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no faith in your old wives’ tales. Not I. But the luck was against us. Everything went wrong from the first. And there’s no getting away from the fact that we sailed on a Friday.

The weather in the Bay was filthy. Our engines went wrong in the Red Sea. We lay up at Aden for a week. There was a bill as long as my arm to pay. Then when we got out into the open the weather began again. Never had such a run! It was touch and go for our lives. One night, half-way between Ceylon and Sumatra, I thought it was the end. We had more than another touch off the Philippines. By the time we reached Yokohama we were a wreck—nothing less.