y in the air with weak forepaws at Michael's continued ferocious-
acted onslaughts. And this, despite the fact that Scraps out-bullied him
and out-scaled him at least three times, and was as careless and
unwitting of the weight of his legs or shoulders as a baby elephant on a
lawn of daisies. Given his breath back again, Scraps was as ripe as ever
for another frolic, and Michael was just as ripe to meet him. All of
which was splendid training for Michael, keeping him in the tiptop of
physical condition and mental wholesomeness.

CHAPTER XII

So sailed the Ship of Fools--Michael playing with Scraps, respecting
Cocky and by Cocky being bullied and wheedled, singing with Steward and
worshipping him; Daughtry drinking his six quarts of beer each day,
collecting his wages the first of each month, and admiring Charles Stough
Greenleaf as the finest man on board; Kwaque serving and loving his
master and thickening and darkening and creasing his brow with the
growing leprous infiltration; Ah Moy avoiding the Black Papuan as the
very plague, washing himself continuously and boiling his blankets once a
week; Captain Doane doing the navigating and worrying about his
flat-building in San Francisco; Grimshaw resting his ham-hands on his
colossal knees and girding at the pawnbroker to contribute as much to the
adventure as he was contributing from his wheat-ranches; Simon Nishikanta
wiping his sweaty neck with the greasy silk handkerchief and painting
endless water-colours; the mate patiently stealing the ship's latitude
and longitude with his duplicate key; and the Ancient Mariner, solacing
himself with Scotch highballs, smoking fragrant three-for-a-dollar
Havanas that were charged to the adventure, and for ever maundering about
the hell of the longboat, the cross-bearings unnamable, and the treasure
a fathom under the sand.

Came a stretch of ocean that to Daughtry was like all other stretches of
ocean and unidentifiable from them. No land broke the sea-rim. The ship
the centre, the horizon was the invariable and eternal circle of the
world. The magnetic needle in the binnacle was the point on which the
_Mary Turner_ ever pivoted. The sun rose in the undoubted east and set
in the undoubted west, corrected and proved, of course, by declination,
deviation, and variation; and the nightly march of the stars and
constellations proceeded across the sky.

And in this stretch of ocean, lookouts were mastheaded at day-dawn