lchre, which is better than a sooted
one, but as it was a sort of receptacle for coal-dust, which was coal
grease withal, even when port, ventilator and door were all closed, it was
to be feared, _tamen usque recurret_, it would be black again in a week.

We came into a region of ships, tramps like ourselves for the most part,
and the less handsome oil-tankers also. Finisterre lighthouse shone
kindly upon us. With a fair wind, the concourse of shipping dwindling
away somewhat as we went on, we now entered the Bay. Our angles began
to be anything but right, but it was much gentler weather than I had any
reason to need. Fair as it was for us, save for the cinders that fell
in showers amidships, the vessels running in the teeth of the weather
were pitching with vigour. Grey and shrouded the sea met us in hills and
valleys, with white ridges and flecked with foaming veins; as we went
further into the famous corner, the _Bonadventure_ could not but roll and
lurch as though she liked it, and the waves were mountainous; yet out
there we passed a fishing boat making beautiful weather of it.

The second mate, Bicker, could scarcely get any sleep; but not on any
score of weather or discomfort. All his watch below, or most of it, one
might see him standing at his sea chest with pen scratching away at the
forthcoming _Optimist_. So sweet is journalism when wooed as a casual
mistress. Shall I go on? No.

My trouble was not what to write but what to read. Even Young's _Night
Thoughts_, buried in annotations reverent and irreverent, began to grow
familiar beyond all reason. _Pears' Cyclopaedia_, _Brown's Nautical
Almanac_, _The South Indian Ocean Pilot_, _Phrenology for All_, and
other borrowed books, were all at much the same stage. This ship was
not the one recently reported in the newspapers in which the chief read
poetry like a passion, the cook chewed Froude with his morning crust, and
the cabin-boy needed the help of Hegel. I forget if those were the
actual claims, but in any case that was another ship. About now, an
accident happened to my Young. It seemed as if a Poltergeist had visited
the spare cabin port during the night, for awaking I found my settee,
and the _Night Thoughts_ thereon, waterlogged. Perhaps the heavy rain
had been answerable for this, but I could not see how--my port was
closed. Poltergeist had spared my novel, lying next to Young: evidently he
thought that already watery enough. Young, immortal, made a sur