impid depths yet another
crust of discontent and self-conceit.

As I dressed into flannels and blazer, I looked round the deck, and
with an unskilled and doubtful eye took in all that the darkness had
hitherto hidden. She seemed very small (in point of fact she was
seven tons), something over thirty feet in length and nine in beam, a
size very suitable to week-ends in the Solent, for such as liked that
sort of thing; but that she should have come from Dover to the Baltic
suggested a world of physical endeavour of which I had never dreamed.
I passed to the aesthetic side. Smartness and beauty were essential
to yachts, in my mind, but with the best resolves to be pleased I
found little encouragement here. The hull seemed too low, and the
mainmast too high; the cabin roof looked clumsy, and the skylights
saddened the eye with dull iron and plebeian graining. What brass
there was, on the tiller-head and elsewhere, was tarnished with
sickly green. The decks had none of that creamy purity which Cowes
expects, but were rough and grey, and showed tarry exhalations round
the seams and rusty stains near the bows. The ropes and rigging were
in mourning when contrasted with the delicate buff manilla so
satisfying to the artistic eye as seen against the blue of a June sky
at Southsea. Nor was the whole effect bettered by many signs of
recent refitting. An impression of paint, varnish, and carpentry was
in the air; a gaudy new burgee fluttered aloft; there seemed to be a
new rope or two, especially round the diminutive mizzen-mast, which
itself looked altogether new. But all this only emphasized the
general plainness, reminding one of a respectable woman of the
working-classes trying to dress above her station, and soon likely to
give it up.

That the _ensemble_ was businesslike and solid even my untrained eye
could see. Many of the deck fittings seemed disproportionately
substantial. The anchor-chain looked contemptuous of its charge; the
binnacle with its compass was of a size and prominence almost
comically impressive, and was, moreover the only piece of brass which
was burnished and showed traces of reverent care. Two huge coils of
stout and dingy warp lay just abaft the mainmast, and summed up the
weather-beaten aspect of the little ship. I should add here that in
the distant past she had been a lifeboat, and had been clumsily
converted into a yacht by the addition of a counter, deck, and the
necessary spars. She was built, a