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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Mirror of the Sea, by Joseph Conrad
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Mirror of the Sea
+       Memories and Impressions
+
+
+Author: Joseph Conrad
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 7, 2013  [eBook #1058]
+[This file was first posted on October 10, 1997]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MIRROR OF THE SEA***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1907 Methuen & Co. edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+                          THE MIRROR OF THE SEA
+                         MEMORIES AND IMPRESSIONS
+
+
+                                    BY
+                              JOSEPH CONRAD
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    “ . . . for this miracle or this wonder
+    troubleth me right greatly.”
+
+                                  BOETHIUS DE CON: PHIL: B. IV., PROSE VI.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                              THIRD EDITION
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                              METHUEN & CO.
+                          36 ESSEX STREET  W.C.
+                                  LONDON
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+_First published_   _October_     _1906_
+_Second Edition_    _December_    _1906_
+_Third Edition_     _January_     _1907_
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                    TO
+                           KATHERINE SANDERSON
+
+               WHOSE WARM WELCOME AND GRACIOUS HOSPITALITY
+                    EXTENDED TO THE FRIEND OF HER SON
+          CHEERED THE FIRST DARK DAYS OF MY PARTING WITH THE SEA
+                 THESE PAGES ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+THE MIRROR OF THE SEA:—                        PAGE
+     LANDFALLS AND DEPARTURES           I.        1
+     EMBLEMS OF HOPE                   IV.       17
+     THE FINE ART                     VII.       33
+     COBWEBS AND GOSSAMER               X.       52
+     THE WEIGHT OF THE BURDEN        XIII.       69
+     OVERDUE AND MISSING              XVI.       86
+     THE GRIP OF THE LAND              XX.      102
+     THE CHARACTER OF THE FOE        XXII.      109
+     RULES OF EAST AND WEST           XXV.      123
+     THE FAITHFUL RIVER               XXX.      157
+     IN CAPTIVITY                  XXXIII.      180
+     INITIATION                      XXXV.      201
+     THE NURSERY OF THE CRAFT      XXXVII.      233
+     THE _TREMOLINO_                   XL.      244
+     THE HEROIC AGE                  XLVI.      289
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+    “And shippes by the brinke comen and gon,
+    And in swich forme endure a day or two.”
+
+                                                  _The Frankeleyn’s Tale_.
+
+LANDFALL and Departure mark the rhythmical swing of a seaman’s life and
+of a ship’s career.  From land to land is the most concise definition of
+a ship’s earthly fate.
+
+A “Departure” is not what a vain people of landsmen may think.  The term
+“Landfall” is more easily understood; you fall in with the land, and it
+is a matter of a quick eye and of a clear atmosphere.  The Departure is
+not the ship’s going away from her port any more than the Landfall can be
+looked upon as the synonym of arrival.  But there is this difference in
+the Departure: that the term does not imply so much a sea event as a
+definite act entailing a process—the precise observation of certain
+landmarks by means of the compass card.
+
+Your Landfall, be it a peculiarly-shaped mountain, a rocky headland, or a
+stretch of sand-dunes, you meet at first with a single glance.  Further
+recognition will follow in due course; but essentially a Landfall, good
+or bad, is made and done with at the first cry of “Land ho!”  The
+Departure is distinctly a ceremony of navigation.  A ship may have left
+her port some time before; she may have been at sea, in the fullest sense
+of the phrase, for days; but, for all that, as long as the coast she was
+about to leave remained in sight, a southern-going ship of yesterday had
+not in the sailor’s sense begun the enterprise of a passage.
+
+The taking of Departure, if not the last sight of the land, is, perhaps,
+the last professional recognition of the land on the part of a sailor.
+It is the technical, as distinguished from the sentimental, “good-bye.”
+Henceforth he has done with the coast astern of his ship.  It is a matter
+personal to the man.  It is not the ship that takes her departure; the
+seaman takes his Departure by means of cross-bearings which fix the place
+of the first tiny pencil-cross on the white expanse of the track-chart,
+where the ship’s position at noon shall be marked by just such another
+tiny pencil cross for every day of her passage.  And there may be sixty,
+eighty, any number of these crosses on the ship’s track from land to
+land.  The greatest number in my experience was a hundred and thirty of
+such crosses from the pilot station at the Sand Heads in the Bay of
+Bengal to the Scilly’s light.  A bad passage. . .
+
+A Departure, the last professional sight of land, is always good, or at
+least good enough.  For, even if the weather be thick, it does not matter
+much to a ship having all the open sea before her bows.  A Landfall may
+be good or bad.  You encompass the earth with one particular spot of it
+in your eye.  In all the devious tracings the course of a sailing-ship
+leaves upon the white paper of a chart she is always aiming for that one
+little spot—maybe a small island in the ocean, a single headland upon the
+long coast of a continent, a lighthouse on a bluff, or simply the peaked
+form of a mountain like an ant-heap afloat upon the waters.  But if you
+have sighted it on the expected bearing, then that Landfall is good.
+Fogs, snowstorms, gales thick with clouds and rain—those are the enemies
+of good Landfalls.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+Some commanders of ships take their Departure from the home coast sadly,
+in a spirit of grief and discontent.  They have a wife, children perhaps,
+some affection at any rate, or perhaps only some pet vice, that must be
+left behind for a year or more.  I remember only one man who walked his
+deck with a springy step, and gave the first course of the passage in an
+elated voice.  But he, as I learned afterwards, was leaving nothing
+behind him, except a welter of debts and threats of legal proceedings.
+
+On the other hand, I have known many captains who, directly their ship
+had left the narrow waters of the Channel, would disappear from the sight
+of their ship’s company altogether for some three days or more.  They
+would take a long dive, as it were, into their state-room, only to emerge
+a few days afterwards with a more or less serene brow.  Those were the
+men easy to get on with.  Besides, such a complete retirement seemed to
+imply a satisfactory amount of trust in their officers, and to be trusted
+displeases no seaman worthy of the name.
+
+On my first voyage as chief mate with good Captain MacW— I remember that
+I felt quite flattered, and went blithely about my duties, myself a
+commander for all practical purposes.  Still, whatever the greatness of
+my illusion, the fact remained that the real commander was there, backing
+up my self-confidence, though invisible to my eyes behind a maple-wood
+veneered cabin-door with a white china handle.
+
+That is the time, after your Departure is taken, when the spirit of your
+commander communes with you in a muffled voice, as if from the sanctum
+sanctorum of a temple; because, call her a temple or a “hell afloat”—as
+some ships have been called—the captain’s state-room is surely the august
+place in every vessel.
+
+The good MacW— would not even come out to his meals, and fed solitarily
+in his holy of holies from a tray covered with a white napkin.  Our
+steward used to bend an ironic glance at the perfectly empty plates he
+was bringing out from there.  This grief for his home, which overcomes so
+many married seamen, did not deprive Captain MacW— of his legitimate
+appetite.  In fact, the steward would almost invariably come up to me,
+sitting in the captain’s chair at the head of the table, to say in a
+grave murmur, “The captain asks for one more slice of meat and two
+potatoes.”  We, his officers, could hear him moving about in his berth,
+or lightly snoring, or fetching deep sighs, or splashing and blowing in
+his bath-room; and we made our reports to him through the keyhole, as it
+were.  It was the crowning achievement of his amiable character that the
+answers we got were given in a quite mild and friendly tone.  Some
+commanders in their periods of seclusion are constantly grumpy, and seem
+to resent the mere sound of your voice as an injury and an insult.
+
+But a grumpy recluse cannot worry his subordinates: whereas the man in
+whom the sense of duty is strong (or, perhaps, only the sense of
+self-importance), and who persists in airing on deck his moroseness all
+day—and perhaps half the night—becomes a grievous infliction.  He walks
+the poop darting gloomy glances, as though he wished to poison the sea,
+and snaps your head off savagely whenever you happen to blunder within
+earshot.  And these vagaries are the harder to bear patiently, as becomes
+a man and an officer, because no sailor is really good-tempered during
+the first few days of a voyage.  There are regrets, memories, the
+instinctive longing for the departed idleness, the instinctive hate of
+all work.  Besides, things have a knack of going wrong at the start,
+especially in the matter of irritating trifles.  And there is the abiding
+thought of a whole year of more or less hard life before one, because
+there was hardly a southern-going voyage in the yesterday of the sea
+which meant anything less than a twelvemonth.  Yes; it needed a few days
+after the taking of your departure for a ship’s company to shake down
+into their places, and for the soothing deep-water ship routine to
+establish its beneficent sway.
+
+It is a great doctor for sore hearts and sore heads, too, your ship’s
+routine, which I have seen soothe—at least for a time—the most turbulent
+of spirits.  There is health in it, and peace, and satisfaction of the
+accomplished round; for each day of the ship’s life seems to close a
+circle within the wide ring of the sea horizon.  It borrows a certain
+dignity of sameness from the majestic monotony of the sea.  He who loves
+the sea loves also the ship’s routine.
+
+Nowhere else than upon the sea do the days, weeks and months fall away
+quicker into the past.  They seem to be left astern as easily as the
+light air-bubbles in the swirls of the ship’s wake, and vanish into a
+great silence in which your ship moves on with a sort of magical effect.
+They pass away, the days, the weeks, the months.  Nothing but a gale can
+disturb the orderly life of the ship; and the spell of unshaken monotony
+that seems to have fallen upon the very voices of her men is broken only
+by the near prospect of a Landfall.
+
+Then is the spirit of the ship’s commander stirred strongly again.  But
+it is not moved to seek seclusion, and to remain, hidden and inert, shut
+up in a small cabin with the solace of a good bodily appetite.  When
+about to make the land, the spirit of the ship’s commander is tormented
+by an unconquerable restlessness.  It seems unable to abide for many
+seconds together in the holy of holies of the captain’s state-room; it
+will out on deck and gaze ahead, through straining eyes, as the appointed
+moment comes nearer.  It is kept vigorously upon the stretch of excessive
+vigilance.  Meantime the body of the ship’s commander is being enfeebled
+by want of appetite; at least, such is my experience, though “enfeebled”
+is perhaps not exactly the word.  I might say, rather, that it is
+spiritualized by a disregard for food, sleep, and all the ordinary
+comforts, such as they are, of sea life.  In one or two cases I have
+known that detachment from the grosser needs of existence remain
+regrettably incomplete in the matter of drink.
+
+But these two cases were, properly speaking, pathological cases, and the
+only two in all my sea experience.  In one of these two instances of a
+craving for stimulants, developed from sheer anxiety, I cannot assert
+that the man’s seamanlike qualities were impaired in the least.  It was a
+very anxious case, too, the land being made suddenly, close-to, on a
+wrong bearing, in thick weather, and during a fresh onshore gale.  Going
+below to speak to him soon after, I was unlucky enough to catch my
+captain in the very act of hasty cork-drawing.  The sight, I may say,
+gave me an awful scare.  I was well aware of the morbidly sensitive
+nature of the man.  Fortunately, I managed to draw back unseen, and,
+taking care to stamp heavily with my sea-boots at the foot of the cabin
+stairs, I made my second entry.  But for this unexpected glimpse, no act
+of his during the next twenty-four hours could have given me the
+slightest suspicion that all was not well with his nerve.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+Quite another case, and having nothing to do with drink, was that of poor
+Captain B—.  He used to suffer from sick headaches, in his young days,
+every time he was approaching a coast.  Well over fifty years of age when
+I knew him, short, stout, dignified, perhaps a little pompous, he was a
+man of a singularly well-informed mind, the least sailor-like in outward
+aspect, but certainly one of the best seamen whom it has been my good
+luck to serve under.  He was a Plymouth man, I think, the son of a
+country doctor, and both his elder boys were studying medicine.  He
+commanded a big London ship, fairly well known in her day.  I thought no
+end of him, and that is why I remember with a peculiar satisfaction the
+last words he spoke to me on board his ship after an eighteen months’
+voyage.  It was in the dock in Dundee, where we had brought a full cargo
+of jute from Calcutta.  We had been paid off that morning, and I had come
+on board to take my sea-chest away and to say good-bye.  In his slightly
+lofty but courteous way he inquired what were my plans.  I replied that I
+intended leaving for London by the afternoon train, and thought of going
+up for examination to get my master’s certificate.  I had just enough
+service for that.  He commended me for not wasting my time, with such an
+evident interest in my case that I was quite surprised; then, rising from
+his chair, he said:
+
+“Have you a ship in view after you have passed?”
+
+I answered that I had nothing whatever in view.
+
+He shook hands with me, and pronounced the memorable words:
+
+“If you happen to be in want of employment, remember that as long as I
+have a ship you have a ship, too.”
+
+In the way of compliment there is nothing to beat this from a ship’s
+captain to his second mate at the end of a voyage, when the work is over
+and the subordinate is done with.  And there is a pathos in that memory,
+for the poor fellow never went to sea again after all.  He was already
+ailing when we passed St. Helena; was laid up for a time when we were off
+the Western Islands, but got out of bed to make his Landfall.  He managed
+to keep up on deck as far as the Downs, where, giving his orders in an
+exhausted voice, he anchored for a few hours to send a wire to his wife
+and take aboard a North Sea pilot to help him sail the ship up the east
+coast.  He had not felt equal to the task by himself, for it is the sort
+of thing that keeps a deep-water man on his feet pretty well night and
+day.
+
+When we arrived in Dundee, Mrs. B— was already there, waiting to take him
+home.  We travelled up to London by the same train; but by the time I had
+managed to get through with my examination the ship had sailed on her
+next voyage without him, and, instead of joining her again, I went by
+request to see my old commander in his home.  This is the only one of my
+captains I have ever visited in that way.  He was out of bed by then,
+“quite convalescent,” as he declared, making a few tottering steps to
+meet me at the sitting-room door.  Evidently he was reluctant to take his
+final cross-bearings of this earth for a Departure on the only voyage to
+an unknown destination a sailor ever undertakes.  And it was all very
+nice—the large, sunny room; his deep, easy-chair in a bow window, with
+pillows and a footstool; the quiet, watchful care of the elderly, gentle
+woman who had borne him five children, and had not, perhaps, lived with
+him more than five full years out of the thirty or so of their married
+life.  There was also another woman there in a plain black dress, quite
+gray-haired, sitting very erect on her chair with some sewing, from which
+she snatched side-glances in his direction, and uttering not a single
+word during all the time of my call.  Even when, in due course, I carried
+over to her a cup of tea, she only nodded at me silently, with the
+faintest ghost of a smile on her tight-set lips.  I imagine she must have
+been a maiden sister of Mrs. B— come to help nurse her brother-in-law.
+His youngest boy, a late-comer, a great cricketer it seemed, twelve years
+old or thereabouts, chattered enthusiastically of the exploits of W. G.
+Grace.  And I remember his eldest son, too, a newly-fledged doctor, who
+took me out to smoke in the garden, and, shaking his head with
+professional gravity, but with genuine concern, muttered: “Yes, but he
+doesn’t get back his appetite.  I don’t like that—I don’t like that at
+all.”  The last sight of Captain B— I had was as he nodded his head to me
+out of the bow window when I turned round to close the front gate.
+
+It was a distinct and complete impression, something that I don’t know
+whether to call a Landfall or a Departure.  Certainly he had gazed at
+times very fixedly before him with the Landfall’s vigilant look, this
+sea-captain seated incongruously in a deep-backed chair.  He had not then
+talked to me of employment, of ships, of being ready to take another
+command; but he had discoursed of his early days, in the abundant but
+thin flow of a wilful invalid’s talk.  The women looked worried, but sat
+still, and I learned more of him in that interview than in the whole
+eighteen months we had sailed together.  It appeared he had “served his
+time” in the copper-ore trade, the famous copper-ore trade of old days
+between Swansea and the Chilian coast, coal out and ore in, deep-loaded
+both ways, as if in wanton defiance of the great Cape Horn seas—a work,
+this, for staunch ships, and a great school of staunchness for
+West-Country seamen.  A whole fleet of copper-bottomed barques, as strong
+in rib and planking, as well-found in gear, as ever was sent upon the
+seas, manned by hardy crews and commanded by young masters, was engaged
+in that now long defunct trade.  “That was the school I was trained in,”
+he said to me almost boastfully, lying back amongst his pillows with a
+rug over his legs.  And it was in that trade that he obtained his first
+command at a very early age.  It was then that he mentioned to me how, as
+a young commander, he was always ill for a few days before making land
+after a long passage.  But this sort of sickness used to pass off with
+the first sight of a familiar landmark.  Afterwards, he added, as he grew
+older, all that nervousness wore off completely; and I observed his weary
+eyes gaze steadily ahead, as if there had been nothing between him and
+the straight line of sea and sky, where whatever a seaman is looking for
+is first bound to appear.  But I have also seen his eyes rest fondly upon
+the faces in the room, upon the pictures on the wall, upon all the
+familiar objects of that home, whose abiding and clear image must have
+flashed often on his memory in times of stress and anxiety at sea.  Was
+he looking out for a strange Landfall, or taking with an untroubled mind
+the bearings for his last Departure?
+
+It is hard to say; for in that voyage from which no man returns Landfall
+and Departure are instantaneous, merging together into one moment of
+supreme and final attention.  Certainly I do not remember observing any
+sign of faltering in the set expression of his wasted face, no hint of
+the nervous anxiety of a young commander about to make land on an
+uncharted shore.  He had had too much experience of Departures and
+Landfalls!  And had he not “served his time” in the famous copper-ore
+trade out of the Bristol Channel, the work of the staunchest ships
+afloat, and the school of staunch seamen?
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+BEFORE an anchor can ever be raised, it must be let go; and this
+perfectly obvious truism brings me at once to the subject of the
+degradation of the sea language in the daily press of this country.
+
+Your journalist, whether he takes charge of a ship or a fleet, almost
+invariably “casts” his anchor.  Now, an anchor is never cast, and to take
+a liberty with technical language is a crime against the clearness,
+precision, and beauty of perfected speech.
+
+An anchor is a forged piece of iron, admirably adapted to its end, and
+technical language is an instrument wrought into perfection by ages of
+experience, a flawless thing for its purpose.  An anchor of yesterday
+(because nowadays there are contrivances like mushrooms and things like
+claws, of no particular expression or shape—just hooks)—an anchor of
+yesterday is in its way a most efficient instrument.  To its perfection
+its size bears witness, for there is no other appliance so small for the
+great work it has to do.  Look at the anchors hanging from the cat-heads
+of a big ship!  How tiny they are in proportion to the great size of the
+hull!  Were they made of gold they would look like trinkets, like
+ornamental toys, no bigger in proportion than a jewelled drop in a
+woman’s ear.  And yet upon them will depend, more than once, the very
+life of the ship.
