I dreamt I was lunching at a fashionable seaside resort with Polly
at my side, and An kept bringing us melons, which grew so monstrous
every time a knife was put into them that poor Polly screamed aloud.
I dreamt I was afloat on a raft, hotly pursued by my tailor, whose bare
and shiny head--may Providence be good to him!--was garlanded with roses,
while in his fist was a bunch of unpaid bills, the which he waved aloft,
shouting to me to stop. And thus we danced down an ink-black river until
he had chiveyed me into the vast hall of the Admiralty, where a fearsome
Secretary, whose golden teeth rattled and dropped from his head with
mingled cold and anger, towered above me as he asked why I was absent
from my ship without leave. And I was just mumbling out excuses while
stooping to pick up his golden dentistry, when some one stirring in the
hut aroused me. I started up on my elbow and looked around. Where was
I? For a minute all was confused and dark. The heavy mound-like forms of
sleeping men, the dim outlines of their hunting gear upon the walls, the
pale sea beyond, half seen through the open doorway, just turning livid
in the morning light; and then as my eyes grew more accustomed to the
obscurity, and my stupid senses returned, I recognised the surroundings,
and, with a sigh, remembered yesterday's adventures.

However, it would never do to mope; so, rising silently and picking
a way through human lumber on the floor, I went out and down to the
water's edge, where "shore-going" clothes, as we sailors call them,
were slipped off, and I plunged into the sea for a swim.

It was a welcome dip, for I needed the plunge physically and
intellectually, but it came to an abrupt conclusion. The Thither folk
apparently had never heard of this form of enjoyment; to them water stood
for drinking or drowning, nothing else, and since one could not drink the
sea, to be in it meant, even for a ghost, to drown. Consequently, when