rated
plum-duff, like a geological specimen, was on the table. There was a
slant of sunshine through a square port window, and it rested on a
decayed suit of oilskins. We sat silent, the shipbreaker having
finished estimating to me, with enthusiasm, what she had of copper. He
was now waiting for his men to return to work. They were going to take
the masts out of her. But I was wondering what I could do to lay that
ghost of my old shipping parish which this craft had conjured in my
mind. And as we both sat there, looking at nothing, we heard, at the
end of the alley-way, a door stealthily latch.

Yeo sprang to his feet at once, staring and listening. He looked at me,
surprised and puzzled. "Of all the----" he began, and stopped. He took
his seat again. "Why, of course," he said. "She's settling. That's what
it is. She's settling. But my men, the fools, will have it there's some
one pottering about this ship."

_May 1909._

XIV. The Sou'-Wester

The trees of the Embankment Gardens were nearly stripped of their
leaves, and were tossing widely. Shutting the eyes, you could think you
heard the sweep of deep-water seas with strident crests. The greater
buildings, like St. Paul's, might have been promontories looming in a
driving murk. The low sky was dark and riven, and was falling headlong.
But I liked the look of it. Here, plainly, was the end of the halcyon
days,--good-bye to the sun,--but I felt, for a reason I could not
remember and did not try to recall, pleased and satisfied with this
gale and its wrack. The clouds seemed curiously familiar. I had seen
them before somewhere; they were reminding me of a lucky but forgotten
occasion of the past. Whatever it was, no doubt it was better than
anything likely to happen today. It was something good in an old world
we have lost. But it was something of that old world, like an old book
which reads the same today; or an old friend surviving, who would help
to make endurable the years to come. I need not try to remember it. I
had got it, whatever it was, and that was all the assurance of its
wealth I wanted. Then from the river came a call, deep, prolonged, and
melancholy....

So that was it! No wonder the low clouds driving, and the wind in the
trees, worked that in my mind. The tide was near full. There was a
steamer moving in the Pool. She was outward bound.

Outward bound! I saw again the black buildings of a Welsh coaling port
at evening, and a vague steamer