A kick of the ship overturned the fireshovel, and I woke again to look with surprise at so small a cause of a terrible sound, and was leaving the shovel to its fate when it came to life, and began to crawl stealthily over the floor.  It was an imperative duty to rise and imprison it.  When that was forgotten the steward arrived, and roused me to watch the method of setting a breakfast-table at sea; but I had seen all that before, and climbed out of the saloon.  There are moments in a life afloat when the kennel and chain of the house-dog appear to have their merits.  The same wash was still racing past outside, and the ship moving along.  The halyards were shaking in the cold.  The funnel was still abruptly rocking.  A sailor was painting the starboard stanchions.  A stoker was going forward off duty, in his shirt and trousers, indifferent to the cruel wind which bulged and quivered his thin rags.  The skipper was on the bridge, his hands in the pockets of his flapping overcoat, still searching the distance for what was not there.  A train of gulls was weaving about over our wake.  A derelict fish-trunk floated close to us, with a great black-backed gull perched on it.  He cocked up one eye at me when he drew level, crouched for flight, but perhaps saw on my face the reason why I prefer working tomorrow, and contemptuously stayed where he was.  Then I noticed the skipper looking back at the bird.  He nodded to it, and cried:  “There goes a milestone.  The fleet is about somewhere.”  I danced with caution along the treacherous deck, where one day that voyage a sea picked up two men and stranded them on top of the engine-room casing, and got up with the master.  He had just ordered the ship to be put over to a trawler in sight.  With the seas so swift and ponderous I completely forgot the cold wind in watching the two lively ships being manoeuvred till they were within earshot.  When the engines were stopped the steering had to be nicely calculated, or erratic waves brought them dangerously close, or else took them out of call.  Our new friend had not seen “our lot,” but had left a fleet with an unknown house-flag ten miles astern.  We surged forward again.

We steamed for two hours, and then the pattern of a trawler’s smoke was seen ahead traced on a band of greenish brilliance which divided the sea from the sky.  Almost at once other faint tracings multiplied there.  In a few minutes we could make out plainly within that livid narrow outlet between the sea and the heavy clouds a concourse of midget ships.

“There they are,” breathed the skipper after a quick inspection through his glasses.

In half an hour we were in the midst of a fleet of fifty little steamers, just too late to take our place as carrier to them for London’s daily market.  As we steamed in, another carrier, which had left London after us, hoisted her signal pennant, and took over that job.