. Would I come down below and have
something to drink? With pleasure; and so we went. The last time I had
been in that room was when his predecessor, the little man with four
children and a house of his own, had extended hospitality to me. It is
not a pleasant room. A spare bunk full of canvas bolts, cordage, and
other stores, make it untidy; and the Steward's stores are just behind
the after bulkhead, so that it smells like a ship-chandler's
warehouse. Well, we sit down, and the whiskey passes. We light cigars
(magnificent Campania Generals at three farthings each), and then he
ferrets about in his locker. I look at the pictures. Almanack issued
by a rope-maker in Manchester; photo of an Irish terrier, legs wide
part, tail at an angle of forty-five to the rest of him; photo of
Scotch terrier, short legs, fat body, ears like a donkey's; photo of
the officers of s.s. _Timbuctoo_, in full uniform, my friend among
them, taken on the upper deck, bulldog in the foreground. By this time
the Second Officer has exhumed an oblong wooden case containing a worn
violin. Ah! I have his secret. He holds it like a baby, and plucks at
the strings. Then he plays.

Well, he knows, by instinct I imagine, that I care nothing for music,
as music. So when I ask for hymn-tunes, he smiles soberly and
complies. I hear my favourites to my heart's content--"Hark, Hark, My
Soul," "Weary of Earth," "Abide With Me," and "Thou Knowest, Lord."
How glad they must be who believe these words! The red sun was
flooding the room with his last flaming signal as the man played:

"_Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide,
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me!_"

Yes, _mon ami_, all men know of that tremendous loss inherent in all
their labours. And it is, I think, to balance that loss that they have
invented religion.

XXII

It has suddenly struck me that there are many important things to be
found by considering the cheap literature which floods the English and
American publics week by week and month by month. I am afraid that,
when at home in Chelsea, where even the idlers read Swinburne and Lord
de Tabley, I had grown accustomed to the stilted point of view,
calling novelettes "trashy" and beneath an intellectual man's
consideration. Well, since this particular trash forms the staple
brain food in the Mercantile Marine, I must needs look