18 The Light That Failed selvage. I don’t think there’s enough to protect my royal body from the cold blast as it is. What are you doing with that everlasting sketch-book of yours, Dick?” “Study of our Special Correspondent repairing his wardrobe,” said Dick, gravely, as the other man kicked off a pair of sorely worn riding-breeches and began to fit a square of coarse canvas over the most obvious open space. He grunted disconsolately as the vastness of the void developed itself. “Sugar-bags, indeed! Hi! you pilot man there! lend me all the sails for that whale-boat.” A fez-crowned head bobbed up in the stern-sheets, divided itself into exact halves with one flashing grin, and bobbed down again. The man of the tattered breeches, clad only in a Norfolk jacket and a gray flannel shirt, went on with his clumsy sewing, while Dick chuckled over the sketch. Some twenty whale-boats were nuzzling a sand-bank which was dotted with English soldiery of half'a dozen corps, bathing or washing their clothes. A heap of boat-rollers, commissariat-boxes, sugar-bags, and flourand small-arm-ammunition-cases showed where one of the whale-boats had been compelled to unload hastily; and a regimental carpenter was swearing aloud as he tried, on a wholly insufficient allowance of white lead, to plaster up the sun-parched gaping seams of the boat herself. “First the bloomin’ rudder snaps,” said he to the world in general; “then the mast goes; an’ then, s’ help me, when she can’t do nothin’ else, she opens ’erself out like a cock-eyes Chinese lotus.” “Exactly the case with my breeches, whoever you are, said the tailor, without looking up. “Dick, I wonder when I shall see a decent shop again.” There was no answer, save the incessant angry mur