"BREAD UPON THE WATERS"
loch, my second, knew her as well as I did. I found him dryin' his socks on the main-steam, an' combin' his whiskers wi' the comb Janet gied me last year, for the warld an' a' as though we were in port. I tried the feed, speered into the stoke-hole, thumbed all bearin's, spat on the thrust for luck, gied 'em my blessin', an' took Kinloch's socks before I went up to the bridge again.
"Then Bell handed me the wheel, an' went below to warm himself. When he came up my gloves were frozen to the spokes an' the ice clicked over my eyelids. Pairfeet North Atlantic winter weather, as I was sayin'.
"The gale blew out by night, but we lay in smotherin' cross-seas that made the auld Kite chatter from stem to stern. I slowed to thirty-four, I mind—no, thirty-seven. There was a long swell the morn, an' the Grotkau was headin' into it west awa'.
"'She 'll win to Rio yet, tail-shaft or no tail-shaft,' says Bell.
"'Last night shook her,' I said. 'She 'll jar it off yet, mark my word.'
"We were then, maybe, a hunder and fifty mile west-sou' west o' Slyne Head, by dead reckonin'. Next day we made a hunder an' thirty—ye 'll note we were not racin'-boats—an' the day after a hunder an' sixty-one, an' that made us, we ’ll say, Eighteen an' a bittock west, an' maybe Fifty-one an' a bittock north, crossin' all the North Atlantic liner lanes on the long slant, always in sight o' the Grotkau, creepin' up by night and fallin' awa' by day. After the gale it was cold weather wi' dark nights.
"I was in the engine-room on Friday night, just be-
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