AS I have said, I used to keep a careful diary as long as my life contained nothing eventful to record.
As soon as things began to happen to me I naturally ceased to record them. I was too busy experiencing them.
The diary habit, I think, presupposes a certain placidity, both of mind and circumstance.
The days that followed each other now on board the Astarte were placid enough, but the habit was broken, and I have only a rather confused memory of the long journey.
The wind held from the north and nor’-west, steady and moderate, with bright skies, and the Astarte, with the big square sails set, marched steadily over the waters.
One night, as Edmund and I were on the deck before turning in, a great light flashed on our port bow. There was a slight haze, and we could see the great white beam move round across sea and sky like the hand of a vast clock until it struck the Astarte, and seemed to pause for an instant searching and almost blinding us ere it moved away again on its night-long quest.
“That’s Ushant,” said Edmund. “We’ll soon be in the Bay now.”
For days and nights we were borne along on great following seas that seemed to fling us from one to another. Running before it we felt nothing of the wind that hummed continually in the shrouds, and it was as though we were swept down the current of a mighty river.
Each day Edmund marked our position on the chart, and declared happily that we had beaten all records for a vessel of our size.
Home and all my little anxieties about it vanished from my mind. Even the existence of Jakoub ceased to trouble me.