+
+An anchor is forged and fashioned for faithfulness; give it ground that
+it can bite, and it will hold till the cable parts, and then, whatever
+may afterwards befall its ship, that anchor is “lost.”  The honest, rough
+piece of iron, so simple in appearance, has more parts than the human
+body has limbs: the ring, the stock, the crown, the flukes, the palms,
+the shank.  All this, according to the journalist, is “cast” when a ship
+arriving at an anchorage is brought up.
+
+This insistence in using the odious word arises from the fact that a
+particularly benighted landsman must imagine the act of anchoring as a
+process of throwing something overboard, whereas the anchor ready for its
+work is already overboard, and is not thrown over, but simply allowed to
+fall.  It hangs from the ship’s side at the end of a heavy, projecting
+timber called the cat-head, in the bight of a short, thick chain whose
+end link is suddenly released by a blow from a top-maul or the pull of a
+lever when the order is given.  And the order is not “Heave over!” as the
+paragraphist seems to imagine, but “Let go!”
+
+As a matter of fact, nothing is ever cast in that sense on board ship but
+the lead, of which a cast is taken to search the depth of water on which
+she floats.  A lashed boat, a spare spar, a cask or what not secured
+about the decks, is “cast adrift” when it is untied.  Also the ship
+herself is “cast to port or starboard” when getting under way.  She,
+however, never “casts” her anchor.
+
+To speak with severe technicality, a ship or a fleet is “brought up”—the
+complementary words unpronounced and unwritten being, of course, “to an
+anchor.”  Less technically, but not less correctly, the word “anchored,”
+with its characteristic appearance and resolute sound, ought to be good
+enough for the newspapers of the greatest maritime country in the world.
+“The fleet anchored at Spithead”: can anyone want a better sentence for
+brevity and seamanlike ring?  But the “cast-anchor” trick, with its
+affectation of being a sea-phrase—for why not write just as well “threw
+anchor,” “flung anchor,” or “shied anchor”?—is intolerably odious to a
+sailor’s ear.  I remember a coasting pilot of my early acquaintance (he
+used to read the papers assiduously) who, to define the utmost degree of
+lubberliness in a landsman, used to say, “He’s one of them poor,
+miserable ‘cast-anchor’ devils.”
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+From first to last the seaman’s thoughts are very much concerned with his
+anchors.  It is not so much that the anchor is a symbol of hope as that
+it is the heaviest object that he has to handle on board his ship at sea
+in the usual routine of his duties.  The beginning and the end of every
+passage are marked distinctly by work about the ship’s anchors.  A vessel
+in the Channel has her anchors always ready, her cables shackled on, and
+the land almost always in sight.  The anchor and the land are
+indissolubly connected in a sailor’s thoughts.  But directly she is clear
+of the narrow seas, heading out into the world with nothing solid to
+speak of between her and the South Pole, the anchors are got in and the
+cables disappear from the deck.  But the anchors do not disappear.
+Technically speaking, they are “secured in-board”; and, on the forecastle
+head, lashed down to ring-bolts with ropes and chains, under the
+straining sheets of the head-sails, they look very idle and as if asleep.
+Thus bound, but carefully looked after, inert and powerful, those emblems
+of hope make company for the look-out man in the night watches; and so
+the days glide by, with a long rest for those characteristically shaped
+pieces of iron, reposing forward, visible from almost every part of the
+ship’s deck, waiting for their work on the other side of the world
+somewhere, while the ship carries them on with a great rush and splutter
+of foam underneath, and the sprays of the open sea rust their heavy
+limbs.
+
+The first approach to the land, as yet invisible to the crew’s eyes, is
+announced by the brisk order of the chief mate to the boatswain: “We will
+get the anchors over this afternoon” or “first thing to-morrow morning,”
+as the case may be.  For the chief mate is the keeper of the ship’s
+anchors and the guardian of her cable.  There are good ships and bad
+ships, comfortable ships and ships where, from first day to last of the
+voyage, there is no rest for a chief mate’s body and soul.  And ships are
+what men make them: this is a pronouncement of sailor wisdom, and, no
+doubt, in the main it is true.
+
+However, there are ships where, as an old grizzled mate once told me,
+“nothing ever seems to go right!”  And, looking from the poop where we
+both stood (I had paid him a neighbourly call in dock), he added: “She’s
+one of them.”  He glanced up at my face, which expressed a proper
+professional sympathy, and set me right in my natural surmise: “Oh no;
+the old man’s right enough.  He never interferes.  Anything that’s done
+in a seamanlike way is good enough for him.  And yet, somehow, nothing
+ever seems to go right in this ship.  I tell you what: she is naturally
+unhandy.”
+
+The “old man,” of course, was his captain, who just then came on deck in
+a silk hat and brown overcoat, and, with a civil nod to us, went ashore.
+He was certainly not more than thirty, and the elderly mate, with a
+murmur to me of “That’s my old man,” proceeded to give instances of the
+natural unhandiness of the ship in a sort of deprecatory tone, as if to
+say, “You mustn’t think I bear a grudge against her for that.”
+
+The instances do not matter.  The point is that there are ships where
+things _do_ go wrong; but whatever the ship—good or bad, lucky or
+unlucky—it is in the forepart of her that her chief mate feels most at
+home.  It is emphatically _his_ end of the ship, though, of course, he is
+the executive supervisor of the whole.  There are _his_ anchors, _his_
+headgear, his foremast, his station for manoeuvring when the captain is
+in charge.  And there, too, live the men, the ship’s hands, whom it is
+his duty to keep employed, fair weather or foul, for the ship’s welfare.
+It is the chief mate, the only figure of the ship’s afterguard, who comes
+bustling forward at the cry of “All hands on deck!”  He is the satrap of
+that province in the autocratic realm of the ship, and more personally
+responsible for anything that may happen there.
+
+There, too, on the approach to the land, assisted by the boatswain and
+the carpenter, he “gets the anchors over” with the men of his own watch,
+whom he knows better than the others.  There he sees the cable ranged,
+the windlass disconnected, the compressors opened; and there, after
+giving his own last order, “Stand clear of the cable!” he waits
+attentive, in a silent ship that forges slowly ahead towards her
+picked-out berth, for the sharp shout from aft, “Let go!”  Instantly
+bending over, he sees the trusty iron fall with a heavy plunge under his
+eyes, which watch and note whether it has gone clear.
+
+For the anchor “to go clear” means to go clear of its own chain.  Your
+anchor must drop from the bow of your ship with no turn of cable on any
+of its limbs, else you would be riding to a foul anchor.  Unless the pull
+of the cable is fair on the ring, no anchor can be trusted even on the
+best of holding ground.  In time of stress it is bound to drag, for
+implements and men must be treated fairly to give you the “virtue” which
+is in them.  The anchor is an emblem of hope, but a foul anchor is worse
+than the most fallacious of false hopes that ever lured men or nations
+into a sense of security.  And the sense of security, even the most
+warranted, is a bad councillor.  It is the sense which, like that
+exaggerated feeling of well-being ominous of the coming on of madness,
+precedes the swift fall of disaster.  A seaman labouring under an undue
+sense of security becomes at once worth hardly half his salt.  Therefore,
+of all my chief officers, the one I trusted most was a man called B—.  He
+had a red moustache, a lean face, also red, and an uneasy eye.  He was
+worth all his salt.
+
+On examining now, after many years, the residue of the feeling which was
+the outcome of the contact of our personalities, I discover, without much
+surprise, a certain flavour of dislike.  Upon the whole, I think he was
+one of the most uncomfortable shipmates possible for a young commander.
+If it is permissible to criticise the absent, I should say he had a
+little too much of the sense of insecurity which is so invaluable in a
+seaman.  He had an extremely disturbing air of being everlastingly ready
+(even when seated at table at my right hand before a plate of salt beef)
+to grapple with some impending calamity.  I must hasten to add that he
+had also the other qualification necessary to make a trustworthy
+seaman—that of an absolute confidence in himself.  What was really wrong
+with him was that he had these qualities in an unrestful degree.  His
+eternally watchful demeanour, his jerky, nervous talk, even his, as it
+were, determined silences, seemed to imply—and, I believe, they did
+imply—that to his mind the ship was never safe in my hands.  Such was the
+man who looked after the anchors of a less than five-hundred-ton barque,
+my first command, now gone from the face of the earth, but sure of a
+tenderly remembered existence as long as I live.  No anchor could have
+gone down foul under Mr. B—’s piercing eye.  It was good for one to be
+sure of that when, in an open roadstead, one heard in the cabin the wind
+pipe up; but still, there were moments when I detested Mr. B—
+exceedingly.  From the way he used to glare sometimes, I fancy that more
+than once he paid me back with interest.  It so happened that we both
+loved the little barque very much.  And it was just the defect of Mr.
+B—’s inestimable qualities that he would never persuade himself to
+believe that the ship was safe in my hands.  To begin with, he was more
+than five years older than myself at a time of life when five years
+really do count, I being twenty-nine and he thirty-four; then, on our
+first leaving port (I don’t see why I should make a secret of the fact
+that it was Bangkok), a bit of manoeuvring of mine amongst the islands of
+the Gulf of Siam had given him an unforgettable scare.  Ever since then
+he had nursed in secret a bitter idea of my utter recklessness.  But upon
+the whole, and unless the grip of a man’s hand at parting means nothing
+whatever, I conclude that we did like each other at the end of two years
+and three months well enough.
+
+The bond between us was the ship; and therein a ship, though she has
+female attributes and is loved very unreasonably, is different from a
+woman.  That I should have been tremendously smitten with my first
+command is nothing to wonder at, but I suppose I must admit that Mr. B—’s
+sentiment was of a higher order.  Each of us, of course, was extremely
+anxious about the good appearance of the beloved object; and, though I
+was the one to glean compliments ashore, B— had the more intimate pride
+of feeling, resembling that of a devoted handmaiden.  And that sort of
+faithful and proud devotion went so far as to make him go about flicking
+the dust off the varnished teak-wood rail of the little craft with a silk
+pocket-handkerchief—a present from Mrs. B—, I believe.
+
+That was the effect of his love for the barque.  The effect of his
+admirable lack of the sense of security once went so far as to make him
+remark to me: “Well, sir, you _are_ a lucky man!”
+
+It was said in a tone full of significance, but not exactly offensive,
+and it was, I suppose, my innate tact that prevented my asking, “What on
+earth do you mean by that?”
+
+Later on his meaning was illustrated more fully on a dark night in a
+tight corner during a dead on-shore gale.  I had called him up on deck to
+help me consider our extremely unpleasant situation.  There was not much
+time for deep thinking, and his summing-up was: “It looks pretty bad,
+whichever we try; but, then, sir, you always do get out of a mess
+somehow.”
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+It is difficult to disconnect the idea of ships’ anchors from the idea of
+the ship’s chief mate—the man who sees them go down clear and come up
+sometimes foul; because not even the most unremitting care can always
+prevent a ship, swinging to winds and tide, from taking an awkward turn
+of the cable round stock or fluke.  Then the business of “getting the
+anchor” and securing it afterwards is unduly prolonged, and made a
+weariness to the chief mate.  He is the man who watches the growth of the
+cable—a sailor’s phrase which has all the force, precision, and imagery
+of technical language that, created by simple men with keen eyes for the
+real aspect of the things they see in their trade, achieves the just
+expression seizing upon the essential, which is the ambition of the
+artist in words.  Therefore the sailor will never say, “cast anchor,” and
+the ship-master aft will hail his chief mate on the forecastle in
+impressionistic phrase: “How does the cable grow?”  Because “grow” is the
+right word for the long drift of a cable emerging aslant under the
+strain, taut as a bow-string above the water.  And it is the voice of the
+keeper of the ship’s anchors that will answer: “Grows right ahead, sir,”
+or “Broad on the bow,” or whatever concise and deferential shout will fit
+the case.
+
+There is no order more noisily given or taken up with lustier shouts on
+board a homeward-bound merchant ship than the command, “Man the
+windlass!”  The rush of expectant men out of the forecastle, the
+snatching of hand-spikes, the tramp of feet, the clink of the pawls, make
+a stirring accompaniment to a plaintive up-anchor song with a roaring
+chorus; and this burst of noisy activity from a whole ship’s crew seems
+like a voiceful awakening of the ship herself, till then, in the
+picturesque phrase of Dutch seamen, “lying asleep upon her iron.”
+
+For a ship with her sails furled on her squared yards, and reflected from
+truck to water-line in the smooth gleaming sheet of a landlocked harbour,
+seems, indeed, to a seaman’s eye the most perfect picture of slumbering
+repose.  The getting of your anchor was a noisy operation on board a
+merchant ship of yesterday—an inspiring, joyous noise, as if, with the
+emblem of hope, the ship’s company expected to drag up out of the depths,
+each man all his personal hopes into the reach of a securing hand—the
+hope of home, the hope of rest, of liberty, of dissipation, of hard
+pleasure, following the hard endurance of many days between sky and
+water.  And this noisiness, this exultation at the moment of the ship’s
+departure, make a tremendous contrast to the silent moments of her
+arrival in a foreign roadstead—the silent moments when, stripped of her
+sails, she forges ahead to her chosen berth, the loose canvas fluttering
+softly in the gear above the heads of the men standing still upon her
+decks, the master gazing intently forward from the break of the poop.
+Gradually she loses her way, hardly moving, with the three figures on her
+forecastle waiting attentively about the cat-head for the last order of,
+perhaps, full ninety days at sea: “Let go!”
+
+This is the final word of a ship’s ended journey, the closing word of her
+toil and of her achievement.  In a life whose worth is told out in
+passages from port to port, the splash of the anchor’s fall and the
+thunderous rumbling of the chain are like the closing of a distinct
+period, of which she seems conscious with a slight deep shudder of all
+her frame.  By so much is she nearer to her appointed death, for neither
+years nor voyages can go on for ever.  It is to her like the striking of
+a clock, and in the pause which follows she seems to take count of the
+passing time.
+
+This is the last important order; the others are mere routine directions.
+Once more the master is heard: “Give her forty-five fathom to the water’s
+edge,” and then he, too, is done for a time.  For days he leaves all the
+harbour work to his chief mate, the keeper of the ship’s anchor and of
+the ship’s routine.  For days his voice will not be heard raised about
+the decks, with that curt, austere accent of the man in charge, till,
+again, when the hatches are on, and in a silent and expectant ship, he
+shall speak up from aft in commanding tones: “Man the windlass!”
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+THE other year, looking through a newspaper of sound principles, but
+whose staff _will_ persist in “casting” anchors and going to sea “on” a
+ship (ough!), I came across an article upon the season’s yachting.  And,
+behold! it was a good article.  To a man who had but little to do with
+pleasure sailing (though all sailing is a pleasure), and certainly
+nothing whatever with racing in open waters, the writer’s strictures upon
+the handicapping of yachts were just intelligible and no more.  And I do
+not pretend to any interest in the enumeration of the great races of that
+year.  As to the 52-foot linear raters, praised so much by the writer, I
+am warmed up by his approval of their performances; but, as far as any
+clear conception goes, the descriptive phrase, so precise to the
+comprehension of a yachtsman, evokes no definite image in my mind.
+
+The writer praises that class of pleasure vessels, and I am willing to
+endorse his words, as any man who loves every craft afloat would be ready
+to do.  I am disposed to admire and respect the 52-foot linear raters on
+the word of a man who regrets in such a sympathetic and understanding
+spirit the threatened decay of yachting seamanship.
+
+Of course, yacht racing is an organized pastime, a function of social
+idleness ministering to the vanity of certain wealthy inhabitants of
+these isles nearly as much as to their inborn love of the sea.  But the
+writer of the article in question goes on to point out, with insight and
+justice, that for a great number of people (20,000, I think he says) it
+is a means of livelihood—that it is, in his own words, an industry.  Now,
+the moral side of an industry, productive or unproductive, the redeeming
+and ideal aspect of this bread-winning, is the attainment and
+preservation of the highest possible skill on the part of the craftsmen.
+Such skill, the skill of technique, is more than honesty; it is something
+wider, embracing honesty and grace and rule in an elevated and clear
+sentiment, not altogether utilitarian, which may be called the honour of
+labour.  It is made up of accumulated tradition, kept alive by individual
+pride, rendered exact by professional opinion, and, like the higher arts,
+it spurred on and sustained by discriminating praise.
+
+This is why the attainment of proficiency, the pushing of your skill with
+attention to the most delicate shades of excellence, is a matter of vital
+concern.  Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may be reached
+naturally in the struggle for bread.  But there is something beyond—a
+higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond
+mere skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish
+which is almost art—which _is_ art.
+
+As men of scrupulous honour set up a high standard of public conscience
+above the dead-level of an honest community, so men of that skill which
+passes into art by ceaseless striving raise the dead-level of correct
+practice in the crafts of land and sea.  The conditions fostering the
+growth of that supreme, alive excellence, as well in work as in play,
+ought to be preserved with a most careful regard lest the industry or the
+game should perish of an insidious and inward decay.  Therefore I have
+read with profound regret, in that article upon the yachting season of a
+certain year, that the seamanship on board racing yachts is not now what
+it used to be only a few, very few, years ago.
+
+For that was the gist of that article, written evidently by a man who not
+only knows but _understands_—a thing (let me remark in passing) much
+rarer than one would expect, because the sort of understanding I mean is
+inspired by love; and love, though in a sense it may be admitted to be
+stronger than death, is by no means so universal and so sure.  In fact,
+love is rare—the love of men, of things, of ideas, the love of perfected
+skill.  For love is the enemy of haste; it takes count of passing days,
+of men who pass away, of a fine art matured slowly in the course of years
+and doomed in a short time to pass away too, and be no more.  Love and
+regret go hand in hand in this world of changes swifter than the shifting
+of the clouds reflected in the mirror of the sea.
+
+To penalize a yacht in proportion to the fineness of her performance is
+unfair to the craft and to her men.  It is unfair to the perfection of
+her form and to the skill of her servants.  For we men are, in fact, the
+servants of our creations.  We remain in everlasting bondage to the
+productions of our brain and to the work of our hands.  A man is born to
+serve his time on this earth, and there is something fine in the service
+being given on other grounds than that of utility.  The bondage of art is
+very exacting.  And, as the writer of the article which started this
+train of thought says with lovable warmth, the sailing of yachts is a
+fine art.
+
+His contention is that racing, without time allowances for anything else
+but tonnage—that is, for size—has fostered the fine art of sailing to the
+pitch of perfection.  Every sort of demand is made upon the master of a
+sailing-yacht, and to be penalized in proportion to your success may be
+of advantage to the sport itself, but it has an obviously deteriorating
+effect upon the seamanship.  The fine art is being lost.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+
+The sailing and racing of yachts has developed a class of fore-and-aft
+sailors, men born and bred to the sea, fishing in winter and yachting in
+summer; men to whom the handling of that particular rig presents no
+mystery.  It is their striving for victory that has elevated the sailing
+of pleasure craft to the dignity of a fine art in that special sense.  As
+I have said, I know nothing of racing and but little of fore-and-aft rig;
+but the advantages of such a rig are obvious, especially for purposes of
+pleasure, whether in cruising or racing.  It requires less effort in
+handling; the trimming of the sail-planes to the wind can be done with
+speed and accuracy; the unbroken spread of the sail-area is of infinite
+advantage; and the greatest possible amount of canvas can be displayed
+upon the least possible quantity of spars.  Lightness and concentrated
+power are the great qualities of fore-and-aft rig.
