n, too, said that his ship did not roll. The
shore captain grinned, but said nothing, except that, if I had been over
to France, I should find the voyage just the same. It was the captain's
turn to grin. Next, the second mate came, book in hand, and entered the
name of my next-of-kin.

During the afternoon the funnel of the _Bonadventure_ had sent forth
smoke, and the hooter, hoots; the cold increased, and, having heard
that we were to go out at about six, for all my apprehensions I felt
eager for that hour. The surroundings were gloomy. The _Bonadventure_
lay in a row of coal-carrying steamers, with something grim about their
iron flatness; the _Phryne_, _Marie Nielsen_, _Sandvik_, many another,
their cold colours reminding me of the huge blue-painted unexploded
shell which once I ventured to help remove from a trench at Givenchy.
The grey-green pool swilled sulkily about them: and the red bricks in
the background offered no relief to an unprogressive eye. Sooty, hard
and bleak, the scene itself urged my impatience to be gone.

A call announced the arrival of the pilot; and, at ten minutes to six,
in obedience to a process of which I gathered little, the ship began to
move gently out of the dock. The shouts of the pilot on the bridge, his
"Hard-a-port," his "Hard-a-starboard," were taken up from the forepart
of the ship, where a number of substantial figures were at work with
winch and cable. The _Bonadventure_ was guided with nice gradation into
a channel not much exceeding her own width; on the quay beside men
were shouting and scampering; the wireless clerk leaning over against all
gravity grabbed a bag of "mail" from one of them; and out we passed.
The wind livened. The lights of the town slowly dwindled behind us.
Into the channel close after the _Bonadventure_ came the green lamp of
another ship. Soon the _Bonadventure_ was definitely, at a growing
speed, running down the Bristol Channel, under a veiled sky through
which the moon always seemed about to emerge, and among the scattered
lights of other ships going into Barry, or waiting in readiness to go in.

The thing had never occurred to me before, and I may be pardoned for
reflecting, while I stood watching, in a manner somewhat grandiose. The
energy of Man, maker of cathedrals, high-roads, aqueducts, railroads, was
passing before me; and this one manifestation of it seemed perhaps the
most surprising. The millions of times that this restless creature Man
had