ning, and in drizzling rain. There
was not much comment, except upon the rain; the good thing about the
damp cloudy weather was that we were spared the more furious heat, though
the atmosphere had been oily and sultry. With the steamy clouds swarming
about us I could picture a past life hereabouts which might justly have
aroused man's wrath; the sailing days, when to take advantage of whatever
brief breeze might visit the sleepy doldrums, the sailors had to be
constantly running aloft in the drenching mist, and afterwards lay down in
their sweating glory-holes, in their soaked clothes, week after week.

The painting epidemic was not abated. Meacock and Mead camped out while
they made their rooms as white as ivory. Mead looked charming in a round
white cap, which he said a V.A.D. had given him. The steward, with his
experience of every sort of ship under the sun, had developed an artistic
eye: and, perhaps to relieve the whiteness, he decided upon a dado for
the saloon, which hitherto had been from ceiling to floor done in white
enamel. The dado was to be grained, in imitation of an actual wainscot.
He began his solemn task, applying by way of groundwork a brimstone
yellow and other sickly yellows which disturbed us at meals.

Meacock and Phillips varied these days with a discussion of firemen,
whether white or coloured firemen were the more difficult to manage?
Phillips was for his Africans, the excellent selection aboard at present
forming a contrast with his memories of ne'er-do-wells, "doctors,
remittance-men and all sorts," of English birth. Meacock was soon hard at
work describing with amusing mimicry a refractory negro, one of a
number of Somalis who, hearing of labour troubles in England, did their
best to be paid off in Africa. If they had succeeded, the ship would have
been without firemen for her return voyage; so their efforts were
resisted. The particular genius played the hand of "suicidal tendency."
Choosing a time when there were several people about the deck, he
climbed somewhat slowly up the bulwarks and prepared with gestures to
leap over the side. Meacock was a spectator of this piece of acting. The
actor was pulled back with some violence, and "about half-past four we
got the handcuffs on him. We would have had to turn the cook out of his
room aft to lock this fellow up, but I didn't want to do that, so I
fastened him up with the handcuffs round a stanchion in the poop. I
said, 'And the rats will pro