But Jacob moved. He murmured good-night. He went out into the court. He
buttoned his jacket across his chest. He went back to his rooms, and
being the only man who walked at that moment back to his rooms, his
footsteps rang out, his figure loomed large. Back from the Chapel, back
from the Hall, back from the Library, came the sound of his footsteps,
as if the old stone echoed with magisterial authority: "The young man--
the young man--the young man-back to his rooms."




CHAPTER FOUR


What's the use of trying to read Shakespeare, especially in one of those
little thin paper editions whose pages get ruffled, or stuck together
with sea-water? Although the plays of Shakespeare had frequently been
praised, even quoted, and placed higher than the Greek, never since they
started had Jacob managed to read one through. Yet what an opportunity!

For the Scilly Isles had been sighted by Timmy Durrant lying like
mountain-tops almost a-wash in precisely the right place. His
calculations had worked perfectly, and really the sight of him sitting
there, with his hand on the tiller, rosy gilled, with a sprout of beard,
looking sternly at the stars, then at a compass, spelling out quite
correctly his page of the eternal lesson-book, would have moved a woman.
Jacob, of course, was not a woman. The sight of Timmy Durrant was no
sight for him, nothing to set against the sky and worship; far from it.
They had quarrelled. Why the right way to open a tin of beef, with
Shakespeare on board, under conditions of such splendour, should have