324 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



of the blackness a thin screen of slanted, pearl- 

 grey lines etched on the substance of night. 



At midnight the unending warp of rain still 

 threaded the invisible sky and sea. I lay in my 

 bunk and listened to the unearthly cries of the 

 confused sea-birds. The high, shrill, pitiful notes 

 filtered through the murk, and then, suddenly, 

 several ghostly forms would shape themselves, flut- 

 tering tremulously far out in the driving wind and 

 rain, proving that the darkness was not darkness 

 after all. 



In the museum of Uyeno Park, Tokio, there 

 was once an incomparable collection of kakemonos 

 — the rarest work of the best old masters of Yeddo 

 and China — all taken now by the earthquake. Un- 

 known to me, there was hidden deep within a for- 

 gotten cell of memory, a clear-cut vision of one, 

 showing sea-gulls flying in the rain. And now, on 

 this rainy midnight at sea, the picture flashed to 

 consciousness, for there before me, framed in the 

 long rectangle of my cabin door, Hokasai's kake- 

 mono lived again. 



I lay back in the bunk, writing on my drawn-up 

 knees, my posture recalling Stevenson or Twain 

 in everything except the value of what I wrote. 

 A half hour passed and the rain was Monday's 

 rain, when I heard a gentle whipping of wings — 

 the sharper tone which is given out when wings 

 are very wet. In mid-air in my cabin, beating a 

 little cross current to my electric fan, was one of 

 the fairy terns of Cocos. As I looked, the immacu- 

 late little beauty fluttered upward and poised close 



