's room.
The steward, in unusual radiance, came in presently, and sang a long
song concerning a tramp who was flung off a freight train by a brakesman.
"Because he was only a tramp" (_dying fall_).

This might have been a comment on Mr. W. H. Davies' Autobiography.
Warmed with his singing and other helps, the steward began to recall
his acquaintance (on guard) with Royalty, and spun off at tangents with
affairs half a century more recent: "That b---- flaming butcher-- I
was going to hit him with a box of matches," and other incidents. I
was sorry to hear the lank Chips, the next morning, bawling at the
entrance of the saloon a complaint about the toughness of his meat; the
steward's new mood deserved anything but that sort of damper.

XXX

With little to do, I fought a sort of pillow fight with Meacock, our
weapons being sacks well stuffed; he won, of course, but it was a popular
bout. Then there were acrobatic performances on the stays of the funnel.
The need I had for training appeared on our last night in Emden Port,
when my sleep was nipped in the bud by the entry of Bicker and Mead.
Both had the clear spirits raised, in two senses; both thickened voices
already thick enough. They were disguised (Mead's fancy, I warrant)
as members of the Ku-Klux-Klan; and besides their costume one bore a
revolver, the other an air gun impounded from an apprentice. I was
ordered out of bed, but wished to stop; we argued about it and by good
luck I hung on. After this, insidious, they declared that a lady who
knew me and wished to see me had come aboard. This flight of fancy and
flow of language went on until they sought variety, which they found
in painting the unfortunate Tich in the alley below in several colours.

The German police, green men and true, watched the ship closely. It was
rumoured that a shipping clerk and a young woman had eloped and were
aboard one of the tramps. "Love in a foc'sle," especially ours, was
considered no bad joke.

One more home circle was held in the starboard alleyway towards
midnight; gin very prevalent, and the steward also. He fell into a
sequence of army recollections, which (as the glass was thrust replenished
into his hand) began on this pattern, "Well, I'm telling you, Mister, at
three in the afternoon of March the twelfth 1873, we was parading
outside the Queen's pavilion...." Once more also Mead and myself made our
way into Emden. The old nooks of buildings and the vistas of na