“A little ship was on the sea, It was a pretty sight, It sailed along so pleasantly, And all was calm and bright.” But, alas! the storm did soon begin to rise; by morning we were in troubled waters, and by noon we were battened down and hove to. We had given up all idea of making progress and were riding out the gale as best we might. All the saloon party were more or less laid low, including Mr. Ritchie, for the first time in his life. The steward was not seen for two days; and if it had not been that the under-steward, who shall be known as “Luke,” rose to the occasion, the state of affairs would have been somewhat serious. He not only contrived to satisfy the appetites of the crew, which were subsequently said to have been abnormally good, but also staggered round, with black hands and a tousled head, ministering with tea and bovril to our frailer needs. The engineer, a landsman, was too incapacitated to do any work, and doubt arose as to whether we should not be left without electric light. More alarming was the fact that the place smelt badly of paraffin, arousing anxiety as to the effect the excessive rolling of the ship might have had on our carefully tested tanks and barrels; happily the odour proved to be due merely to a temporary overflow in the engine-room. We now found the disadvantage of having abandoned, owing to our various delays, the trial runs in home waters which had at one time been planned. The skylights, which would have been adequate for ordinary yachting—which has been described as “going round and round the Isle of Wight”—proved unequal to the work expected of _Mana_, and the truth appeared of a dark saying of the Board of Trade surveyor that “skylights were not ventilation.” Not only could they of course not be raised in bad weather, but those which, like mine, were arranged to open, admitted the sea to an unpleasant degree; such an amount of water had to be conveyed by means of dripping towels into canvas baths that it seemed at one time as if the Atlantic would be perceptibly emptier. When in the midst of the gale night fell on the lonely ship the sensation was eerie; every now and then the persistent rolling, which threw from side to side of the berth those fortunate enough to be below, was interrupted by a resounding crash in the darkness as a big wave broke against the vessel’s side, followed by the rushing surge and gurgle of the water as it poured in a volume over the deck above. Then the hubbub entirely ceased, and for a perceptible time the vessel lay perfectly still in the trough of the wave, like a human creature dazed by a sudden blow, after a second or two to begin again her weary tossing. I wondered, as I lay there, which was the more weird experience, this night or one spent in camp in East Africa with no palisade, in a district swarming with lions, and again recalled the philosophy of one of our Swahili boys.