The Bonadventure

The Bonadventure, subtitled A Random Journal of an Atlantic Holiday, is by Edmund Blunden. The author's note says the autumn of 1921 found the writer in bad health, and the Editors for whom he works suggested a sea voyage.

The writer says he is one of that large class who can afford little more than voyages in ships which are hauled over on chains. The narrator ends up aboard a vessel which the boys recognized as the Bonadventure and asks a wooden-faced seaman, who seemed to be alone, where he could find the captain. A quiet, smiling and enviably robust man tells the narrator he should sign on as a member of the crew to-morrow. One scene shows a street crowd in which ladies of most aristocratic air come by with the blackest of masks above the whitest of countenances, and a girl in the dress of a bull-fighter drives her own light carriage. One day is Easter Monday, and many folks are walking out, while the narrator's party is puzzled by the Sabbath look of things to find a place to sit down.