Evans was grimly conscious that I was moderately ignorant of technical
details; he kept them well before my eyes all day long.

At odd moments I tried to read Callan's article. It was impossible. It
opened with a description of the squalor of the Greenlander's life, and
contained tawdry passages of local colour.

I knew what was coming. This was the view of the Greenlanders of
pre-Merschian Greenland, elaborated, after the manner of Callan--the
Special Commissioner--so as to bring out the glory and virtue of the
work of regeneration. Then in a gush of superlatives the work itself
would be described. I knew quite well what was coming, and was
temperamentally unable to read more than the first ten lines.

Everything was going wrong. The printers developed one of their sudden
crazes for asking idiotic questions. Their messengers came to Evans,
Evans sent them round the pitch-pine screen to me. "Mr. Jackson wants to
know----"

The fourth of the messengers that I had despatched to Soane returned
with the news that Soane would arrive at half-past nine. I sent out in
search of the strongest coffee that the city afforded. Soane arrived. He
had been ill, he said, very ill. He desired to be fortified with
champagne. I produced the coffee.

Soane was the son of an Irish peer. He had magnificent features--a
little blurred nowadays--and a remainder of the grand manner. His nose
was a marvel of classic workmanship, but the floods of time had reddened
and speckled it--not offensively, but ironically; his hair was turning
grey, his eyes were bloodshot, his heavy moustache rather ragged. He