The flying-fishes could have dispensed with the Bonadventure. During the night, sixteen or so had come aboard, to be seized by the apprentices for breakfast; I saw with surprise how one had been driven and wedged between the steam-pipes. In looks, when they were out of their element, despite their large mild eyes, their long “wings” closed into a sort of spur, being light spines webbed with a filmy skin, despite too the purple-blue glowing from the dark back, they did not seem remarkable. But under the hot and shining morning, where the Bonadventure’s sheering bows alarmed the shoals into flight, they were seen more justly. In ones and twos and crescents and troops they skimmed away, sometimes with their dark backs and white undersides appearing as fishes, sometimes in the sun nothing more than volleys of light-curved silvery darts. They turned in the air at sharp angles without apparently losing their speed, which was such that often one heard the water hiss as they entered it again.

The morning that they first came in numbers, it happened that the salt fish for breakfast was relieved by reminiscences.

“You reminded me of Captain Shank just now, chief.”

“Indeed–why?”“When you ran your hand along the table for the treacle.... He used to think the treacle was put aboard for him. He told the second mate off for eating too much of it–said it wasn’t really for his use. After that we all began to eat the stuff like blazes.”

“You must have had some funny captains in this line.”

“He was. He’d come up sometimes on the bridge and sit down in the wheel and start making noises to himself. He’d sit there with his old chin drooping and say, ’... I knew it.... Haw, haw.... The silly old b—.... Bless my soul....’ for twenty minutes. I’d go away from the wheel for fear of laughing out–and then he’d go somewhere else and do it.”

“Davy Jones got him at the finish, didn’t he?”

“–And a dam’d fine ship too.”

“It was her maiden trip.”

“What happened to her?”

“Ran ashore.”

“Both the boats capsized.”

“She had the most valuable cargo I ever heard of.” A pause.

“Old Shank used to ask for it, though. Once in the Gulf of Mexico he was down below, and the ship was on the course he’d given. (He never used to take any notice of deviation.) The second mate heard breakers, you could hear them quite plain, and not very far off; so he turns the ship a little, and goes down to tell Shank. Old Shank jumped up and stormed and stamped, and rushed up on the bridge roaring, ’Am I to be taught after forty-eight years at sea by a set of b— schoolboys?’ and had her put back to the old course again. And then he walked off. You could hear him snapping his teeth. Presently he stopped. You could see the breakers now, the phosphorescence of them. ’What’s that?’ he whipped out, ’What’s that? My God.’”

“He was one of the white-haired boys in the office, what’s more.”

“His officers saved him.”

“Well, one night he gave me a course, and the last thing he said to me on the bridge was, ‘It’s up to you to keep her there.’ I soon found we were going to fall on land, and I changed the course. And as it was, we passed three-quarters of a mile inside the lightship. I went down to his room and told him. ‘Why, you damn’d fool,’ he started off; he nearly went mad. ‘But I’ve hauled her out,’ I said, ‘I hauled her out.’ And then he yelled, ‘Changed her course without orders, did you?’ and so on.”

“Well, the office made a pet of him. Some people get away with it.”

“After my trip with him, the whole crew refused to sail with him again. And the mate went up to Shields to join a new ship. And when he got there, he found Shank had joined her as skipper!”

We came into the Doldrums, and I felt none too well. “Cold, worse; heat, worse,” became my diary’s keynote. The steward also complained of a persistent cold. Six bottles–six–of his own medicine since we left Barry had not cured him. This notable Cardiff Irishman was always pleased to answer questions about this cold of his, and they became suspiciously frequent. Then his solemn face would grow still more solemn, his voice of office would take on a pleasing melancholy, and he would shake his grey head with dolorous realizations. Nevertheless, his stores being just below my cabin, I grew accustomed to his morning rejuvenate roarings from the threshold at the avarice of the modern sailor. It seemed that at such times he was momentarily free of his illness.

