the restricted glow from the binnacle, this silent comment of mine on man and his fate caused the helmsman no amusement.  “I hope you are bringing us luck this trip,” said the sailor to me.  “Last trip we got a poor catch.  I don’t know where the fish have got to.”  Somewhere, north-east about two hundred miles, was the fleet which, if I were the right sort of mascot to the Windhover, we should pick up on the evening of the next day.

3

When I left the wheel-house to go below, it was near midnight.  As I opened the heavy door of the house the night howled aloud at my appearance.  The night smelt pungently of salt and seaweed.  The hand-rail was cold and wet.  The wind was like ice in my nose, and it tasted like iron.  Sometimes the next step was at a correct distance below my feet; and then all that was under me would be swept away.  I descended into the muffled saloon, which was a little box enclosing light and warmth partially submerged in the waters.  There it smelt of hot engine-oil and stale clothes.  I got used to the murmuring transit of something which swept our outer walls in immense bounds, and the flying grind of the propeller, and the bang-clang of the rudder when it was struck . . . and must have gone to sleep. . . .

When I woke, it was because the saloon in my dreams had gone mad.  Perhaps it had been going mad for some time.  Really I was not fully awake—­it was four in the morning, the fire was out, and violent draughts kept ballooning the blanket over me—­and in another minute I might have become quite aware that I had gone to sea for the first time.  It was my bench which properly woke me.  It fell away from me, and I, of course, went after it, and my impression is that I met it halfway on its return journey, for then there came the swooning sensation one feels in the immediate ascent of a lift.  When the bench was as high as it could go it overbalanced, canting acutely, and, grabbing my blanket, I left diagonally for a corner of the saloon, accompanied by some sea-boots I met under the table.  As I was slowly and carefully climbing back, the floor reversed, and I stopped falling when my head struck a panel.  The panel slid gently along, and the mate’s severe countenance regarded me from inside the bunk.  I expected some remonstrance from a tired man who had been unfairly awakened too soon.  “Hurt yourself?” he asked.  “It’s getting up outside.  Dirty weather.  Take things easy.”

I took them as easily as perhaps should be expected of a longshoreman.  There was no more sleep, though no more was wanted.  By putting out my hand to the table I managed to keep where I was, even when, in those moments of greatest insecurity, the screw was roaring in mid-air.  Our fascinating hanging lamp would perform the impossible, hanging acutely out of plumb; and then, when I was watching this miracle, rattle its chain and hang the other way.  A regiment of boots on the floor—­I suppose it was boots—­would tramp to one corner, remain quiet for a while, and then clatter elsewhere in a body.  Towards daybreak the skipper appeared in shining oilskins, tapped the barometer, glanced at me, and laughed because my pillow—­which was a linen bag stuffed with old magazines—­at that moment became lower than my heels, and the precipitous rug tried to smother me.  I enjoyed that laugh.