he subconscious. They tell us nowadays that
it's the subconscious mind that is really important. The more mental
operations we can turn over to the subconscious realm, the happier we
will be, and the more efficient. Morality, theology, and everything
really worth while, as I understand it, spring from the subconscious."

The Captain's look of cheer would vanish.

"Maybe there's something in that."

"If so," Gissing continued, "then perhaps consciousness is entirely
spurious. It seems to me that before we can get anywhere at all, we've
got to draw the line between the conscious and the subconscious.
What bothers me is, am I conscious of having a subconscious, or not?
Sometimes I think I am, and then again I'm doubtful. But if I'm aware
of my subconscious, then it isn't a genuine subconscious, and the whole
thing's just another delusion--"

The Captain would knit his weather-beaten brow and again retire
anxiously to his quarters, after begging Gissing to be generous and
carry on a while longer. Occasionally, pacing the starboard bridge-deck,
sacred to captains, Gissing would glance through the port and see the
metaphysical commander bent over sheets of foolscap and thickly wreathed
in pipe-smoke.

He himself had fallen into a kind of tranced felicity, in which these
questions no longer had other than an ingenious interest. His heart was
drowned in the engulfing blue. As they made their southing, wind
and weather seemed to fall astern, the sun poured with a more golden
candour. He stood at the wheel in a tranquil reverie, blithely steering
toward some bright belly of cloud that had caught his fancy. Mr. Pointer
shook his head when he glanced surreptitiously at the steering recorder,
a device that noted graphically every movement of the rudder with a view
to promoting economical helmsmanship. Indeed Gissing's course, as logged
on the chart, surprised even himself, so that he forbade the officers
taking their noon observations. When Mr. Pointer said something about
isobars, the staff-captain replied serenely that he did not expect to
find any polar bears in these latitudes.

He had hoped privately for an occasional pirate, and scanned the sea-rim
sharply for suspicious topsails. But the ocean, as he remarked, is
not crowded. They proceeded, day after day, in a solitary wideness of
unblemished colour. The ship, travelling always in the centre of this
infinite disk, seemed strangely identified with his own itinerant
spi