Seagulls poised and wheeling in the hot blue sky above the Indian Ocean espied, last week, a long, low, incredibly slender ship, darting with splendid speed toward Aden, the Red Sea, Suez. A literate seagull might have spelled out upon the vessel's spume flecked prow the name H. M. S. Enterprise. Aboard and often on the bridge was a young man who is called by his Royal family simply "David." As he paced the bridge, engines of 80,000 horsepower thrust the frail 7,600-ton cruiser across the placid Indian Ocean at automobile speed: 40 m.p.h. Only a seaplane could have sped faster, yet the distance of 6,000 miles seemed illimitable, mocking. Perhaps the young man remembered Kipling's words:
The Injun Ocean sets an' smiles
So sof, so bright, so bloomin' blue!
There aren't a wave for miles an' miles,
Excep' the jiggle from the screw.
Last week the "jiggle" was a boiling, foaming wake wave, and from the Enterprise's short, rakishly tilted funnels spewed enough smoke and steam at roaring forced draft to perceptibly darken the "blue." Behind lay British East Africa and the small, busy port of Dar-Es-Saalam, where Edward of Wales had taken ship. Ahead, beyond the Red Sea, beyond the Mediterranean, beyond Europe and the Channel lay the beloved Sovereign of an Empire. Radio flashes told that pleurisy had been followed by pneumonia, complicated by Bright's disease.
At so grave an hour the young bachelor who may some day choose to call himself "King David"* might properly have pondered what his future is to be. Not much longer will the Empire rest content that he is without wife or heir. One may, with propriety, assume that last week the thoughts of David of Windsor turned repeatedly upon Lady Anne Maud Wellesley, 18, dark eyed and blooming daughter of the Marquis Douro, direct descendant of the great Duke of Wellington.
Lady Anne is convalescing from pneumonia. Reports of her illness and recovery are known to have been cabled in code to Edward of Wales throughout the course of his Afric Good Will Tour (TIME, Sept. 17 et seq.). Naturally the Marquis Douro continued, last week, his refusal either to confirm or to deny. But the fact of H. R. H.'s solicitude for Lady Anne was not disputed.
Code radio flashes from London to the plunging, speeding Enterprise told David of Windsor more than any correspondent knew about George V's condition. In England censorship of the official medical bulletins by Home Secretary Sir William Joynson-Hicks grew so drastic that prominent folk even tried to pry the truth out of Sir William's son Lancelot, previously a pallid nonentity. One day after chatting with his tall, correct, frock-coated father, Lancelot Joynson-Hicks said positively: "There is no doubt that the King is on the mend."