I led a lazy life. There was not much reason for being active. My afternoon walk might reach as far as the fo’c’sle, in which lay a kindly miscellany of wire, hemp and manila ropes in coils, and an aroma of paint and tar was never absent. The heat, however, seemed intenser in this house than in the open. Clouds and a little rain soon vanished, and the sea was one long flame towards the sun. White uniforms were in vogue. For me, the half-closed eye, with a flying-fish or two sometimes glittering to awake its notice, in any corner out of the sun, was an occupation. The unfortunate boatswain and his men were chipping paint, clanging and banging in the heat; or I would see him perching on the bulwarks directing some aerial operation, and a sailor seated in the “bosun’s chair” being hauled up the mast. They rested from Saturday noon until Monday morning. Now, more than ever, the lot of the engineers and firemen seemed unacceptable. The blaze, the fierce blue sea, and a flagging breeze became a routine now. The rains of the Doldrums were not much in evidence; a short shower, flying over the clay-coloured water, might come towards evening.
Incidents were few. The sight of the flying-fishes still starting up and skimming, veering and spurting into a safe distance from the intruder, was no longer one for my absorbed watch. I woke up, heavy-headed, one morning to find that Meacock had suspended one of these poor creatures from my roof; there he hung swaying in the little breeze that there was, in parched and doleful manner, and ever and anon turning upon me, who felt much in his condition, his mild and magnificent eye. I threw him out with sympathy. At night the boobies shrieked round the lights on the masts, and appeared at morning flying over the water. Once the sleep of the just was broken by profane language and scuffling in the passage outside–a rat hunt. Boat drill took its turn one afternoon, the siren summoning all hands available to their posts. I was questioned about Colonel Lawrence, at intervals, having seen him in the flesh; and the publisher of his Life was expected to be named by me. I said that I believed he himself would write his Memoirs. But this was not the thing. A book about him by some one who knew how to paint the lily and improve on possibility was what was sought. I think I could design a satisfactory coloured cover.
The morning bucket was a transient happiness. To disturb the “gradual dusky veil” now unescapable, since the bunkers were now chiefly filled with coal-dust, was not too simple in a limited space, with limited hot water. My porthole, looking over those fuming bunkers, had to be shut at all hours. According to everybody, the Bonadventure was “a dirty ship”; although it seemed unlikely that a carrier of coal by thousands of tons should be clean.
She at least began to please the chief with his coveted “Ten knots”; and at dinner on the seventeenth day out, he asked whether anyone had seen a disturbance in the water. The old gentleman was expected. I was sorry that he did not come, after all, with his “baptism,” shave, and medicine (and I believe other rites), when at about four in the afternoon the Bonadventure crossed the Equator; but old customs can scarcely be eternal. The steward’s cough mixture was the only medicine I got that day. Neptuneless, the ship furrowed a sea almost silent, and evening came on tranquilly among woolpacks of warm-kindled colouring.
IX
Mary, what news?–
The lands, as I suppose,
Are drenched with sleet or drifted up with snows,
The east wind strips the slates and starves the blood,