ove their launch, amused
himself with making noisy and scandalous observations upon its crew,
their careers and their faces. Why this fury? I really believe it was
his way of expressing fraternity.

So there was nothing to do but wait for our new pilot on Monday morning:
to play cards with a pack whose age had given each card characteristic
markings besides those upon its face; to "yarn." At tea, Bicker was in
his most assiduous narrative mood. "We were in the West Indies in a boat
bringing the bumboat woman aboard--well, she started to climb up the
rope ladder and this fellow thought he'd lay his hand on her ankle. So he
made a move to do so. Just then" (his broad grin grew almost incredibly
broad), "the boat gave a roll, and as he had one foot on the gunwale, and
one on the rope ladder he fell into the water. Well, he went down past
rows and rows of plates, and we looked out for him to come up.--First a
hat, his black hat, came up. And then, a newspaper came up"--[_Chief_
(_ignored_) "To say he wasn't coming up?"]--and then, _he_ came up. Stern
first. We dragged him on deck, and there he was all spluttering, and
then he said as solemn as a judge:

'That's the fruits of Blacklegging.'"

This closed the proceedings.

Under the sunset the river's dingy current began to take on a strange
glory, and changed into a tawny golden wilderness moving down to sea. Then
presently it was full moon and pale splendours. A great quiet prevailed;
but led by the moon, like the tide and the poets, Mead and myself paced
the decks for hours recalling the local colour of war apart from fighting.

XIV

A most placid morning. The sky ahead was silvered with the smoke of unseen
Buenos Aires, the water so gleaming that the flat coast lined with trees,
to starboard, appeared to be midway suspended between one mother-of-pearl
heaven and another. The new pilot arrived in this early tranquillity,
and the ship resumed her way up the channel marked out by buoys of several
shapes.

The sun increased in power all too fast. I stood on the bridge to hear the
pilot and the mates giving their directions: we came to a couple of
tugs told off to escort the _Bonadventure_ in. Ropes leapt aboard us,
tossed up in the adroitest way and caught as cleverly by our sailors; the
bigger cables were attached to them, drawn aboard the tugs and made fast;
and so we went on with tugboats fore and aft. The peculiar beauty of the
morning mist over Buenos