+
+A fleet of fore-and-afters at anchor has its own slender graciousness.
+The setting of their sails resembles more than anything else the
+unfolding of a bird’s wings; the facility of their evolutions is a
+pleasure to the eye.  They are birds of the sea, whose swimming is like
+flying, and resembles more a natural function than the handling of
+man-invented appliances.  The fore-and-aft rig in its simplicity and the
+beauty of its aspect under every angle of vision is, I believe,
+unapproachable.  A schooner, yawl, or cutter in charge of a capable man
+seems to handle herself as if endowed with the power of reasoning and the
+gift of swift execution.  One laughs with sheer pleasure at a smart piece
+of manoeuvring, as at a manifestation of a living creature’s quick wit
+and graceful precision.
+
+Of those three varieties of fore-and-aft rig, the cutter—the racing rig
+_par excellence_—is of an appearance the most imposing, from the fact
+that practically all her canvas is in one piece.  The enormous mainsail
+of a cutter, as she draws slowly past a point of land or the end of a
+jetty under your admiring gaze, invests her with an air of lofty and
+silent majesty.  At anchor a schooner looks better; she has an aspect of
+greater efficiency and a better balance to the eye, with her two masts
+distributed over the hull with a swaggering rake aft.  The yawl rig one
+comes in time to love.  It is, I should think, the easiest of all to
+manage.
+
+For racing, a cutter; for a long pleasure voyage, a schooner; for
+cruising in home waters, the yawl; and the handling of them all is indeed
+a fine art.  It requires not only the knowledge of the general principles
+of sailing, but a particular acquaintance with the character of the
+craft.  All vessels are handled in the same way as far as theory goes,
+just as you may deal with all men on broad and rigid principles.  But if
+you want that success in life which comes from the affection and
+confidence of your fellows, then with no two men, however similar they
+may appear in their nature, will you deal in the same way.  There may be
+a rule of conduct; there is no rule of human fellowship.  To deal with
+men is as fine an art as it is to deal with ships.  Both men and ships
+live in an unstable element, are subject to subtle and powerful
+influences, and want to have their merits understood rather than their
+faults found out.
+
+It is not what your ship will _not_ do that you want to know to get on
+terms of successful partnership with her; it is, rather, that you ought
+to have a precise knowledge of what she will do for you when called upon
+to put forth what is in her by a sympathetic touch.  At first sight the
+difference does not seem great in either line of dealing with the
+difficult problem of limitations.  But the difference is great.  The
+difference lies in the spirit in which the problem is approached.  After
+all, the art of handling ships is finer, perhaps, than the art of
+handling men.
+
+And, like all fine arts, it must be based upon a broad, solid sincerity,
+which, like a law of Nature, rules an infinity of different phenomena.
+Your endeavour must be single-minded.  You would talk differently to a
+coal-heaver and to a professor.  But is this duplicity?  I deny it.  The
+truth consists in the genuineness of the feeling, in the genuine
+recognition of the two men, so similar and so different, as your two
+partners in the hazard of life.  Obviously, a humbug, thinking only of
+winning his little race, would stand a chance of profiting by his
+artifices.  Men, professors or coal-heavers, are easily deceived; they
+even have an extraordinary knack of lending themselves to deception, a
+sort of curious and inexplicable propensity to allow themselves to be led
+by the nose with their eyes open.  But a ship is a creature which we have
+brought into the world, as it were on purpose to keep us up to the mark.
+In her handling a ship will not put up with a mere pretender, as, for
+instance, the public will do with Mr. X, the popular statesman, Mr. Y,
+the popular scientist, or Mr. Z, the popular—what shall we say?—anything
+from a teacher of high morality to a bagman—who have won their little
+race.  But I would like (though not accustomed to betting) to wager a
+large sum that not one of the few first-rate skippers of racing yachts
+has ever been a humbug.  It would have been too difficult.  The
+difficulty arises from the fact that one does not deal with ships in a
+mob, but with a ship as an individual.  So we may have to do with men.
+But in each of us there lurks some particle of the mob spirit, of the mob
+temperament.  No matter how earnestly we strive against each other, we
+remain brothers on the lowest side of our intellect and in the
+instability of our feelings.  With ships it is not so.  Much as they are
+to us, they are nothing to each other.  Those sensitive creatures have no
+ears for our blandishments.  It takes something more than words to cajole
+them to do our will, to cover us with glory.  Luckily, too, or else there
+would have been more shoddy reputations for first-rate seamanship.  Ships
+have no ears, I repeat, though, indeed, I think I have known ships who
+really seemed to have had eyes, or else I cannot understand on what
+ground a certain 1,000-ton barque of my acquaintance on one particular
+occasion refused to answer her helm, thereby saving a frightful smash to
+two ships and to a very good man’s reputation.  I knew her intimately for
+two years, and in no other instance either before or since have I known
+her to do that thing.  The man she had served so well (guessing, perhaps,
+at the depths of his affection for her) I have known much longer, and in
+bare justice to him I must say that this confidence-shattering experience
+(though so fortunate) only augmented his trust in her.  Yes, our ships
+have no ears, and thus they cannot be deceived.  I would illustrate my
+idea of fidelity as between man and ship, between the master and his art,
+by a statement which, though it might appear shockingly sophisticated, is
+really very simple.  I would say that a racing-yacht skipper who thought
+of nothing else but the glory of winning the race would never attain to
+any eminence of reputation.  The genuine masters of their craft—I say
+this confidently from my experience of ships—have thought of nothing but
+of doing their very best by the vessel under their charge.  To forget
+one’s self, to surrender all personal feeling in the service of that fine
+art, is the only way for a seaman to the faithful discharge of his trust.
+
+Such is the service of a fine art and of ships that sail the sea.  And
+therein I think I can lay my finger upon the difference between the
+seamen of yesterday, who are still with us, and the seamen of to-morrow,
+already entered upon the possession of their inheritance.  History
+repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is
+never reproduced.  It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of
+a destroyed wild bird.  Nothing will awaken the same response of
+pleasurable emotion or conscientious endeavour.  And the sailing of any
+vessel afloat is an art whose fine form seems already receding from us on
+its way to the overshadowed Valley of Oblivion.  The taking of a modern
+steamship about the world (though one would not minimize its
+responsibilities) has not the same quality of intimacy with nature,
+which, after all, is an indispensable condition to the building up of an
+art.  It is less personal and a more exact calling; less arduous, but
+also less gratifying in the lack of close communion between the artist
+and the medium of his art.  It is, in short, less a matter of love.  Its
+effects are measured exactly in time and space as no effect of an art can
+be.  It is an occupation which a man not desperately subject to
+sea-sickness can be imagined to follow with content, without enthusiasm,
+with industry, without affection.  Punctuality is its watchword.  The
+incertitude which attends closely every artistic endeavour is absent from
+its regulated enterprise.  It has no great moments of self-confidence, or
+moments not less great of doubt and heart-searching.  It is an industry
+which, like other industries, has its romance, its honour and its
+rewards, its bitter anxieties and its hours of ease.  But such sea-going
+has not the artistic quality of a single-handed struggle with something
+much greater than yourself; it is not the laborious absorbing practice of
+an art whose ultimate result remains on the knees of the gods.  It is not
+an individual, temperamental achievement, but simply the skilled use of a
+captured force, merely another step forward upon the way of universal
+conquest.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+
+Every passage of a ship of yesterday, whose yards were braced round
+eagerly the very moment the pilot, with his pockets full of letters, had
+got over the side, was like a race—a race against time, against an ideal
+standard of achievement outstripping the expectations of common men.
+Like all true art, the general conduct of a ship and her handling in
+particular cases had a technique which could be discussed with delight
+and pleasure by men who found in their work, not bread alone, but an
+outlet for the peculiarities of their temperament.  To get the best and
+truest effect from the infinitely varying moods of sky and sea, not
+pictorially, but in the spirit of their calling, was their vocation, one
+and all; and they recognised this with as much sincerity, and drew as
+much inspiration from this reality, as any man who ever put brush to
+canvas.  The diversity of temperaments was immense amongst those masters
+of the fine art.
+
+Some of them were like Royal Academicians of a certain kind.  They never
+startled you by a touch of originality, by a fresh audacity of
+inspiration.  They were safe, very safe.  They went about solemnly in the
+assurance of their consecrated and empty reputation.  Names are odious,
+but I remember one of them who might have been their very president, the
+P.R.A. of the sea-craft.  His weather-beaten and handsome face, his
+portly presence, his shirt-fronts and broad cuffs and gold links, his air
+of bluff distinction, impressed the humble beholders (stevedores, tally
+clerks, tide-waiters) as he walked ashore over the gangway of his ship
+lying at the Circular Quay in Sydney.  His voice was deep, hearty, and
+authoritative—the voice of a very prince amongst sailors.  He did
+everything with an air which put your attention on the alert and raised
+your expectations, but the result somehow was always on stereotyped
+lines, unsuggestive, empty of any lesson that one could lay to heart.  He
+kept his ship in apple-pie order, which would have been seamanlike enough
+but for a finicking touch in its details.  His officers affected a
+superiority over the rest of us, but the boredom of their souls appeared
+in their manner of dreary submission to the fads of their commander.  It
+was only his apprenticed boys whose irrepressible spirits were not
+affected by the solemn and respectable mediocrity of that artist.  There
+were four of these youngsters: one the son of a doctor, another of a
+colonel, the third of a jeweller; the name of the fourth was Twentyman,
+and this is all I remember of his parentage.  But not one of them seemed
+to possess the smallest spark of gratitude in his composition.  Though
+their commander was a kind man in his way, and had made a point of
+introducing them to the best people in the town in order that they should
+not fall into the bad company of boys belonging to other ships, I regret
+to say that they made faces at him behind his back, and imitated the
+dignified carriage of his head without any concealment whatever.
+
+This master of the fine art was a personage and nothing more; but, as I
+have said, there was an infinite diversity of temperament amongst the
+masters of the fine art I have known.  Some were great impressionists.
+They impressed upon you the fear of God and Immensity—or, in other words,
+the fear of being drowned with every circumstance of terrific grandeur.
+One may think that the locality of your passing away by means of
+suffocation in water does not really matter very much.  I am not so sure
+of that.  I am, perhaps, unduly sensitive, but I confess that the idea of
+being suddenly spilt into an infuriated ocean in the midst of darkness
+and uproar affected me always with a sensation of shrinking distaste.  To
+be drowned in a pond, though it might be called an ignominious fate by
+the ignorant, is yet a bright and peaceful ending in comparison with some
+other endings to one’s earthly career which I have mentally quaked at in
+the intervals or even in the midst of violent exertions.
+
+But let that pass.  Some of the masters whose influence left a trace upon
+my character to this very day, combined a fierceness of conception with a
+certitude of execution upon the basis of just appreciation of means and
+ends which is the highest quality of the man of action.  And an artist is
+a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient,
+or finds the issue of a complicated situation.
+
+There were masters, too, I have known, whose very art consisted in
+avoiding every conceivable situation.  It is needless to say that they
+never did great things in their craft; but they were not to be despised
+for that.  They were modest; they understood their limitations.  Their
+own masters had not handed the sacred fire into the keeping of their cold
+and skilful hands.  One of those last I remember specially, now gone to
+his rest from that sea which his temperament must have made a scene of
+little more than a peaceful pursuit.  Once only did he attempt a stroke
+of audacity, one early morning, with a steady breeze, entering a crowded
+roadstead.  But he was not genuine in this display which might have been
+art.  He was thinking of his own self; he hankered after the meretricious
+glory of a showy performance.
+
+As, rounding a dark, wooded point, bathed in fresh air and sunshine, we
+opened to view a crowd of shipping at anchor lying half a mile ahead of
+us perhaps, he called me aft from my station on the forecastle head, and,
+turning over and over his binoculars in his brown hands, said: “Do you
+see that big, heavy ship with white lower masts?  I am going to take up a
+berth between her and the shore.  Now do you see to it that the men jump
+smartly at the first order.”
+
+I answered, “Ay, ay, sir,” and verily believed that this would be a fine
+performance.  We dashed on through the fleet in magnificent style.  There
+must have been many open mouths and following eyes on board those
+ships—Dutch, English, with a sprinkling of Americans and a German or
+two—who had all hoisted their flags at eight o’clock as if in honour of
+our arrival.  It would have been a fine performance if it had come off,
+but it did not.  Through a touch of self-seeking that modest artist of
+solid merit became untrue to his temperament.  It was not with him art
+for art’s sake: it was art for his own sake; and a dismal failure was the
+penalty he paid for that greatest of sins.  It might have been even
+heavier, but, as it happened, we did not run our ship ashore, nor did we
+knock a large hole in the big ship whose lower masts were painted white.
+But it is a wonder that we did not carry away the cables of both our
+anchors, for, as may be imagined, I did not stand upon the order to “Let
+go!” that came to me in a quavering, quite unknown voice from his
+trembling lips.  I let them both go with a celerity which to this day
+astonishes my memory.  No average merchantman’s anchors have ever been
+let go with such miraculous smartness.  And they both held.  I could have
+kissed their rough, cold iron palms in gratitude if they had not been
+buried in slimy mud under ten fathoms of water.  Ultimately they brought
+us up with the jibboom of a Dutch brig poking through our spanker—nothing
+worse.  And a miss is as good as a mile.
+
+But not in art.  Afterwards the master said to me in a shy mumble, “She
+wouldn’t luff up in time, somehow.  What’s the matter with her?”  And I
+made no answer.
+
+Yet the answer was clear.  The ship had found out the momentary weakness
+of her man.  Of all the living creatures upon land and sea, it is ships
+alone that cannot be taken in by barren pretences, that will not put up
+with bad art from their masters.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+
+FROM the main truck of the average tall ship the horizon describes a
+circle of many miles, in which you can see another ship right down to her
+water-line; and these very eyes which follow this writing have counted in
+their time over a hundred sail becalmed, as if within a magic ring, not
+very far from the Azores—ships more or less tall.  There were hardly two
+of them heading exactly the same way, as if each had meditated breaking
+out of the enchanted circle at a different point of the compass.  But the
+spell of the calm is a strong magic.  The following day still saw them
+scattered within sight of each other and heading different ways; but
+when, at last, the breeze came with the darkling ripple that ran very
+blue on a pale sea, they all went in the same direction together.  For
+this was the homeward-bound fleet from the far-off ends of the earth, and
+a Falmouth fruit-schooner, the smallest of them all, was heading the
+flight.  One could have imagined her very fair, if not divinely tall,
+leaving a scent of lemons and oranges in her wake.
+
+The next day there were very few ships in sight from our mast-heads—seven
+at most, perhaps, with a few more distant specks, hull down, beyond the
+magic ring of the horizon.  The spell of the fair wind has a subtle power
+to scatter a white-winged company of ships looking all the same way, each
+with its white fillet of tumbling foam under the bow.  It is the calm
+that brings ships mysteriously together; it is your wind that is the
+great separator.
+
+The taller the ship, the further she can be seen; and her white tallness
+breathed upon by the wind first proclaims her size.  The tall masts
+holding aloft the white canvas, spread out like a snare for catching the
+invisible power of the air, emerge gradually from the water, sail after
+sail, yard after yard, growing big, till, under the towering structure of
+her machinery, you perceive the insignificant, tiny speck of her hull.
+
+The tall masts are the pillars supporting the balanced planes that,
+motionless and silent, catch from the air the ship’s motive-power, as it
+were a gift from Heaven vouchsafed to the audacity of man; and it is the
+ship’s tall spars, stripped and shorn of their white glory, that incline
+themselves before the anger of the clouded heaven.
+
+When they yield to a squall in a gaunt and naked submission, their
+tallness is brought best home even to the mind of a seaman.  The man who
+has looked upon his ship going over too far is made aware of the
+preposterous tallness of a ship’s spars.  It seems impossible but that
+those gilt trucks which one had to tilt one’s head back to see, now
+falling into the lower plane of vision, must perforce hit the very edge
+of the horizon.  Such an experience gives you a better impression of the
+loftiness of your spars than any amount of running aloft could do.  And
+yet in my time the royal yards of an average profitable ship were a good
+way up above her decks.
+
+No doubt a fair amount of climbing up iron ladders can be achieved by an
+active man in a ship’s engine-room, but I remember moments when even to
+my supple limbs and pride of nimbleness the sailing-ship’s machinery
+seemed to reach up to the very stars.
+
+For machinery it is, doing its work in perfect silence and with a
+motionless grace, that seems to hide a capricious and not always
+governable power, taking nothing away from the material stores of the
+earth.  Not for it the unerring precision of steel moved by white steam
+and living by red fire and fed with black coal.  The other seems to draw
+its strength from the very soul of the world, its formidable ally, held
+to obedience by the frailest bonds, like a fierce ghost captured in a
+snare of something even finer than spun silk.  For what is the array of
+the strongest ropes, the tallest spars and the stoutest canvas against
+the mighty breath of the infinite, but thistle stalks, cobwebs and
+gossamer?
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+
+Indeed, it is less than nothing, and I have seen, when the great soul of
+the world turned over with a heavy sigh, a perfectly new, extra-stout
+foresail vanish like a bit of some airy stuff much lighter than gossamer.
+Then was the time for the tall spars to stand fast in the great uproar.
+The machinery must do its work even if the soul of the world has gone
+mad.
+
+The modern steamship advances upon a still and overshadowed sea with a
+pulsating tremor of her frame, an occasional clang in her depths, as if
+she had an iron heart in her iron body; with a thudding rhythm in her
+progress and the regular beat of her propeller, heard afar in the night
+with an august and plodding sound as of the march of an inevitable
+future.  But in a gale, the silent machinery of a sailing-ship would
+catch not only the power, but the wild and exulting voice of the world’s
+soul.  Whether she ran with her tall spars swinging, or breasted it with
+her tall spars lying over, there was always that wild song, deep like a
+chant, for a bass to the shrill pipe of the wind played on the sea-tops,
+with a punctuating crash, now and then, of a breaking wave.  At times the
+weird effects of that invisible orchestra would get upon a man’s nerves
+till he wished himself deaf.
+
+And this recollection of a personal wish, experienced upon several
+oceans, where the soul of the world has plenty of room to turn over with
+a mighty sigh, brings me to the remark that in order to take a proper
+care of a ship’s spars it is just as well for a seaman to have nothing
+the matter with his ears.  Such is the intimacy with which a seaman had
+to live with his ship of yesterday that his senses were like her senses,
+that the stress upon his body made him judge of the strain upon the
+ship’s masts.
