THE SPRING AND SUMMER OF 1894 489 



and sea, must have a disturbing effect on the sit- 

 uation of the earth's axis. When such an idea sets 

 into one's head, it is no easy matter to get it out 

 again. After pondering over it for several days, I 

 have finally discovered that the influence of the moon 

 on the sea must be sufficient to cause a shifting of the 

 Pole to the extent of one minute in 800,000 years. In 

 order to account for the European Glacial Age, which 

 was my main object, I must shift the Pole at least ten 

 or twenty degrees. This leaves an uncomfortably wide 

 interval of time since that period, and shows that the 

 human race must have attained a respectable age. Of 

 course, it is all nonsense. But while I am indefatigably 

 tramping the deck in a brown study, imagining myself 

 no end of a great thinker, I suddenly discover that my 

 thoughts are at home, where all is summer and loveli- 

 ness, and those I have left are busy building castles in 

 the air for the day when I shall return. Yes, yes. I 

 spend rather too much time on this sort of thing; but 

 the drift goes as slowly as ever, and the wind, the all- 

 powerful wind, is still the same. The first thing my 

 eyes look for when I set foot on deck in the morning is 

 the weathercock on the mizzen-top, to see how the wind 

 lies ; thither they are forever straying during the whole 

 day, and there again they rest the last thing before I 

 turn in. But it ever points in the same direction, west 

 and southwest, and we drift now quicker, now more 

 slowly westward, and only a little to the north. I have 



