rit, watchful at the gist of things, alert at the point which was
necessarily, for him, the nub of all existence. He wandered about the
Pomerania's sagely ordered passages and found her more and more magical.
She went on and on, with some strange urgent vitality of her own.
Through the fiddleys on the boat deck came a hot oily breath and the
steady drumming of her burning heart. From outer to hawse-hole, from
shaft-tunnel to crow's-nest, he explored and loved her. In the whole of
her proud, faithful, obedient fabric he divined honour and exultation.
Poised upon uncertainty, she was sure. The camber of her white-scrubbed
decks, the long, clean sheer of her hull, the concave flare of her
bows--what was the amazing joy and rightness of these things? And yet
the grotesque passengers regarded her only as a vehicle, to carry them
sedatively to some clamouring dock. Fools! She was more lovely than
anything they would ever see again! He yearned to drive her endlessly
toward that unreachable perimeter of sky.

On land there had been definite horizons, even if disappointing when
reached and examined; but here there was no horizon at all. Every hour
it slid and slid over the dark orb of sea. He lost count of time. The
tremulous cradling of the Pomerania, steadily climbing the long leagues;
her noble forecastle solemnly lifting against heaven, then descending
with grave beauty into a spread of foaming beryl and snowdrift, seemed
one with the rhythm of his pulse and heart. Perhaps there had been more
than mere ingenuity in his last riddle for the theological skipper.
Truly the subconscious had usurped him. Here he was almost happy, for he
was almost unaware of life. It was all blue vacancy and suspension. The
sea is the great answer and consoler, for it means either nothing or
everything, and so need not tease the brain.

But the passengers, though unobservant, began to murmur; especially
those who had wagered that the Pomerania would dock on the eighth day.
The world itself, they complained, was created in seven days, and why
should so fine a ship take longer to cross a comparatively small ocean?
Urbanely, over coffee and petite fours, Gissing argued with them. They
were well on their way, he protested; and then, as a hypothetical case,
he asked why one destination was more worth visiting than another? He
even quoted Shakespeare on this point--something about "ports and happy
havens"--and succeeded in turning the tide of conversati