We crossed the line at six in the morning, and in drizzling rain. There was not much comment, except upon the rain; the good thing about the damp cloudy weather was that we were spared the more furious heat, though the atmosphere had been oily and sultry. With the steamy clouds swarming about us I could picture a past life hereabouts which might justly have aroused man’s wrath; the sailing days, when to take advantage of whatever brief breeze might visit the sleepy doldrums, the sailors had to be constantly running aloft in the drenching mist, and afterwards lay down in their sweating glory-holes, in their soaked clothes, week after week.

The painting epidemic was not abated. Meacock and Mead camped out while they made their rooms as white as ivory. Mead looked charming in a round white cap, which he said a V.A.D. had given him. The steward, with his experience of every sort of ship under the sun, had developed an artistic eye: and, perhaps to relieve the whiteness, he decided upon a dado for the saloon, which hitherto had been from ceiling to floor done in white enamel. The dado was to be grained, in imitation of an actual wainscot. He began his solemn task, applying by way of groundwork a brimstone yellow and other sickly yellows which disturbed us at meals.

Meacock and Phillips varied these days with a discussion of firemen, whether white or coloured firemen were the more difficult to manage? Phillips was for his Africans, the excellent selection aboard at present forming a contrast with his memories of ne’er-do-wells, “doctors, remittance-men and all sorts,” of English birth. Meacock was soon hard at work describing with amusing mimicry a refractory negro, one of a number of Somalis who, hearing of labour troubles in England, did their best to be paid off in Africa. If they had succeeded, the ship would have been without firemen for her return voyage; so their efforts were resisted. The particular genius played the hand of “suicidal tendency.” Choosing a time when there were several people about the deck, he climbed somewhat slowly up the bulwarks and prepared with gestures to leap over the side. Meacock was a spectator of this piece of acting. The actor was pulled back with some violence, and “about half-past four we got the handcuffs on him. We would have had to turn the cook out of his room aft to lock this fellow up, but I didn’t want to do that, so I fastened him up with the handcuffs round a stanchion in the poop. I said, ‘And the rats will probably eat you before the morning’; and I really did expect to find him eaten by the morning; for there were some monsters in the poop.

“Next day, he began saying ‘Sick.’–‘Sick? Where are you sick?’–‘Sick all over.’ I had enough of this after a bit, and went and got the strongest black draught I’ve yet known. He didn’t want to drink it, and I said to him, ‘Now drink this up as quick as you can.’ And so he did. After that, whenever I looked in at the poop, this fellow would start waving his arms and hollering out. In fact, he was mad; every time I got near him, he was mad. That black draught was not popular, I think. When we got to Cuxhaven, the medical authority put this man through a careful examination. ‘He’s no more mad,’ he said, ‘than you or I. He’s got a slight touch of rheumatics in the arm. But,’ he said, ‘when you get to Hamburg, you can satisfy yourself by sending this man to the asylum.’ We did. Two days–and he was back.”

Meacock’s laconic phrases were accompanied with grimaces which told the tale to perfection.

The atmosphere had grown so literary that Mead now took pencil and paper with him to his day watch as a matter of course. The pages of the Optimist were beginning to look somewhat laboured. He determined to infuse a new vein. So a series of vividly coloured hoaxes came into existence, the first of which, a harem story, was too much in its full bloom for the editor’s acceptance. Not surprised, and not dejected, Mead offered “The Pirate,” and it duly appeared. These fictions ended, as did their successors, with a disillusionment:

It was about the period of hoaxes–April 1 arrived. Bicker appeared at my cabin, where I was reading. “Meacock wants to see you.” I went. Bicker triumphed, and went his way convinced that he could beat the intellectual at his own game, as the Optimist had already shown him he could.

A brighter sky and cooler wind came on. We were soon expected at Saint Vincent. The new moon and calmer waters brought one evening of strange watery beauty. Towards his setting the sun had hidden himself in black clouds, whence he threw a silver light over sea spaces where sea and sky were meeting: he sank, and left the heavens like green havens, with these clouds slowly sailing through their utmost peace. The change soon came; the head wind brought pale grey turbulent days, with the ship playing at rocking-horses; over the head wind and rousing sea, the healthy sun at length dawned on the Sunday of our arrival at Saint Vincent. Sunday, without the voice of church bells or the sight of people going to worship, seemed no Sunday despite its idle hours: at least, the mood sometimes took me so.

The third engineer was acquiring no mean name as a cutter of hair, and I felt the cold after I had been to his open-air chair, near the engine-room staircase. While I sat to him, a characteristic of the mess-room boy was borne on the air from the chief’s room. It was his habit of replying hastily to any observation, “Yes, yes,” and this time the chief’s voice was heard: “Curse you, John, for a blasted nuisance.” “Yes, yes, sir.”

As the sun was stooping under the sea once more, land grew into sight far ahead; mountain or cloud? The mountainous coast was mocked indeed by great continents of cloud above, of its own grey hue. The wind blew hard, but at ten o’clock we were running in under the rocky pinnacles of Saint Vincent, against the blustering wind and the black racing sea. A light or two, chiefly from other steamers, told something of the port. The crescent moon, cloaked in a circling golden mist, was now near setting. We anchored and spent the night in quiet.

A mile or so from our anchorage, in the morning’s clear air, huddled the pink unsightly little town. At distance the heights of rock looked as unsubstantial as Prospero’s magic; the clouds that swam over them and across their steeps might have been solid, so phantasmal were those rocks. Not so with the stony masses overpeering the town; those in their iron-brown nakedness had the aspect of eternal immobility. The air was cold and lucent; the water halcyon blue. Several tramps with rusty black and red, and a sailing ship or two, lay around the Bonadventure; barges of a rough old make clustered closer in to shore.

The invasion by natives began early. A dozen boats were tossing on the waves alongside, with woolly heads and upward eyes seeking what or whom they might devour, and quiet-footed rogues here and there on the decks were trying to sell matches, cigarettes, and red bead handbags. To their attempts, the politest answer was “No good.” “No caree?” Nobody seemed to care. Some of our firemen whose homes were here had gone ashore, with the air of men allowing their old haunts to share their glory.

Two lighters, coppered below, bearded with dark green weed, blundered alongside with bags of coal, and soon the gangs, a grimy and ragged collection, were getting the bags aboard, and the winch grumbling away. Yet it was now made known that we were not to pick up much coal here, but to proceed to Las Palmas for the bulk of our wants. This was unfortunate for the firemen who had gone home. All too soon the blue peter at half-mast and the blowing of the hooter recalled them.

Now, too, it was rumoured that our port of discharge was to be Emden, in Hanover: but of such arrangements it became more difficult to feel assurance.

At midday we left. The most valued effect of our call at Saint Vincent was the receipt of some giant flying-fishes, which we got, one apiece, at tea. It was only by virtue of perseverance that a man could consume his ration. They were good, if dry.

If I were a Bewick, I have in mind a little tailpiece for this chapter. It would display, for the careful eye, the hatless Kelly filleting a flying fish, against the bunker hatch, for his friend the cat, who should be gazing up with cupboard love at her unshaven protector. The direction of the wind, in true Bewick style, should be implied in a sprinkling of coal-dust settling on the new paint of the “House.”