d damp--with the least exertion you
steam! Imagine the joy of having to dress for dinner in such cramped
space and heat--you drop a stud and a year of your life in finding it! I
think most people realise that their feelings under these circumstances
cannot be exactly described in decorous language, so they set their
teeth in grim silence; and after all there is something laughable about
all the trouble--we needn't go in for white shirts and black coats and
trousers in the tropics unless we like. Everyone feels them horribly
uncomfortable and unsuitable, but no one dares to be so utterly radical
as come to dinner in anything else. If a flannel shirt and shorts were
the fashion, if only for the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, how many valued
lives would be prolonged. The penance in India is not so bad; there your
_Boy_ hunts your stud whilst you sit and cool.

A number of passengers sleep on deck now; I suppose three and four in a
cabin is intolerable. They have their mattresses brought up on deck by
their cabin steward, and he chalks their number on the deck at their
feet; you can thus sleep in a strong wet draught under the officers'
deck. There is a great deal of pleasure in sleeping in the open, but you
should have nothing but stars overhead and a shelter to windward, if it
is only a swelling in the ground or a sod or two. The ladies have a part
of the deck reserved, and the floor of the music room round the well
that opens into the dining-saloon below. Their part of the deck is
defended at night by a zereba of deck chairs, piled three or four feet
high; it suggests privacy!

We had our port open last night again--my fault--and just as G. came to
my end of the cabin to tell me the waves were getting near the port, in
one came! So we spent the small hot hours rearranging things, shut the
port and slept the sleep of the weary, and awakened more dead than alive
from too little air and too much water.

Yesterday the ship went on fire. It started on the woodwork of the
companion way, where there was a place for stationery; there was a
mighty mess of water and smell of smoke and a panel or two burned, and
no great damage done, as far as I can hear. I am surprised we don't go
on fire every day with so many smokers chucking cigarette ends
overboard. The wind-catchers sticking out of the ports of course catch
these, and they blow into the berths. Yesterday, however, to prevent
this, two or three buckets with sand in them were put