painted a dull slate-colour, with pure saffron funnel, and boats of
robin's-egg blue, engaging in the Odessa trade till she was invited (and
the invitation could not well be disregarded) to keep away from Black
Sea ports altogether.

She had ridden through many waves of depression. Freights might drop
out of sight, Seamen's Unions throw spanners and nuts at certificated
masters, or stevedores combine till cargo perished on the dock-head;
but the boat of many names came and went, busy, alert, and inconspicuous
always. Her skipper made no complaint of hard times, and port officers
observed that her crew signed and signed again with the regularity of
Atlantic liner boatswains. Her name she changed as occasion called;
her well-paid crew never; and a large percentage of the profits of
her voyages was spent with an open hand on her engine-room. She never
troubled the underwriters, and very seldom stopped to talk with a
signal-station, for her business was urgent and private.

But an end came to her tradings, and she perished in this manner. Deep
peace brooded over Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Australasia, and
Polynesia. The Powers dealt together more or less honestly; banks paid
their depositors to the hour; diamonds of price came safely to the
hands of their owners; Republics rested content with their Dictators;
diplomats found no one whose presence in the least incommoded them;
monarchs lived openly with their lawfully wedded wives. It was as though
the whole earth had put on its best Sunday bib and tucker; and business
was very bad for the Martin Hunt. The great, virtuous calm engulfed her,
slate sides, yellow funnel, and all, but cast up in another hemisphere
the steam whaler Haliotis, black and rusty, with a manure-coloured
funnel, a litter of dingy white boats, and an enormous stove, or
furnace, for boiling blubber on her forward well-deck. There could be no
doubt that her trip was successful, for she lay at several ports not too
well known, and the smoke of her trying-out insulted the beaches.

Anon she departed, at the speed of the average London four-wheeler, and
entered a semi-inland sea, warm, still, and blue, which is, perhaps,
the most strictly preserved water in the world. There she stayed for a
certain time, and the great stars of those mild skies beheld her playing
puss-in-the-corner among islands where whales are never found. All
that while she smelt abominably, and the smell, though fishy, was not
whales