and gasp." Nothing will pacify them short of
drinks at their expense. A sailor with yellow hair and moustache
curled and oiled insufferably, insists on providing me with a pint of
rum. The carpenter, a radical and Fenian when sober, sports a bowler
with a decided "list." He embraces my yellow-haired benefactor, and
now, to the music of "Remember Me to Mother Dear," rendered by the
electric piano behind the bar, they waltz slowly and solemnly around.
The landlady implores them to stop, and the carpenter bursts into
tears. It really is very much like the "Hunting of the Snark." They
are so unaffectedly wealthy, so ridiculously happy, so unspeakably
vulgar! They batter their silver and gold upon the bar; they command
inoffensive strangers to drink monstrous potations; they ply their
feet in unconscious single-steps; they forget they have not touched
the last glass, and order more; they put cataclysmal questions to the
blushing lassie who serves them; they embrace one another repeatedly
with maudlin affection, and are finally ejected by main force from the
premises. All the world--below Wind Street--knows that the _Benvenuto_
has been paid off.

And we? We drink soberly to England, home, and beauty, bank our
surpluses, and scuttle back to the ship. Past interminable rows of
huge hydraulic cranes, over lock-gates, under gigantic coal-shoots
which hurl twenty tons of coal at once into the gaping holds of filthy
colliers, we stumble and hurry along to where our own steamer is
berthed. That is one of the hardships of our exalted position as
officers. _We_ begin again as soon as we have been paid off; _they_
depart, inebriated and uxorious, to their homes. _They_ enjoy what the
political economists call "the rewards of abstinence"; _we_ put on our
boiler suits and crawl about in noisome bilges, soot-choked
smoke-boxes, and salt-scarred evaporators.

Nevertheless, when five o'clock strikes and work is done for the day,
we put on our "shore clothes" (the inevitable blue serge of the
seamen), light our pipes, and go into the town again. Ah! How good it
is to see people, people, people! To see cars, and shops, and girls
again! How wondrously, how ineffably beautiful a barmaid appears to
us, who have seen no white woman for nearly four months! And
book-shops! Dear God! I was in the High Street for half an hour
to-night, and I have already bagged a genuine "Galignani" Byron, calf
binding, yellow paper, and suppressed poems, all com