We came into grey waters, and also into a grey sort of day, overcast and moody. In the evening the wind was strong from the land, and laden with that earthy scent which had so surprised me when I first encountered it; a languid, rich and beguiling perfume, that is tomb-like and unnerving in its suggestion, rising over us. It made out for me the spirit of Tom Hood’s last song, if it was his last song; the one beginning “Farewell, life, my senses swim”; its first verse ending “I smell the Mould above the Rose,” and its second, “I smell the Rose above the Mould.”

Hosea engaged me in discussion of Tennyson and Edwin Arnold. He had been carrying out a lively campaign in his room, where an unwelcome insect had appeared lately; one would have doubted whether any insect, however irrepressible, could have existed in the atmosphere of cigar smoke which he daily thickened in that room of his. But there it was, the bug had been seen, and the whole room was overhauled.

This did not in any way deflect him from his evening pursuit of the abstract. His resolution in following a problem through its own difficult aspects, combined with his control of the Bonadventure, often made me wonder whether he was typical of his fellow-captains. Though, as he said, the roaring-bull style of master mariner was almost extinct, I could not help thinking him singular.

I woke at about four, following an inquiry into some remote subject, from a dream of roaring thunderbolts, out of whose red and whizzing track I was crouching on the lee side of barns and cowsheds. I looked out; there was a loud wind much like that which brought the storm of the other Sunday. I went back to bed a little disappointed. This squall left the makings of a very good breeze blowing and moreover lowered the temperature. The mate complained of his khaki shorts; the second mate had had to bring out another blanket, although it was a sunny morning. The colour of the sea was changing as we went at a striking rate; but prevailing, in those shallower roads turbid with silt or sand was a greenness as of horse-chestnut leaves at their prime. Here and there were dark acres of discoloured water drifting by, contrasting magnificently with the green and its bright white-crested waves. The afternoon brought into sight the dim shapes of coastline with those now less familiar things trees and houses. This advance was welcomed by Mead and the apprentices who lived in his alleyway with spirited but not spiritual songs.

The next day, Hosea was very early at the door of the wireless operator’s cabin, endeavouring to get a reply from the ship’s agents in Monte Video, to questions sent some days before. I do not think he succeeded. There was, however, much buzzing, and I got up to enjoy the time of day. It was still keen outside–“a nipping and an eager air”–the sky being blue and the sun unclouded none the less; over the drab green sea, a seagull or two in their lordly fashions flapping against the wind; to starboard, in a gentle haze, a view of rugged shore. This point was one of mountainous eminences, rolling like larger Downs, with white cliffs or sandy beaches under their light red masses. Other steamers were in our neighbourhood, on the same course out or home, some bright with new paint, others scarred and rusty. Probably they were having tripe in batter for breakfast like ourselves, the prose part of me suggested; and I felt with gratitude that I must have become a new and better man, who could now face and even look forward to a food which had hitherto only interested me as a favourite with C. Lamb.

The continued cold caused me to return to socks; but I delayed the reinstatement of the collar, which I had found no such necessity to human happiness.

It seemed no time at all before we had passed Flores Island, and Monte Video came into view. Bright sandy shores gave place to a parched sort of greenery, as it looked, with large buildings here and there; the town beyond lay terraced on rising ground, its square monotonous buildings hot in the sun, whose fervour the roofs returned in dazzling mirror-glare. The spires and minarets of its more pretentious architecture, something scantily, relieved the greyness of the formal rows, barracks, warehouses and whatever else. Farther on a rough squat cone of barren-looking ground surmounted with another heavy square-cut building caught but scarcely charmed the eye. As the heat was dreary, so at a casual glance through the smouldering air this town of flat roofs and tiers.

Hosea, very smart, with his telescope under his arm, and the second mate beside him, stood on the bridge. Hosea was giving orders, the second mate passing them on to the engineer below on the ringing telegraph, and by megaphone to Meacock, who with the carpenter stood to the anchor forward. Flags were run up announcing the Bonadventure. No answer, in the form of a launch, was vouchsafed so early, although other ships moored round about us were being visited by agents or doctors. The word was given to let go the anchor. “Forty-five on the windlass!” The cumbrous chain unwound and ran down with a cloud of rust. The Bonadventure lay still, even the cocoa-like mud which her propeller had been diffusing in a few moments thinning away.

A gangway was let down over the side. Firemen and engineers came up from the underworld and all–not only the passenger–looked towards a motor launch which now appeared making swiftly towards us. She was tied up a moment later with ropes at the foot of the gangway, and an Englishman emerging from her small beautifully polished saloon, asked in supercilious fashion for the captain. “Come aboard.” “No, I can’t,” Hosea stalked forth with successful dignity, as if unaware that anyone should be calling; then, going back for the ship’s papers, boarded the launch, and we heard that we were going on to Buenos Aires. The papers were quickly seen and restored; letters–general gloom!–were absent, probably with some other agents; and the launch and the young man in his beautiful suit, raiment for a diplomat, departed.

We stayed here at anchor through the afternoon; telescopes sprang up on all sides, even if to unacquainted, non-cubist eyes the view was rather interesting than pleasing. Every half-hour or so, some tramp would leave the harbour. Curiosity in their case was small. Every half-hour, launches puffed along to take back their pilots. The purlieus of Monte Video with their apparent but distant gaiety, even, were soon disregarded.

Bicker and Meacock exchanged humorous history by the engine bunkers, in holiday mood. The steward, who had lost little time in putting out a fishline, leaned over the rail in meditation, not knowing that his misanthropic look was being almost to a line caught by Bicker behind him. Bicker also illustrated in dumb show the action of heaving the poor old man overboard. And, meanwhile, it was hot: no doubt of that! Presently the doleful patience of the steward was rewarded with a foolish-looking fish perhaps three pounds in weight, which was soon cut into sectors and salted.

When towards seven in the evening the anchor was got up and the ship began to move up the River Plate to Buenos Aires, the scene was one to be remembered. Astern lay Monte Video with its lines of lights, and from its hill one great light glowed out momently; ahead lay the buoys of the channel, flashing first red and then white in reassuring alternation along our course; and the moon overhead, pale with a stratum of thin cloud, or lost at times behind echelons of stormier vapours, gave light enough to hint at the look of the shores. At first the captain, the mate and the anchor appeared the three forces acting on the ship, the anchor especially, which was loath to come aboard. At last it came, and the Bonadventure went steadily up the river to the pipe of a rising wind.Hosea, well satisfied, sat down in his room with his “purser” to theorize in our wonted way. The beauty of the commonplace, it was; then we were considering the simplicity of seafaring men. They must be simple, he said, to have done what they had done, including Columbus. Seafaring in sailing ships, he described in the powerful phrase “fighting against your God”; a phrase which I suppose the early mariners in their piety might have applied to steamers.

Those trim skiffs unknown of yore–