d stare straight before him for hours at a time,
until I am almost frantic to demand of him what are his thoughts.
Sometimes I doubt that he is thinking at all. I give him up. I cannot
fathom him.

Altogether a depressing day of rain-splatter and wash of water across the
deck. I can see, now, that the problem of sailing a ship with five
thousand tons of coal around the Horn is more serious than I had thought.
So deep is the _Elsinore_ in the water that she is like a log awash. Her
tall, six-foot bulwarks of steel cannot keep the seas from boarding her.
She has not the buoyancy one is accustomed to ascribe to ships. On the
contrary, she is weighted down until she is dead, so that, for this one
day alone, I am appalled at the thought of how many thousands of tons of
the North Atlantic have boarded her and poured out through her spouting
scuppers and clanging ports.

Yes, a depressing day. The two mates have alternated on deck and in
their bunks. Captain West has dozed on the cabin sofa or read the Bible.
Miss West is still sea-sick. I have tired myself out with reading, and
the fuzziness of my unsleeping brain makes for melancholy. Even Wada is
anything but a cheering spectacle, crawling out of his bunk, as he does
at stated intervals, and with sick, glassy eyes trying to discern what my
needs may be. I almost wish I could get sea-sick myself. I had never
dreamed that a sea voyage could be so unenlivening as this one is
proving.

CHAPTER XII

Another morning of overcast sky and leaden sea, and of the _Elsinore_,
under half her canvas, clanging her deck ports, spouting water from her
scuppers, and dashing eastward into the heart of the Atlantic. And I
have failed to sleep half-an-hour all told. At this rate, in a very
short time I shall have consumed all the cream of tartar on the ship. I
never have had hives like these before. I can't understand it. So long
as I keep my lamp burning and read I am untroubled. The instant I put
out the lamp and drowse off the irritation starts and the lumps on my
skin begin to form.

Miss West may be sea-sick, but she cannot be comatose, because at
frequent intervals she sends the steward to me with more cream of tartar.

I have had a revelation to-day. I have discovered Captain West. He is a
Samurai.--You remember the Samurai that H. G. Wells describes in his
_Modern Utopia_--the superior breed of men who know things and are
masters of life and of their