+
+I had been some time at sea before I became aware of the fact that
+hearing plays a perceptible part in gauging the force of the wind.  It
+was at night.  The ship was one of those iron wool-clippers that the
+Clyde had floated out in swarms upon the world during the seventh decade
+of the last century.  It was a fine period in ship-building, and also, I
+might say, a period of over-masting.  The spars rigged up on the narrow
+hulls were indeed tall then, and the ship of which I think, with her
+coloured-glass skylight ends bearing the motto, “Let Glasgow Flourish,”
+was certainly one of the most heavily-sparred specimens.  She was built
+for hard driving, and unquestionably she got all the driving she could
+stand.  Our captain was a man famous for the quick passages he had been
+used to make in the old _Tweed_, a ship famous the world over for her
+speed.  The _Tweed_ had been a wooden vessel, and he brought the
+tradition of quick passages with him into the iron clipper.  I was the
+junior in her, a third mate, keeping watch with the chief officer; and it
+was just during one of the night watches in a strong, freshening breeze
+that I overheard two men in a sheltered nook of the main deck exchanging
+these informing remarks.  Said one:
+
+“Should think ’twas time some of them light sails were coming off her.”
+
+And the other, an older man, uttered grumpily: “No fear! not while the
+chief mate’s on deck.  He’s that deaf he can’t tell how much wind there
+is.”
+
+And, indeed, poor P—, quite young, and a smart seaman, was very hard of
+hearing.  At the same time, he had the name of being the very devil of a
+fellow for carrying on sail on a ship.  He was wonderfully clever at
+concealing his deafness, and, as to carrying on heavily, though he was a
+fearless man, I don’t think that he ever meant to take undue risks.  I
+can never forget his naïve sort of astonishment when remonstrated with
+for what appeared a most dare-devil performance.  The only person, of
+course, that could remonstrate with telling effect was our captain,
+himself a man of dare-devil tradition; and really, for me, who knew under
+whom I was serving, those were impressive scenes.  Captain S— had a great
+name for sailor-like qualities—the sort of name that compelled my
+youthful admiration.  To this day I preserve his memory, for, indeed, it
+was he in a sense who completed my training.  It was often a stormy
+process, but let that pass.  I am sure he meant well, and I am certain
+that never, not even at the time, could I bear him malice for his
+extraordinary gift of incisive criticism.  And to hear _him_ make a fuss
+about too much sail on the ship seemed one of those incredible
+experiences that take place only in one’s dreams.
+
+It generally happened in this way: Night, clouds racing overhead, wind
+howling, royals set, and the ship rushing on in the dark, an immense
+white sheet of foam level with the lee rail.  Mr. P—, in charge of the
+deck, hooked on to the windward mizzen rigging in a state of perfect
+serenity; myself, the third mate, also hooked on somewhere to windward of
+the slanting poop, in a state of the utmost preparedness to jump at the
+very first hint of some sort of order, but otherwise in a perfectly
+acquiescent state of mind.  Suddenly, out of the companion would appear a
+tall, dark figure, bareheaded, with a short white beard of a
+perpendicular cut, very visible in the dark—Captain S—, disturbed in his
+reading down below by the frightful bounding and lurching of the ship.
+Leaning very much against the precipitous incline of the deck, he would
+take a turn or two, perfectly silent, hang on by the compass for a while,
+take another couple of turns, and suddenly burst out:
+
+“What are you trying to do with the ship?”
+
+And Mr. P—, who was not good at catching what was shouted in the wind,
+would say interrogatively:
+
+“Yes, sir?”
+
+Then in the increasing gale of the sea there would be a little private
+ship’s storm going on in which you could detect strong language,
+pronounced in a tone of passion and exculpatory protestations uttered
+with every possible inflection of injured innocence.
+
+“By Heavens, Mr. P-!  I used to carry on sail in my time, but—”
+
+And the rest would be lost to me in a stormy gust of wind.
+
+Then, in a lull, P—’s protesting innocence would become audible:
+
+“She seems to stand it very well.”
+
+And then another burst of an indignant voice:
+
+“Any fool can carry sail on a ship—”
+
+And so on and so on, the ship meanwhile rushing on her way with a heavier
+list, a noisier splutter, a more threatening hiss of the white, almost
+blinding, sheet of foam to leeward.  For the best of it was that Captain
+S— seemed constitutionally incapable of giving his officers a definite
+order to shorten sail; and so that extraordinarily vague row would go on
+till at last it dawned upon them both, in some particularly alarming
+gust, that it was time to do something.  There is nothing like the
+fearful inclination of your tall spars overloaded with canvas to bring a
+deaf man and an angry one to their senses.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+
+So sail did get shortened more or less in time even in that ship, and her
+tall spars never went overboard while I served in her.  However, all the
+time I was with them, Captain S— and Mr. P— did not get on very well
+together.  If P— carried on “like the very devil” because he was too deaf
+to know how much wind there was, Captain S— (who, as I have said, seemed
+constitutionally incapable of ordering one of his officers to shorten
+sail) resented the necessity forced upon him by Mr. P—’s desperate goings
+on.  It was in Captain S—’s tradition rather to reprove his officers for
+not carrying on quite enough—in his phrase “for not taking every ounce of
+advantage of a fair wind.”  But there was also a psychological motive
+that made him extremely difficult to deal with on board that iron
+clipper.  He had just come out of the marvellous _Tweed_, a ship, I have
+heard, heavy to look at but of phenomenal speed.  In the middle sixties
+she had beaten by a day and a half the steam mail-boat from Hong Kong to
+Singapore.  There was something peculiarly lucky, perhaps, in the placing
+of her masts—who knows?  Officers of men-of-war used to come on board to
+take the exact dimensions of her sail-plan.  Perhaps there had been a
+touch of genius or the finger of good fortune in the fashioning of her
+lines at bow and stern.  It is impossible to say.  She was built in the
+East Indies somewhere, of teak-wood throughout, except the deck.  She had
+a great sheer, high bows, and a clumsy stern.  The men who had seen her
+described her to me as “nothing much to look at.”  But in the great
+Indian famine of the seventies that ship, already old then, made some
+wonderful dashes across the Gulf of Bengal with cargoes of rice from
+Rangoon to Madras.
+
+She took the secret of her speed with her, and, unsightly as she was, her
+image surely has its glorious place in the mirror of the old sea.
+
+The point, however, is that Captain S—, who used to say frequently, “She
+never made a decent passage after I left her,” seemed to think that the
+secret of her speed lay in her famous commander.  No doubt the secret of
+many a ship’s excellence does lie with the man on board, but it was
+hopeless for Captain S— to try to make his new iron clipper equal the
+feats which made the old _Tweed_ a name of praise upon the lips of
+English-speaking seamen.  There was something pathetic in it, as in the
+endeavour of an artist in his old age to equal the masterpieces of his
+youth—for the _Tweed’s_ famous passages were Captain S—’s masterpieces.
+It was pathetic, and perhaps just the least bit dangerous.  At any rate,
+I am glad that, what between Captain S—’s yearning for old triumphs and
+Mr. P—’s deafness, I have seen some memorable carrying on to make a
+passage.  And I have carried on myself upon the tall spars of that Clyde
+shipbuilder’s masterpiece as I have never carried on in a ship before or
+since.
+
+The second mate falling ill during the passage, I was promoted to officer
+of the watch, alone in charge of the deck.  Thus the immense leverage of
+the ship’s tall masts became a matter very near my own heart.  I suppose
+it was something of a compliment for a young fellow to be trusted,
+apparently without any supervision, by such a commander as Captain S—;
+though, as far as I can remember, neither the tone, nor the manner, nor
+yet the drift of Captain S—’s remarks addressed to myself did ever, by
+the most strained interpretation, imply a favourable opinion of my
+abilities.  And he was, I must say, a most uncomfortable commander to get
+your orders from at night.  If I had the watch from eight till midnight,
+he would leave the deck about nine with the words, “Don’t take any sail
+off her.”  Then, on the point of disappearing down the companion-way, he
+would add curtly: “Don’t carry anything away.”  I am glad to say that I
+never did; one night, however, I was caught, not quite prepared, by a
+sudden shift of wind.
+
+There was, of course, a good deal of noise—running about, the shouts of
+the sailors, the thrashing of the sails—enough, in fact, to wake the
+dead.  But S— never came on deck.  When I was relieved by the chief mate
+an hour afterwards, he sent for me.  I went into his state-room; he was
+lying on his couch wrapped up in a rug, with a pillow under his head.
+
+“What was the matter with you up there just now?” he asked.
+
+“Wind flew round on the lee quarter, sir,” I said.
+
+“Couldn’t you see the shift coming?”
+
+“Yes, sir, I thought it wasn’t very far off.”
+
+“Why didn’t you have your courses hauled up at once, then?” he asked in a
+tone that ought to have made my blood run cold.
+
+But this was my chance, and I did not let it slip.
+
+“Well, sir,” I said in an apologetic tone, “she was going eleven knots
+very nicely, and I thought she would do for another half-hour or so.”
+
+He gazed at me darkly out of his head, lying very still on the white
+pillow, for a time.
+
+“Ah, yes, another half-hour.  That’s the way ships get dismasted.”
+
+And that was all I got in the way of a wigging.  I waited a little while
+and then went out, shutting carefully the door of the state-room after
+me.
+
+Well, I have loved, lived with, and left the sea without ever seeing a
+ship’s tall fabric of sticks, cobwebs and gossamer go by the board.
+Sheer good luck, no doubt.  But as to poor P—, I am sure that he would
+not have got off scot-free like this but for the god of gales, who called
+him away early from this earth, which is three parts ocean, and therefore
+a fit abode for sailors.  A few years afterwards I met in an Indian port
+a man who had served in the ships of the same company.  Names came up in
+our talk, names of our colleagues in the same employ, and, naturally
+enough, I asked after P—.  Had he got a command yet?  And the other man
+answered carelessly:
+
+“No; but he’s provided for, anyhow.  A heavy sea took him off the poop in
+the run between New Zealand and the Horn.”
+
+Thus P— passed away from amongst the tall spars of ships that he had
+tried to their utmost in many a spell of boisterous weather.  He had
+shown me what carrying on meant, but he was not a man to learn discretion
+from.  He could not help his deafness.  One can only remember his cheery
+temper, his admiration for the jokes in _Punch_, his little oddities—like
+his strange passion for borrowing looking-glasses, for instance.  Each of
+our cabins had its own looking-glass screwed to the bulkhead, and what he
+wanted with more of them we never could fathom.  He asked for the loan in
+confidential tones.  Why?  Mystery.  We made various surmises.  No one
+will ever know now.  At any rate, it was a harmless eccentricity, and may
+the god of gales, who took him away so abruptly between New Zealand and
+the Horn, let his soul rest in some Paradise of true seamen, where no
+amount of carrying on will ever dismast a ship!
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+
+THERE has been a time when a ship’s chief mate, pocket-book in hand and
+pencil behind his ear, kept one eye aloft upon his riggers and the other
+down the hatchway on the stevedores, and watched the disposition of his
+ship’s cargo, knowing that even before she started he was already doing
+his best to secure for her an easy and quick passage.
+
+The hurry of the times, the loading and discharging organization of the
+docks, the use of hoisting machinery which works quickly and will not
+wait, the cry for prompt despatch, the very size of his ship, stand
+nowadays between the modern seaman and the thorough knowledge of his
+craft.
+
+There are profitable ships and unprofitable ships.  The profitable ship
+will carry a large load through all the hazards of the weather, and, when
+at rest, will stand up in dock and shift from berth to berth without
+ballast.  There is a point of perfection in a ship as a worker when she
+is spoken of as being able to _sail_ without ballast.  I have never met
+that sort of paragon myself, but I have seen these paragons advertised
+amongst ships for sale.  Such excess of virtue and good-nature on the
+part of a ship always provoked my mistrust.  It is open to any man to say
+that his ship will sail without ballast; and he will say it, too, with
+every mark of profound conviction, especially if he is not going to sail
+in her himself.  The risk of advertising her as able to sail without
+ballast is not great, since the statement does not imply a warranty of
+her arriving anywhere.  Moreover, it is strictly true that most ships
+will sail without ballast for some little time before they turn turtle
+upon the crew.
+
+A shipowner loves a profitable ship; the seaman is proud of her; a doubt
+of her good looks seldom exists in his mind; but if he can boast of her
+more useful qualities it is an added satisfaction for his self-love.
+
+The loading of ships was once a matter of skill, judgment, and knowledge.
+Thick books have been written about it.  “Stevens on Stowage” is a portly
+volume with the renown and weight (in its own world) of Coke on
+Littleton.  Stevens is an agreeable writer, and, as is the case with men
+of talent, his gifts adorn his sterling soundness.  He gives you the
+official teaching on the whole subject, is precise as to rules, mentions
+illustrative events, quotes law cases where verdicts turned upon a point
+of stowage.  He is never pedantic, and, for all his close adherence to
+broad principles, he is ready to admit that no two ships can be treated
+exactly alike.
+
+Stevedoring, which had been a skilled labour, is fast becoming a labour
+without the skill.  The modern steamship with her many holds is not
+loaded within the sailor-like meaning of the word.  She is filled up.
+Her cargo is not stowed in any sense; it is simply dumped into her
+through six hatchways, more or less, by twelve winches or so, with
+clatter and hurry and racket and heat, in a cloud of steam and a mess of
+coal-dust.  As long as you keep her propeller under water and take care,
+say, not to fling down barrels of oil on top of bales of silk, or deposit
+an iron bridge-girder of five ton or so upon a bed of coffee-bags, you
+have done about all in the way of duty that the cry for prompt despatch
+will allow you to do.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+
+The sailing-ship, when I knew her in her days of perfection, was a
+sensible creature.  When I say her days of perfection, I mean perfection
+of build, gear, seaworthy qualities and ease of handling, not the
+perfection of speed.  That quality has departed with the change of
+building material.  No iron ship of yesterday ever attained the marvels
+of speed which the seamanship of men famous in their time had obtained
+from their wooden, copper-sheeted predecessors.  Everything had been done
+to make the iron ship perfect, but no wit of man had managed to devise an
+efficient coating composition to keep her bottom clean with the smooth
+cleanness of yellow metal sheeting.  After a spell of a few weeks at sea,
+an iron ship begins to lag as if she had grown tired too soon.  It is
+only her bottom that is getting foul.  A very little affects the speed of
+an iron ship which is not driven on by a merciless propeller.  Often it
+is impossible to tell what inconsiderate trifle puts her off her stride.
+A certain mysteriousness hangs around the quality of speed as it was
+displayed by the old sailing-ships commanded by a competent seaman.  In
+those days the speed depended upon the seaman; therefore, apart from the
+laws, rules, and regulations for the good preservation of his cargo, he
+was careful of his loading,—or what is technically called the trim of his
+ship.  Some ships sailed fast on an even keel, others had to be trimmed
+quite one foot by the stern, and I have heard of a ship that gave her
+best speed on a wind when so loaded as to float a couple of inches by the
+head.
+
+I call to mind a winter landscape in Amsterdam—a flat foreground of waste
+land, with here and there stacks of timber, like the huts of a camp of
+some very miserable tribe; the long stretch of the Handelskade; cold,
+stone-faced quays, with the snow-sprinkled ground and the hard, frozen
+water of the canal, in which were set ships one behind another with their
+frosty mooring-ropes hanging slack and their decks idle and deserted,
+because, as the master stevedore (a gentle, pale person, with a few
+golden hairs on his chin and a reddened nose) informed me, their cargoes
+were frozen-in up-country on barges and schuyts.  In the distance, beyond
+the waste ground, and running parallel with the line of ships, a line of
+brown, warm-toned houses seemed bowed under snow-laden roofs.  From afar
+at the end of Tsar Peter Straat, issued in the frosty air the tinkle of
+bells of the horse tramcars, appearing and disappearing in the opening
+between the buildings, like little toy carriages harnessed with toy
+horses and played with by people that appeared no bigger than children.
+
+I was, as the French say, biting my fists with impatience for that cargo
+frozen up-country; with rage at that canal set fast, at the wintry and
+deserted aspect of all those ships that seemed to decay in grim
+depression for want of the open water.  I was chief mate, and very much
+alone.  Directly I had joined I received from my owners instructions to
+send all the ship’s apprentices away on leave together, because in such
+weather there was nothing for anybody to do, unless to keep up a fire in
+the cabin stove.  That was attended to by a snuffy and mop-headed,
+inconceivably dirty, and weirdly toothless Dutch ship-keeper, who could
+hardly speak three words of English, but who must have had some
+considerable knowledge of the language, since he managed invariably to
+interpret in the contrary sense everything that was said to him.
+
+Notwithstanding the little iron stove, the ink froze on the swing-table
+in the cabin, and I found it more convenient to go ashore stumbling over
+the arctic waste-land and shivering in glazed tramcars in order to write
+my evening letter to my owners in a gorgeous café in the centre of the
+town.  It was an immense place, lofty and gilt, upholstered in red plush,
+full of electric lights and so thoroughly warmed that even the marble
+tables felt tepid to the touch.  The waiter who brought me my cup of
+coffee bore, by comparison with my utter isolation, the dear aspect of an
+intimate friend.  There, alone in a noisy crowd, I would write slowly a
+letter addressed to Glasgow, of which the gist would be: There is no
+cargo, and no prospect of any coming till late spring apparently.  And
+all the time I sat there the necessity of getting back to the ship bore
+heavily on my already half-congealed spirits—the shivering in glazed
+tramcars, the stumbling over the snow-sprinkled waste ground, the vision
+of ships frozen in a row, appearing vaguely like corpses of black vessels
+in a white world, so silent, so lifeless, so soulless they seemed to be.
+
+With precaution I would go up the side of my own particular corpse, and
+would feel her as cold as ice itself and as slippery under my feet.  My
+cold berth would swallow up like a chilly burial niche my bodily shivers
+and my mental excitement.  It was a cruel winter.  The very air seemed as
+hard and trenchant as steel; but it would have taken much more than this
+to extinguish my sacred fire for the exercise of my craft.  No young man
+of twenty-four appointed chief mate for the first time in his life would
+have let that Dutch tenacious winter penetrate into his heart.  I think
+that in those days I never forgot the fact of my elevation for five
+consecutive minutes.  I fancy it kept me warm, even in my slumbers,
+better than the high pile of blankets, which positively crackled with
+frost as I threw them off in the morning.  And I would get up early for
+no reason whatever except that I was in sole charge.  The new captain had
+not been appointed yet.
+
+Almost each morning a letter from my owners would arrive, directing me to
+go to the charterers and clamour for the ship’s cargo; to threaten them
+with the heaviest penalties of demurrage; to demand that this assortment
+of varied merchandise, set fast in a landscape of ice and windmills
+somewhere up-country, should be put on rail instantly, and fed up to the
+ship in regular quantities every day.  After drinking some hot coffee,
+like an Arctic explorer setting off on a sledge journey towards the North
+Pole, I would go ashore and roll shivering in a tramcar into the very
+heart of the town, past clean-faced houses, past thousands of brass
+knockers upon a thousand painted doors glimmering behind rows of trees of
+the pavement species, leafless, gaunt, seemingly dead for ever.
