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“And Queen Victoria rides once a year through the streets of London on her milk-white courser, to hear the nightingales sing in the Tower. For when she came to the throne the Tower was full of prisoners, but with a stroke of her sceptre she changed them all into song-birds. Every year she releases fifty; and that is why they sing so rapturously, because each one hopes his turn has come at last.”

I turned away. It was unconscionable to cram the child’s mind with these preposterous fables. I pictured the poor little chap’s disappointment when the bleak reality came to stare him in the face. To my mind, his father was worse than an idiot, and I could hardly bring myself to greet him next morning, when we met.

My disgust did not seem to trouble him. In a timid way, even, his eyes expressed satisfaction. For a week or two I let him alone, and then was forced to speak.

It happened in this way. We had spun merrily along the tail of the S.E. trades and glided slowly to a standstill on a glassy ocean, and beneath a sun that at noon left us shadowless. A fluke or two of wind had helped us across the line; but now, in 2 deg. 27′ north latitude, the Midas slept like a turtle on the greasy sea. The heat of the near African coast seemed to beat like steam against our faces. The pitch bubbled like caviare in the seams of the white deck, and the shrouds and ratlines ran with tears of tar. To touch the brass rail of the poop was to blister the hand, to catch a whiff from the cook’s galley was to feel sick for ten minutes. The hens in their coops lay with eyes glazed and gasped for air. If you hung forward over the bulwarks you stared down into your own face. The sailors grumbled and cursed and panted as they huddled forward under a second awning that was rigged up to give them shade rather than coolness; for coolness was not to be had.

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.