Seventeen or eighteen years might have induced wrath or despair. But twenty-five so belonged to the realm of fantasy that we could do nothing but laugh.

New gudgeon pins might do no harm! And even a new bearing or two. The mechanic was told to go right over her from the beginning again and replace whatever was necessary. Then word reached me that the beaching and salvage had been officially reported to the Receiver of Wreck. She was not insured.

The only way to meet all these fantastic happenings, it seemed to me, was to be even more fantastic, and when a man came out of the blue and asked me if I was selling my house (the rumours of our going to sea must have been spreading!), I said yes. Within an hour of our seriously discussing the price, we were in a solicitor’s office and the house irrevocably sold.

That night the Crew and I thought it might be as well to discuss matters realistically, so we figured out our resources and our hopes, and the following day I went to the chief of the Civil Service Department in which I worked and handed him my resignation. His initial surprise turned to consternation and he spoke to me for a long time in a fatherly way, for he has a humanity that no red tape can strangle. Did I realise that I should not only lose my salary but my pension, towards which I had worked for over twenty years?

For though it is commonly believed that a Civil Servant’s salary is smaller than it should be because of pension rights that accrue, in actual fact a Civil Servant is not deemed to have any legal right to a pension. A pension is a gratuity graciously granted by the Treasury after forty years’ service. Should one elect to retire after thirty-nine years’ service, there would be no pension. There is here the characteristically delightful indefiniteness of British institutions whereby the individual is deemed to have rights—until he actually tries to act upon them—when he finds he hasn’t quite got them, not in his way, in fact not at all.

To make sure of this, I applied for a pension, including in the application certain personal considerations which I need not detail here, and forwarded it to our Departmental Board in London. In one sentence, curtly accepting my resignation and refusing even to lay my case before ‘the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty’s Treasury with the view to the award of a pension’, the small matter was economically disposed of. Which was that!

But I was touched by the friendly consideration of our northern chief, who did his best to point out the madness of my ways and the uncertainties of literature, particularly (as he tactfully if not very hopefully put it) when not of the commercial kind. I trust that when he retires in two or three years he may draw his pension for a period long enough to make up in some measure for the pension I did not get!