On the second afternoon of the calm I happened to pass this awning, and glanced in.  Pretty well all the men were there, lounging, with shirts open and chests streaming with sweat; and in their midst on a barrel, sat Johnny, with a flushed face.

The boatswain—­Gibbings by name—­was speaking.  I heard him say—­“An’ the Lord Mayor ‘ll be down to meet us, sonny, at the docks, wi’ his five-an’-fifty black boys all ablowin’ blowin’ Hallelujarum on their silver key-bugles.  An’ we’ll be took in tow to the Mansh’n ‘Ouse an’ fed—­” here he broke off and passed the back of his hand across his mouth, with a glance at the ship’s cook, who had been driven from his galley by the heat.  But the cook had no suggestions to make.  His soul was still sick with the reek of the boiled pork and pease pudding he had cooked two hours before under a torrid and vertical sun.

“We’ll put it at hokey-pokey, nothin’ a lump, if you don’t mind, sonny,” the boatswain went on; “in a nice airy parlour painted white, with a gilt chandelier an’ gilt combings to the wainscot.”  His picture of the Mansion House as he proceeded was drawn from his reading in the Book of Revelations and his own recollections of Thames-side gin-palaces and the saloons of passenger steamers, and gave the impression of a virtuous gambling-hell.  The whole crew listened admiringly, and it seemed they were all in the stupid conspiracy.  I resolved, for Johnny’s sake, to protest, and that very evening drew Gibbings aside and expostulated with him.

“Why,” I asked, “lay up this cruel, this certain disappointment for the little chap?  Why yarn to him as if he were bound for the New Jerusalem?”

The boatswain stared at me point-blank, at first incredulously, then with something like pity.

“Why, sir, don’t you know?  Can’t you see for yoursel’?  It’s because he is bound for the New Jeroosalem; because—­bless his tender soul!—­that’s all the land he’ll ever touch.”

“Good Lord!” I cried.  “Nonsense!  His cough’s better; and look at his cheeks.”

“Ay—­we knows that colour on this line.  His cough’s better, you say; and I say this weather’s killing him.  You just wait for the nor’-east trades.”

I left Gibbings, and after pacing up and down the deck a few times, stepped to the bulwarks, where a dark figure was leaning and gazing out over the black waters.  Johnny was in bed; and a great shame swept over me as I noted the appealing wretchedness of this lonely form.

I stepped up and touched him softly on the arm.

“Sir, I am come to beg your forgiveness.”

Next morning I joined the conspiracy.

After his father, I became Johnny’s most constant companion.  “Father disliked you at first,” was the child’s frank comment; “he said you told fibs, but now he wants us to be friends.”  And we were excellent friends.  I lied from morning to night—­lied glibly, grandly.  Sometimes, indeed, as I lay awake in my berth, a horror took me lest the springs of my imagination should run dry.  But they never did.  As a liar, I out-classed every man on board.