First of all he would insist upon the advantages of the Eastern trade, hinting at its superiority to the Western ocean service.  He extolled the sky, the seas, the ships, and the easy life of the Far East.  The Nan-Shan, he affirmed, was second to none as a sea-boat.

“We have no brass-bound uniforms, but then we are like brothers here,” he wrote.  “We all mess together and live like fighting-cocks. . . .  All the chaps of the black-squad are as decent as they make that kind, and old Sol, the Chief, is a dry stick.  We are good friends.  As to our old man, you could not find a quieter skipper.  Sometimes you would think he hadn’t sense enough to see anything wrong.  And yet it isn’t that.  Can’t be.  He has been in command for a good few years now.  He doesn’t do anything actually foolish, and gets his ship along all right without worrying anybody.  I believe he hasn’t brains enough to enjoy kicking up a row.  I don’t take advantage of him.  I would scorn it.  Outside the routine of duty he doesn’t seem to understand more than half of what you tell him.  We get a laugh out of this at times; but it is dull, too, to be with a man like this—­in the long-run.  Old Sol says he hasn’t much conversation.  Conversation!  O Lord!  He never talks.  The other day I had been yarning under the bridge with one of the engineers, and he must have heard us.  When I came up to take my watch, he steps out of the chart-room and has a good look all round, peeps over at the sidelights, glances at the compass, squints upward at the stars.  That’s his regular performance.  By-and-by he says:  ’Was that you talking just now in the port alleyway?’ ‘Yes, sir.’  ‘With the third engineer?’ ‘Yes, sir.’  He walks off to starboard, and sits under the dodger on a little campstool of his, and for half an hour perhaps he makes no sound, except that I heard him sneeze once.  Then after a while I hear him getting up over there, and he strolls across to port, where I was.  ’I can’t understand what you can find to talk about,’ says he.  ’Two solid hours.  I am not blaming you.  I see people ashore at it all day long, and then in the evening they sit down and keep at it over the drinks.  Must be saying the same things over and over again.  I can’t understand.’

“Did you ever hear anything like that?  And he was so patient about it.  It made me quite sorry for him.  But he is exasperating, too, sometimes.  Of course one would not do anything to vex him even if it were worth while.  But it isn’t.  He’s so jolly innocent that if you were to put your thumb to your nose and wave your fingers at him he would only wonder gravely to himself what got into you.  He told me once quite simply that he found it very difficult to make out what made people always act so queerly.  He’s too dense to trouble about, and that’s the truth.”

Thus wrote Mr. Jukes to his chum in the Western ocean trade, out of the fulness of his heart and the liveliness of his fancy.