+
+That part of the expedition was easy enough, though the horses were
+painfully glistening with icicles, and the aspect of the tram-conductors’
+faces presented a repulsive blending of crimson and purple.  But as to
+frightening or bullying, or even wheedling some sort of answer out of Mr.
+Hudig, that was another matter altogether.  He was a big, swarthy
+Netherlander, with black moustaches and a bold glance.  He always began
+by shoving me into a chair before I had time to open my mouth, gave me
+cordially a large cigar, and in excellent English would start to talk
+everlastingly about the phenomenal severity of the weather.  It was
+impossible to threaten a man who, though he possessed the language
+perfectly, seemed incapable of understanding any phrase pronounced in a
+tone of remonstrance or discontent.  As to quarrelling with him, it would
+have been stupid.  The weather was too bitter for that.  His office was
+so warm, his fire so bright, his sides shook so heartily with laughter,
+that I experienced always a great difficulty in making up my mind to
+reach for my hat.
+
+At last the cargo did come.  At first it came dribbling in by rail in
+trucks, till the thaw set in; and then fast, in a multitude of barges,
+with a great rush of unbound waters.  The gentle master stevedore had his
+hands very full at last; and the chief mate became worried in his mind as
+to the proper distribution of the weight of his first cargo in a ship he
+did not personally know before.
+
+Ships do want humouring.  They want humouring in handling; and if you
+mean to handle them well, they must have been humoured in the
+distribution of the weight which you ask them to carry through the good
+and evil fortune of a passage.  Your ship is a tender creature, whose
+idiosyncrasies must be attended to if you mean her to come with credit to
+herself and you through the rough-and-tumble of her life.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+
+So seemed to think the new captain, who arrived the day after we had
+finished loading, on the very eve of the day of sailing.  I first beheld
+him on the quay, a complete stranger to me, obviously not a Hollander, in
+a black bowler and a short drab overcoat, ridiculously out of tone with
+the winter aspect of the waste-lands, bordered by the brown fronts of
+houses with their roofs dripping with melting snow.
+
+This stranger was walking up and down absorbed in the marked
+contemplation of the ship’s fore and aft trim; but when I saw him squat
+on his heels in the slush at the very edge of the quay to peer at the
+draught of water under her counter, I said to myself, “This is the
+captain.”  And presently I descried his luggage coming along—a real
+sailor’s chest, carried by means of rope-beckets between two men, with a
+couple of leather portmanteaus and a roll of charts sheeted in canvas
+piled upon the lid.  The sudden, spontaneous agility with which he
+bounded aboard right off the rail afforded me the first glimpse of his
+real character.  Without further preliminaries than a friendly nod, he
+addressed me: “You have got her pretty well in her fore and aft trim.
+Now, what about your weights?”
+
+I told him I had managed to keep the weight sufficiently well up, as I
+thought, one-third of the whole being in the upper part “above the
+beams,” as the technical expression has it.  He whistled “Phew!”
+scrutinizing me from head to foot.  A sort of smiling vexation was
+visible on his ruddy face.
+
+“Well, we shall have a lively time of it this passage, I bet,” he said.
+
+He knew.  It turned out he had been chief mate of her for the two
+preceding voyages; and I was already familiar with his handwriting in the
+old log-books I had been perusing in my cabin with a natural curiosity,
+looking up the records of my new ship’s luck, of her behaviour, of the
+good times she had had, and of the troubles she had escaped.
+
+He was right in his prophecy.  On our passage from Amsterdam to Samarang
+with a general cargo, of which, alas! only one-third in weight was stowed
+“above the beams,” we had a lively time of it.  It was lively, but not
+joyful.  There was not even a single moment of comfort in it, because no
+seaman can feel comfortable in body or mind when he has made his ship
+uneasy.
+
+To travel along with a cranky ship for ninety days or so is no doubt a
+nerve-trying experience; but in this case what was wrong with our craft
+was this: that by my system of loading she had been made much too stable.
+
+Neither before nor since have I felt a ship roll so abruptly, so
+violently, so heavily.  Once she began, you felt that she would never
+stop, and this hopeless sensation, characterizing the motion of ships
+whose centre of gravity is brought down too low in loading, made everyone
+on board weary of keeping on his feet.  I remember once over-hearing one
+of the hands say: “By Heavens, Jack!  I feel as if I didn’t mind how soon
+I let myself go, and let the blamed hooker knock my brains out if she
+likes.”  The captain used to remark frequently: “Ah, yes; I dare say
+one-third weight above beams would have been quite enough for most ships.
+But then, you see, there’s no two of them alike on the seas, and she’s an
+uncommonly ticklish jade to load.”
+
+Down south, running before the gales of high latitudes, she made our life
+a burden to us.  There were days when nothing would keep even on the
+swing-tables, when there was no position where you could fix yourself so
+as not to feel a constant strain upon all the muscles of your body.  She
+rolled and rolled with an awful dislodging jerk and that dizzily fast
+sweep of her masts on every swing.  It was a wonder that the men sent
+aloft were not flung off the yards, the yards not flung off the masts,
+the masts not flung overboard.  The captain in his armchair, holding on
+grimly at the head of the table, with the soup-tureen rolling on one side
+of the cabin and the steward sprawling on the other, would observe,
+looking at me: “That’s your one-third above the beams.  The only thing
+that surprises me is that the sticks have stuck to her all this time.”
+
+Ultimately some of the minor spars did go—nothing important:
+spanker-booms and such-like—because at times the frightful impetus of her
+rolling would part a fourfold tackle of new three-inch Manilla line as if
+it were weaker than pack-thread.
+
+It was only poetic justice that the chief mate who had made a
+mistake—perhaps a half-excusable one—about the distribution of his ship’s
+cargo should pay the penalty.  A piece of one of the minor spars that did
+carry away flew against the chief mate’s back, and sent him sliding on
+his face for quite a considerable distance along the main deck.
+Thereupon followed various and unpleasant consequences of a physical
+order—“queer symptoms,” as the captain, who treated them, used to say;
+inexplicable periods of powerlessness, sudden accesses of mysterious
+pain; and the patient agreed fully with the regretful mutters of his very
+attentive captain wishing that it had been a straightforward broken leg.
+Even the Dutch doctor who took the case up in Samarang offered no
+scientific explanation.  All he said was: “Ah, friend, you are young yet;
+it may be very serious for your whole life.  You must leave your ship;
+you must quite silent be for three months—quite silent.”
+
+Of course, he meant the chief mate to keep quiet—to lay up, as a matter
+of fact.  His manner was impressive enough, if his English was childishly
+imperfect when compared with the fluency of Mr. Hudig, the figure at the
+other end of that passage, and memorable enough in its way.  In a great
+airy ward of a Far Eastern hospital, lying on my back, I had plenty of
+leisure to remember the dreadful cold and snow of Amsterdam, while
+looking at the fronds of the palm-trees tossing and rustling at the
+height of the window.  I could remember the elated feeling and the
+soul-gripping cold of those tramway journeys taken into town to put what
+in diplomatic language is called pressure upon the good Hudig, with his
+warm fire, his armchair, his big cigar, and the never-failing suggestion
+in his good-natured voice: “I suppose in the end it is you they will
+appoint captain before the ship sails?”  It may have been his extreme
+good-nature, the serious, unsmiling good-nature of a fat, swarthy man
+with coal-black moustache and steady eyes; but he might have been a bit
+of a diplomatist, too.  His enticing suggestions I used to repel modestly
+by the assurance that it was extremely unlikely, as I had not enough
+experience.  “You know very well how to go about business matters,” he
+used to say, with a sort of affected moodiness clouding his serene round
+face.  I wonder whether he ever laughed to himself after I had left the
+office.  I dare say he never did, because I understand that diplomatists,
+in and out of the career, take themselves and their tricks with an
+exemplary seriousness.
+
+But he had nearly persuaded me that I was fit in every way to be trusted
+with a command.  There came three months of mental worry, hard rolling,
+remorse, and physical pain to drive home the lesson of insufficient
+experience.
+
+Yes, your ship wants to be humoured with knowledge.  You must treat with
+an understanding consideration the mysteries of her feminine nature, and
+then she will stand by you faithfully in the unceasing struggle with
+forces wherein defeat is no shame.  It is a serious relation, that in
+which a man stands to his ship.  She has her rights as though she could
+breathe and speak; and, indeed, there are ships that, for the right man,
+will do anything but speak, as the saying goes.
+
+A ship is not a slave.  You must make her easy in a seaway, you must
+never forget that you owe her the fullest share of your thought, of your
+skill, of your self-love.  If you remember that obligation, naturally and
+without effort, as if it were an instinctive feeling of your inner life,
+she will sail, stay, run for you as long as she is able, or, like a
+sea-bird going to rest upon the angry waves, she will lay out the
+heaviest gale that ever made you doubt living long enough to see another
+sunrise.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+
+Often I turn with melancholy eagerness to the space reserved in the
+newspapers under the general heading of “Shipping Intelligence.”  I meet
+there the names of ships I have known.  Every year some of these names
+disappear—the names of old friends.  “Tempi passati!”
+
+The different divisions of that kind of news are set down in their order,
+which varies but slightly in its arrangement of concise headlines.  And
+first comes “Speakings”—reports of ships met and signalled at sea, name,
+port, where from, where bound for, so many days out, ending frequently
+with the words “All well.”  Then come “Wrecks and Casualties”—a longish
+array of paragraphs, unless the weather has been fair and clear, and
+friendly to ships all over the world.
+
+On some days there appears the heading “Overdue”—an ominous threat of
+loss and sorrow trembling yet in the balance of fate.  There is something
+sinister to a seaman in the very grouping of the letters which form this
+word, clear in its meaning, and seldom threatening in vain.
+
+Only a very few days more—appallingly few to the hearts which had set
+themselves bravely to hope against hope—three weeks, a month later,
+perhaps, the name of ships under the blight of the “Overdue” heading
+shall appear again in the column of “Shipping Intelligence,” but under
+the final declaration of “Missing.”
+
+“The ship, or barque, or brig So-and-so, bound from such a port, with
+such and such cargo, for such another port, having left at such and such
+a date, last spoken at sea on such a day, and never having been heard of
+since, was posted to-day as missing.”  Such in its strictly official
+eloquence is the form of funeral orations on ships that, perhaps wearied
+with a long struggle, or in some unguarded moment that may come to the
+readiest of us, had let themselves be overwhelmed by a sudden blow from
+the enemy.
+
+Who can say?  Perhaps the men she carried had asked her to do too much,
+had stretched beyond breaking-point the enduring faithfulness which seems
+wrought and hammered into that assemblage of iron ribs and plating, of
+wood and steel and canvas and wire, which goes to the making of a ship—a
+complete creation endowed with character, individuality, qualities and
+defects, by men whose hands launch her upon the water, and that other men
+shall learn to know with an intimacy surpassing the intimacy of man with
+man, to love with a love nearly as great as that of man for woman, and
+often as blind in its infatuated disregard of defects.
+
+There are ships which bear a bad name, but I have yet to meet one whose
+crew for the time being failed to stand up angrily for her against every
+criticism.  One ship which I call to mind now had the reputation of
+killing somebody every voyage she made.  This was no calumny, and yet I
+remember well, somewhere far back in the late seventies, that the crew of
+that ship were, if anything, rather proud of her evil fame, as if they
+had been an utterly corrupt lot of desperadoes glorying in their
+association with an atrocious creature.  We, belonging to other vessels
+moored all about the Circular Quay in Sydney, used to shake our heads at
+her with a great sense of the unblemished virtue of our own well-loved
+ships.
+
+I shall not pronounce her name.  She is “missing” now, after a sinister
+but, from the point of view of her owners, a useful career extending over
+many years, and, I should say, across every ocean of our globe.  Having
+killed a man for every voyage, and perhaps rendered more misanthropic by
+the infirmities that come with years upon a ship, she had made up her
+mind to kill all hands at once before leaving the scene of her exploits.
+A fitting end, this, to a life of usefulness and crime—in a last outburst
+of an evil passion supremely satisfied on some wild night, perhaps, to
+the applauding clamour of wind and wave.
+
+How did she do it?  In the word “missing” there is a horrible depth of
+doubt and speculation.  Did she go quickly from under the men’s feet, or
+did she resist to the end, letting the sea batter her to pieces, start
+her butts, wrench her frame, load her with an increasing weight of salt
+water, and, dismasted, unmanageable, rolling heavily, her boats gone, her
+decks swept, had she wearied her men half to death with the unceasing
+labour at the pumps before she sank with them like a stone?
+
+However, such a case must be rare.  I imagine a raft of some sort could
+always be contrived; and, even if it saved no one, it would float on and
+be picked up, perhaps conveying some hint of the vanished name.  Then
+that ship would not be, properly speaking, missing.  She would be “lost
+with all hands,” and in that distinction there is a subtle
+difference—less horror and a less appalling darkness.
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+
+The unholy fascination of dread dwells in the thought of the last moments
+of a ship reported as “missing” in the columns of the _Shipping Gazette_.
+Nothing of her ever comes to light—no grating, no lifebuoy, no piece of
+boat or branded oar—to give a hint of the place and date of her sudden
+end.  The _Shipping Gazette_ does not even call her “lost with all
+hands.”  She remains simply “missing”; she has disappeared enigmatically
+into a mystery of fate as big as the world, where your imagination of a
+brother-sailor, of a fellow-servant and lover of ships, may range
+unchecked.
+
+And yet sometimes one gets a hint of what the last scene may be like in
+the life of a ship and her crew, which resembles a drama in its struggle
+against a great force bearing it up, formless, ungraspable, chaotic and
+mysterious, as fate.
+
+It was on a gray afternoon in the lull of a three days’ gale that had
+left the Southern Ocean tumbling heavily upon our ship, under a sky hung
+with rags of clouds that seemed to have been cut and hacked by the keen
+edge of a sou’-west gale.
+
+Our craft, a Clyde-built barque of 1,000 tons, rolled so heavily that
+something aloft had carried away.  No matter what the damage was, but it
+was serious enough to induce me to go aloft myself with a couple of hands
+and the carpenter to see the temporary repairs properly done.
+
+Sometimes we had to drop everything and cling with both hands to the
+swaying spars, holding our breath in fear of a terribly heavy roll.  And,
+wallowing as if she meant to turn over with us, the barque, her decks
+full of water, her gear flying in bights, ran at some ten knots an hour.
+We had been driven far south—much farther that way than we had meant to
+go; and suddenly, up there in the slings of the foreyard, in the midst of
+our work, I felt my shoulder gripped with such force in the carpenter’s
+powerful paw that I positively yelled with unexpected pain.  The man’s
+eyes stared close in my face, and he shouted, “Look, sir! look!  What’s
+this?” pointing ahead with his other hand.
+
+At first I saw nothing.  The sea was one empty wilderness of black and
+white hills.  Suddenly, half-concealed in the tumult of the foaming
+rollers I made out awash, something enormous, rising and
+falling—something spread out like a burst of foam, but with a more
+bluish, more solid look.
+
+It was a piece of an ice-floe melted down to a fragment, but still big
+enough to sink a ship, and floating lower than any raft, right in our
+way, as if ambushed among the waves with murderous intent.  There was no
+time to get down on deck.  I shouted from aloft till my head was ready to
+split.  I was heard aft, and we managed to clear the sunken floe which
+had come all the way from the Southern ice-cap to have a try at our
+unsuspecting lives.  Had it been an hour later, nothing could have saved
+the ship, for no eye could have made out in the dusk that pale piece of
+ice swept over by the white-crested waves.
+
+And as we stood near the taffrail side by side, my captain and I, looking
+at it, hardly discernible already, but still quite close-to on our
+quarter, he remarked in a meditative tone:
+
+“But for the turn of that wheel just in time, there would have been
+another case of a ‘missing’ ship.”
+
+Nobody ever comes back from a “missing” ship to tell how hard was the
+death of the craft, and how sudden and overwhelming the last anguish of
+her men.  Nobody can say with what thoughts, with what regrets, with what
+words on their lips they died.  But there is something fine in the sudden
+passing away of these hearts from the extremity of struggle and stress
+and tremendous uproar—from the vast, unrestful rage of the surface to the
+profound peace of the depths, sleeping untroubled since the beginning of
+ages.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+
+But if the word “missing” brings all hope to an end and settles the loss
+of the underwriters, the word “overdue” confirms the fears already born
+in many homes ashore, and opens the door of speculation in the market of
+risks.
+
+Maritime risks, be it understood.  There is a class of optimists ready to
+reinsure an “overdue” ship at a heavy premium.  But nothing can insure
+the hearts on shore against the bitterness of waiting for the worst.
+
+For if a “missing” ship has never turned up within the memory of seamen
+of my generation, the name of an “overdue” ship, trembling as it were on
+the edge of the fatal heading, has been known to appear as “arrived.”
+
+It must blaze up, indeed, with a great brilliance the dull printer’s ink
+expended on the assemblage of the few letters that form the ship’s name
+to the anxious eyes scanning the page in fear and trembling.  It is like
+the message of reprieve from the sentence of sorrow suspended over many a
+home, even if some of the men in her have been the most homeless mortals
+that you may find among the wanderers of the sea.
+
+The reinsurer, the optimist of ill-luck and disaster, slaps his pocket
+with satisfaction.  The underwriter, who had been trying to minimize the
+amount of impending loss, regrets his premature pessimism.  The ship has
+been stauncher, the skies more merciful, the seas less angry, or perhaps
+the men on board of a finer temper than he has been willing to take for
+granted.
+
+“The ship So-and-so, bound to such a port, and posted as ‘overdue,’ has
+been reported yesterday as having arrived safely at her destination.”
+
+Thus run the official words of the reprieve addressed to the hearts
+ashore lying under a heavy sentence.  And they come swiftly from the
+other side of the earth, over wires and cables, for your electric
+telegraph is a great alleviator of anxiety.  Details, of course, shall
+follow.  And they may unfold a tale of narrow escape, of steady ill-luck,
+of high winds and heavy weather, of ice, of interminable calms or endless
+head-gales; a tale of difficulties overcome, of adversity defied by a
+small knot of men upon the great loneliness of the sea; a tale of
+resource, of courage—of helplessness, perhaps.
+
+Of all ships disabled at sea, a steamer who has lost her propeller is the
+most helpless.  And if she drifts into an unpopulated part of the ocean
+she may soon become overdue.  The menace of the “overdue” and the
+finality of “missing” come very quickly to steamers whose life, fed on
+coals and breathing the black breath of smoke into the air, goes on in
+disregard of wind and wave.  Such a one, a big steamship, too, whose
+working life had been a record of faithful keeping time from land to
+land, in disregard of wind and sea, once lost her propeller down south,
+on her passage out to New Zealand.
