Speculation arises out of ignorance.  Many and various are the predictions as to what will be the state of the game when we shall have come to anchor in Table Bay.  Forecasts range from the capture of Pretoria by Sir George White and the confinement of President Kruger in the deepest level beneath the Johannesburg Exchange, on the one hand, to the surrender of Cape Town to the Boers, the proclamation of Mr. Schreiner as King of South Africa, and a fall of two points in Rand Mines on the other.  Between these wild extremes all shades of opinion are represented.  Only one possibility is unanimously excluded—­an inconclusive peace.  There are on board officers who travelled this road eighteen years ago with Lord Roberts, and reached Cape Town only to return by the next boat.  But no one anticipates such a result this time.

Monotony is the characteristic of a modern voyage, and who shall describe it?  The lover of realism might suggest that writing the same paragraph over and over again would enable the reader to experience its weariness, if he were truly desirous of so doing.  But I hesitate to take such a course, and trust that some of these lines even once repeated may convey some inkling of the dulness of the days.  Monotony of view—­for we live at the centre of a complete circle of sea and sky; monotony of food—­for all things taste the same on board ship; monotony of existence—­for each day is but a barren repetition of the last; all fall to the lot of the passenger on great waters.  It were malevolent to try to bring the realisation home to others.  Yet all earthly evils have their compensations, and even monotony is not without its secret joy.  For a time we drop out of the larger world, with its interests and its obligations, and become the independent citizens of a tiny State:—­a Utopian State where few toil and none go hungry—­bounded on all sides by the sea and vassal only to the winds and waves.  Here during a period which is too long while it lasts, too short when it is over, we may placidly reflect on the busy world that lies behind and the tumult that is before us.  The journalists read books about South Africa; the politician—­were the affair still in the domain of words—­might examine the justice of the quarrel.  The Headquarter Staff pore over maps or calculate the sizes of camps and entrenchments; and in the meantime the great ship lurches steadily forward on her course, carrying to the south at seventeen miles an hour schemes and intentions of war.

But let me record the incidents rather than their absence.  One day the first shoal of flying fish is seen—­a flight of glittering birds that, flushed by the sudden approach of the vessel, skim away over the waters and turn in the cover of a white-topped wave.  On another we crossed the Equator.  Neptune and his consort boarded us near the forecastle and paraded round the ship in state.  Never have I seen such a draggle-tailed divinity.  An important feature in the ritual which he prescribes is the shaving