4	ANGEL     PAVEMENT
had only resigned from it by escaping in his shirt and
trousers over the side one night, was apt to turn fantastic
in his drink. On two nights out of the three, during
the voyage, he had insisted upon declaiming a long
speech from Goethe's Faust in four different languages,
to show that he was a man of culture. And on the
night before they had entered the Thames Estuary, the
previous night, in fact, he had gone further than that,
for he had laughed a great deal, sung four songs that
Mr. Golspie could not understand at all, told a long
story apparently in Russian, cried a little, and shaken
Mr. Golspie's hand so hard and so often that as he
thought about it all now, over his cigar in the saloon
that seemed so strangely still, Mr. Golspie could almost •
feel the ache again in his hand. Mr. Golspie himself
did not perform any of these antics; he merely mellowed
as the evening waned and the bottles were emptied; and
he was mellowing now, early though it was, for he and
the captain had sat a long time over lunch. Apparently,
however, Mr. Golspie did not consider that he was
sufficiently mellow, for he now helped himself to
another drink.
Then men in bowler hats were by this time on board.
Some of them were interviewing the captain. Others
were interested in Mr. Golspie, for they had to decide
whether he was fit to land in the island of his birth.
His relations with these officials were quite amiable, but
they did not prevent him from expressing his views.
"Regulations! Of course, they're regulations!" he
boomed through the great moustache, mellow but pug-
nacious. "But that doesn't mean they're not a lot o'
damned nonsense. There's more palaver getting into
England now than there was getting into Russia and