+
+It was the wintry, murky time of cold gales and heavy seas.  With the
+snapping of her tail-shaft her life seemed suddenly to depart from her
+big body, and from a stubborn, arrogant existence she passed all at once
+into the passive state of a drifting log.  A ship sick with her own
+weakness has not the pathos of a ship vanquished in a battle with the
+elements, wherein consists the inner drama of her life.  No seaman can
+look without compassion upon a disabled ship, but to look at a
+sailing-vessel with her lofty spars gone is to look upon a defeated but
+indomitable warrior.  There is defiance in the remaining stumps of her
+masts, raised up like maimed limbs against the menacing scowl of a stormy
+sky; there is high courage in the upward sweep of her lines towards the
+bow; and as soon as, on a hastily-rigged spar, a strip of canvas is shown
+to the wind to keep her head to sea, she faces the waves again with an
+unsubdued courage.
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+
+The efficiency of a steamship consists not so much in her courage as in
+the power she carries within herself.  It beats and throbs like a
+pulsating heart within her iron ribs, and when it stops, the steamer,
+whose life is not so much a contest as the disdainful ignoring of the
+sea, sickens and dies upon the waves.  The sailing-ship, with her
+unthrobbing body, seemed to lead mysteriously a sort of unearthly
+existence, bordering upon the magic of the invisible forces, sustained by
+the inspiration of life-giving and death-dealing winds.
+
+So that big steamer, dying by a sudden stroke, drifted, an unwieldy
+corpse, away from the track of other ships.  And she would have been
+posted really as “overdue,” or maybe as “missing,” had she not been
+sighted in a snowstorm, vaguely, like a strange rolling island, by a
+whaler going north from her Polar cruising ground.  There was plenty of
+food on board, and I don’t know whether the nerves of her passengers were
+at all affected by anything else than the sense of interminable boredom
+or the vague fear of that unusual situation.  Does a passenger ever feel
+the life of the ship in which he is being carried like a sort of honoured
+bale of highly sensitive goods?  For a man who has never been a passenger
+it is impossible to say.  But I know that there is no harder trial for a
+seaman than to feel a dead ship under his feet.
+
+There is no mistaking that sensation, so dismal, so tormenting and so
+subtle, so full of unhappiness and unrest.  I could imagine no worse
+eternal punishment for evil seamen who die unrepentant upon the earthly
+sea than that their souls should be condemned to man the ghosts of
+disabled ships, drifting for ever across a ghostly and tempestuous ocean.
+
+She must have looked ghostly enough, that broken-down steamer, rolling in
+that snowstorm—a dark apparition in a world of white snowflakes to the
+staring eyes of that whaler’s crew.  Evidently they didn’t believe in
+ghosts, for on arrival into port her captain unromantically reported
+having sighted a disabled steamer in latitude somewhere about 50 degrees
+S. and a longitude still more uncertain.  Other steamers came out to look
+for her, and ultimately towed her away from the cold edge of the world
+into a harbour with docks and workshops, where, with many blows of
+hammers, her pulsating heart of steel was set going again to go forth
+presently in the renewed pride of its strength, fed on fire and water,
+breathing black smoke into the air, pulsating, throbbing, shouldering its
+arrogant way against the great rollers in blind disdain of winds and sea.
+
+The track she had made when drifting while her heart stood still within
+her iron ribs looked like a tangled thread on the white paper of the
+chart.  It was shown to me by a friend, her second officer.  In that
+surprising tangle there were words in minute letters—“gales,” “thick
+fog,” “ice”—written by him here and there as memoranda of the weather.
+She had interminably turned upon her tracks, she had crossed and
+recrossed her haphazard path till it resembled nothing so much as a
+puzzling maze of pencilled lines without a meaning.  But in that maze
+there lurked all the romance of the “overdue” and a menacing hint of
+“missing.”
+
+“We had three weeks of it,” said my friend, “just think of that!”
+
+“How did you feel about it?” I asked.
+
+He waved his hand as much as to say: It’s all in the day’s work.  But
+then, abruptly, as if making up his mind:
+
+“I’ll tell you.  Towards the last I used to shut myself up in my berth
+and cry.”
+
+“Cry?”
+
+“Shed tears,” he explained briefly, and rolled up the chart.
+
+I can answer for it, he was a good man—as good as ever stepped upon a
+ship’s deck—but he could not bear the feeling of a dead ship under his
+feet: the sickly, disheartening feeling which the men of some “overdue”
+ships that come into harbour at last under a jury-rig must have felt,
+combated, and overcome in the faithful discharge of their duty.
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+
+IT is difficult for a seaman to believe that his stranded ship does not
+feel as unhappy at the unnatural predicament of having no water under her
+keel as he is himself at feeling her stranded.
+
+Stranding is, indeed, the reverse of sinking.  The sea does not close
+upon the water-logged hull with a sunny ripple, or maybe with the angry
+rush of a curling wave, erasing her name from the roll of living ships.
+No.  It is as if an invisible hand had been stealthily uplifted from the
+bottom to catch hold of her keel as it glides through the water.
+
+More than any other event does stranding bring to the sailor a sense of
+utter and dismal failure.  There are strandings and strandings, but I am
+safe to say that 90 per cent. of them are occasions in which a sailor,
+without dishonour, may well wish himself dead; and I have no doubt that
+of those who had the experience of their ship taking the ground, 90 per
+cent. did actually for five seconds or so wish themselves dead.
+
+“Taking the ground” is the professional expression for a ship that is
+stranded in gentle circumstances.  But the feeling is more as if the
+ground had taken hold of her.  It is for those on her deck a surprising
+sensation.  It is as if your feet had been caught in an imponderable
+snare; you feel the balance of your body threatened, and the steady poise
+of your mind is destroyed at once.  This sensation lasts only a second,
+for even while you stagger something seems to turn over in your head,
+bringing uppermost the mental exclamation, full of astonishment and
+dismay, “By Jove! she’s on the ground!”
+
+And that is very terrible.  After all, the only mission of a seaman’s
+calling is to keep ships’ keels off the ground.  Thus the moment of her
+stranding takes away from him every excuse for his continued existence.
+To keep ships afloat is his business; it is his trust; it is the
+effective formula of the bottom of all these vague impulses, dreams, and
+illusions that go to the making up of a boy’s vocation.  The grip of the
+land upon the keel of your ship, even if nothing worse comes of it than
+the wear and tear of tackle and the loss of time, remains in a seaman’s
+memory an indelibly fixed taste of disaster.
+
+“Stranded” within the meaning of this paper stands for a more or less
+excusable mistake.  A ship may be “driven ashore” by stress of weather.
+It is a catastrophe, a defeat.  To be “run ashore” has the littleness,
+poignancy, and bitterness of human error.
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+
+That is why your “strandings” are for the most part so unexpected.  In
+fact, they are all unexpected, except those heralded by some short
+glimpse of the danger, full of agitation and excitement, like an
+awakening from a dream of incredible folly.
+
+The land suddenly at night looms up right over your bows, or perhaps the
+cry of “Broken water ahead!” is raised, and some long mistake, some
+complicated edifice of self-delusion, over-confidence, and wrong
+reasoning is brought down in a fatal shock, and the heart-searing
+experience of your ship’s keel scraping and scrunching over, say, a coral
+reef.  It is a sound, for its size, far more terrific to your soul than
+that of a world coming violently to an end.  But out of that chaos your
+belief in your own prudence and sagacity reasserts itself.  You ask
+yourself, Where on earth did I get to?  How on earth did I get there?
+with a conviction that it could not be your own act, that there has been
+at work some mysterious conspiracy of accident; that the charts are all
+wrong, and if the charts are not wrong, that land and sea have changed
+their places; that your misfortune shall for ever remain inexplicable,
+since you have lived always with the sense of your trust, the last thing
+on closing your eyes, the first on opening them, as if your mind had kept
+firm hold of your responsibility during the hours of sleep.
+
+You contemplate mentally your mischance, till little by little your mood
+changes, cold doubt steals into the very marrow of your bones, you see
+the inexplicable fact in another light.  That is the time when you ask
+yourself, How on earth could I have been fool enough to get there?  And
+you are ready to renounce all belief in your good sense, in your
+knowledge, in your fidelity, in what you thought till then was the best
+in you, giving you the daily bread of life and the moral support of other
+men’s confidence.
+
+The ship is lost or not lost.  Once stranded, you have to do your best by
+her.  She may be saved by your efforts, by your resource and fortitude
+bearing up against the heavy weight of guilt and failure.  And there are
+justifiable strandings in fogs, on uncharted seas, on dangerous shores,
+through treacherous tides.  But, saved or not saved, there remains with
+her commander a distinct sense of loss, a flavour in the mouth of the
+real, abiding danger that lurks in all the forms of human existence.  It
+is an acquisition, too, that feeling.  A man may be the better for it,
+but he will not be the same.  Damocles has seen the sword suspended by a
+hair over his head, and though a good man need not be made less valuable
+by such a knowledge, the feast shall not henceforth have the same
+flavour.
+
+Years ago I was concerned as chief mate in a case of stranding which was
+not fatal to the ship.  We went to work for ten hours on end, laying out
+anchors in readiness to heave off at high water.  While I was still busy
+about the decks forward I heard the steward at my elbow saying: “The
+captain asks whether you mean to come in, sir, and have something to eat
+to-day.”
+
+I went into the cuddy.  My captain sat at the head of the table like a
+statue.  There was a strange motionlessness of everything in that pretty
+little cabin.  The swing-table which for seventy odd days had been always
+on the move, if ever so little, hung quite still above the soup-tureen.
+Nothing could have altered the rich colour of my commander’s complexion,
+laid on generously by wind and sea; but between the two tufts of fair
+hair above his ears, his skull, generally suffused with the hue of blood,
+shone dead white, like a dome of ivory.  And he looked strangely untidy.
+I perceived he had not shaved himself that day; and yet the wildest
+motion of the ship in the most stormy latitudes we had passed through,
+never made him miss one single morning ever since we left the Channel.
+The fact must be that a commander cannot possibly shave himself when his
+ship is aground.  I have commanded ships myself, but I don’t know; I have
+never tried to shave in my life.
+
+He did not offer to help me or himself till I had coughed markedly
+several times.  I talked to him professionally in a cheery tone, and
+ended with the confident assertion:
+
+“We shall get her off before midnight, sir.”
+
+He smiled faintly without looking up, and muttered as if to himself:
+
+“Yes, yes; the captain put the ship ashore and we got her off.”
+
+Then, raising his head, he attacked grumpily the steward, a lanky,
+anxious youth with a long, pale face and two big front teeth.
+
+“What makes this soup so bitter?  I am surprised the mate can swallow the
+beastly stuff.  I’m sure the cook’s ladled some salt water into it by
+mistake.”
+
+The charge was so outrageous that the steward for all answer only dropped
+his eyelids bashfully.
+
+There was nothing the matter with the soup.  I had a second helping.  My
+heart was warm with hours of hard work at the head of a willing crew.  I
+was elated with having handled heavy anchors, cables, boats without the
+slightest hitch; pleased with having laid out scientifically bower,
+stream, and kedge exactly where I believed they would do most good.  On
+that occasion the bitter taste of a stranding was not for my mouth.  That
+experience came later, and it was only then that I understood the
+loneliness of the man in charge.
+
+It’s the captain who puts the ship ashore; it’s we who get her off.
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+
+IT seems to me that no man born and truthful to himself could declare
+that he ever saw the sea looking young as the earth looks young in
+spring.  But some of us, regarding the ocean with understanding and
+affection, have seen it looking old, as if the immemorial ages had been
+stirred up from the undisturbed bottom of ooze.  For it is a gale of wind
+that makes the sea look old.
+
+From a distance of years, looking at the remembered aspects of the storms
+lived through, it is that impression which disengages itself clearly from
+the great body of impressions left by many years of intimate contact.
+
+If you would know the age of the earth, look upon the sea in a storm.
+The grayness of the whole immense surface, the wind furrows upon the
+faces of the waves, the great masses of foam, tossed about and waving,
+like matted white locks, give to the sea in a gale an appearance of hoary
+age, lustreless, dull, without gleams, as though it had been created
+before light itself.
+
+Looking back after much love and much trouble, the instinct of primitive
+man, who seeks to personify the forces of Nature for his affection and
+for his fear, is awakened again in the breast of one civilized beyond
+that stage even in his infancy.  One seems to have known gales as
+enemies, and even as enemies one embraces them in that affectionate
+regret which clings to the past.
+
+Gales have their personalities, and, after all, perhaps it is not
+strange; for, when all is said and done, they are adversaries whose wiles
+you must defeat, whose violence you must resist, and yet with whom you
+must live in the intimacies of nights and days.
+
+Here speaks the man of masts and sails, to whom the sea is not a
+navigable element, but an intimate companion.  The length of passages,
+the growing sense of solitude, the close dependence upon the very forces
+that, friendly to-day, without changing their nature, by the mere putting
+forth of their might, become dangerous to-morrow, make for that sense of
+fellowship which modern seamen, good men as they are, cannot hope to
+know.  And, besides, your modern ship which is a steamship makes her
+passages on other principles than yielding to the weather and humouring
+the sea.  She receives smashing blows, but she advances; it is a slogging
+fight, and not a scientific campaign.  The machinery, the steel, the
+fire, the steam, have stepped in between the man and the sea.  A modern
+fleet of ships does not so much make use of the sea as exploit a highway.
+The modern ship is not the sport of the waves.  Let us say that each of
+her voyages is a triumphant progress; and yet it is a question whether it
+is not a more subtle and more human triumph to be the sport of the waves
+and yet survive, achieving your end.
+
+In his own time a man is always very modern.  Whether the seamen of three
+hundred years hence will have the faculty of sympathy it is impossible to
+say.  An incorrigible mankind hardens its heart in the progress of its
+own perfectability.  How will they feel on seeing the illustrations to
+the sea novels of our day, or of our yesterday?  It is impossible to
+guess.  But the seaman of the last generation, brought into sympathy with
+the caravels of ancient time by his sailing-ship, their lineal
+descendant, cannot look upon those lumbering forms navigating the naïve
+seas of ancient woodcuts without a feeling of surprise, of affectionate
+derision, envy, and admiration.  For those things, whose
+unmanageableness, even when represented on paper, makes one gasp with a
+sort of amused horror, were manned by men who are his direct professional
+ancestors.
+
+No; the seamen of three hundred years hence will probably be neither
+touched nor moved to derision, affection, or admiration.  They will
+glance at the photogravures of our nearly defunct sailing-ships with a
+cold, inquisitive and indifferent eye.  Our ships of yesterday will stand
+to their ships as no lineal ancestors, but as mere predecessors whose
+course will have been run and the race extinct.  Whatever craft he
+handles with skill, the seaman of the future shall be, not our
+descendant, but only our successor.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+
+And so much depends upon the craft which, made by man, is one with man,
+that the sea shall wear for him another aspect.  I remember once seeing
+the commander—officially the master, by courtesy the captain—of a fine
+iron ship of the old wool fleet shaking his head at a very pretty
+brigantine.  She was bound the other way.  She was a taut, trim, neat
+little craft, extremely well kept; and on that serene evening when we
+passed her close she looked the embodiment of coquettish comfort on the
+sea.  It was somewhere near the Cape—_The_ Cape being, of course, the
+Cape of Good Hope, the Cape of Storms of its Portuguese discoverer.  And
+whether it is that the word “storm” should not be pronounced upon the sea
+where the storms dwell thickly, or because men are shy of confessing
+their good hopes, it has become the nameless cape—the Cape _tout court_.
+The other great cape of the world, strangely enough, is seldom if ever
+called a cape.  We say, “a voyage round the Horn”; “we rounded the Horn”;
+“we got a frightful battering off the Horn”; but rarely “Cape Horn,” and,
+indeed, with some reason, for Cape Horn is as much an island as a cape.
+The third stormy cape of the world, which is the Leeuwin, receives
+generally its full name, as if to console its second-rate dignity.  These
+are the capes that look upon the gales.
+
+The little brigantine, then, had doubled the Cape.  Perhaps she was
+coming from Port Elizabeth, from East London—who knows?  It was many
+years ago, but I remember well the captain of the wool-clipper nodding at
+her with the words, “Fancy having to go about the sea in a thing like
+that!”
+
+He was a man brought up in big deep-water ships, and the size of the
+craft under his feet was a part of his conception of the sea.  His own
+ship was certainly big as ships went then.  He may have thought of the
+size of his cabin, or—unconsciously, perhaps—have conjured up a vision of
+a vessel so small tossing amongst the great seas.  I didn’t inquire, and
+to a young second mate the captain of the little pretty brigantine,
+sitting astride a camp stool with his chin resting on his hands that were
+crossed upon the rail, might have appeared a minor king amongst men.  We
+passed her within earshot, without a hail, reading each other’s names
+with the naked eye.
+
+Some years later, the second mate, the recipient of that almost
+involuntary mutter, could have told his captain that a man brought up in
+big ships may yet take a peculiar delight in what we should both then
+have called a small craft.  Probably the captain of the big ship would
+not have understood very well.  His answer would have been a gruff, “Give
+me size,” as I heard another man reply to a remark praising the handiness
+of a small vessel.  It was not a love of the grandiose or the prestige
+attached to the command of great tonnage, for he continued, with an air
+of disgust and contempt, “Why, you get flung out of your bunk as likely
+as not in any sort of heavy weather.”
+
+I don’t know.  I remember a few nights in my lifetime, and in a big ship,
+too (as big as they made them then), when one did not get flung out of
+one’s bed simply because one never even attempted to get in; one had been
+made too weary, too hopeless, to try.  The expedient of turning your
+bedding out on to a damp floor and lying on it there was no earthly good,
+since you could not keep your place or get a second’s rest in that or any
+other position.  But of the delight of seeing a small craft run bravely
+amongst the great seas there can be no question to him whose soul does
+not dwell ashore.  Thus I well remember a three days’ run got out of a
+little barque of 400 tons somewhere between the islands of St. Paul and
+Amsterdam and Cape Otway on the Australian coast.  It was a hard, long
+gale, gray clouds and green sea, heavy weather undoubtedly, but still
+what a sailor would call manageable.  Under two lower topsails and a
+reefed foresail the barque seemed to race with a long, steady sea that
+did not becalm her in the troughs.  The solemn thundering combers caught
+her up from astern, passed her with a fierce boiling up of foam level
+with the bulwarks, swept on ahead with a swish and a roar: and the little
+vessel, dipping her jib-boom into the tumbling froth, would go on running
+in a smooth, glassy hollow, a deep valley between two ridges of the sea,
+hiding the horizon ahead and astern.  There was such fascination in her
+pluck, nimbleness, the continual exhibition of unfailing seaworthiness,
+in the semblance of courage and endurance, that I could not give up the
+delight of watching her run through the three unforgettable days of that
+gale which my mate also delighted to extol as “a famous shove.”
