And the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed. Then the oiler rowed. It was a weary business. The human back can become the seat of more aches and pains than are registered in books for the composite anatomy of a regiment. It is a limited area, but it can become the theatre of innumerable muscular conflicts, tangles, wrenches, knots, and other comforts.

‘Did you ever like to row, Billie?’ asked the correspondent.

‘No,’ said the oiler. ‘Hang it.’

When one exchanged the rowing-seat for a place in the bottom of the boat, he suffered a bodily depression that caused him to be careless of everything save an obligation to wiggle one finger. There was cold sea-water swashing to and fro in the boat, and he lay in it. His head, pillowed on a thwart, was within an inch of the swirl of a wave crest, and sometimes a particularly obstreperous sea came in-board and drenched him once more. But these matters did not annoy him. It is almost certain that if the boat had capsized he would have tumbled comfortably out upon the ocean as if he felt sure that it was a great soft mattress.

‘Look! There’s a man on the shore!’

‘Where?’

‘There! See ’im? See ’im?’

‘Yes, sure! He ’s walking along.’

‘Now he ’s stopped. Look! He ’s facing us!’

‘He ’s waving at us!’

‘So he is! By thunder!’

‘Ah, now we’re all right! Now we’re all right! There’ll be a boat out here for us in half-an-hour.’

‘He ’s going on. He ’s running. He ’s going up to that house there.’

The remote beach seemed lower than the sea, and it required a searching glance to discern the little black figure. The captain saw a floating stick and they rowed to it. A bath-towel was by some weird chance in the boat, and, tying this on the stick, the captain waved it. The oarsman did not dare turn his head, so he was obliged to ask questions.

‘What’s he doing now?’

‘He ’s standing still again. He ’s looking, I think. … There he goes again. Towards the house.… Now he ’s stopped again.’

‘Is he waving at us?’

‘No, not now! he was, though.’

‘Look! There comes another man!’

‘He ’s running.’

‘Look at him go, would you.’

‘Why, he ’s on a bicycle. Now he ’s met the other man. They’re both waving at us. Look!’