Part 2 (1/2)

'You can chuck your things down the skylight on to your berth as you unpack them,' he reot I suppose you couldn't e--'

'No, I couldn't,' I said shortly

The absurdity of arguue

'If you'll go out I shall be able to get out too,' I added He seehost of an altercation, but I pushed past, ht unstrapped that accursed port its contents, sorting so matteredthe rest with guilty stealth ere Davies should discover their character, and strapping up the whole again Then I sat down upon my white elephant and shi+vered, for the chill of autumn was in the air It suddenly struck ht have been worse still The notion lass; stars above and stars below; a fehite cottages glihts of Flensburg; to the east the fiord broadening into unknown gloo below there were , punctuated occasionally by a heavy splash as so shot up from the hatchway and fell into the water

How it ca pathetic in the look I had last seen on his face--a look which I associated for no reason whatever with his bandaged hand; whether it was one of those instants of clear vision in which our separate selves are seen divided, the baser frootisenerous nature; whether it was an impalpable air of mystery which pervaded the whole enterprise and refused to be dissipated by itsincidents--a mystery dimly connected withhi atrophied instincts of youth and spirits; probably, indeed, it was all these influences, ceth by a ruthless sense of hu a mere commonplace fool of myself in spite of all my laboured calculations; but whatever it was, in a flash ed The crown of martyrdom disappeared, the wounded vanity healed; that precious fund of fictitious resignation drained away, but left no void There was left a fashi+onable and dishevelled youngin the dew and in the dark on a ridiculous portmanteau which dwarfed the yacht that was to carry it; a youth acutely sensible of ignorance in a strange and strenuous at sore and victimized; but withal sanely ashamed and sanely resolved to enjoy hie was radical its full groas slow But in any case it was here and now that it took its birth

'Grog's ready!' ca myself for the descent I found to my astonishment that all trace of litter had ned Glasses and lerant smell of punch had deadened previous odours I showed little eive intense relief to Davies, who delightedly showedthe 'roo den 'There's your stove, you see,' he ended; 'I've chucked the old one overboard' It was a weakness of his, I should say here, to rejoice in throwing things overboard on the flimsiest pretexts I afterwards suspected that the new stove had not been 'really necessary' anythis curious taste

We soing to bed After s, I h blankets Davies,swiftly and deftly, was soon in his

'It's quite coht from where he lay, with an accuracy whichpractice

I felt prickly all over, and there was a damp patch on the pillohich was soon explained by a heavy drop ofon ?' I said, as mildly as I could

'I' out of his bunk 'Ityesterday, but I suppose I missed that place I'll run up and square it with an oilskin'

'What's wrong with your hand?' I asked, sleepily, on his return, for gratitude re much; I strained it the other day,' was the reply; and then the seeht that prismatic compass It's not really necessary, of course; but'

(muffled by blankets) 'it may come in useful'

III Davies

I DOZED but fitfully, with a fretful sense of sore elbows and neck and ht before I had reached the stage of torpor in which such sluh the skylight of a torrent of water I started up, buainst the decks, and blinked leaden-eyed upwards

'Sorry! I' decks Co fro out into a pool of water on the oilcloth Thence I stumbled up the ladder, dived overboard, and buried bad dreams, stiffness, frowsiness, and tormented nerves in the loveliest fiord of the lovely Baltic A short and furious swi for a means of ascent up the smooth black side, which, low as it as slippery and unsympathetic Davies, in a loose canvas shi+rt, with the sleeves tucked up, and flannels rolled up to the knee, hung over me with a rope's end, and chatted unconcernedly about the easiness of the job when you kno, adjuringabout an accommodation ladder he had once had, but had thrown overboard because it was so horribly in the way When I arrived, my knees and elboere picked out in black paint, to his consternation Nevertheless, as I plied the towel, I knew that I had left in those limpid depths yet another crust of discontent and self-conceit

As I dressed into flannels and blazer, I looked round the deck, and with an unskilled and doubtful eye took in all that the darkness had hitherto hidden She seemed very s over thirty feet in length and nine in beam, a size very suitable to week-ends in the Solent, for such as liked that sort of thing; but that she should have coested a world of physical endeavour of which I had never dreamed

I passed to the aesthetic side Smartness and beauty were essential to yachts, in my mind, but with the best resolves to be pleased I found little encourageh; the cabin roof looked cluhts saddened the eye with dull iron and plebeian graining What brass there was, on the tiller-head and elsewhere, was tarnished with sickly green The decks had none of that crearey, and showed tarry exhalations round the sea were inwhen contrasted with the delicate buff ainst the blue of a June sky at Southsea Nor was the whole effect bettered byAn iaudy new burgee fluttered aloft; there seemed to be a new rope or two, especially round the diether new But all this only e one of a respectable wo to dress above her station, and soon likely to give it up

That the _ensemble_ was businesslike and solid even s seemed disproportionately substantial The anchor-chain looked contee; the binnacle with its compass was of a size and prominence almost comically impressive, and was, moreover the only piece of brass which was burnished and showed traces of reverent care Two huge coils of stout and dingy warp lay just abaft the mainmast, and summed up the weather-beaten aspect of the little shi+p I should add here that in the distant past she had been a lifeboat, and had been clumsily converted into a yacht by the addition of a counter, deck, and the necessary spars She was built, as all lifeboats are, diagonally, of two skins of teak, and thus had ih, in the er and 'Tea's ht me down to the cabin, where I found breakfast laid out on the table over the centre-board case, with Davies earnestly presiding, rather flushed as to the face, and sooty as to the fingers There was a slight shortage of plate and crockery, but I praised the bacon and could do so truthfully, for its crisp and steas would have put to shame the efforts of my London cook Indeed, I should have enjoyed the meal heartily were it not for the lowness of the sofa and table, causing a curvature of the body which thy process than usual, and induced a periodical yearning to get up and stretch--a relief which spelt disaster to the skull I noticed, too, that Davies spoke with a zest, sinister to hts of white bread and fresh h suitable to an inaugural banquet in honour of a fastidious stranger 'One can't be always going on shore,' he said, when I showed a discreet interest in these things 'I lived for ten days on a big rye loaf over in the Frisian Islands'

'And it died hard, I suppose?'

'Very hard, but' (gravely) 'quite good After that I taughtpowder at first, so used Eno's fruit salt, but they wouldn't rise much with that As for ed the subject, and asked about his plans

'Let's get under way at once,' he said, 'and sail down the fiord' I tried for soone, and his voice drowned in the fo'c'sle by the clatter and swish of washi+ng up