+
+And this is one of those gales whose memory in after-years returns,
+welcome in dignified austerity, as you would remember with pleasure the
+noble features of a stranger with whom you crossed swords once in
+knightly encounter and are never to see again.  In this way gales have
+their physiognomy.  You remember them by your own feelings, and no two
+gales stamp themselves in the same way upon your emotions.  Some cling to
+you in woebegone misery; others come back fiercely and weirdly, like
+ghouls bent upon sucking your strength away; others, again, have a
+catastrophic splendour; some are unvenerated recollections, as of
+spiteful wild-cats clawing at your agonized vitals; others are severe,
+like a visitation; and one or two rise up draped and mysterious, with an
+aspect of ominous menace.  In each of them there is a characteristic
+point at which the whole feeling seems contained in one single moment.
+Thus there is a certain four o’clock in the morning in the confused roar
+of a black and white world when coming on deck to take charge of my watch
+I received the instantaneous impression that the ship could not live for
+another hour in such a raging sea.
+
+I wonder what became of the men who silently (you couldn’t hear yourself
+speak) must have shared that conviction with me.  To be left to write
+about it is not, perhaps, the most enviable fate; but the point is that
+this impression resumes in its intensity the whole recollection of days
+and days of desperately dangerous weather.  We were then, for reasons
+which it is not worth while to specify, in the close neighbourhood of
+Kerguelen Land; and now, when I open an atlas and look at the tiny dots
+on the map of the Southern Ocean, I see as if engraved upon the paper the
+enraged physiognomy of that gale.
+
+Another, strangely, recalls a silent man.  And yet it was not din that
+was wanting; in fact, it was terrific.  That one was a gale that came
+upon the ship swiftly, like a parnpero, which last is a very sudden wind
+indeed.  Before we knew very well what was coming all the sails we had
+set had burst; the furled ones were blowing loose, ropes flying, sea
+hissing—it hissed tremendously—wind howling, and the ship lying on her
+side, so that half of the crew were swimming and the other half clawing
+desperately at whatever came to hand, according to the side of the deck
+each man had been caught on by the catastrophe, either to leeward or to
+windward.  The shouting I need not mention—it was the merest drop in an
+ocean of noise—and yet the character of the gale seems contained in the
+recollection of one small, not particularly impressive, sallow man
+without a cap and with a very still face.  Captain Jones—let us call him
+Jones—had been caught unawares.  Two orders he had given at the first
+sign of an utterly unforeseen onset; after that the magnitude of his
+mistake seemed to have overwhelmed him.  We were doing what was needed
+and feasible.  The ship behaved well.  Of course, it was some time before
+we could pause in our fierce and laborious exertions; but all through the
+work, the excitement, the uproar, and some dismay, we were aware of this
+silent little man at the break of the poop, perfectly motionless,
+soundless, and often hidden from us by the drift of sprays.
+
+When we officers clambered at last upon the poop, he seemed to come out
+of that numbed composure, and shouted to us down wind: “Try the pumps.”
+Afterwards he disappeared.  As to the ship, I need not say that, although
+she was presently swallowed up in one of the blackest nights I can
+remember, she did not disappear.  In truth, I don’t fancy that there had
+ever been much danger of that, but certainly the experience was noisy and
+particularly distracting—and yet it is the memory of a very quiet silence
+that survives.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+
+For, after all, a gale of wind, the thing of mighty sound, is
+inarticulate.  It is man who, in a chance phrase, interprets the
+elemental passion of his enemy.  Thus there is another gale in my memory,
+a thing of endless, deep, humming roar, moonlight, and a spoken sentence.
+
+It was off that other cape which is always deprived of its title as the
+Cape of Good Hope is robbed of its name.  It was off the Horn.  For a
+true expression of dishevelled wildness there is nothing like a gale in
+the bright moonlight of a high latitude.
+
+The ship, brought-to and bowing to enormous flashing seas, glistened wet
+from deck to trucks; her one set sail stood out a coal-black shape upon
+the gloomy blueness of the air.  I was a youngster then, and suffering
+from weariness, cold, and imperfect oilskins which let water in at every
+seam.  I craved human companionship, and, coming off the poop, took my
+place by the side of the boatswain (a man whom I did not like) in a
+comparatively dry spot where at worst we had water only up to our knees.
+Above our heads the explosive booming gusts of wind passed continuously,
+justifying the sailor’s saying “It blows great guns.”  And just from that
+need of human companionship, being very close to the man, I said, or
+rather shouted:
+
+“Blows very hard, boatswain.”
+
+His answer was:
+
+“Ay, and if it blows only a little harder things will begin to go.  I
+don’t mind as long as everything holds, but when things begin to go it’s
+bad.”
+
+The note of dread in the shouting voice, the practical truth of these
+words, heard years ago from a man I did not like, have stamped its
+peculiar character on that gale.
+
+A look in the eyes of a shipmate, a low murmur in the most sheltered spot
+where the watch on duty are huddled together, a meaning moan from one to
+the other with a glance at the windward sky, a sigh of weariness, a
+gesture of disgust passing into the keeping of the great wind, become
+part and parcel of the gale.  The olive hue of hurricane clouds presents
+an aspect peculiarly appalling.  The inky ragged wrack, flying before a
+nor’-west wind, makes you dizzy with its headlong speed that depicts the
+rush of the invisible air.  A hard sou’-wester startles you with its
+close horizon and its low gray sky, as if the world were a dungeon
+wherein there is no rest for body or soul.  And there are black squalls,
+white squalls, thunder squalls, and unexpected gusts that come without a
+single sign in the sky; and of each kind no one of them resembles
+another.
+
+There is infinite variety in the gales of wind at sea, and except for the
+peculiar, terrible, and mysterious moaning that may be heard sometimes
+passing through the roar of a hurricane—except for that unforgettable
+sound, as if the soul of the universe had been goaded into a mournful
+groan—it is, after all, the human voice that stamps the mark of human
+consciousness upon the character of a gale.
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+
+THERE is no part of the world of coasts, continents, oceans, seas,
+straits, capes, and islands which is not under the sway of a reigning
+wind, the sovereign of its typical weather.  The wind rules the aspects
+of the sky and the action of the sea.  But no wind rules unchallenged his
+realm of land and water.  As with the kingdoms of the earth, there are
+regions more turbulent than others.  In the middle belt of the earth the
+Trade Winds reign supreme, undisputed, like monarchs of long-settled
+kingdoms, whose traditional power, checking all undue ambitions, is not
+so much an exercise of personal might as the working of long-established
+institutions.  The intertropical kingdoms of the Trade Winds are
+favourable to the ordinary life of a merchantman.  The trumpet-call of
+strife is seldom borne on their wings to the watchful ears of men on the
+decks of ships.  The regions ruled by the north-east and south-east Trade
+Winds are serene.  In a southern-going ship, bound out for a long voyage,
+the passage through their dominions is characterized by a relaxation of
+strain and vigilance on the part of the seamen.  Those citizens of the
+ocean feel sheltered under the ægis of an uncontested law, of an
+undisputed dynasty.  There, indeed, if anywhere on earth, the weather may
+be trusted.
+
+Yet not too implicitly.  Even in the constitutional realm of Trade Winds,
+north and south of the equator, ships are overtaken by strange
+disturbances.  Still, the easterly winds, and, generally speaking, the
+easterly weather all the world over, is characterized by regularity and
+persistence.
+
+As a ruler, the East Wind has a remarkable stability; as an invader of
+the high latitudes lying under the tumultuous sway of his great brother,
+the Wind of the West, he is extremely difficult to dislodge, by the
+reason of his cold craftiness and profound duplicity.
+
+The narrow seas around these isles, where British admirals keep watch and
+ward upon the marches of the Atlantic Ocean, are subject to the turbulent
+sway of the West Wind.  Call it north-west or south-west, it is all one—a
+different phase of the same character, a changed expression on the same
+face.  In the orientation of the winds that rule the seas, the north and
+south directions are of no importance.  There are no North and South
+Winds of any account upon this earth.  The North and South Winds are but
+small princes in the dynasties that make peace and war upon the sea.
+They never assert themselves upon a vast stage.  They depend upon local
+causes—the configuration of coasts, the shapes of straits, the accidents
+of bold promontories round which they play their little part.  In the
+polity of winds, as amongst the tribes of the earth, the real struggle
+lies between East and West.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+
+The West Wind reigns over the seas surrounding the coasts of these
+kingdoms; and from the gateways of the channels, from promontories as if
+from watch-towers, from estuaries of rivers as if from postern gates,
+from passage-ways, inlets, straits, firths, the garrison of the Isle and
+the crews of the ships going and returning look to the westward to judge
+by the varied splendours of his sunset mantle the mood of that arbitrary
+ruler.  The end of the day is the time to gaze at the kingly face of the
+Westerly Weather, who is the arbiter of ships’ destinies.  Benignant and
+splendid, or splendid and sinister, the western sky reflects the hidden
+purposes of the royal mind.  Clothed in a mantle of dazzling gold or
+draped in rags of black clouds like a beggar, the might of the Westerly
+Wind sits enthroned upon the western horizon with the whole North
+Atlantic as a footstool for his feet and the first twinkling stars making
+a diadem for his brow.  Then the seamen, attentive courtiers of the
+weather, think of regulating the conduct of their ships by the mood of
+the master.  The West Wind is too great a king to be a dissembler: he is
+no calculator plotting deep schemes in a sombre heart; he is too strong
+for small artifices; there is passion in all his moods, even in the soft
+mood of his serene days, in the grace of his blue sky whose immense and
+unfathomable tenderness reflected in the mirror of the sea embraces,
+possesses, lulls to sleep the ships with white sails.  He is all things
+to all oceans; he is like a poet seated upon a throne—magnificent,
+simple, barbarous, pensive, generous, impulsive, changeable,
+unfathomable—but when you understand him, always the same.  Some of his
+sunsets are like pageants devised for the delight of the multitude, when
+all the gems of the royal treasure-house are displayed above the sea.
+Others are like the opening of his royal confidence, tinged with thoughts
+of sadness and compassion in a melancholy splendour meditating upon the
+short-lived peace of the waters.  And I have seen him put the pent-up
+anger of his heart into the aspect of the inaccessible sun, and cause it
+to glare fiercely like the eye of an implacable autocrat out of a pale
+and frightened sky.
+
+He is the war-lord who sends his battalions of Atlantic rollers to the
+assault of our seaboard.  The compelling voice of the West Wind musters
+up to his service all the might of the ocean.  At the bidding of the West
+Wind there arises a great commotion in the sky above these Islands, and a
+great rush of waters falls upon our shores.  The sky of the westerly
+weather is full of flying clouds, of great big white clouds coming
+thicker and thicker till they seem to stand welded into a solid canopy,
+upon whose gray face the lower wrack of the gale, thin, black and
+angry-looking, flies past with vertiginous speed.  Denser and denser
+grows this dome of vapours, descending lower and lower upon the sea,
+narrowing the horizon around the ship.  And the characteristic aspect of
+westerly weather, the thick, gray, smoky and sinister tone sets in,
+circumscribing the view of the men, drenching their bodies, oppressing
+their souls, taking their breath away with booming gusts, deafening,
+blinding, driving, rushing them onwards in a swaying ship towards our
+coasts lost in mists and rain.
+
+The caprice of the winds, like the wilfulness of men, is fraught with the
+disastrous consequences of self-indulgence.  Long anger, the sense of his
+uncontrolled power, spoils the frank and generous nature of the West
+Wind.  It is as if his heart were corrupted by a malevolent and brooding
+rancour.  He devastates his own kingdom in the wantonness of his force.
+South-west is the quarter of the heavens where he presents his darkened
+brow.  He breathes his rage in terrific squalls, and overwhelms his realm
+with an inexhaustible welter of clouds.  He strews the seeds of anxiety
+upon the decks of scudding ships, makes the foam-stripped ocean look old,
+and sprinkles with gray hairs the heads of ship-masters in the
+homeward-bound ships running for the Channel.  The Westerly Wind
+asserting his sway from the south-west quarter is often like a monarch
+gone mad, driving forth with wild imprecations the most faithful of his
+courtiers to shipwreck, disaster, and death.
+
+The south-westerly weather is the thick weather _par excellence_.  It is
+not the thickness of the fog; it is rather a contraction of the horizon,
+a mysterious veiling of the shores with clouds that seem to make a
+low-vaulted dungeon around the running ship.  It is not blindness; it is
+a shortening of the sight.  The West Wind does not say to the seaman,
+“You shall be blind”; it restricts merely the range of his vision and
+raises the dread of land within his breast.  It makes of him a man robbed
+of half his force, of half his efficiency.  Many times in my life,
+standing in long sea-boots and streaming oilskins at the elbow of my
+commander on the poop of a homeward-bound ship making for the Channel,
+and gazing ahead into the gray and tormented waste, I have heard a weary
+sigh shape itself into a studiously casual comment:
+
+“Can’t see very far in this weather.”
+
+And have made answer in the same low, perfunctory tone
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+It would be merely the instinctive voicing of an ever-present thought
+associated closely with the consciousness of the land somewhere ahead and
+of the great speed of the ship.  Fair wind, fair wind!  Who would dare to
+grumble at a fair wind?  It was a favour of the Western King, who rules
+masterfully the North Atlantic from the latitude of the Azores to the
+latitude of Cape Farewell.  A famous shove this to end a good passage
+with; and yet, somehow, one could not muster upon one’s lips the smile of
+a courtier’s gratitude.  This favour was dispensed to you from under an
+overbearing scowl, which is the true expression of the great autocrat
+when he has made up his mind to give a battering to some ships and to
+hunt certain others home in one breath of cruelty and benevolence,
+equally distracting.
+
+“No, sir.  Can’t see very far.”
+
+Thus would the mate’s voice repeat the thought of the master, both gazing
+ahead, while under their feet the ship rushes at some twelve knots in the
+direction of the lee shore; and only a couple of miles in front of her
+swinging and dripping jib-boom, carried naked with an upward slant like a
+spear, a gray horizon closes the view with a multitude of waves surging
+upwards violently as if to strike at the stooping clouds.
+
+Awful and threatening scowls darken the face of the West Wind in his
+clouded, south-west mood; and from the King’s throne-hall in the western
+board stronger gusts reach you, like the fierce shouts of raving fury to
+which only the gloomy grandeur of the scene imparts a saving dignity.  A
+shower pelts the deck and the sails of the ship as if flung with a scream
+by an angry hand; and when the night closes in, the night of a
+south-westerly gale, it seems more hopeless than the shade of Hades.  The
+south-westerly mood of the great West Wind is a lightless mood, without
+sun, moon, or stars, with no gleam of light but the phosphorescent
+flashes of the great sheets of foam that, boiling up on each side of the
+ship, fling bluish gleams upon her dark and narrow hull, rolling as she
+runs, chased by enormous seas, distracted in the tumult.
+
+There are some bad nights in the kingdom of the West Wind for
+homeward-bound ships making for the Channel; and the days of wrath dawn
+upon them colourless and vague like the timid turning up of invisible
+lights upon the scene of a tyrannical and passionate outbreak, awful in
+the monotony of its method and the increasing strength of its violence.
+It is the same wind, the same clouds, the same wildly racing seas, the
+same thick horizon around the ship.  Only the wind is stronger, the
+clouds seem denser and more overwhelming, the waves appear to have grown
+bigger and more threatening during the night.  The hours, whose minutes
+are marked by the crash of the breaking seas, slip by with the screaming,
+pelting squalls overtaking the ship as she runs on and on with darkened
+canvas, with streaming spars and dripping ropes.  The down-pours thicken.
+Preceding each shower a mysterious gloom, like the passage of a shadow
+above the firmament of gray clouds, filters down upon the ship.  Now and
+then the rain pours upon your head in streams as if from spouts.  It
+seems as if your ship were going to be drowned before she sank, as if all
+atmosphere had turned to water.  You gasp, you splutter, you are blinded
+and deafened, you are submerged, obliterated, dissolved, annihilated,
+streaming all over as if your limbs, too, had turned to water.  And every
+nerve on the alert you watch for the clearing-up mood of the Western
+King, that shall come with a shift of wind as likely as not to whip all
+the three masts out of your ship in the twinkling of an eye.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+
+Heralded by the increasing fierceness of the squalls, sometimes by a
+faint flash of lightning like the signal of a lighted torch waved far
+away behind the clouds, the shift of wind comes at last, the crucial
+moment of the change from the brooding and veiled violence of the
+south-west gale to the sparkling, flashing, cutting, clear-eyed anger of
+the King’s north-westerly mood.  You behold another phase of his passion,
+a fury bejewelled with stars, mayhap bearing the crescent of the moon on
+its brow, shaking the last vestiges of its torn cloud-mantle in
+inky-black squalls, with hail and sleet descending like showers of
+crystals and pearls, bounding off the spars, drumming on the sails,
+pattering on the oilskin coats, whitening the decks of homeward-bound
+ships.  Faint, ruddy flashes of lightning flicker in the starlight upon
+her mastheads.  A chilly blast hums in the taut rigging, causing the ship
+to tremble to her very keel, and the soaked men on her decks to shiver in
+their wet clothes to the very marrow of their bones.  Before one squall
+has flown over to sink in the eastern board, the edge of another peeps up
+already above the western horizon, racing up swift, shapeless, like a
+black bag full of frozen water ready to burst over your devoted head.
+The temper of the ruler of the ocean has changed.  Each gust of the
+clouded mood that seemed warmed by the heat of a heart flaming with anger
+has its counterpart in the chilly blasts that seem blown from a breast
+turned to ice with a sudden revulsion of feeling.  Instead of blinding
+your eyes and crushing your soul with a terrible apparatus of cloud and
+mists and seas and rain, the King of the West turns his power to
+contemptuous pelting of your back with icicles, to making your weary eyes
+water as if in grief, and your worn-out carcass quake pitifully.  But
+each mood of the great autocrat has its own greatness, and each is hard
+to bear.  Only the north-west phase of that mighty display is not
+demoralizing to the same extent, because between the hail and sleet
+squalls of a north-westerly gale one can see a long way ahead.
+
+To see! to see!—this is the craving of the sailor, as of the rest of
+blind humanity.  To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of
+every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.  I have
+heard a reserved, silent man, with no nerves to speak of, after three
+days of hard running in thick south-westerly weather, burst out
+passionately: “I wish to God we could get sight of something!”
