of humour, one's own kind of philosophy; knowing that they are not
perfect and understanding their limitations; trusting to time and
circumstance to bring out the fast colours of life in the eternal
wash. Thinking thoughts like these that night, Henry's bunk-mate
could not sleep. So he slipped on a grey overcoat over his pajamas
and put on a grey hat and grey rubber-soled shoes, and went out on
deck into the hot night that falls in the gulf stream in summer.
It was the murky hour before dawn and around and around the deck he
paced noiselessly, a grey, but hardly gaunt spectre in the night.
The deck chairs were filled with sleepers from the berths below
decks. At last, wearying of his rounds, the spectre stopped to gaze
over the rail at the water and the stars when he heard this from
a deck chair behind him, "Wake up, Net--for God's sake wake up!"
whispered a frightened woman's voice. "There's that awful thing
again that scared me so awhile ago!"

[Illustration with caption: "Col-o-nel, will you please carry my
books?"]

Even at the latter end of the journey the ocean interested us. An
ocean always seems so unreasonable to inlanders. And that morning
when there was "a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn
breaking," Henry came alongside and looked at the seascape, all
twisting and writhing and tossing and billowing, up and down and
sideways. He also looked at his partner who was gradually growing
pale and wan and weary. And Henry heard this: "She's on a bender;
she's riz about ten feet during the night. I guess there's been
rain somewhere up near the headwaters or else the fellow took his
finger out of the hole in the dyke. Anyway, she'll be out of her
banks before breakfast. I don't want any breakfast; I'm going to