Wilson’s report. 
291 
destined to go to the bottom before tea-time—would not 
have caused him to lay out the dinner-table a whit 
less symmetrically. Still, I own, the style of his 
service was slightly depressing. He laid out my clean 
shirt of a morning as if it had been a shroud; and 
cleaned my boots as though for a man on Ms last legs. 
The fact is, he was imaginative and atrabilious,—con¬ 
templating life through a medium of the colour of his 
own complexion. 
This was the cheerful kind of report he used in¬ 
variably to bring me of a morning. Coming to the side 
of my cot with the air of a man announcing the stroke 
of doomsday, he used to say, or rather toll — 
“ Seven o’clock, my Lord!” 
“ Very well; how’s the wind ?” 
“ Dead ahead, my Lord— dead /” 
“ How many points is she off her course ? ” 
“Four points, my Lord—full four points!” (Four 
points being as much as she could be.) 
“ Is it pretty clear? eh! Wilson?” 
“ —Can’t see your hand, my Lord!—can’t see your 
hand!” 
“ Much ice in sight? ” 
u 2 
