and £50 in bolivianos, and came over to the door and almost out into the corridor to say good-bye. His last words, “Good luck, and remember to cable before you actually do anything,” were to recur to Harold Dunnett with varying emphasis and significance many times during the coming months.
    He said good-bye to the others in turn. Mr. Plymme was perfunctory and unenthusiastic: he drew his hand away as soon as he had given it. Mr. Verking kept clapping him heavily on the back and reminding him of their last conversation together; he did not actually refer to the revolver, but he made it quite clear where, in his opinion, safety lay. And Mr. Frampton was almost overcome. He regarded it as an honour for the whole department that Mr. Dunnett should have been chosen; in a way it was a tribute to his training. He clasped Harold’s hand several times very firmly as though he were saying good-bye to a favourite son, and appeared almost ready to break down over it all. Dunnett was surprised and rather embarrassed to find there was so much human feeling in an office.
    At ten minutes to six he went down the front steps for the last time; it would be nearly half a year before he would feel their worn, familiar tread under his feet again. Even the porter knew where he was going and called out something after him. Dunnett felt sorry for the men he was leaving: they were all so securely trapped. A fortnight ago he had been one of them, a dreary shiny-trousered clerk. And now the
Isabella Flores
was waiting down the river—his river—to carry him off to the New World and promotion.
    He was the one man among them with a future.
    When he left the office he hadn’t really thought about buying Kay a present; most of all a ring. The impulse had come quite suddenly and he had surrendered to it. He was passing a jeweller’s, and with a happy, reckless feeling he hadgone inside. But he had been awkward and self-conscious about it, as though the whole shop had been looking at him. “I want a ring,” he had said, lamely. “Something for a girl.”
    It was a single sapphire that he bought, a little tablet of blue that glittered with a convincing and fashionable fury. Now that it was his and he could feel the small, hard package in his pocket, he felt very excited. It was the most extravagant thing he had ever done. And there was something symbolic and