He, nevertheless, at present, added his good word to the general approval of the cook. The bread was universally admired, the pea-soup also. This popularity did not cause any alteration in the melancholy orientalism of its deserver. He looked forth from his galley with the same wooden countenance. He was the thinnest man I think I ever saw.

His macaroni, however, appeared to fall under a general taboo. It was “eschewed.” Bicker, the most assiduous tale-teller, seized it as the chance for describing an old shipmate’s misfortune. It was in Italy: “He was keen on seeing all the sights, so we asked him if he’d seen the macaroni plantation. He said he’d like to. We told him to take the tram out of the town and walk on another mile or so, when he’d see the trees with macaroni growing on them like lace–natural lace. And he went. But the best of it was that he’d sent a card home the day before to say, ‘To-morrow I am going to see the macaroni plantation.’” This, which if true was stranger than fiction, elicited recollections of fool’s-errands in the shipyards (“Run and get a capful of nailholes,” “Ask the storekeeper for a brass hook and a long stay”), which kept us at table until the steward groaned aloud.

I led a lazy life. There was not much reason for being active. My afternoon walk might reach as far as the fo’c’sle, in which lay a kindly miscellany of wire, hemp and manila ropes in coils, and an aroma of paint and tar was never absent. The heat, however, seemed intenser in this house than in the open. Clouds and a little rain soon vanished, and the sea was one long flame towards the sun. White uniforms were in vogue. For me, the half-closed eye, with a flying-fish or two sometimes glittering to awake its notice, in any corner out of the sun, was an occupation. The unfortunate boatswain and his men were chipping paint, clanging and banging in the heat; or I would see him perching on the bulwarks directing some aerial operation, and a sailor seated in the “bosun’s chair” being hauled up the mast. They rested from Saturday noon until Monday morning. Now, more than ever, the lot of the engineers and firemen seemed unacceptable. The blaze, the fierce blue sea, and a flagging breeze became a routine now. The rains of the Doldrums were not much in evidence; a short shower, flying over the clay-coloured water, might come towards evening.

Incidents were few. The sight of the flying-fishes still starting up and skimming, veering and spurting into a safe distance from the intruder, was no longer one for my absorbed watch. I woke up, heavy-headed, one morning to find that Meacock had suspended one of these poor creatures from my roof; there he hung swaying in the little breeze that there was, in parched and doleful manner, and ever and anon turning upon me, who felt much in his condition, his mild and magnificent eye. I threw him out with sympathy. At night the boobies shrieked round the lights on the masts, and appeared at morning flying over the water. Once the sleep of the just was broken by profane language and scuffling in the passage outside–a rat hunt. Boat drill took its turn one afternoon, the siren summoning all hands available to their posts. I was questioned about Colonel Lawrence, at intervals, having seen him in the flesh; and the publisher of his Life was expected to be named by me. I said that I believed he himself would write his Memoirs. But this was not the thing. A book about him by some one who knew how to paint the lily and improve on possibility was what was sought. I think I could design a satisfactory coloured cover.

The morning bucket was a transient happiness. To disturb the “gradual dusky veil” now unescapable, since the bunkers were now chiefly filled with coal-dust, was not too simple in a limited space, with limited hot water. My porthole, looking over those fuming bunkers, had to be shut at all hours. According to everybody, the Bonadventure was “a dirty ship”; although it seemed unlikely that a carrier of coal by thousands of tons should be clean.

She at least began to please the chief with his coveted “Ten knots”; and at dinner on the seventeenth day out, he asked whether anyone had seen a disturbance in the water. The old gentleman was expected. I was sorry that he did not come, after all, with his “baptism,” shave, and medicine (and I believe other rites), when at about four in the afternoon the Bonadventure crossed the Equator; but old customs can scarcely be eternal. The steward’s cough mixture was the only medicine I got that day. Neptuneless, the ship furrowed a sea almost silent, and evening came on tranquilly among woolpacks of warm-kindled colouring.