“Nothing in the way of weather, I mean.”
Captain Welfare closed his books in silence and put them back on their shelf.
“Well, so long as you’re satisfied,” he said.
“Oh, I’m perfectly satisfied.”
“And the books is there for your inspection whenever you’ve a mind.”
“Thank you. But I’m afraid you’ll have to look upon me practically as a sleeping partner.”
“Perhaps it will be as well.”
I had lost count of the lapse of time under the strange nepenthe-like influence that a sailing-ship at sea possesses. If I thought at all of Bates and Mrs. Rattray, of Snape or the bishop, of parish, or pigeons, or the Byzantine Empire, it was as of dead friends remembered, and dim interests of the past.
The thought of anxiety on the part of people at home no longer worried me. I had no worries. I had hardly even anticipation. The Astarte had become my planet, bearing all I knew of humanity. The ocean had become space, through which my planet ever moved, and measurements of time had ceased to matter, as though we were already in Eternity. I was content to lean for hours on the bulwark looking down at the stream of bubbles for ever forming on the ship’s side, begotten of the sea by the ship’s motion, falling behind us, spinning for a moment on the surface, and expiring in their myriads, countless and insignificant as human lives.
Then one day the horizon was decorated by the delicate white edges of the still snow-covered Sierras of Spain. I do not know for how many days I watched their delicate aerial loveliness. We came nearer the land, and someone pointed out Trafalgar Bay. But even that one magic word was powerless to move me from the trance that had got possession of my soul.