to eat. A
barrel of good hardtack stands always open in the forecastle. Louis
bakes fresh bread for the sailors three times a week. The variety of
food is excellent, if not the quality. There is no restriction in the
amount of water for drinking purposes. And I can only say that in this
good weather the men's appearance improves daily.

Possum is very sick. Each day he grows thinner. Scarcely can I call him
a perambulating skeleton, because he is too weak to walk. Each day, in
this delightful weather, Wada, under Miss West's instructions, brings him
up in his box and places him out of the wind on the awninged poop. She
has taken full charge of the puppy, and has him sleep in her room each
night. I found her yesterday, in the chart-room, reading up the
_Elsinore's_ medical library. Later on she overhauled the
medicine-chest. She is essentially the life-giving, life-conserving
female of the species. All her ways, for herself and for others, make
toward life.

And yet--and this is so curious it gives me pause--she shows no interest
in the sick and injured for'ard.

They are to her cattle, or less than cattle. As the life-giver and race-
conserver, I should have imagined her a Lady Bountiful, tripping
regularly into that ghastly steel-walled hospital room of the midship-
house and dispensing gruel, sunshine, and even tracts. On the contrary,
as with her father, these wretched humans do not exist.

And still again, when the steward jammed a splinter under his nail, she
was greatly concerned, and manipulated the tweezers and pulled it out.
The Elsinore reminds me of a slave plantation before the war; and Miss
West is the lady of the plantation, interested only in the house-slaves.
The field slaves are beyond her ken or consideration, and the sailors are
the Elsinore's field slaves. Why, several days back, when Wada suffered
from a severe headache, she was quite perturbed, and dosed him with
aspirin. Well, I suppose this is all due to her sea-training. She has
been trained hard.

We have the phonograph in the second dog-watch every other evening in
this fine weather. On the alternate evenings this period is Mr. Pike's
watch on deck. But when it is his evening below, even at dinner, he
betrays his anticipation by an eagerness ill suppressed. And yet, on
each such occasion, he punctiliously waits until we ask if we are to be
favoured with music. Then his hard-bitten face lights up, although the
lines