“Glamis.”
“What is your cargo?”
“Wood—and—flax. Wood—and—flax.”
“Ah well, I can’t attend to you now, you’d bettah drop your ankah.”
At one point, to the great disgust of the skipper, we were stopped by a cruiser and some twenty mail-bags were sent to us. And we lost our steam. “They signalled us six miles away. Why couldn’t they have said they wanted us to slow up for mails, instead of allowing us to come up at full speed, and then giving us ‘Stop immediately’ and making us reverse the engines and go full astern.”
We were a lot of cheerful British grumblers. I was the only passenger on board, and so got to know them all pretty well. Every man was a character in his way, and their remarks filled me constantly with mirth.
Our last three days were stormy in the extreme—regular equinoctial weather. The captain did not sleep, for the waters were, in his opinion, “too submariny.” I put out my lifebelt and wrapped up my manuscripts in a waterproof packet.
“What will happen should we strike a mine or be torpedoed?” I asked of the captain.
“Unless the engines were blown up we should proceed as best we could on the injured ship,” said he. He showed me what were the vital sections of the vessel.
“In any case we should not take to the boats except in the worst extremity,” said he. “For the Lascars have no will to live and they would not row us far. We should throw three dead overboard every morning, they so quickly lose hope.”