e too soon. These travelling lights--akin to the gem of the
glow-worm seen close--were, according to Mead, the Portugee men-of-war
which I had seen by day. No name could be less descriptive. These small
creatures, at night living lamps of green, by day with their glassy red
and blue like the floating petals of some sea-rose, were worthy of some
gentler imagist. When, Mead said, you take them from the water, they
are nothing but a little slime; evanescent as the rainbow on the spray.

Splendour and fiery heat marked the day still. I had discarded jacket and
socks, enjoying the soothing gush of air about the ankles; otherwise
even reading was made unprofitable by the drug-like heat. The same sky
and seascape, the same condemnations of "a dirty ship" recurred day by
day. "The worst ship I ever sailed on, mister. You turn in washed and
you wake up black." The bath was still an enjoyable interlude, despite
mechanical drawbacks. The bath proper was out of order, owing tosome
deficiency of the water-pipes. At one end, in substitution, you lodged
your bucket in a board with a hole in it. At the other end a crossbar
offered the bather a seat. Much splashing transferred the water from
the bucket to your coal-dust surface; while, there being little air in
the bathroom, you breathed sparingly. Yet how well off was the acrobat
with his sponge, compared with the fireman who just then was taking
bucket after bucket of ashes from the stokehold hoist and tipping them
overboard--a job that was never done until the engines rested in port;
that punctuated our progress, as did the morning hosepipe on the cabins
and the bridge deck.

Not much was said of the country to which we were going. Englishmen
were definitely unpopular there, said some one; English sailors, on the
slightest pretext, taken off by the police to the "calaboosh." "You
only want to look like an Englishman." "Well, what about trying to look
like a German?" The chief engineer rarely missed a chance to rub in his
politics, and he jumped at this one--"Doesn't the same thing apply at
home?"--with eager irony.

Ships were discussed and compared at almost every meal. Some, luxurious.

"But that yacht she was pretty, there's no getting away from it."

"That was _my_ yacht."

"They must employ quite a lot of shore labour to keep these yachts from
looking like ships."

"Well, they couldn't very well make them look like standard ships, if they
wanted to."

"Oh, I don' know--