Golfing Round the World
Chapter VIII Keep Your Eye on the Ball
Life on shipboard was very pleasant at this time. If it was occasionally overwarm ashore, the climate at sea was absolutely perfect. Time after time, while gloom and murk or terrific thunder and lightning appeared to prevail over the coasts, we, at sea, would pass by in brilliant sunshine, while the cool clear breezes played about the deck. A large tarpaulin swimming tank had been rigged up on the foredeck, and I would not ask for a more delightful sensation than the midnight day. Floating drowsily in the warm sea water amid the phosphorescence and gazing at the stars is an ideal introduction to sound and cool slumber.
I should like to recapture the sense of carefree 'well content' that came to me in those equatorial seas. I did not keep a diary of my wanderings in the ordinary way, but occasionally, before turning in, I would go in off the deep end with pencil and notebook and perpetrate this sort of thing:-
"Plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose. be it the Red, the Arabian, the Sapphire, the Purple or the Pink, this sea which is proverbially capricious and like woman, 'souvent varie' remains ever a flat disc of infinite gradations of colour, and we rest consistently in its centre, always moving towards its edge, that ever receding rim, which keeps ever the same distance away. Of course is never the same. Watch the mermaids and the sea elves. The former will only come in the moonlight: you can see them in the ship's wake trying to catch the fireflies for their stitchery: but the elves come out whenever the sun calls them from the deep and they will dance in the turquoise patches when the zephyrs play their tunes, while nearby the sea angels keep watch and ward. You can hear them whispering and murmuring ever night and day amid the drone and humming of the giant turbines, in the caseless, yet infinitely soothing swash and shush of the creaming foaming waves. Then the afreets in the blue whisk up their tails quite suddenly, and with their long grey cloaks obscure the sun, but how iridesce as that fiery old monarch shoots beam after beam, chasing and chivvying the dusky monsters to their caverns beyond the horizon."