it they will hardly feel the motion.

It was really considerate of the captain making a break in a dull, damp
Sunday afternoon--the horn went booming, and up we all jumped in the
smoking-room with some idea that someone had gone overboard, and up on
deck came the lascars grinning, a jolly string of colour, and away
forward they trotted and climbed into the forward life-boats from the
deck above us. It was very smartly done, but I would like to have seen
if their feet could reach the stretchers or their hands the oars; the
boats were not swung out, but everything seemed ready. I think my friend
the bo'sun must have had an inkling they were needed for he was working
about the davits and falls earlier in the afternoon. In the words of the
poet, Gilbert,

"It is little I know,
Of the ways of men of the sea,
But I'll eat my hand if I (don't) understand"

this part of their business; practice on a whaler tends to perfection at
getting away in the boats, and at getting on board again too, if you are
hungry--and faith if it isn't snowing it is fun!

To night the air is damp and warm from the S.E., and we smell
Spain--true bill--several of us noticed the aromatic smell. Scents at
sea carry great distances. "I know a man" who smelt burning wood or
heather, 250 nautical miles from land, and said so and was laughed at;
but he laughed last, for two or three days after his vessel beat up to
some islands, from which towered a vast column of brown and white smoke
from burning peat, and this floated south on a frosty northerly breeze,
and the chart showed the smoke was dead to windward at the time he
spoke.

CHAPTER III

MONDAY--a rolling tumbling sea, soft grey and white, and misty-wet decks
with shimmering reflections--a day when even a great liner such as this
feels a little shut off from the outside world, for the mist comes down
on the edge of the horizon and hedges us in. If I ever paint Orpheus or
the Sirens, I will use such a grey wet effect. I think of these old
navigators in their small vessels, getting the thick and the thin, just
as we do to-day in our own sailing craft; getting well dusted at times,
with the salt thick on their cheeks and decks. Taking it all round, the
sea is rather a minor chord; so that these Burlington House pictures of
the Argo and The Heroes, in orange and rose on a wine-red sea are not
convincing. When my patron comes home I will humbly suggest Orpheus
singing at