at rich reverie, kindred with an essay
which has weathered a hundred years' storms--Charles Lamb's _South-Sea
House_--would write of the sea to-day in his translucent classical
revivings:

"The model of this Russian ship was as memorable as a Greek statue."

And yet, once or twice already, I was indistinctly aware of an antique
look about the ship forward, with her dark beak and all her shrouds and
spars and winches; as I watched her at twilight ploughing a grey sea
and still driving afield towards a horizon of sad vapours, braided with
the sunset's waning red, and, from time to time until darkness settled,
creviced with a primrose gleam, calm, clear and sweet amid its shadows.

VI

A swell running in its long undulations accompanied us until we had
passed Madeira, beyond its horizons. Mugs of tea slid suddenly and
swiftly across the saloon table; complaints were made at every meal,
and the mate hinted, with dreadful implications for my benefit, that a
special memorandum would be presented to Father Neptune, expected on board
shortly. Other hints of the passenger's future trials were made. We
were bound for the Plate, but we might be sent thence to Australia. That
addition, as a possibility, to my holiday perturbed me somewhat; I
envisaged the bailiffs in at home before I got back.

The second mate, Bicker, and the third mate, Mead, invited me to see
their observations and their watches. Bicker, a fine audacious spirit,
dark-haired, dark-eyed, four-or-five-and-twenty years old, had my
company in the afternoon, the days being warm and inviting. The typical
scene below the bridge was of Mead in his singlet rigging up a line,
whereon towels, socks and other properties were soon in the sun; while
mattresses aired over the cargo-hatch tarpaulin. Other toil at this hour,
save that of the engines and the man at the wheel, was not noticeable.
The boatswain and his wrinkled party, who actually did leave a sea-salt
impression in their stocking-turbans and greasy rags and roomy sea-boots,
had left the midships white, and had changed their ground for hose and
scrubber to the neighbourhood of the engines and the galley; but the
afternoons heard them not. An occasional whistle from the bridge would
summon hurrying feet up the ladder; the striking of the bell made Time's
pace perceived. Bicker would sometimes interrupt his large stories to
show me, or to try to show me, remote or tiny curiosities floating past
the shi