Damaris revelled in it all: the seagulls; the lighthouses; the ships
that passed in the day and night; and the tail-end of a storm they hit
up in the Bay, whilst Jane Coop invented new verses to the Litany as
she tried, in her cabin, to solve the problem of two into one, and
Wellington, somewhere under the water-line, daily gave a fine imitation
of hell-bound to a circle of admiring seamen.

To his last hour at sea Captain X will forever retain the memory of
what it cost him in strength of will to maintain his dignity, when,
standing straight and exceedingly beautiful, with one hand full of
lists, the huge bulldog at her feet, with a black bow under his left
ear, and an assembly of the greatest sufferers before her, Damaris, two
days before arriving at Port Said, solemnly read out the items and the
shop price of each article chewed, damaged or totally destroyed during
the voyage by the dog.

"Shoes, boots, pants, edges of trousers; two pipes, one pouch, six
packets of gaspers; one entire tray of crockery; one air-cushion
dropped in fright by stewardess; one coil of rope, one life-buoy, one
tin can dented, one man's ankles slightly bruised; one bare patch to
ship's cat's back. . . ." And so on and so forth; whilst murmurs arose
from the sufferers, who chorused that "they didn't want no
compensation, only too pleased to part with their bits, as long . . ."
etc., etc.

"I do not think the fault was all on one side, Miss Hethencourt,"
summed up the Captain, speaking in guttural consonant and flattened
vowel from suppressed emotion. "The--er--the plaintiff must have
approached the dog as he was chained and------"