was
that part of a first voyage when you feel you were meant to be a
navigator. To stand at the end of the bridge, rolling out over the
cataracts roaring below, and to swing back, and out again, watching the
ship's head decline into a hollow of the seas, and then to clutch the
saddle as she reared with a sudden twist and swing above the horizon, and
in such a vast and illuminated theatre, was to awake to a new virtue in
life. We were alone there. There were only comets of smoke on the
bright wall of the sky, of steamers out of sight.

At sunset we made Smith's Knoll Light, and dropped the land. The cluster
of stars astern, which was a fleet of Yarmouth herring boats at work,
went out in the dark. I had, for warmth and company in the wheel-house
on the bridge, while listening to the seas getting up, only signals from
Orion and the Great Bear, the glow of the pipe of the silent fellow at
the wheel, and the warm shaft of light which streamed from somewhere in
the ship's body and isolated the foremast as a column of gold. There was
the monody, confident but subdued, the most ancient song in the world, of
invisible waters. Sometimes there was a shock when she dropped into a
hollow, and a vicious shower whipped across the glass of the wheel-house.
I then got the sad feeling, much too soon, that the inhospitable North
was greeting us. It is after sundown at sea, when looking through the
dark to the stars, listening to sounds that are as though ancient waters
were still wandering under a sky in which day has not been kindled,
seeking coasts not yet formed, it is in such nights that one's thoughts
are of destiny, and then the remembrance of our late eager activities
brings a little smile. There being no illumination in the wheel-house
but the restricted glow from the binnacle, this silent comment of mine on
man and his fate caused the helmsman no amusement. "I hope you are
bringing us luck this trip," said the sailor to me. "Last trip we got a
poor catch. I don't know where the fish have got to." Somewhere,
north-east about two hundred miles, was the fleet which, if I were the
right sort of mascot to the Windhover, we should pick up on the evening
of the next day.

3

When I left the wheel-house to go below, it was near midnight. As I
opened the heavy door of the house the night howled aloud at my
appearance. The night smelt pungently of salt and seaweed. The
hand-rail was cold and wet. The wind was like ic