return by the next boat. But no one anticipates such a result this time.

Monotony is the characteristic of a modern voyage, and who shall
describe it? The lover of realism might suggest that writing the same
paragraph over and over again would enable the reader to experience its
weariness, if he were truly desirous of so doing. But I hesitate to
take such a course, and trust that some of these lines even once
repeated may convey some inkling of the dulness of the days. Monotony of
view--for we live at the centre of a complete circle of sea and sky;
monotony of food--for all things taste the same on board ship; monotony
of existence--for each day is but a barren repetition of the last; all
fall to the lot of the passenger on great waters. It were malevolent to
try to bring the realisation home to others. Yet all earthly evils have
their compensations, and even monotony is not without its secret joy.
For a time we drop out of the larger world, with its interests and its
obligations, and become the independent citizens of a tiny State:--a
Utopian State where few toil and none go hungry--bounded on all sides by
the sea and vassal only to the winds and waves. Here during a period
which is too long while it lasts, too short when it is over, we may
placidly reflect on the busy world that lies behind and the tumult that
is before us. The journalists read books about South Africa; the
politician--were the affair still in the domain of words--might examine
the justice of the quarrel. The Headquarter Staff pore over maps or
calculate the sizes of camps and entrenchments; and in the meantime the
great ship lurches steadily forward on her course, carrying to the south
at seventeen miles an hour schemes and intentions of war.

But let me record the incidents rather than their absence. One day the
first shoal of flying fish is seen--a flight of glittering birds that,
flushed by the sudden approach of the vessel, skim away over the waters