Names and menaces came fast and furious.
... Flowers there’ll be which you won’t smell,
You swob, you’ll learn a lot in hell.
Had I been called half these things
Some one or I’d be wearing wings.
This effusion, laboriously printed in Capitals so that its effect on the recipient should be the more demoralizing, headed The Answer, and signed in characteristic fashion Nulli Secundus, was to have been handed to its theme in the saloon. Eventually, Mead rejected that as perhaps contrary to tradition, and handed it in at the porthole aforesaid; but its object, the arranging of “a little bout,” was not achieved.
XXIII
A literary epoch began. Bicker, our authentic poet, and not an opportunist like Mead, had been proposing a magazine for some little time past. On a Saturday afternoon, he decided to produce the first number for the Sunday following. The circulation was to be six: there being no aids aboard such as the clay or hectograph, each copy had to be written by hand throughout. Into this labour I, with the editor’s satirical comments upon my profession, was at once pressed. Material in prose and verse was given to me, and filled three foolscap pages in a close handwriting. I copied out these contributions, which scarcely stood the test of a second reading, six times: and was rewarded with a vile headache. I hoped the magazine would succeed, but only once. Bicker, like a born editor, copied out his portion without feeling any the worse, and his appreciation of the fare which he was providing grew with every copy.
The final details, however, delayed the appearance of the Optimist until Sunday afternoon. Bicker said in self-protection that no Sunday paper is available in the provinces before breakfast. When the Optimist was published, there was no question of its being welcomed. It was of the familiar kind, which seems to satisfy enough readers to satisfy its promoters. A fable in a dialect generally considered a skilful parody of the Old Testament, “Things we want to know,” reports of the football season at Buenos Aires, Answers to Correspondents, a poetical libel beginning “It is an ancient Mariner,” and much besides, principally from the editor’s pen, formed the bulk of it. There were columns devoted to Amusements, and Advertisements of the principal business heads aboard. A copy made its way aft to the bosun and his sea-dogs–the gentlemen who were announced in it as the Chain Lightning Gang. Sitting on the poop in Sunday neatness, they gave it a good reception. The bosun himself had been ill, but was better after reading it.