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For a brief spell, by some unforeseen miracle of good fortune, there was nothing to do for the moment, and the four of us, in clean singlets and dungarees, were leaning on the off rail of the after well-deck smoking. Port Duluth was behind us.

At first sight HMT Antenor seemed to be not unlike my early childish drawings of ships, high fo'castle, a low forward well-deck, high superstructure, a low aft well-deck and a high stern structure. Both well-decks had raised hatch covers that gave access to the lower decks and the centre superstructure carried the lone funnel.

The great, virtuous calm engulfed her, slate sides, yellow funnel, and all, but cast up in another hemisphere the steam whaler Haliotis, black and rusty, with a manure-coloured funnel, a litter of dingy white boats, and an enormous stove, or furnace, for boiling blubber on her forward well-deck.

The late afternoon was spent in the Aragon, down in the depths of a well-deck, waiting for the fleet-sweeper to take them to Anzac. Mick was furious because he was not allowed to buy stuff at the ship's canteen, as it was reserved for those non-fighting staff soldiers who lived in all the comfort and safety of this beautiful ship. Mick was loud and exceedingly pointed in his remarks.

She enlightened me not a little. I saw how lame a thing my own journey was my leisurely dawdling back to my work. This girl came as it were on wings, with power in her heart and will, that would take no denial but God's. Her few words as we walked up and down the well-deck were words that burnt and shone in the cold dark. I am talking about things as I saw them just then.

This last was often done in shark-ridden waters, to the great disapproval of the ship's officers, some of whom would stand on the well-deck, revolver in hand, while more than once a swift bullet was sent shrilling over our heads at some great fin rising out of the sea beyond.

"Is it going to get any worse?" said the bow-anchor chained down to the deck, where he could only breathe once in five minutes. "Not knowing, can't say. Wind may blow a bit by midnight. Thanks awfully. Good-bye." The wave that spoke so politely had travelled some distance aft, and found itself all mixed up on the deck amidships, which was a well-deck sunk between high bulwarks.

Jimmie slipped down the accommodation ladder that led to the well-deck, side-stepped a yawning hatch, dodged a swinging cargo net stuffed with trunks, and entered the second-class smoking-room. From there he elbowed his way to the second-class promenade deck. A stream of tearful and hilarious visitors who, like sheep in a chute, were being herded down the gangway, engulfed him.

The white man must always be top dog, etc., etc. Carraway grew greasily fluent on rather well-worn lines. I smoked my pipe and made no comment. By-and-bye he tired of his monologue. He gave me no further confidences till the night after we left Madeira. Then he came to me suddenly about eleven o'clock as I stood on the well-deck, smoking a pipe before turning in.

There were probably twenty feet of open well-deck between me and the foot of the ladder leading to the saloon-deck, and, then, I had the dark passageway to traverse for another thirty or forty feet aft before I could gain my room. I braced myself between the hood of the companion and a thrumming ventilator and listened for some hostile sound.