and the reefs and rocks
amongst whose deadly edges our hideous pilot steered for our lives, were
like beds of flowers blooming under water. Red, purple, yellow, orange,
pale green, dark green, in patches quite milky, and in patches a mass of
all sorts of sea-weed, a gay garden on a white ground, shimmering
through crystal! And down below the crabs crawled about, and the fishes
shot hither and thither; and over the surface of the water, from reef to
reef and island to island, the tern and sea-gulls skimmed and swooped
about.

We anchored that evening, and the pilot went ashore. Lovely as the day
had been, we were (for some mysterious reason) more tired at the end of
it than on days when we had been working three times as hard. This, with
Dennis, invariably led to mischief, and with Alister to intolerance. The
phase was quite familiar to me now, and I knew it was coming on when
they would talk about the pilot. That the pilot was admirably skilful in
his trade, and that he was a most comical-looking specimen of humanity,
were obvious facts. I quite agreed with both Alister and Dennis, but
that, unfortunately, did not make them agree with each other. Not that
Dennis contradicted Alister (he pretended to be afraid to do so), but he
made comments that were highly aggravating. He did not attempt to deny
that it was "a gran' sight to see ony man do his wark weel," or that the
African negro shared with us "our common humanity and our immortal
hopes," but he introduced the quite irrelevant question of whether it
was not a loss to the Presbyterian Ministry that Alister had gone to
sea. He warmly allowed that the pilot probably had his feelings, and
added that even he had his; that the Hat tried them, but that the Feet
were "altogether too many for them intirely." He received the
information that the pilot's feet were "as his Creator made them," in
respectful silence, and a few minutes afterwards asked me if I was aware
of the "curious fact in physiology," that it took a surgical operation
to get a joke through a Scotchman's brain-pan.

I was feeling all-overish and rather cross myself towards evening, and
found Alister's cantankerousness and Dennis O'Moore's chaff almost
equally tiresome. To make matters worse, I perceived that Dennis was now
so on edge, that to catch sight of the black pilot made him really
hysterical, and the distracting thing was, that either because I was
done up, or because such folly is far more contagious