line on it. I know every inch of space on the
_Elsinore_, and know there isn't an ounce of grub anywhere for'ard, and
yet they eat! I've overhauled the lazarette. As near as I can make it
out, nothing is missing. Then where do they get it? That's what I want
to know. Where do they get it?"

I know that this morning he spent hours in the lazarette with the steward
and the cook, overhauling and checking off from the lists of the
Baltimore agents. And I know that they came up out of the lazarette, the
three of them, dripping with perspiration and baffled. The steward has
raised the hypothesis that, first of all, there were extra stores left
over from the previous voyage, or from previous voyages, and, next, that
the stealing of these stores must have taken place during the
night-watches when it was Mr. Pike's turn below.

At any rate, the mate takes the food mystery almost as much to heart as
he takes the persistent and propinquitous existence of Sidney Waltham.

I am coming to realize the meaning of watch-and-watch. To begin with, I
spend on deck twelve hours, and a fraction more, of each twenty-four. A
fair portion of the remaining twelve is spent in eating, in dressing, and
in undressing, and with Margaret. As a result, I feel the need for more
sleep than I am getting. I scarcely read at all, now. The moment my
head touches the pillow I am asleep. Oh, I sleep like a baby, eat like a
navvy, and in years have not enjoyed such physical well-being. I tried
to read George Moore last night, and was dreadfully bored. He may be a
realist, but I solemnly aver he does not know reality on that tight,
little, sheltered-life archipelago of his. If he could wind-jam around
the Horn just one voyage he would be twice the writer.

And Mr. Pike, for practically all of his sixty-nine years, has stood his
watch-and-watch, with many a spill-over of watches into watches. And yet
he is iron. In a struggle with him I am confident that he would break me
like so much straw. He is truly a prodigy of a man, and, so far as to-
day is concerned, an anachronism.

The Faun is not dead, despite my unlucky bullet. Henry insisted that he
caught a glimpse of him yesterday. To-day I saw him myself. He came to
the corner of the 'midship-house and gazed wistfully aft at the poop,
straining and eager to understand. In the same way I have often seen
Possum gaze at me.

It has just struck me that of our eight followers five are Asia