weighed his anchor and in cockle-shell or galleon or clipper or tramp
set out to ferry over the seas at his own sweet will! This matter was
now put in a more prosaic light by the wireless clerk, who, beckoning
me to a place out of the wind, informed me that at a charge he could,
as soon as the _Bonadventure_ was out of touch of land, transmit any
message I had for home. With this youngster I tried to speak on his own
province, in which I had made some elementary excursions in Flanders
times: but this intrusion upon his mysteries appeared to affect him,
and I learned only that the modern wireless was different.

The doleful tolling of a bell, later on, with its suggestion of the
Inchcape Rock, reached me in my bunk, where, noticing the oscillations
of the ship, I had early withdrawn.

IV

My theory of repentance during the first few days at sea was to be fact.
At the start, I seemed to myself to be perfectly steady. The breeze
blew cold; I thought it even pleasant; and without over-exercise, I took
my last views of English coasts, and watched ships ahead of us blackly
smudging a vaporous sky. I attended dinner, and began to swell with vanity.

By this time the ship was rolling (after all yesterday's kind assurances).
There was no mistake about it: and my vanity and observation were at once
cut short by a surprise attack of sea-sickness. A dismal cowardice
came on me. The wind seemed changing, or perhaps--I inquired but
little--the course of the ship; the effect needed no inquiry. Time and
again, lowering my _morale_ at each arrival, the seas beat in a great
crash upon the ship's sides, and, with the attendant tilt, the scarcely
less welcome seethe of the waters flowing down the decks would follow.
The ship seemed to be provided with cogs, on which she was raised and
lowered with horrible deliberate jolts over a half-circle: then again,
the big wave would jump in with a punch like some giant Fitzsimmons.
My experience was growing. The sunshine died off the porthole; the
breeze was half a gale already, droning and whining louder and louder;
and I felt that my breaking-in was to be thorough enough.

Captain Hosea found time, now and then, to look at his passenger. We
kept up eloquent discourse, though I was handicapped. The origin of
species and the riddle of the universe are topics on which much enlivening
debate may occur, and certainly did then; but the floor of the debating
society should be made steady and