Maurice Baring

He stands at the threshold of the book as its dedicatee and imagined reader, the recipient of a letter that wanders from the naming of children to the true nature of the voyage ahead. The narrator links their friendship through shared literary jokes—The Green Overcoat answering The Green Elephant—and through Baring's own book on things that come to mind, which this cruise is meant to resemble. His presence frames the whole enterprise as a sailing through the seas of the years rather than a mere log of coastal miles.