"And he was, for you must bear in mind that there were others on board besides Mr. Bloom. There was the Second Mate, a young man whose prospects were tarnished by a weakness for secret drinking. And there was young Siddons, a stripling just out of his apprenticeship and uncertificated, the son of a well-to-do merchant in a country town. Jack used to say there was too much of the lah-di-dah about him, and was down on him time and again. All the same he liked the boy, as I did, too, for Siddons was a gentleman--the only one on board, I used to think. He got the D. S. O. the other day for bombing something or other in Germany. He was what modern, educated smart women call 'a charming boy' or 'a pretty little boy.' Not that he was effeminate, by any means. He was simply one of those to whom virtuous sentiment is a passionate necessity. Instead of playing in the gutters of life, as so many of us do, his young body and soul were on tip-toe for the coming of love. You can see it when they are like that. There is a thirsty look about the lips, a turn for moodiness, a sudden dilation of the pupils as they catch your glance, and a quick flush, very pretty to see. And sometimes, I am informed, they find a woman worthy of the gifts they bear.... "We had a couple of engineers, too, but they were scarcely to be classed with young Siddons. They were like a good many of us, useful, shop-soiled articles with plenty of the meretricious conventional sexuality which passes for passion when stimulated. But neither of them would have got a look from a modern, educated smart woman. The Third I didn't know very much about. He came and went, and the principal impression I have of him now is that he was married. The Second had what I should call an oppressively incondite mind. He had a cold avidity for facts. Unlike most seamen he never read fiction unless it was some book which had achieved notoriety for what is called frankness. He had a bookshelf in his cabin containing his shore-going boots and a derby hat, a Whittaker's Almanac, a Who's Who, several year-books, and a shilling encyclopedia. It was astonishing, the comfort he seemed to derive from knowing the census-returns of Bolivia, or the Republican majority in Oregon, or the number of microbes in a pint of milk. But it did no one any harm. I only mention it because he, too, in his way, fell in love with Artemisia and for a time neglected his familiar preoccupations.