he tune for the rest of the week."

"O, it's easy. Steak, steak, steak."

We hurried our breakfast amid these criticisms, as the port authority was
expected. Towards nine o'clock, all hands being assembled amidships,
his launch came to the foot of the gangway. Eight sailors in white uniform
rowed this launch. He divested himself of his sword, came up, and went
inside Hosea's quarters to "talk things over"; whereupon, the parade
broke up. The next event was, we changed our mooring. As we passed to the
new tether, which was among several tramps as ladylike as ourselves, I
had my first experience of the groaning, screeching and gasping noise
which the machinery of a dredger can make, as its buckets come round
on the endless chain and empty themselves into the barge alongside. I
wonder these contrivances were not introduced during the Passchendaele
operations. They would have served two purposes, that of keeping a good
depth of water for the infantry to swim through; and that of demoralizing
the enemy.

We remained only a few minutes in this new position. Then we moved into a
dock, lined with warehouses as they appeared, under whose grey tin roofs
were stacked bags of grain in large profusion. With much shouting and
manipulating of ropes, we got in, behind the steamer _Caxambu_; alongside
a framework of piles. On these, even the less accessible slanting
timbers, many a ship's name scrawled in black or red paint, and often
followed by the date of the call, addressed the new-comer's eye. In
these inscriptions the S's, B's, D's, and 9's, had a tendency to be
reversed. I thought that the exotic poets and others who deny their
readers capital letters, apostrophes and so forth might here find another
inspiration. The medley of names included such as the _Trebarthan_, the
_King Arthur_, the _Alf_, the _Olive_, the _Bilbao_. And the _Keats_;
why _Keats_? Apart from this mystery, I could not help contrasting
many of the names with those of the figure-head days, and like the
posy of a ring, some of them came into my mind, from my reading, the
_John and Judith_, _Charming Nancy_, _Love and Unity_, _Lancashire Witch_.

Here, the heat seemed to redouble, and the flies to bite harder
accordingly. For some time nothing much happened. The Captain, after
being visited by the doctor, ship's chandler and others, but not such a
swarm as on our previous berthing, went ashore, leaving Bicker, who
prided himself upon his mathematical faculty,