_When there isn't a girl about,
You do feel lonely!
When there isn't a girl about
To call your only!
You're absolutely on the shelf,
Don't know what to do with yourself,
When there isn't a girl about!_"

"Said good-bye to her, Mac?" he asks. I nod evasively. He has been
home to Sunderland since we got in, and I found him asleep on the
gallery floor, with his head in the ash-pit, the night of his return.
He is better now, and since I know he has brought back a photograph
from the north, I am in hopes of his having fallen in love. (_Clang!
Slow ahead._) It is high time, I think. His constitution won't stand
everything, you know. And it seems such a pity for a fine young chap
to----(_Clang! Stop._) George is recording the bridge orders on the
black-board on the bunker bulkhead, and I wonder----(_Clang! Slow
ahead._) A pause; then--_Clang! FULL AHEAD._

"Let her go away gradually, mister," says the Second as he goes round
to have a look at the pumps. Cautiously the stop-valve is opened out,
and the engines get into their sixty-two per-minute stride. The
firemen are at it now, trimmers are flogging away the wedges from the
bunker doors, and the funnel damper is full open. And then, and
then--how shall I describe the sensation of that first delicate rise
and fall of the plates. I experience a feeling of buoyant life under
my feet! It means we are out at sea, that we have crossed the bar. The
Chief and Second have gone to get washed for dinner, George is on deck
shutting off steam and watching the steering engine for defects, and I
am left alone below with a greaser. I experience a feeling of
exultation as I watch my engines settle down for their seven-day run
to the Canary Islands. How can I explain how beautiful they are?

"_All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all!_"

Yes, that is how I feel just now as I pace round and round, alert for
a leaky joint or a slackened nut. The solemn music of the plunging
rods is all the sweeter for that I have not heard it for six weeks. We
are out at sea!

And now George comes down again, and I go on deck to get my dinner. We
are crossing Swansea Bay, among the brown-sailed trawlers and the
incoming steamships. The sun shines brightly on us as we bear away
southward towards Lundy, and I stare out silently across the broad
Channel, thinking. Oh,