The last of those airless nights passed. The astonished Withers saw
me breakfasting at eight, and at 9.30 I was vacantly examining
rigging-screws with what wits were left me after a sulphurous ride in
the Underground to Aldgate. I laid great stress on the 3/8's, and the
galvanism, and took them on trust, ignorant as to their functions.
For the eleven-shilling oilskins I was referred to a villainous den
in a back street, which the shopman said they always recommended, and
where a dirty and bejewelled Hebrew chaffered with me (beginning at
18s.) over two reeking orange slabs distantly resembling moieties of
the human figure. Their odour made me close prematurely for 14s., and
I hurried back (for I was due there at eleven) to my office with my
two disreputable brown-paper parcels, one of which made itself so
noticeable in the close official air that Carter attentively asked if
I would like to have it sent to my chambers, and K--was inquisitive
to bluntness about it and my movements. But I did not care to
enlighten K--, whose comments I knew would be provokingly envious or
wounding to my pride in some way.

I remembered, later on, the prismatic compass, and wired to the
Minories to have one sent at once, feeling rather relieved that I was
not present there to be cross-examined as to size and make.

The reply was, 'Not stocked; try surveying-instrument maker'--a reply
both puzzling and reassuring, for Davies's request for a compass had
given me more uneasiness than anything, while, to find that what he
wanted turned out to be a surveying-instrument, was a no less
perplexing discovery. That day I made my last _précis_ and handed
over my schedules--Procrustean beds, where unwilling facts were
stretched and tortured--and said good-bye to my temporary chief,
genial and lenient M--, who wished me a jolly holiday with all