ing off the coarse encroachments of his mates, thirsting for new experiences, ever erecting new air castles upon the ruins of the old. Ordinary seaman, able seaman, steward, bugle boy, quartermaster, assistant purser, boatswain: he had acted in these and other capacities, and at the end of each voyage converted his pay-day into English gold and added his savings to the fund with which he had set out from Fremantle. The secreting and safeguarding of this hoard had been a precarious business. More than once he had done battle for it. But association with ruffians had taught him arts of self-protection.
For three or four years he roved the Southern Seas in steamers of varying nationality, touching at ports in Africa, India, South America. In none of his ships did he find the freedom, comfort and kindliness that had prevailed on the Clytemnestra. None of his shipmates spoiled him as Captain Caxton and Otto and the Danish carpenter had done. Kicks replaced friendly pats, jibes were more common than endearments. The clean smell of tar and white sheen of canvas were exchanged for oily cotton-waste and showers of soot from smutty funnels. Everything was ugly, cramped and prosaic. Aboard the Clytemnestra one had made the world to suit oneself; wars might rage throughout Europe and Asia and nobody be the wiser. On wireless ships distracting rumours came to the ears. In retrospection his first voyage seemed like a story he might have read in Chums.
Often, when carrying out the orders of some weedy fourth officer, Paul had mutinous fits that got him into trouble. After conflicts of this kind he would stare into—the sea and curse the folly that had taken him from home. He pictured radiant careers he had forfeited, then reminded himself that nothing rooted in Hale's Turning could ever be radiant. True, in Hale's Turning, for all its provincialism, he might have had the solace of music; and the deprivation of music had done more than any-
