thousand-guinea horse; that duty done, he proceeded, as a fellow-prisoner, to explain to the pony, in terms of pats and cluckings, that freedom was a relative quantity, not to be attained by vicious hoofs. If the pony had retorted, "Do you call it freedom to be delivered into the hands of some hare-brained cavalry officer whose notion of what conduces to my welfare is to make me gallop over a dusty field after a little ball he merely wants to hit?" Paul would have replied, "On the whole, yes. You'll be better off, for instance, than your ninety-second cousins on Dartmoor. Notwithstanding which, throw the silly ass if you can—and a clean getaway to you!"
As the Cranmore lurched through a bright blue, early-autumn Mediterranean, Paul's spirits reflected the sea's suppressive calm. He had learned the ways of the ship, weighed her crew in the balance, found it wanting, and settled down for the voyage. It was depressing to acknowledge how easily he had established his footing. It meant that during the remainder of the voyage there would be nothing but books, the caprices of the weather, and passing landmarks to provide stimulation. And on subsequent voyages the prospect of slow, monotonous promotion. One day he would be put in command of a ship; then of a bigger ship. By that time his hair would be grey, or gone. And the rest of the men seemed to think—but what mattered what they thought! His mental processes never tallied with those of his neighbours, never had, and never would, on land or on sea, world without end, Amen! Why trouble then to look back or forward, why do anything but accept life as it was, and sleep whenever possible!
At Port Saïd the Cranmore was to coal and unload a marble statue for a pasha's palace. Paul obtained leave, drew some money, dressed in civilian clothes, and went ashore to look for a sextant and other articles which lack of funds had prevented him from buying in England.
