As I leaned against the rail, dismissing premonitions of disaster, I could not help thinking of Miss West below, bustling and humming as she made her little nest. And from her my thought drifted on to the everlasting mystery of woman. Yes, I, with all the futuristic contempt for woman, am ever caught up afresh by the mystery of woman.
Oh, no illusions, thank you. Woman, the love-seeker, obsessing and possessing, fragile and fierce, soft and venomous, prouder than Lucifer and as prideless, holds a perpetual, almost morbid, attraction for the thinker. What is this flame of her, blazing through all her contradictions and ignobilities?—this ruthless passion for life, always for life, more life on the planet? At times it seems to me brazen, and awful, and soulless. At times I am made petulant by it. And at other times I am swayed by the sublimity of it. No; there is no escape from woman. Always, as a savage returns to a dark glen where goblins are and gods may be, so do I return to the contemplation of woman.
Mr. Pike’s voice interrupted my musings. From for’ard, on the main deck, I heard him snarl:
“On the main-topsail-yard, there!—if you cut that gasket I’ll split your damned skull!”
Again he called, with a marked change of voice, and the Henry he called to I concluded was the training-ship boy.
“You, Henry, main-skysail-yard, there!” he cried. “Don’t make those gaskets up! Fetch ’em in along the yard and make fast to the tye!”
Thus routed from my reverie, I decided to go below to bed. As my hand went out to the knob of the chart-house door again the mate’s voice rang out:
“Come on, you gentlemen’s sons in disguise! Wake up! Lively now!”
I did not sleep well. To begin with, I read late. Not till two in the morning did I reach up and turn out the kerosene reading-lamp which Wada had purchased and installed for me. I was asleep immediately—perfect sleep being perhaps my greatest gift; but almost immediately I was awake again. And thereafter, with dozings and cat-naps and restless tossings, I struggled to win to sleep, then gave it up. For of all things, in my state of jangled nerves, to be afflicted with hives! And still again, to be afflicted with hives in cold winter weather!