Chapter IX
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!
At four I lighted up and went to reading, forgetting my irritated skin in
Vernon Lee's delightful screed against William James, and his "will to
believe." I was on the weather side of the ship, and from overhead, through the deck, came the steady footfalls of some officer on watch. I knew that they were not the steps of Mr. Pike, and wondered whether they were Mr. Mellaire's or the pilot's. Somebody above there was awake. The work was going on, the vigilant seeing and overseeing, that, I could plainly conclude, would go on through every hour of all the hours on the voyage.
At half-past four I heard the steward's alarm go off, instantly
suppressed, and five minutes later I lifted my hand to motion him in
through my open door. What I desired was a cup of coffee, and Wada had
been with me through too many years for me to doubt that he had given the
steward precise instructions and turned over to him my coffee and my
coffee-making apparatus.
The steward was a jewel. In ten minutes he served me with a perfect cup
of coffee. I read on until daylight, and half-past eight found me, breakfast in bed finished, dressed and shaved, and on deck. We were still towing, but all sails were set to a light favouring breeze from the north. In the chart-room Captain West and the pilot were smoking cigars. At the wheel I noted what I decided at once was an efficient. He was not a large man; if anything he was undersized. But his countenance was broad-browed and intelligently formed. Tom, I later learned, was his name--Tom Spink, an Englishman. He was blue-eyed, fair-skinned, well- grizzled, and, to the eye, a hale fifty years of age. His reply of "Good morning, sir" was cheery, and he smiled as he uttered the simple phrase. He did not look sailor-like, as did Henry, the training-ship boy; and yet I felt at once that he was a sailor, and an able one.
It was Mr. Pike's watch, and on asking him about Tom he grudgingly
admitted that the man was the "best of the boiling."
Miss West emerged from the chart-house, with a rosy morning face and her
vital, springy limb-movement, and immediately began establishing her
contacts. On asking how I had slept, and when I said wretchedly, she
demanded an explanation. I told her of my affliction of hives and showed
her the lumps on my wrists.
"Your blood needs thinning and cooling," she adjudged promptly. "Wait a
minute. I'll see what can be done for you."
And with that she was away and below and back in a trice, in her hand a
part glass of water into which she stirred a teaspoonful of cream of
tartar.
"Drink it," she ordered, as a matter of course.
I drank it. And at eleven in the morning she came up to my deck-chair
with a second dose of the stuff. Also she reproached me soundly for
permitting Wada to feed meat to Possum. It was from her that Wada and I
learned how mortal a sin it was to give meat to a young puppy. Furthermore, she laid down the law and the diet for Possum, not alone to me and Wada, but to the steward, the carpenter, and Mr. Mellaire. Of the latter two, because they ate by themselves in the big after-room and because Possum played there, she was especially suspicious; and she was outspoken in voicing her suspicions to their faces. The carpenter mumbled embarrassed asseverations in broken English of past, present, and future innocence, the while he humbly scraped and shuffled before her on his huge feet. Mr. Mellaire's protestations were of the same nature, save that they were made with the grace and suavity of a Chesterfield.
In short, Possum's diet raised quite a tempest in the Elsinore teapot, and by the time it was over Miss West had established this particular contact with me and given me a feeling that we were the mutual owners of the puppy. I noticed, later in the day, that it was to Miss West that Wada went for instructions as to the quantity of warm water he must use to dilute Possum's condensed milk.