He had learnt the sea in the Roumanian navy, and English out of a book;
he would still at times pronounce the e's at the end of "there"
and "here"; he was a naturalised Englishman, and he drove me into a
reluctant and uncongenial patriotism by his everlasting carping at
things English. Pollack would set himself to "draw him out." Heaven
alone can tell how near I came to murder.
Fifty-three days I had outward, cooped up with these two and a shy and
profoundly depressed mate who read the Bible on Sundays and spent the
rest of his leisure in lethargy, three and fifty days of life cooped up
in a perpetual smell, in a persistent sick hunger that turned from the
sight of food, in darkness, cold and wet, in a lightly ballasted ship
that rolled and pitched and swayed. And all the time the sands in the
hour-glass of my uncle's fortunes were streaming out. Misery! Amidst it
all I remember only one thing brightly, one morning of sunshine in the
Bay of Biscay and a vision of frothing waves, sapphire green, a bird
following our wake and our masts rolling about the sky.
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