and I go over and over, like a stone. I come down on my knee,
and there are beer-bottles on the rocks. The English and Germans, they
drink beer on the rocks--beautiful Swedish beer, better than
Loewenbrau, hein! Well, they take out of my knee fifty pieces of
glass--you see the marks? And my chest it is smashed bad. They cut off
three rib and look inside; this is where they look into my chest. All
right! They put ribs back and box all up. Oh, I was a wild devil when
I was a kid!"

Such is Johann Nicanor Gustaffsen, with his huge strength, frescoed
chest, and pasty face with the jolly blue eyes. I think the women like
him, and, by the hammer of Thor! he can bend a bar of iron across his
knee!

XX

It is Christmas Day, and I begin it with the clock as usual. George
the Fourth punches me in the ribs, grunts, "Merry new Christmas, Mac,"
and vanishes. There is not a breath of air stirring. Through the
sultry night air the stars burn brightly. A cluster of blurred lights
on the horizon show me where a liner is creeping past us in the
darkness--a ship passing in the night. Clad only in dungaree trousers
and singlet, I go below, on watch. The windsail hangs limp and
breathless, and the thermometer stands at 120 deg. Fah. Christmas Day!

Slowly in the hot air the hours drag on. One, two, three o'clock.
Then, "one bell." No breeze yet. I finish up, score my log on the
black-board--Sea water 90 deg., discharge 116 deg.--and call the
Second. He is awake, panting in the hot oven of his berth. If I wish
him a merry Christmas he will murder me. I slink below again, and have
a sea bath. Even salt water at 90 deg. Fah. is a boon after four hours
in that inferno.

A mug of cocoa--strange how hot cocoa cools one--and I turn in. I hear
the Skipper padding up and down in his sandals on the poop, clad only
in pyjamas. At last, as the stars are paling, I fall asleep.

At seven o'clock I am aroused by the mess-room steward leaning over
me, closing my ports. They are flooding the decks with sea-water to
cool them, and if my ports are open I am also flooded.

Still no relief. There is a deathly quiet in the mess-room as we
assembled to our Christmas breakfast of bacon and eggs, coffee, cocoa,
and marmalade. Imagine such a _menu_ in the tropics! The butter is
liquid, and from each of us, clad in singlets and white ducks,
the sweat streams. The day begins unpropitiously. John Thomas,
the mess-room steward, balancing himself on the