eir outward manifestations of
impatience were confined for the most part to dissatisfied glances at
the hard cloudless blue sky to windward, as it met their gaze morning
after morning when they came on deck, to shrugs of the shoulders
whenever the subject happened to be mentioned, and to scornful,
sarcastic, or despondent allusions to the proverbial longevity and
obstinacy of easterly winds in general. Except Mr Forester Dale, and
he, I regret to say, made himself a perfect nuisance to everybody on
board by his snappishness and irascibility. The weather was "beastly,"
the ship was "beastly," and his demeanour was such as to suggest to the
other passengers the idea that he considered them also to be "beastly,"
a suggestion which they very promptly resented by sending him to
Coventry. That his metaphorical seclusion in that ancient city was not
of the very strictest kind was entirely due to the fact that his
partner, Rex Fortescue, and the inimitable Brook wore on board. Rex
bore the childish irritability of his senior partner with unparalleled
good-humour; his strongest protest being a mere, "Shut up, there's a
good fellow, and let a man enjoy his book and his weed in peace for once
in a while." Factotum Brook attempted quite a different mode of
soothing his superior. He demonstrated--to his own complete
satisfaction if not to that of anybody else--that it was a physical
impossibility for them to have anything _but_ easterly winds where they
were. But, he asserted, there was a good time coming; they had had
easterly winds ever since they had started; this, by an unalterable law
of nature, had been gradually creating a vacuum away there in the
easterly quarter, which vacuum must now necessarily soon become so
perfect that, by another unalterable law of nature, the wind would come
careering back from the westward with a force sufficient to more than
enable them to make up for all lost time.

To do Captain Staunton justice he left no means untried whereby to wile
away the time and render less oppressive the monotony of the voyage. He
suggested the weekly publication of a newspaper in the saloon, and
energetically promoted and encouraged such sports and pastimes as are
practicable on board ship; _al fresco_ concerts on the poop, impromptu
dances, _tableaux-vivants_, charades, recitations, etcetera, for the
evening; and deck-quoits, follow-my-leader, shooting at bottles,
fishing, etcetera, during the day. By these me