ere clear of Africa--and with the booty aboard I did not see what
stood between us and home.

For the first time since I had fallen sick in the Thames my spirits
rose. I was sea-sick and physically disgusted, of course, but I felt
kindly in spite of my qualms. So far as I could calculate then the
situation was saved. I saw myself returning triumphantly into the
Thames, and nothing on earth to prevent old Capern's Perfect Filament
going on the market in fortnight. I had the monopoly of electric lamps
beneath my feet.

I was released from the spell of that bloodstained black body all mixed
up with grey-black mud. I was going back to baths and decent food and
aeronautics and Beatrice. I was going back to Beatrice and my real life
again--out of this well into which I had fallen. It would have needed
something more than sea-sickness and quap fever to prevent my spirits
rising.

I told the captain that I agreed with him that the British were the scum
of Europe, the westward drift of all the people, a disgusting rabble,
and I lost three pounds by attenuated retail to Pollack at ha'penny nap
and euchre.

And then you know, as we got out into the Atlantic this side of Cape
Verde, the ship began to go to pieces. I don't pretend for one moment to
understand what happened. But I think Greiffenhagen's recent work on
the effects of radium upon ligneous tissue does rather carry out my idea
that emanations from quap have rapid rotting effect upon woody fibre.

From the first there had been a different feel about the ship, and as
the big winds and waves began to strain her she commenced leaking. Soon
she was leaking--not at any particular point, but everywhere. She did
not spring a leak, I mean, but water came in first of all near the
decaying edges of her planks, and then through them.

I firmly believe the water came through the wood. First it began to
ooze, then to trickle. It was like trying to carry moist sugar in a thin
paper bag. Soon we were taking in water as though we had opened a door
in her bottom.

Once it began, the thing went ahead beyond all fighting. For a day or
so we did our best, and I can still remember in my limbs and back the
pumping--the fatigue in my arms and the memory of a clear little dribble
of water that jerked as one pumped, and of knocking off and the being
awakened to go on again, and of fatigue piling up upon fatigue. At
last we ceased to think of anything but pumping; one became a thing of
tor