, the horizon rose and fell. As
unsteady as that, the day left behind its sunny comfort and brought
clouds and chillier air. I saw the navigators passing on their business,
but I could not emulate their equipoise; I attached myself to a rail
or fixture to watch them, this one coiling a rope, that trailing a
coco-nut mat in the sea--a capital cleanser; to watch the gulls also,
so easily keeping up with the plunging brows, amid all their side-shows of
wheeling and darting flights. Inured, I presently joined in at dinner in
the saloon; ate, and had no serious trouble. A framework, which was
described as a "fiddle," covered the table and checked the more mobile
crockery; but it could not prevent an accident in the steward's own
department, which caused his tone of private feud with Neptune to sound
clearly in the apostrophe, "Break 'em all, then, so we shall have none
for the fine weather." But fine weather was expected now.

V

My prospect brightened with the weather. "Things are looking bad,"
observed the chief engineer with an anxious glance at me. "Why?" I said
more anxiously. "There's three teaspoons missing," he answered, satisfied
at having played his joke. The morning, though the wind blew hard
against us, was sunny and cheerful; the light blue sky flying here and
there the streamer of a shining cloud, the moon going down ahead of us,
the drove of gulls still pleasing themselves in glistening whims of flight
among the waves. Warmer it was, but not yet warm enough for me: and going
out on the deck I often sheltered behind the cabins with fingers as of
old turning waxen for want of blood. I found the ancient sea a new
pleasure in its aspects: I liked to see the wave-tops suddenly become
crystalline with a clear green glow. Such a greenness immediately
associated itself with, and, I even thought, comprehended, the curious
emanation of the old mermaid stories. It is a light wherein the sudden
arising of a supernatural might seem natural.

Aboard, less remote interests revealed themselves. The cook, that lean
aproned figure, walked slowly between the stores and his stronghold
the galley, carrying perhaps a couple of large onions; and the smell
of cooking might rise above that of the Atlantic. The tawny firemen
emptied their buckets of cinders in long series through the iron chute
over the side; or found, by request, work for an oilcan round the funnel.
Everything said, in its manner, "No blind hurry, no delay."