overcast waste around us. It was useless to appeal to it. It did
vouchsafe us one ship that morning, a German trawler with a fir tree
lashed to her deck, ready for Christmas morning, I suppose, when perhaps
they would tie herrings to its twigs. But she was no good to us. And
the grey animosity granted us three others during the afternoon, and they
were equally useless, for they had not sighted our fleet for a week. All
that interested me was the way the lookout on the bridge picked out a
mark, which I could not see, for it was obscured where sea and sky were
the same murk, and called it a ship. Long before I could properly
discern it, the look-out behaved as though he knew all about it. But it
was never the sign we wanted. We had changed our course so often that I
was beginning to believe that nobody aboard could make a nearer guess at
our position than the giddy victim in blindman's-buff. A sextant was
never used. Apparently these fishermen found their way about on a little
mental arithmetic compounded of speed, time, and the course. That leaves
a large margin for error. So if they felt doubtful they got a plummet,
greased it, and dipped it overboard. When it was hauled up they
inspected whatever might be sticking to the tallow, and at once announced
our position. At first I felt sceptical. It was as though one who had
got lost with you in London might pick up a stone in an unknown
thoroughfare, and straightway announce the name of that street. That
would be rather clever. But I discovered my fishermen could do something
like it.

Our skipper no longer appeared at meals. He was on the bridge day and
night. He acted quite well a pose of complete indifference, and said no
more than: "This has not happened to me for years." He repeated this
slowly at reasonable intervals. But he had lost the nimble impulse to
chat about little things, and also his look of peering and innocent
curiosity. As now he did not come to our table, the others spoke of