ourse in the confusion we
did not hear him shouting. He looked abashed. She said cheerfully, 'I
suppose it does not matter my losing the train now?' 'No, Jenny--you go
below and get warm,' he growled. Then to us: 'A sailor has no business
with a wife--I say. There I was, out of the ship. Well, no harm done
this time. Let's go and look at what that fool of a steamer smashed.'

"It wasn't much, but it delayed us three weeks. At the end of that time,
the captain being engaged with his agents, I carried Mrs. Beard's bag to
the railway-station and put her all comfy into a third-class carriage.
She lowered the window to say, 'You are a good young man. If you see
John--Captain Beard--without his muffler at night, just remind him from
me to keep his throat well wrapped up.' 'Certainly, Mrs. Beard,' I said.
'You are a good young man; I noticed how attentive you are to John--to
Captain--' The train pulled out suddenly; I took my cap off to the old
woman: I never saw her again... Pass the bottle.

"We went to sea next day. When we made that start for Bankok we had been
already three months out of London. We had expected to be a fortnight or
so--at the outside.

"It was January, and the weather was beautiful--the beautiful sunny
winter weather that has more charm than in the summer-time, because it
is unexpected, and crisp, and you know it won't, it can't, last long.
It's like a windfall, like a godsend, like an unexpected piece of luck.

"It lasted all down the North Sea, all down Channel; and it lasted till
we were three hundred miles or so to the westward of the Lizards: then
the wind went round to the sou'west and began to pipe up. In two days it
blew a gale. The _Judea_, hove to, wallowed on the Atlantic like an old
candlebox. It blew day after day: it blew with spite, without interval,
without mercy, without rest. The world was nothing but an immensity of
great foaming waves rushing at us, under a sky low enough to touch
with the hand and dirty like a smoked ceiling. In the stormy space
surrounding us there was as much flying spray as air. Day after day and
night after night there was nothing round the ship but the howl of the
wind, the tumult of the sea, the noise of water pouring over her deck.
There was no rest for her and no rest for us. She tossed, she pitched,
she stood on her head, she sat on her tail, she rolled, she groaned, and
we had to hold on while on deck and cling to our bunks when below, in a
constant effor