I have never felt as though inexperience were a part of me which would soon be overlaid with “the wonder of Experience”: I felt as if inexperience were a thing, a thing like a pall, hanging over me and clouding my intrinsic Experience and its truth; and soon that pall would be twisted away and there I would stand, at last, myself.

This was the first time I’d been on a ship—well, this didn’t deserve the name; this was a river-trader. I was enjoying myself and very proud that I was evidently one of those things, “a good sailor”. Actually I had felt a little queasy when she moved off last night, so it was a good thing I’d nothing in my stomach. But this morning I was hungry and had remained in the same position for hours under a chill wind, and I’d never felt so healthy. Every smell was a delight: I had smelt this river for the last half-dozen months or so, but never had it smelt like this, so wide, so salt, so free. There was the smell of tar and galley-smells which made me vividly hungry.

It was hard, among the piled crates, to catch many glimpses of the shore, but I don’t think I’d have seen much more from any position on deck. The river was tremendously wide here. The shores were far, hazy lines, here suggesting plains by their flat grey-green haze. There were other boats though, yammering before the wind, down-river over the whorls and swelling, swaying, green currents and the blue, sunlit, wind-whipped waves.

There was almost always a sail, near or far, faded orange or striped, patched and bellying, rakish-slanted or stolidly rectangular, even on my limited horizon.

The hoarse shouts of the crews, cross-wind from each other, and the froth and leap of the waters all spoke with one virile voice: it was Summer, the river was bounding away from the brick City and bearing me heart-bounding on it.

When the sun was high there was much tacking of sails by men scrambling in what rigging there was, and some of the crates farthest from where I lay began to be shifted, with grunting.

I braced myself for the rapidly approaching climax of my lovely illicit passage; pushed the salt-stiff hair back from my eyes and tried moving what parts of me I could.