rolling miles? Wise of the world,
give answer! We two poor rough toilers sit at your feet and wait upon
your words.

You will see, now, why I want George the Fourth to fall in love. But
with whom is he to fall in love? Who courts the society of a sailor in
a foreign port? Seamen's bethels? Ah, yes! The gentle English ladies
in foreign ports are very sympathetic, very kind, very pleasant, at
the Wednesday evening concert in the rebuilt Genoese palace or the
deserted Neapolitan hotel, or the tin tabernacle amid the white sand
and scrub; but they take good care to keep together at the upper end
of the room, and the audience is railed off from them if possible,
while the merry girls outside, who live shameful lives, and whose
existence is ignored by the missionary, link their arms in George's
and take him to their cosy little boxes high up behind those beautiful
green blinds....

"It's a hell of a life, but we've just got to mak' the best of it,"
says George, and he lounges off to join the talk in the Second's room.

I, too, sigh when he is gone. The best of it! Are these heroes of mine
right after all?

"_Then wherefore sully the entrusted gem
Of high and noble life with thoughts so sick?
Why pierce high-fronted honour to the quick
For nothing but a dream?_"

XIII

It is an hour since George the Fourth left me, and I have been
discussing the matter with the Mate. It is a habit of mine to discuss
matters with the Mate. Here is a man with no theories of life, no
culture, as we understand the term, no touch of modern life at all; a
man of apostolic simplicity, having gone down to the sea in ships
since 1867. You can depend on the practicability of his conclusions,
because he has dealt with facts--since 1867. "For," to quote Carlyle,
"you are in contact with verities, to an unexampled degree, when
you get upon the ocean, with intent to sail on it ... bottomless
destruction raging beneath you and on all hands of you, if you
neglect, for any reason, the methods of keeping _it_ down and making
it float you to your aim!"

"'Tis a hard life, Mr. McAlnwick, an' we've just got to make the best
of it."

"But, Mr. Honna, what is the best of it?"

"This! Give us your glass. One more, an' Nicholas is makin' a
Stonewall Jackson in the panthry. He'll be in in a minute."

In a minute Nicholas arrives with a jug. Nicholas is the Steward, at
sea since '69, a bronzed Greek from Salonika, a believer i