the necessity, to slumber for an hour after the noon meal.  Certainly sleep descending on the tropical traveller is armed with a bludgeon.  Passengers, crew, steerage, “deck,” animal, and bird fall down then in an enchantment.  I have often wondered who navigates the ship during that sacred hour, or, indeed, if anybody navigates it at all.  Perhaps that time is sacred to the genii of the old East, who close all prying mortal eyes, but in return lend a guiding hand to the most pressing of mortal affairs.  The deck of the ship is a curious sight between the hours of half-past one and three.  The tropical siesta requires no couching of the form.  You sit down in your chair, with a book—­you fade slowly into a deep, restful slumber.  And yet it is a slumber wherein certain small pleasant things persist from the world outside.  You remain dimly conscious of the rhythmic throbbing of the engines, of the beat of soft, warm air on your cheek.

At three o’clock or thereabout you rise as gently back to life, and sit erect in your chair without a stretch or a yawn in your whole anatomy.  Then is the one time of day for a display of energy—­if you have any to display.  Ship games, walks—­fairly brisk—­explorations to the forecastle, a watch for flying fish or Arab dhows, anything until tea-time.  Then the glowing sunset; the opalescent sea, and the soft afterglow of the sky—­and the bugle summoning you to dress.  That is a mean job.  Nothing could possibly swelter worse than the tiny cabin.  The electric fan is an aggravation.  You reappear in your fresh “whites” somewhat warm and flustered in both mind and body.  A turn around the deck cools you off; and dinner restores your equanimity—­dinner with the soft, warm tropic air breathing through all the wide-open ports; the electric fans drumming busily; the men all in clean white; the ladies, the very few precious ladies, in soft, low gowns.  After dinner the deck, as near cool as it will be, and heads bare to the breeze of our progress, and glowing cigars.  At ten or eleven o’clock the groups begin to break up, the canvas chairs to empty.  Soon reappears a pyjamaed figure followed by a steward carrying a mattress.  This is spread, under its owner’s direction, in a dark corner forward.  With a sigh you in your turn plunge down into the sweltering inferno of your cabin, only to reappear likewise with a steward and a mattress.  The latter, if you are wise, you spread where the wind of the ship’s going will be full upon you.  It is a strong wind and blows upon you heavily, so that the sleeves and legs of your pyjamas flop, but it is a soft, warm wind, and beats you as with muffled fingers.  In no temperate clime can you ever enjoy this peculiar effect of a strong breeze on your naked skin without even the faintest surface chilly sensation.  So habituated has one become to feeling cooler in a draught that the absence of chill lends the night an unaccustomedness, the more weird in that it is unanalyzed, so that one