d his head from a long
chair to ask, 'What is it? Can't you get any steerage-way on her?'

'There is a feel in the water,' said Frithiof, 'that I cannot
understand. I think that we run downhills or somethings. She steers
bad this morning.'

Nobody seems to know the laws that govern the pulse of the big
waters. Sometimes even a landsman can tell that the solid ocean is
atilt, and that the ship is working herself up a long unseen slope;
and sometimes the captain says, when neither full steam nor fair
wind justifies the length of a day's run, that the ship is sagging
downhill; but how these ups and downs come about has not yet been
settled authoritatively.

'No, it is a following sea,' said Frithiof; 'and with a following
sea you shall not get good steerage-way.'

The sea was as smooth as a duck-pond, except for a regular oily
swell. As I looked over the side to see where it might be following
us from, the sun rose in a perfectly clear sky and struck the water
with its light so sharply that it seemed as though the sea should
clang like a burnished gong. The wake of the screw and the little
white streak cut by the log-line hanging over the stern were the only
marks on the water as far as eye could reach.

Keller rolled out of his chair and went aft to get a pineapple from
the ripening stock that was hung inside the after awning.

'Frithiof, the log-line has got tired of swimming. It's coming
home,' he drawled.

'What?' said Frithiof, his voice jumping several octaves.

'Coming home,' Keller repeated, leaning over the stern. I ran to his
side and saw the log-line, which till then had been drawn tense over
the stern railing, slacken, loop, and come up off the port quarter.
Frithiof called up the speaking tube to the bridge, and the bridge
answered, 'Yes, nine knots.' Then Frithiof spoke again, and the
answer was, 'What do you want of the skipper?' and Frithiof bellowed,
'Call him up.'

By this time Zuyland, Keller, and myself had caught something of
Frithiof's excitement, for any emotion on shipboard is most
contagious. The captain ran out of his cabin, spoke to Frithiof,
looked at the log-line, jumped on the bridge, and in a minute we
felt the steamer swing round as Frithiof turned her.

''Going back to Cape Town?' said Keller.

Frithiof did not answer, but tore away at the wheel. Then he beckoned
us three to help, and we held the wheel down till the _Rathmines_
answered it, and we found ourselves looking into