Then to us: 'A sailor has no business
with a wife--I say. There I was, out of the ship. Well, no harm done
this time. Let's go and look at what that fool of a steamer smashed.'
"It wasn't much, but it delayed us three weeks. At the end of that time,
the captain being engaged with his agents, I carried Mrs. Beard's bag to
the railway-station and put her all comfy into a third-class carriage.
She lowered the window to say, 'You are a good young man. If you see
John--Captain Beard--without his muffler at night, just remind him from
me to keep his throat well wrapped up.' 'Certainly, Mrs. Beard,' I said.
'You are a good young man; I noticed how attentive you are to John--to
Captain--' The train pulled out suddenly; I took my cap off to the old
woman: I never saw her again . . . Pass the bottle.
"We went to sea next day. When we made that start for Bankok we had been
already three months out of London. We had expected to be a fortnight or
so--at the outside.
"It was January, and the weather was beautiful--the beautiful sunny
winter weather that has more charm than in the summer-time, because it
is unexpected, and crisp, and you know it won't, it can't, last long.
It's like a windfall, like a godsend, like an unexpected piece of luck.
"It lasted all down the North Sea, all down Channel; and it lasted till
we were three hundred miles or so to the westward of the Lizards: then
the wind went round to the sou'west and began to pipe up.
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