They were fantastically
Misshapen; in high boots, in hats like helmets, and swaying clumsily,
stiff and bulky in glistening oilskins, they resembled men strangely
equipped for some fabulous adventure. Whenever she rose easily to
a towering green sea, elbows dug ribs, faces brightened, lips
murmured:--"Didn't she do it cleverly," and all the heads turning like
one watched with sardonic grins the foiled wave go roaring to leeward,
white with the foam of a monstrous rage. But when she had not been
quick enough and, struck heavily, lay over trembling under the blow, we
clutched at ropes, and looking up at the narrow bands of drenched and
strained sails waving desperately aloft, we thought in our hearts:--"No
wonder. Poor thing!"
The thirty-second day out of Bombay began inauspiciously. In the
morning a sea smashed one of the galley doors. We dashed in through
lots of steam and found the cook very wet and indignant with the
ship:--"She's getting worse every day. She's trying to drown me in front
of my own stove!" He was very angry. We pacified him, and the carpenter,
though washed away twice from there, managed to repair the door.
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