Everlastingly, there was a tackle over the after-hatch and everlastingly the watch on deck were pulling up, spreading out, picking over, rebagging, and lowering down again, some part of that lot of potatoes.  My bargain with all its remotest associations, mental and visual—­the garden of flowers and scents, the girl with her provoking contempt and her tragic loneliness of a hopeless castaway—­was everlastingly dangled before my eyes, for thousands of miles along the open sea.  And as if by a satanic refinement of irony it was accompanied by a most awful smell.  Whiffs from decaying potatoes pursued me on the poop, they mingled with my thoughts, with my food, poisoned my very dreams.  They made an atmosphere of corruption for the ship.

I remonstrated with Mr. Burns about this excessive care.  I would have been well content to batten the hatch down and let them perish under the deck.

That perhaps would have been unsafe.  The horrid emanations might have flavoured the cargo of sugar.  They seemed strong enough to taint the very ironwork.  In addition Mr. Burns made it a personal matter.  He assured me he knew how to treat a cargo of potatoes at sea—­had been in the trade as a boy, he said.  He meant to make my loss as small as possible.  What between his devotion—­it must have been devotion—­and his vanity, I positively dared not give him the order to throw my commercial-venture overboard.  I believe he would have refused point blank to obey my lawful command.  An unprecedented and comical situation would have been created with which I did not feel equal to deal.

I welcomed the coming of bad weather as no sailor had ever done.  When at last I hove the ship to, to pick up the pilot outside Port Philip Heads, the after-hatch had not been opened for more than a week and I might have believed that no such thing as a potato had ever been on board.

It was an abominable day, raw, blustering, with great squalls of wind and rain; the pilot, a cheery person, looked after the ship and chatted to me, streaming from head to foot; and the heavier the lash of the downpour the more pleased with himself and everything around him he seemed to be.  He rubbed his wet hands with a satisfaction, which to me, who had stood that kind of thing for several days and nights, seemed inconceivable in any non-aquatic creature.

“You seem to enjoy getting wet, Pilot,” I remarked.

He had a bit of land round his house in the suburbs and it was of his garden he was thinking.  At the sound of the word garden, unheard, unspoken for so many days, I had a vision of gorgeous colour, of sweet scents, of a girlish figure crouching in a chair.  Yes.  That was a distinct emotion breaking into the peace I had found in the sleepless anxieties of my responsibility during a week of dangerous bad weather.  The Colony, the pilot explained, had suffered from unparalleled drought.  This was the first decent drop of water they had had for seven months.  The root crops were lost.  And, trying to be casual, but with visible interest, he asked me if I had perchance any potatoes to spare.