All that I remember about Madagascar is that Thackeray’s little Billie went up to the top of the mast and there knelt him upon his knee, saying, “I see

               “Jerusalem and Madagascar,
               And North and South Amerikee.”

May 3.  Sunday.  Fifteen or twenty Africanders who will end their voyage to-day and strike for their several homes from Delagoa Bay to-morrow, sat up singing on the afterdeck in the moonlight till 3 A.M.  Good fun and wholesome.  And the songs were clean songs, and some of them were hallowed by tender associations.  Finally, in a pause, a man asked, “Have you heard about the fellow that kept a diary crossing the Atlantic?” It was a discord, a wet blanket.  The men were not in the mood for humorous dirt.  The songs had carried them to their homes, and in spirit they sat by those far hearthstones, and saw faces and heard voices other than those that were about them.  And so this disposition to drag in an old indecent anecdote got no welcome; nobody answered.  The poor man hadn’t wit enough to see that he had blundered, but asked his question again.  Again there was no response.  It was embarrassing for him.  In his confusion he chose the wrong course, did the wrong thing—­began the anecdote.  Began it in a deep and hostile stillness, where had been such life and stir and warm comradeship before.  He delivered himself of the brief details of the diary’s first day, and did it with some confidence and a fair degree of eagerness.  It fell flat.  There was an awkward pause.  The two rows of men sat like statues.  There was no movement, no sound.  He had to go on; there was no other way, at least none that an animal of his calibre could think of.  At the close of each day’s diary, the same dismal silence followed.  When at last he finished his tale and sprung the indelicate surprise which is wont to fetch a crash of laughter, not a ripple of sound resulted.  It was as if the tale had been told to dead men.  After what seemed a long, long time, somebody sighed, somebody else stirred in his seat; presently, the men dropped into a low murmur of confidential talk, each with his neighbor, and the incident was closed.  There were indications that that man was fond of his anecdote; that it was his pet, his standby, his shot that never missed, his reputation-maker.  But he will never tell it again.  No doubt he will think of it sometimes, for that cannot well be helped; and then he will see a picture, and always the same picture—­the double rank of dead men; the vacant deck stretching away in dimming perspective beyond them, the wide desert of smooth sea all abroad; the rim of the moon spying from behind a rag of black cloud; the remote top of the mizzenmast shearing a zigzag path through the fields of stars in the deeps of space; and this soft picture will remind him of the time that he sat in the midst of it and told his poor little tale and felt so lonesome when he got through.