same hour, on several nights; it was remarked,
mostly when the apprentice who first saw it had the wheel. Trying to stop
so strange a bell-ringer, Mead was met by a sharp flap of wind, from a
dead still night, and the glimmering shadow was gone to the air. All
this happened north of the line.

This was Mead's story, but the boy's seemed to support it; and when in the
shadows of the bridge deck, earnestly and without trimming, he told it
me, it seemed very true. I glanced about me occasionally after hearing it.

The wind continued, but the heat was becoming intense. Painting went on
like the wind. The derricks received a terra-cotta coat and their trellis
work looked an amenity, against the general whiteness. The fervour for
redecoration even affected me: was not my hutch to share the common lot?
But, though the walls needed it, the matter was postponed, on account
of the limited accommodation.

The newspaper was to appear again, but its circulation was being cut down.
One copy only would now have to serve the public. It was passed to me,
and my aid with paragraphs requested. I could not regret the reduction
made in the number, even though if that one copy was lost,

We knew not where was that Promethean torch
That could its light relumine.

Bicker, the editor, instead of reviewing his admired literature in his
journal, lengthened breakfast by doing so there _viva voce_. He was all
for Boeotian situations, and, on occasion, his cold re-dishing was
tactfully ended by a relief conversation on religion, the keynote of
which was in the unironically meant remark: "He was darned religious,
but he was a darned good man." I began to know a certain captain, from
talk during the voyage, almost by sight; one who "went in for Sunday
Schools, and put on a crown of glory as soon as he reached Wales," but
once away again, it appears that "he fell."

Another matter for the columns of the _Optimist_ was obtruded upon the
breakfast table. It was a conundrum:

West was the wind, and West steered we,
West was the land. How could that be?

The answer, apart from such evasions as "You were entering port," was that
West was the name of the helmsman. It was understood that the poem went
on in this strain, but the chief's protest came in time.

The cat (last heard of in disgrace), which was under the especial care
of the mess-room boy, was no doubt pleased hereabouts by our reaching
the regions of flying-fishes; but ne