Now, as she lay cleared for sea, the stretch of her main-deck seemed to
me very find under the stars. Very fine, very roomy for her size,
and very inviting. I descended the poop and paced the waist, my mind
picturing to myself the coming passage through the Malay Archipelago,
down the Indian Ocean, and up the Atlantic. All its phases were familiar
enough to me, every characteristic, all the alternatives which were
likely to face me on the high seas--everything! . . . except the novel
responsibility of command. But I took heart from the reasonable thought
that the ship was like other ships, the men like other men, and that
the sea was not likely to keep any special surprises expressly for my
discomfiture.

Arrived at that comforting conclusion, I bethought myself of a cigar and
went below to get it. All was still down there. Everybody at the
after end of the ship was sleeping profoundly. I came out again on
the quarter-deck, agreeably at ease in my sleeping suit on that warm
breathless night, barefooted, a glowing cigar in my teeth, and, going
forward, I was met by the profound silence of the fore end of the ship.
Only as I passed the door of the forecastle, I heard a deep, quiet,
trustful sigh of some sleeper inside. And suddenly I rejoiced in the
great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in
my choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting
problems, invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute
straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness of its purpose.

The riding light in the forerigging burned with a clear, untroubled, as
if symbolic, flame, confident and bright in the mysterious shades of
the night. Passing on my way aft along the other side of the ship, I
observed that the rope side ladder, put over, no doubt, for the master
of the tug when he came to fetch away our letters, had not been hauled