ocean liner's departure, I moved slowly, silently, aloofly, as a
somnambulist. It was a singular outsetting, this start upon my 'way
out.'

III

In ordinary times my thrifty instinct might have led me to travel in
the second class division of the great steamer. But it had happened
that the sum I set aside to cover my travelling expenses proved more
than ample. Several small unreckoned additions had been made to it
during my last month in England; and the upshot was that I decided to
travel by first saloon, and even to indulge myself in the added luxury
of a single-berth, upper-deck cabin. For me privacy had for long been
one of the few luxuries I really did value. Heron had mildly satirised
my sybaritic plans as representing an ingenious preparation for hut
life in the Australian bush, but I had claimed that comfort and
privacy on the passage would give me a deserved holiday, and help put
me into good form for my fresh start oversea. I am not sure which view
was the more correct.

At all events I certainly was very comfortably placed on board the
_Oronta_. My books I had deliberately packed in boxes marked 'Not
wanted on voyage.' There was not so much as a sheet of manuscript
paper among my cabin luggage. Beyond an odd letter or two for postage
at ports of call, and any casual browsing in the ship's library to
which I might feel impelled in my idleness, I was prepared to give no
thought to reading or writing for the present; since for five-and-twenty
years I had been giving practically all my days and half my
nights to these pursuits as a working man of letters.

I had amused myself of late with elaborate anticipations of the
delights of idleness during this passage to Australia. My ideas of sea
travel were really culled from recollections of life on a full rigged
clipper ship--not a steamboat. (The homeward passage from Australia
had hardly been sea-travel in the ordinary sense for me, but rather
six weeks of clerking in an office.) In my anticipations of the
present journey, the dominant impressions had been based upon memories
of the spotless cleanliness, endless leisure, and primitive simplicity
of the old time sailing ship life. I do not mean that I had thought I
should trot about the decks of the _Oronta_ bare-footed, as I and my
childish companions had done aboard the _Ariadne_; but I do mean that
the atmosphere of the _Ariadne_ life had coloured all my thoughts of
what the present trip would be for me.