in a vice-like grip and hold his attention by main force. He spoke
with a funny little almost-foreign accent, was touching on forty,
and was the youngest man at that age in the length and breadth of
the Canal Zone.

At first sight you would take "Mac" for a mere roustabout, like
most who go a'soldiering. But before long you'd begin to wonder
where he got his rich and fluent vocabulary and his warehouse of
information. Then you'd run across the fact that he had once
finished a course in a middle-western university--and forgotten
it. The schools had left little of their blighting mark upon him,
yet "pump" "Mac" on any subject from rapid-fire guns to grand
opera and you'd get at least a reasonable answer. Though you
wouldn't guess the knowledge was there unless you did pump for it,
for "Mac" was not of the type of those who overwork the first
person pronoun, not because of foolish diffidence but merely
because it rarely occurred to him as a subject of conversation.
Seventeen years in the marine corps--you were sure he was
"jollying" when he first said it--had taken "Mac" to most places
where warships go, from Pekin and "the Islands" to Cape Town and
Buenos Ayres, and given him not merely an acquaintance with the
world but--what is far more of an acquisition--the gift of getting
acquainted in almost any stratum of the world in the briefest
possible space of time.

"Mac" spoke not only his English and Italian but a fluent
"Islands" Spanish; he knew enough French to talk even to
Martiniques, and he could moreover make two distinct sets of
noises that were understood by Chinese and Japanese respectively.
He was a man just reckless enough in all things to be generous and