“We’ll be going through the Hair’s Breadth to-morrow at seven,” said the Captain, in a fat, selfcongratulatory voice, as though he had himself created the channel he referred to. “You must all get up early to see her do it.” There are few penances easier than early rising on board ship. There are no inducements to stay upon the implacable plane that is your bunk, in the hot square cube that is your cabin. Your ear is tickled by the sound of the activities of food in the saloon outside; you can hear the sea singing in a cheerful, beckoning way past your inadequate porthole. You emerge from your cabin and find men in pyjamas, and ladies in flowered dressing-gowns and (if possible) thick pig-tails, or (if impossible) pleasing head-erections of lace, sitting in rows at sparkling tables, and being fed by stewards with apples and sandwiches. There is scarcely ever any need to remind the voyager by sea about the tiresome superiority that distinguishes the ant. The Captain, therefore, had a large audience ready for his sleight-of-nerve feat of threading the Hair’s Breadth. He looked very self-conscious on the bridge. Land climbed slowly down the spangled sloped sea from the horizon. There seemed to be no gap in the quivering line of it. Presently, however, as if it had quivered itself to pieces, the line was shattered. Silver channels appeared beckoning on every side. The _Caribbeania_, blind except to her duty, headed towards the least likely-looking channel of all. The most ignorant passenger on the ship could have told the Captain that he was running into certain destruction. Many longed to take command, and to point out to the Captain his mistake. Like a camel advancing foolhardily upon the needle’s eye the _Caribbeania_ approached. Her speed was slackened, she went on tiptoe, so to speak, as if not to awaken the gods of ill-chance, but there was nothing faltering about her. She thrust her shoulders into the opening. (It would be waste of time to inform me that in nautical language a ship has no shoulders.) You could have whispered a confidence to the palm trees on either side—except that you would have been afraid to draw enough breath to do so, for fear of deflecting the ship an inch from her course. Courtesy was, as usual, bold. She spoke in quite an ordinary voice. “Why, look, there’s a man with hardly anything on, paddling! How killing! He’s the colour of brown paper!” “You’ll soon be dead in Trinity Islands if you find that killing,” snapped Mrs. Rust. “The Captain evidently doesn’t know his business. We’re at least six feet nearer to this shore than the other.”