to
perfect, the conversion of inert masses of crude metal into the
magnificently powerful and obviously sentient entity that is bearing
you!

Lonesome? Skirting the coastline of Africa, a country whose
potentates, from the Ptolemies to Tom Ryan, have never failed to make
world history worth thinking about!

Lonesome? Bearing up toward that sea-made manacle of fallen majesty,
St. Helena, absorbed in memories of Bonaparte's magnificent dreams of
world-wide dominion, and of his pathetic end on one of its smallest and
most isolated patches!

Lonesome? With a chum at your elbow so close a student of the manly
game of war that he can glibly reel off for you every important
manoeuvre of all the great battles of history, from those of Alexander
the Great down to Tommy Burns's latest!

And now and then the elements themselves sit in and take a hand in our
game, sometimes a hand we could very well do without--as twice lately.

The first instance happened early last week. Tuesday tropical weather
hit us and drove us into pajamas--a cloudless sky, blazing sun, high
humidity, while we ploughed our way across long, slow-rolling,
unrippled swells that looked so much like a vast, gently heaving sea of
petroleum that, had John D. Standardoil been with us he would have
suffered a probably fatal attack of heart disease if prevented from
stopping right there and planning a pipe line.

Throughout the day close about the ship clouds of flying fish skimmed
the sea, and great schools of porpoises leaped from it and raced us, as
if, even to them, their native element had become hateful, or as if
they sensed something ominous and fearsome abroad from which they
sought shelter in our company. One slender little opal-hued
diaphanous-winged bird-fish came aboard, and before he was picked up
had the happy life grilled out of him on our scorching iron deck, hot
almost as boiler plates. Poor little chap! he found with us anything
but sanctuary; but perhaps he lived long enough to signal the fact to
his mates, for no others boarded us. And yet for one other opal-hued
winged wanderer we have been sanctuary; for when we were about one
hundred and fifty miles out of New York a highly bred carrier pigeon,
bearing on his leg a metal tag marked "32," hovered about us for a
time, finally alighted on our rail, and then fluttered to the deck when
offered a pan of water--and drank and drank until it seemed best to
stop him. By kindness and ingen