ore delays--more tinkering. The owner came down for a day,
and said she was as right as a little fiddle. Poor old Captain Beard
looked like the ghost of a Geordie skipper--through the worry and
humiliation of it. Remember he was sixty, and it was his first command.
Mahon said it was a foolish business, and would end badly. I loved the
ship more than ever, and wanted awfully to get to Bankok. To Bankok!
Magic name, blessed name. Mesopotamia wasn't a patch on it. Remember I
was twenty, and it was my first second mate's billet, and the East was
waiting for me.

"We went out and anchored in the outer roads with a fresh crew--the
third. She leaked worse than ever. It was as if those confounded
shipwrights had actually made a hole in her. This time we did not even
go outside. The crew simply refused to man the windlass.

"They towed us back to the inner harbour, and we became a fixture, a
feature, an institution of the place. People pointed us out to visitors
as 'That 'ere bark that's going to Bankok--has been here six months--put
back three times.' On holidays the small boys pulling about in boats
would hail, '_Judea_, ahoy!' and if a head showed above the rail
shouted, 'Where you bound to?--Bankok?' and jeered. We were only three
on board. The poor old skipper mooned in the cabin. Mahon undertook
the cooking, and unexpectedly developed all a Frenchman's genius for
preparing nice little messes. I looked languidly after the rigging. We
became citizens of Falmouth. Every shopkeeper knew us. At the barber's
or tobacconist's they asked familiarly, 'Do you think you will ever get
to Bankok?' Meantime the owner, the underwriters, and the charterers
squabbled amongst themselves in London, and our pay went on.... Pass
the bottle.

"It was horrid. Morally it was worse than pumping for life. It seemed as
though we had been forgotten by the world, belonged to nobody, would get
nowhere; it seemed that, as if bewitched, we would have to live for ever
and ever in that inner harbour, a derision and a by-word to generations
of long-shore loafers and dishonest boatmen. I obtained three months'
pay and a five days' leave, and made a rush for London. It took me a day
to get there and pretty well another to come back--but three months'
pay went all the same. I don't know what I did with it. I went to a
music-hall, I believe, lunched, dined, and supped in a swell place in
Regent Street, and was back to time, with nothing but a complete set of