why they should behave like that
except for amusement!

[Illustration: A DOLPHIN.]

There goes the bugle for lunch.

Seems early, you say? As if we had only just finished breakfast? Yes.
Look at your watch. It is hopelessly wrong, of course; so is mine and
everyone else's. We are going just about due east now, so we are meeting
the sun half-way, so to speak. That is what makes the time different.
You know that when the sun is at the highest point overhead at any place
then it is midday, and as the earth spins round from west to east a
constant succession of places come beneath him in turn, each getting
their midday a little later than the one before. In the British Isles
there is really very little difference between the hours when the
eastern and western coasts meet the sun. Take Yarmouth, say, and Land's
End; there is perhaps something like half an hour between them, but as
it would be awkward for railway work and business if every place had a
little different time, so, for convenience' sake, one "standard" time is
adopted in England, Scotland, and now even in some of the nearest
continental countries; this is the hour when the sun is highest above
Greenwich, where is our greatest observatory. And this is called midday,
even though as a matter of fact the real midday at different places may
be earlier or later.

As we journey east across the world, however, we are constantly going
forward to meet the sun. We are not only on the earth, which is turning
round all the time, but we are going ahead ourselves as well, and
out-running the earth, and so we arrive at noon sooner and sooner each
day. Our watches of course take no heed of _real_ time as judged by the
sun, they are just mechanical and tick away their sixty minutes to each
hour whether the sun is overhead or not. At this moment we are about
four hours ahead of our friends in England. It is one o'clock here, but
they will only be having breakfast! When we live always in one place it
is easy to forget that we are on a ball spinning round in space, but
this brings it home to us and makes us realise our absurd position in
the universe. Well, let us get our lunch. There is one thing on board,
everybody is always ready to eat an amazing amount after they have got
over sea-sickness, and the number of meals we manage to consume here
would surprise us at home!

As the evening closes in, the day undergoes a change; there is a thick
bank of black-looking cloud in the