“Well, you forget all about everything else. At least, I do. Don’t you? It’s only a week since we saw land, but I feel as if I’d never been anywhere but on this old ship. You wake up in the same creaky old cabin, and you have the same tub, at the command of the same steward; and you come up on deck and see the same old sea, and the same faces; nothing else. Then you walk the same deck, and—oh, do the same old things all day! Nothing different.”
“Yes—but it’s all rather jolly,” said Norah. “You like it, don’t you?”
“Oh, awfully! I don’t care how long it goes on. But I’ve got a queer feeling that I’ve never done anything else, and never will again.”
“Well, that’s just stupid!” said Norah, practically. “And if you really felt like it, I think you’d begin to be dull at once.”
“Well, there’s something in that,” said Wally. “Of course, one knows it’s going to end, and that something altogether different is going to happen. Only one can’t picture it. It’s like being told you’ll die some day; you know it’s perfectly true, but you don’t believe it.”
“Wally!” ejaculated Norah, amazed. “What on earth is the matter? Are you sick?”
“Sick?” said Wally, staring. “Not me. I was merely reflecting. Can’t a fellow think?”
“It’s so unusual, in your case,” put in Jim, who had been silently smoking. “You might give us a little warning when you go in for these unaccustomed exercises. All the same, I know what you’re driving at; one gets into a kind of rut on board ship, without being able to see the end of it. If one could imagine how things will be in England, it would be different—but it’s hard to imagine a place you’ve never seen, and under extraordinary conditions!”
“So it is,” Norah said. “The end of this voyage is like a dark curtain across everything. I wish we could see to the other side of it.”
“So do I,” agreed Wally. “But as we can’t, the best thing is not to think of it. What are you going to do to-day, Norah?”