But one does not appreciate the force of the wind. So
balmy and exhilarating is it that it is so much atmospheric wine. I
delight to open my lungs and my pores to it. Nor does it chill. At
any hour of the night, while the cabin lies asleep, I break off from
my reading and go up on the poop in the thinnest of tropical pyjamas.
I never knew before what the trade wind was. And now I am infatuated
with it. I stroll up and down for an hour at a time, with whichever
mate has the watch. Mr. Mellaire is always full-garmented, but Mr.
Pike, on these delicious nights, stands his first watch after
midnight in his pyjamas. He is a fearfully muscular man. Sixty-nine
years seem impossible when I see his single, slimpsy garments pressed
like fleshings against his form and bulged by heavy bone and huge
muscle. A splendid figure of a man! What he must have been in the
hey-day of youth two score years and more ago passes comprehension.
The days, so filled with simple routine, pass as in a dream. Here,
where time is rigidly measured and emphasized by the changing of the
watches, where every hour and half-hour is persistently brought to
one's notice by the striking of the ship's bells fore and aft, time
ceases.
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