ABSTRACT
The simple truth has not the tremendous resources of drama or romance. One by one I deal with events which have only the merit of their simplicity, though I am well aware that it would be easy, even in the Story of a voyage so ordinary as that across the Gulf of Syria, to invent catastrophes really worth attention. But the Stern glance of truth is ever ready to abash him who romances, and, it seems to me, it is wiser to say simply, as the old voyagers did: "On such a day we saw nothing but a piece of wood upon the sea floating with the waves; on such another only a gull with grey wings." It is better to go on in this way until the rare moment when the action begins to get warm and is complicated by the arrival of a canoe full of savages bringing yams and roasl sucking-pigs.
