ready to hand, to my writing materials on the desk, before which a
swing arm-chair, leather-upholstered and screwed solidly to the
floor, invited me. My pyjamas and dressing-gown were out. My
slippers, in their accustomed place by the bed, also invited me.

Here, aft, all was fitness, intelligence. On deck it was what I have
described--a nightmare spawn of creatures, assumably human, but
malformed, mentally and physically, into caricatures of men. Yes, it
was an unusual crew; and that Mr. Pike and Mr. Mellaire could whip it
into the efficient shape necessary to work this vast and intricate
and beautiful fabric of a ship was beyond all seeming of possibility.

Depressed as I was by what I had just witnessed on deck, there came
to me, as I leaned back in my chair and opened the second volume of
George Moore's Hail and Farewell, a premonition that the voyage was
to be disastrous. But then, as I looked about the room, measured its
generous space, realized that I was more comfortably situated than I
had ever been on any passenger steamer, I dismissed foreboding
thoughts and caught a pleasant vision of myself, through weeks and
months, catching up with all the necessary reading which I had so
long neglected.

Once, I asked Wada if he had seen the crew. No, he hadn't, but the
steward had said that in all his years at sea this was the worst crew
he had ever seen.

"He say, all crazy, no sailors, rotten," Wada said. "He say all big
fools and bime by much trouble. 'You see,' he say all the time.
'You see, You see.' He pretty old man--fifty-five years, he say.
Very smart man for Chinaman. Just now, first time for long time, he