he Pacific Trades.

Raft was at the wheel and Captain Pound the master was pacing the deck
with Mason the first officer, up and down, pausing now and then for a
glance away to windward, now with an eye aloft at the steadfast canvas,
talking all the time of subjects half a world away.

It was a sociable ship as far as the afterguard was concerned. Pound
being a rough and capable man of the old school with no false dignity
and an open manner of speech. He had been talking of his little house at
Twickenham, of Mrs. Pound and the children, of servants and neighbours
that were unsociable and now he was talking of dreams. He had been
dreaming the night before of Pembroke docks, the port he had started
from as a boy. Pembroke docks was a bad dream for Pound, and he said so.
It always heralded some disaster when it appeared before him in
dreamland.

"I've always dreamt before that I was starting from there," said he,
"but last night I was getting the old _Albatross_ in, and the tow rope
went, and the tug knocked herself to bits, and then the old hooker swung
round and there was Mrs. P. on the quayside in her night attire shouting
to me to put the helm down--under hare sticks in the docks, mind you!"

"Dreams are crazy things," said Mason. "I don't believe there's anything
in them."

"Well, maybe not," said Pound. He glanced at the binnacle card and then
went below.

Nothing is more impressive to the unaccustomed mind than the spars and
canvas of a ship under full sail seen from the deck, nothing more
suggestive of power and the daring of man than the sight of those
leviathan spars and vast sail spaces rising dizzily from main and
foresail in pyramids to where the truck works like a pencil point
writing on the sky. Nothing more arresting than the power of the
steersman. A turn of the wheel in the hands of Raft would set all that
canvas shuddering or thundering, spilling the wind as the water is
spilled from a reservoir, a moment's indecision or slackness might lose
the ship a mile on her course. But Raft steered as he breathed,
automatically, almost unconsciously, almost without effort. He, who
ashore was hopelessly adrift and without guidance, at the helm was all
wisdom, direction and intuition.

The wake of the _Albatross_ lay as if drawn with a ruler.

His trick was nearly up, and when he was relieved he went forward;
pausing at the fo'c'sle head to light a pipe he fell in talk with some
of the hands, leaning with h