There is nothing to be done with an adventure which has become a misprise
than to enjoy it that way instead. What did I care when they complained
at breakfast of the waste of rockets the night before? What did that
matter to me when the skylight above our morning coffee was open at last,
really open? Fine weather for December! Across that patch of blue,
which was a peep into eternity, I saw drift a bird as white as sanctity.
And did it matter if the imprints on our tablecloth of negroes' thumbs
were more numerous and patent than ever, in such a light? Not in the
least. For I myself had long since given up washing, as a laborious and
unsatisfactory process, and was then cutting up cake tobacco with the
rapture of an acolyte preparing the incense. If this was what was meant
by getting lost on the Dogger, then the method, if only its magic could
be formulated, would make the fortunes of the professional fakirs of
happiness in the capitals of the rich. Yet mornings of such a quality
cannot be purchased, nor even claimed as the reward of virtue.

On deck it was a regal day, leisurely, immense, and majestic. The wind
was steady and generous. The warm sunlight danced. I should not have
been surprised to have seen Zeus throned on the splendid summit of the
greatest of those rounded clouds, contemplative of us, finger on cheek,
smiling with approval of the scene below--melancholy approval, for we
would remind him of those halcyon days whose refulgence turned pale and
sickly when Paul, that argumentative zealot, came to provide a world,
already thinking more of industry and State politics than of the gods,
with a hard-wearing theology which would last till Manchester came. For
the _Windhover_ had drifted into a time and place as innocent of man's
highest achievements as is joy of death. The wind and sea were chanting.
The riding of the ship kept time to that measure. The vault was
turquoise, and the moving floor was cobalt. The white islands of the
Olympians were in the sky.