bathroom where he plunged gaily
into warm salt water. He was hardly dressed before breakfast was
laid for him in the chart-room. It was a breakfast greatly to his
liking--porridge, scrambled eggs, grilled kidneys and bacon, coffee,
toast, and marmalade. Evidently the hardships of sea life had been
greatly exaggerated by fiction writers.

He was a trifle bashful about appearing on the bridge in his blue and
brass formality, and waited a while thinking Captain Scottie might come.
But no one disturbed him, so by and bye he went out. It was a brisk
morning with a fresh breeze and plenty of whitecaps. Dancing rainbows
hovered about the bow when an occasional explosion of spray burst up
into sunlight. Mr. Pointer was on the bridge, still gazing steadily into
the distance. He saluted Gissing, but said nothing. The quartermaster at
the wheel also saluted in silence. A seaman wiping down the paintwork
on the deckhouse saluted. Gissing returned these gestures punctiliously,
and began to pace the bridge from side to side. He soon grew accustomed
to the varying slant of the deck, and felt that his footing showed a
nautical assurance.

Now for the first time he enjoyed an untrammelled horizon on all sides.
The sea, he observed, was not really blue--not at any rate the blue he
had supposed. Where it seethed flatly along the hull, laced with swirls
of milky foam, it was almost black. Farther away, it was green, or
darkly violet. A ladder led to the top of the charthouse, and from this
commanding height the whole body of the ship lay below him. How alive
she seemed, how full of personality! The strong funnels, the tall masts
that moved so delicately against the pale open sky, the distant stern
that now dipped low in a comfortable hollow, and now soared and threshed
onward with a swimming thrust, the whole vital organism spoke to the eye
and the imagination. In the centre of this vast circle she moved, royal
and serene. She was more beautiful than the element she rode on, for
perhaps there was something meaningless in that pure vacant round of
sea and sky. Once its immense azure was grasped and noted, it brought
nothing to the mind. Reason was indignant to conceive it, sloping
endlessly away.

The placid, beautifully planned routine of shipboard passed on its
accustomed course, and he began to suspect that his staff-captaincy was
a sinecure. Down below he could see the passengers briskly promenading,
or drowsing under their rugs. On