course proceeded in a straight line, representing blue, golden, foam-flecked days when steady progress had made for a settled routine. When the Trade Winds petered out, a tropical languor stole over the ship, and she could do nothing but roll in the long glassy swell under an ardent sun, while the sails, damp from swift recurring downpours, slapped against masts and cordage, then, as the vessel dipped forward, filled out with their own dead weight, drawing in the slack sheets with a whip-like snap. The rudder punctuated the long rhythms by dull kicks that sounded like the distant slamming of a barn door.
See-saw, see-saw—but it was now the drowsy teetering of a "painted ship upon a painted ocean." How those sullenly memorized verses of The Ancient Mariner came to glowing life! One day Paul caught a mollycoddle, which Otto said was nearly as big as an albatross, by means of a baited, triangular ring of tin, into a corner of which it thrust its hooked beak. Keeping the line taut, he had drawn the bird aboard. Once on deck it was unable to fly away, because there was no air purchase for its wings. It declined food and drink. The black kitten, peering around a corner of the house, humped its back at the apparition of a ten-foot spread of wing, and ran for its life, hiding in the hollow of the bowsprit under the forecastle head. Paul finally lifted the bewildered bird to the rail and it flew away, little the worse for its adventure. He had, nevertheless, felt guilty during its captivity, and that night dreamt it hung about his neck while Chips and the cook cursed him with fever-glazed eyes.
Merciless heat, a soft azure sky, towers of canvas mirrored in a field of gently undulating sapphire—and, on boatswain-chairs hung over the sides, men scraped and hammered at flakes of rust, applying great swathes of vermilion paint. At close range, if you stood on the
