hollow. Her bows pressed continually
onward, like the crest of a wave curving forward to break, but held, as
though enchanted. Sometimes, when her white mass heeled from us under
the pressure of the wind, a red light flashed from her submerged body.
She passed silently, a shining phantom, and at last vanished, as phantoms
do.

7

When the boots, exploded on the saloon floor by the petulant mate, woke
me, it was three of a morning which, for my part, was not in the almanac.
"We're bewitched," the mate said, climbing over me into his cupboard. "I
never thought I should want to see our fleet so much."

"Aye," remarked the chief engineer, who came shuffling in then for some
sleep, "ye'll find that fleet quick, or the stokers are giving orders.
D'ye think a ship is driven by the man at the wheel? No' that I want to
smell Hull."

A kick of the ship overturned the fireshovel, and I woke again to look
with surprise at so small a cause of a terrible sound, and was leaving
the shovel to its fate when it came to life, and began to crawl
stealthily over the floor. It was an imperative duty to rise and
imprison it. When that was forgotten the steward arrived, and roused me
to watch the method of setting a breakfast-table at sea; but I had seen
all that before, and climbed out of the saloon. There are moments in a
life afloat when the kennel and chain of the house-dog appear to have
their merits. The same wash was still racing past outside, and the ship
moving along. The halyards were shaking in the cold. The funnel was
still abruptly rocking. A sailor was painting the starboard stanchions.
A stoker was going forward off duty, in his shirt and trousers,
indifferent to the cruel wind which bulged and quivered his thin rags.
The skipper was on the bridge, his hands in the pockets of his flapping
overcoat, still searching the distance for what was not there. A train
of gulls was weaving about over our wake. A derelict fish-trunk floated
close to us, with a great black-backed gull perched on it. He cocked up
one eye at me when he drew level, crouched for flight, but perhaps saw on
my face the reason why I prefer working tomorrow, and contemptuously
stayed where he was. Then I noticed the skipper looking back at the
bird. He nodded to it, and cried: "There goes a milestone. The fleet is
about somewhere." I danced with caution along the treacherous deck,
where one day that voyage a sea picked up two men and stranded