ys George, over his shoulder. "I'm chasing the
night west."

The stars ahead dim no more than if a film of mist had been drawn under
unobserved, but the deep air-boom on our skin changes to a joyful shout.

"The dawn-gust," says Tim. "It'll go on to meet the Sun. Look! Look!
There's the dark being crammed back over our bow! Come to the
after-colloid. I'll show you something."

The engine-room is hot and stuffy; the clerks in the coach are asleep,
and the Slave of the Ray is near to follow them. Tim slides open the aft
colloid and reveals the curve of the world--the ocean's deepest
purple--edged with fuming and intolerable gold. Then the Sun rises and
through the colloid strikes out our lamps. Tim scowls in his face.

"Squirrels in a cage," he mutters. "That's all we are. Squirrels in a
cage! He's going twice as fast as us. Just you wait a few years, my
shining friend and we'll take steps that will amaze you. _We'll_ Joshua
you!"

Yes, that is our dream: to turn all earth into the Vale of Ajalon at our
pleasure. So far, we can drag out the dawn to twice its normal length in
these latitudes. But some day--even on the Equator--we shall hold the
Sun level in his full stride.

Now we look down on a sea thronged with heavy traffic. A big submersible
breaks water suddenly. Another and another follow with a swash and a
suck and a savage bubbling of relieved pressures. The deep-sea
freighters are rising to lung up after the long night, and the
leisurely ocean is all patterned with peacock's eyes of foam.

"We'll lung up, too," says Tim, and when we return to the c. p. George
shuts off, the colloids are opened, and the fresh air sweeps her out.
There is no hurry. The old contracts (they will be revised at the end of
the year) allow twelve hours for a run which any packet can put behind
her in ten. So we breakfast in the arms of an easterly slant which
pushes us along at a languid twenty.

To enjoy life, and tobacco, begin both on a sunny morning half a mile or
so above the dappled Atlantic cloud-belts and after a volt-flurry which
has cleared and tempered your nerves. While we discussed the thickening
traffic with the superiority that comes of having a high level reserved
to ourselves, we heard (and I for the first time) the morning hymn on a
Hospital boat.

She was cloaked by a skein of ravelled fluff beneath us and we caught
the chant before she rose into the sunlight. "_Oh, ye Winds of God_,"
sang the unseen voices: