STEWARD BEERBOHM: The suggestion of asceticism in the name, blent with the sensuality of the thing, heightens its charm. Who would not be a hermit, and dwell in one of those rococo palacules built for weary monarchs in an age of scepticism, flute-playing, and minuets? (_Enter Second Mate Hardy_) SECOND MATE HARDY: The spirit of the years is looking down upon our ship with an ironical smile. O Wessex, Wessex! Would that I could see Stonehenge and a large red moon rising over the plain. CAPTAIN MEREDITH: I am glad to be away from the island of chills and the _informes hiemes_. PURSER SHAW: Sir, with all due respect, I cannot allow this digression to continue. No Englishman can talk consecutively for more than two minutes on the same subject. COOK CHESTERTON: That is why the Irish have conquered England. CAPTAIN MEREDITH: Observe the Southern Cross, if indeed that be the Southern Cross, hanging like a jeweled hilt in the spheral blue-- STEWARD BEERBOHM: Pretty little trinket! Is it a brooch or an aigrette? Methinks a device of Cartier-- CAPTAIN MEREDITH: Those stars are pebbles on the silvery wheel-course of the chariot of the moon. SECOND MATE HARDY: Pitiless, inflexible stars, thousands and thousands of millions of miles away. PURSER SHAW: Don’t you believe it. That’s one of the lies men of science tell us. COOK CHESTERTON: It doesn’t matter if the stars are twenty miles off, or twenty millions of miles off. The point about the stars is that they are stars. (_Enter an Ordinary Seaman_) ORDINARY SEAMAN: Please, sir, the ship is sinking. SECOND MATE HARDY: I knew it! O Irony! PURSER SHAW: Then we shall have to eat roast boatswain after all. FIRST MATE JAMES: If I might hazard a suggestion, without of course trying to grasp any impertinent or rather importunate shadow of a scheme-- ORDINARY SEAMAN: The cabin boy has escaped in the galley. CAPTAIN MEREDITH: O brave! STEWARD BEERBOHM: Ouf! (_The ship sinks with all hands._) [Illustration: THERE IS NOTHING SO ROMANTIC AS FOOD] * * * * * To-night (when is it? I have lost count of time, but I know it is still July) one of the officers told me a yarn. It was his own ghost story, and it was ultimately spoiled for him, just as happened in the case of Kipling, when he heard phantom billiard players playing all night and found out the next day that the noise was caused by a rat and a loose window-sash. This is the story; but I shall spoil it in the telling because to tell a sea-yarn you must be a sailor. The ship was sailing somewhere near the Cape of Good Hope. It was dirty weather and the sailor who was on watch came and reported to the officer that there was a ghost in the sea, for’ard. The officer sent him away, but he returned almost immediately and reported that the ghost was still there.