THE CARGO SHIP 13

The cargo ship lay right outside the Mersey in the
Irish Sea; a cold January.wind blew across the tender;
people sat crammed together below deck saying good-
bye, bored, embarrassed and bonhomous, like parents
at a railway station the first day of term, while
England slipped away from the port-hole, a stone
stage, a tarred side, a slap of grey water against the
glass.

CHAPTER TWO

THE CARGO SHIP
Madeira

MY cousin and I had five fellow-passengers in the
cargo ship: two shipping agents, a traveller for an
engineering firm, a doctor on his way to the Coast
with anti-yellow-fever serum, and a woman joining
her husband at Bathurst. All except the woman and
the traveller knew the Coast; they knew the same
people; they had a common technique of living
enforced by common conditions. The daily dose of
quinine, mosquito netting over all the port-holes:
these to them were as natural as the table-cloth at
meals.

It is a condition favourable to the growth of legend.
Legend belongs naturally to primitive communities
where minds are so little differentiated, by work or
play or education, that a story can move quickly
from brain to brain uncriticised. But sometimes
these conditions arise artificially. A common danger,
purpose or way of life can very nearly destroy