Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/116

86 —it always is feeding-time on a ship, and a time always welcome. The early coffee or tea, the hearty breakfast, the “something” at eleven to support your feeble frame, the substantial luncheon, the afternoon tea, the important dinner, and the final sandwich before bed—to say nothing of the cool drinks between times—keep one at least from fainting, and not only serve to pass the time but occupy all the time; what really selfish greedy animals we are! I include myself, for I never miss any of these things and have no call to scorn them. The truth is I am very lazy, comfortable, and tolerably happy here—bored of course frequently; but I was born bored, and people at present are too kind to me to give me just cause for grumbling, and it is too hot to invent grievances. This is our little world, this boat out here on the Stille Meer; we are all more or less human, and don’t aspire to be angels as yet, especially in such hot weather.

This reference to angels brings me back to the Bishop—not that I can see any great resemblance between bishops and angels; but somehow one has an idea that some bishops became saints, and saints and angels move, I believe, in the same set, and go in for the same fashion in haloes, - though they don’t look now as they did when Cimabue, Botticelli, and the rest pretended to know so much about them. I meet so few, it is difficult to judge. Anyway the Bishop, though he is a good man, does not look the least like an angel, as he has got a long black beard, and I never saw an angel with that, did you? He tells me many interesting things about this land we are approaching, and I can see has a quite worldly satisfaction at having outwitted the Governor and got all the land he wants. I have heard stories—in Sydney—that the