+
+We had just gone down below for a moment to commune in a battened-down
+cabin, with a large white chart lying limp and damp upon a cold and
+clammy table under the light of a smoky lamp.  Sprawling over that
+seaman’s silent and trusted adviser, with one elbow upon the coast of
+Africa and the other planted in the neighbourhood of Cape Hatteras (it
+was a general track-chart of the North Atlantic), my skipper lifted his
+rugged, hairy face, and glared at me in a half-exasperated,
+half-appealing way.  We have seen no sun, moon, or stars for something
+like seven days.  By the effect of the West Wind’s wrath the celestial
+bodies had gone into hiding for a week or more, and the last three days
+had seen the force of a south-west gale grow from fresh, through strong,
+to heavy, as the entries in my log-book could testify.  Then we
+separated, he to go on deck again, in obedience to that mysterious call
+that seems to sound for ever in a shipmaster’s ears, I to stagger into my
+cabin with some vague notion of putting down the words “Very heavy
+weather” in a log-book not quite written up-to-date.  But I gave it up,
+and crawled into my bunk instead, boots and hat on, all standing (it did
+not matter; everything was soaking wet, a heavy sea having burst the poop
+skylights the night before), to remain in a nightmarish state between
+waking and sleeping for a couple of hours of so-called rest.
+
+The south-westerly mood of the West Wind is an enemy of sleep, and even
+of a recumbent position, in the responsible officers of a ship.  After
+two hours of futile, light-headed, inconsequent thinking upon all things
+under heaven in that dark, dank, wet and devastated cabin, I arose
+suddenly and staggered up on deck.  The autocrat of the North Atlantic
+was still oppressing his kingdom and its outlying dependencies, even as
+far as the Bay of Biscay, in the dismal secrecy of thick, very thick,
+weather.  The force of the wind, though we were running before it at the
+rate of some ten knots an hour, was so great that it drove me with a
+steady push to the front of the poop, where my commander was holding on.
+
+“What do you think of it?” he addressed me in an interrogative yell.
+
+What I really thought was that we both had had just about enough of it.
+The manner in which the great West Wind chooses at times to administer
+his possessions does not commend itself to a person of peaceful and
+law-abiding disposition, inclined to draw distinctions between right and
+wrong in the face of natural forces, whose standard, naturally, is that
+of might alone.  But, of course, I said nothing.  For a man caught, as it
+were, between his skipper and the great West Wind silence is the safest
+sort of diplomacy.  Moreover, I knew my skipper.  He did not want to know
+what I thought.  Shipmasters hanging on a breath before the thrones of
+the winds ruling the seas have their psychology, whose workings are as
+important to the ship and those on board of her as the changing moods of
+the weather.  The man, as a matter of fact, under no circumstances, ever
+cared a brass farthing for what I or anybody else in his ship thought.
+He had had just about enough of it, I guessed, and what he was at really
+was a process of fishing for a suggestion.  It was the pride of his life
+that he had never wasted a chance, no matter how boisterous, threatening,
+and dangerous, of a fair wind.  Like men racing blindfold for a gap in a
+hedge, we were finishing a splendidly quick passage from the Antipodes,
+with a tremendous rush for the Channel in as thick a weather as any I can
+remember, but his psychology did not permit him to bring the ship to with
+a fair wind blowing—at least not on his own initiative.  And yet he felt
+that very soon indeed something would have to be done.  He wanted the
+suggestion to come from me, so that later on, when the trouble was over,
+he could argue this point with his own uncompromising spirit, laying the
+blame upon my shoulders.  I must render him the justice that this sort of
+pride was his only weakness.
+
+But he got no suggestion from me.  I understood his psychology.  Besides,
+I had my own stock of weaknesses at the time (it is a different one now),
+and amongst them was the conceit of being remarkably well up in the
+psychology of the Westerly weather.  I believed—not to mince matters—that
+I had a genius for reading the mind of the great ruler of high latitudes.
+I fancied I could discern already the coming of a change in his royal
+mood.  And all I said was:
+
+“The weather’s bound to clear up with the shift of wind.”
+
+“Anybody knows that much!” he snapped at me, at the highest pitch of his
+voice.
+
+“I mean before dark!” I cried.
+
+This was all the opening he ever got from me.  The eagerness with which
+he seized upon it gave me the measure of the anxiety he had been
+labouring under.
+
+“Very well,” he shouted, with an affectation of impatience, as if giving
+way to long entreaties.  “All right.  If we don’t get a shift by then
+we’ll take that foresail off her and put her head under her wing for the
+night.”
+
+I was struck by the picturesque character of the phrase as applied to a
+ship brought-to in order to ride out a gale with wave after wave passing
+under her breast.  I could see her resting in the tumult of the elements
+like a sea-bird sleeping in wild weather upon the raging waters with its
+head tucked under its wing.  In imaginative precision, in true feeling,
+this is one of the most expressive sentences I have ever heard on human
+lips.  But as to taking the foresail off that ship before we put her head
+under her wing, I had my grave doubts.  They were justified.  That long
+enduring piece of canvas was confiscated by the arbitrary decree of the
+West Wind, to whom belong the lives of men and the contrivances of their
+hands within the limits of his kingdom.  With the sound of a faint
+explosion it vanished into the thick weather bodily, leaving behind of
+its stout substance not so much as one solitary strip big enough to be
+picked into a handful of lint for, say, a wounded elephant.  Torn out of
+its bolt-ropes, it faded like a whiff of smoke in the smoky drift of
+clouds shattered and torn by the shift of wind.  For the shift of wind
+had come.  The unveiled, low sun glared angrily from a chaotic sky upon a
+confused and tremendous sea dashing itself upon a coast.  We recognised
+the headland, and looked at each other in the silence of dumb wonder.
+Without knowing it in the least, we had run up alongside the Isle of
+Wight, and that tower, tinged a faint evening red in the salt wind-haze,
+was the lighthouse on St. Catherine’s Point.
+
+My skipper recovered first from his astonishment.  His bulging eyes sank
+back gradually into their orbits.  His psychology, taking it all round,
+was really very creditable for an average sailor.  He had been spared the
+humiliation of laying his ship to with a fair wind; and at once that man,
+of an open and truthful nature, spoke up in perfect good faith, rubbing
+together his brown, hairy hands—the hands of a master-craftsman upon the
+sea:
+
+“Humph! that’s just about where I reckoned we had got to.”
+
+The transparency and ingenuousness, in a way, of that delusion, the airy
+tone, the hint of already growing pride, were perfectly delicious.  But,
+in truth, this was one of the greatest surprises ever sprung by the
+clearing up mood of the West Wind upon one of the most accomplished of
+his courtiers.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+
+The winds of North and South are, as I have said, but small princes
+amongst the powers of the sea.  They have no territory of their own; they
+are not reigning winds anywhere.  Yet it is from their houses that the
+reigning dynasties which have shared between them the waters of the earth
+are sprung.  All the weather of the world is based upon the contest of
+the Polar and Equatorial strains of that tyrannous race.  The West Wind
+is the greatest king.  The East rules between the Tropics.  They have
+shared each ocean between them.  Each has his genius of supreme rule.
+The King of the West never intrudes upon the recognised dominion of his
+kingly brother.  He is a barbarian, of a northern type.  Violent without
+craftiness, and furious without malice, one may imagine him seated
+masterfully with a double-edged sword on his knees upon the painted and
+gilt clouds of the sunset, bowing his shock head of golden locks, a
+flaming beard over his breast, imposing, colossal, mighty-limbed, with a
+thundering voice, distended cheeks and fierce blue eyes, urging the speed
+of his gales.  The other, the East king, the king of blood-red sunrises,
+I represent to myself as a spare Southerner with clear-cut features,
+black-browed and dark-eyed, gray-robed, upright in sunshine, resting a
+smooth-shaven cheek in the palm of his hand, impenetrable, secret, full
+of wiles, fine-drawn, keen—meditating aggressions.
+
+The West Wind keeps faith with his brother, the King of the Easterly
+weather.  “What we have divided we have divided,” he seems to say in his
+gruff voice, this ruler without guile, who hurls as if in sport enormous
+masses of cloud across the sky, and flings the great waves of the
+Atlantic clear across from the shores of the New World upon the hoary
+headlands of Old Europe, which harbours more kings and rulers upon its
+seamed and furrowed body than all the oceans of the world together.
+“What we have divided we have divided; and if no rest and peace in this
+world have fallen to my share, leave me alone.  Let me play at quoits
+with cyclonic gales, flinging the discs of spinning cloud and whirling
+air from one end of my dismal kingdom to the other: over the Great Banks
+or along the edges of pack-ice—this one with true aim right into the
+bight of the Bay of Biscay, that other upon the fiords of Norway, across
+the North Sea where the fishermen of many nations look watchfully into my
+angry eye.  This is the time of kingly sport.”
+
+And the royal master of high latitudes sighs mightily, with the sinking
+sun upon his breast and the double-edged sword upon his knees, as if
+wearied by the innumerable centuries of a strenuous rule and saddened by
+the unchangeable aspect of the ocean under his feet—by the endless vista
+of future ages where the work of sowing the wind and reaping the
+whirlwind shall go on and on till his realm of living waters becomes a
+frozen and motionless ocean.  But the other, crafty and unmoved, nursing
+his shaven chin between the thumb and forefinger of his slim and
+treacherous hand, thinks deep within his heart full of guile: “Aha! our
+brother of the West has fallen into the mood of kingly melancholy.  He is
+tired of playing with circular gales, and blowing great guns, and
+unrolling thick streamers of fog in wanton sport at the cost of his own
+poor, miserable subjects.  Their fate is most pitiful.  Let us make a
+foray upon the dominions of that noisy barbarian, a great raid from
+Finisterre to Hatteras, catching his fishermen unawares, baffling the
+fleets that trust to his power, and shooting sly arrows into the livers
+of men who court his good graces.  He is, indeed, a worthless fellow.”
+And forthwith, while the West Wind meditates upon the vanity of his
+irresistible might, the thing is done, and the Easterly weather sets in
+upon the North Atlantic.
+
+The prevailing weather of the North Atlantic is typical of the way in
+which the West Wind rules his realm on which the sun never sets.  North
+Atlantic is the heart of a great empire.  It is the part of the West
+Wind’s dominions most thickly populated with generations of fine ships
+and hardy men.  Heroic deeds and adventurous exploits have been performed
+there, within the very stronghold of his sway.  The best sailors in the
+world have been born and bred under the shadow of his sceptre, learning
+to manage their ships with skill and audacity before the steps of his
+stormy throne.  Reckless adventurers, toiling fishermen, admirals as wise
+and brave as the world has ever known, have waited upon the signs of his
+westerly sky.  Fleets of victorious ships have hung upon his breath.  He
+has tossed in his hand squadrons of war-scarred three-deckers, and
+shredded out in mere sport the bunting of flags hallowed in the
+traditions of honour and glory.  He is a good friend and a dangerous
+enemy, without mercy to unseaworthy ships and faint-hearted seamen.  In
+his kingly way he has taken but little account of lives sacrificed to his
+impulsive policy; he is a king with a double-edged sword bared in his
+right hand.  The East Wind, an interloper in the dominions of Westerly
+weather, is an impassive-faced tyrant with a sharp poniard held behind
+his back for a treacherous stab.
+
+In his forays into the North Atlantic the East Wind behaves like a subtle
+and cruel adventurer without a notion of honour or fair play.  Veiling
+his clear-cut, lean face in a thin layer of a hard, high cloud, I have
+seen him, like a wizened robber sheik of the sea, hold up large caravans
+of ships to the number of three hundred or more at the very gates of the
+English Channel.  And the worst of it was that there was no ransom that
+we could pay to satisfy his avidity; for whatever evil is wrought by the
+raiding East Wind, it is done only to spite his kingly brother of the
+West.  We gazed helplessly at the systematic, cold, gray-eyed obstinacy
+of the Easterly weather, while short rations became the order of the day,
+and the pinch of hunger under the breast-bone grew familiar to every
+sailor in that held-up fleet.  Every day added to our numbers.  In knots
+and groups and straggling parties we flung to and fro before the closed
+gate.  And meantime the outward-bound ships passed, running through our
+humiliated ranks under all the canvas they could show.  It is my idea
+that the Easterly Wind helps the ships away from home in the wicked hope
+that they shall all come to an untimely end and be heard of no more.  For
+six weeks did the robber sheik hold the trade route of the earth, while
+our liege lord, the West Wind, slept profoundly like a tired Titan, or
+else remained lost in a mood of idle sadness known only to frank natures.
+All was still to the westward; we looked in vain towards his stronghold:
+the King slumbered on so deeply that he let his foraging brother steal
+the very mantle of gold-lined purple clouds from his bowed shoulders.
+What had become of the dazzling hoard of royal jewels exhibited at every
+close of day?  Gone, disappeared, extinguished, carried off without
+leaving a single gold band or the flash of a single sunbeam in the
+evening sky!  Day after day through a cold streak of heavens as bare and
+poor as the inside of a rifled safe a rayless and despoiled sun would
+slink shamefacedly, without pomp or show, to hide in haste under the
+waters.  And still the King slept on, or mourned the vanity of his might
+and his power, while the thin-lipped intruder put the impress of his cold
+and implacable spirit upon the sky and sea.  With every daybreak the
+rising sun had to wade through a crimson stream, luminous and sinister,
+like the spilt blood of celestial bodies murdered during the night.
+
+In this particular instance the mean interloper held the road for some
+six weeks on end, establishing his particular administrative methods over
+the best part of the North Atlantic.  It looked as if the easterly
+weather had come to stay for ever, or, at least, till we had all starved
+to death in the held-up fleet—starved within sight, as it were, of
+plenty, within touch, almost, of the bountiful heart of the Empire.
+There we were, dotting with our white dry sails the hard blueness of the
+deep sea.  There we were, a growing company of ships, each with her
+burden of grain, of timber, of wool, of hides, and even of oranges, for
+we had one or two belated fruit schooners in company.  There we were, in
+that memorable spring of a certain year in the late seventies, dodging to
+and fro, baffled on every tack, and with our stores running down to
+sweepings of bread-lockers and scrapings of sugar-casks.  It was just
+like the East Wind’s nature to inflict starvation upon the bodies of
+unoffending sailors, while he corrupted their simple souls by an
+exasperation leading to outbursts of profanity as lurid as his blood-red
+sunrises.  They were followed by gray days under the cover of high,
+motionless clouds that looked as if carved in a slab of ash-coloured
+marble.  And each mean starved sunset left us calling with imprecations
+upon the West Wind even in its most veiled misty mood to wake up and give
+us our liberty, if only to rush on and dash the heads of our ships
+against the very walls of our unapproachable home.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+
+In the atmosphere of the Easterly weather, as pellucid as a piece of
+crystal and refracting like a prism, we could see the appalling numbers
+of our helpless company, even to those who in more normal conditions
+would have remained invisible, sails down under the horizon.  It is the
+malicious pleasure of the East Wind to augment the power of your
+eyesight, in order, perhaps, that you should see better the perfect
+humiliation, the hopeless character of your captivity.  Easterly weather
+is generally clear, and that is all that can be said for it—almost
+supernaturally clear when it likes; but whatever its mood, there is
+something uncanny in its nature.  Its duplicity is such that it will
+deceive a scientific instrument.  No barometer will give warning of an
+easterly gale, were it ever so wet.  It would be an unjust and ungrateful
+thing to say that a barometer is a stupid contrivance.  It is simply that
+the wiles of the East Wind are too much for its fundamental honesty.
+After years and years of experience the most trusty instrument of the
+sort that ever went to sea screwed on to a ship’s cabin bulkhead will,
+almost invariably, be induced to rise by the diabolic ingenuity of the
+Easterly weather, just at the moment when the Easterly weather,
+discarding its methods of hard, dry, impassive cruelty, contemplates
+drowning what is left of your spirit in torrents of a peculiarly cold and
+horrid rain.  The sleet-and-hail squalls following the lightning at the
+end of a westerly gale are cold and benumbing and stinging and cruel
+enough.  But the dry, Easterly weather, when it turns to wet, seems to
+rain poisoned showers upon your head.  It is a sort of steady,
+persistent, overwhelming, endlessly driving downpour, which makes your
+heart sick, and opens it to dismal forebodings.  And the stormy mood of
+the Easterly weather looms black upon the sky with a peculiar and amazing
+blackness.  The West Wind hangs heavy gray curtains of mist and spray
+before your gaze, but the Eastern interloper of the narrow seas, when he
+has mustered his courage and cruelty to the point of a gale, puts your
+eyes out, puts them out completely, makes you feel blind for life upon a
+lee-shore.  It is the wind, also, that brings snow.
+
+Out of his black and merciless heart he flings a white blinding sheet
+upon the ships of the sea.  He has more manners of villainy, and no more
+conscience than an Italian prince of the seventeenth century.  His weapon
+is a dagger carried under a black cloak when he goes out on his unlawful
+enterprises.  The mere hint of his approach fills with dread every craft
+that swims the sea, from fishing-smacks to four-masted ships that
+recognise the sway of the West Wind.  Even in his most accommodating mood
+he inspires a dread of treachery.  I have heard upwards of ten score of
+windlasses spring like one into clanking life in the dead of night,
+filling the Downs with a panic-struck sound of anchors being torn
+hurriedly out of the ground at the first breath of his approach.
+Fortunately, his heart often fails him: he does not always blow home upon
+our exposed coast; he has not the fearless temper of his Westerly
+brother.
+
+The natures of those two winds that share the dominions of the great
+oceans are fundamentally different.  It is strange that the winds which
+men are prone to style capricious remain true to their character in all
+the various regions of the earth.  To us here, for instance, the East
+Wind comes across a great continent, sweeping over the greatest body of
+solid land upon this earth.  For the Australian east coast the East Wind
+is the wind of the ocean, coming across the greatest body of water upon
+the globe; and yet here and there its characteristics remain the same
+with a strange consistency in everything that is vile and base.  The
+members of the West Wind’s dynasty are modified in a way by the regions
+they rule, as a Hohenzollern, without ceasing to be himself, becomes a
+Roumanian by virtue of his throne, or a Saxe-Coburg learns to put the
+dress of Bulgarian phrases upon his particular thoughts, whatever they
+are.
+
+The autocratic sway of the West Wind, whether forty north or forty south
+of the Equator, is characterized by an open, generous, frank, barbarous
+recklessness.  For he is a great autocrat, and to be a great autocrat you
+must be a great barbarian.  I have been too much moulded to his sway to
+nurse now any idea of rebellion in my heart.  Moreover, what is a
+rebellion within the four walls of a room against the tempestuous rule of
+the West Wind?  I remain faithful to the memory of the mighty King with a
+double-edged sword in one hand, and in the other holding out rewards of
+great daily runs and famously quick passages to those of his courtiers
+who knew how to wait watchfully for every sign of his secret mood.  As we
+deep-water men always reckoned, he made one year in three fairly lively
+for anybody having business upon the Atlantic or down there along the
+“forties” of the Southern Ocean.  You had to take the bitter with the
+sweet; and it cannot be denied he played carelessly with our lives and
+fortunes.  But, then, he was always a great king, fit to rule over the
+great waters where, strictly speaking, a man would have no business
+whatever but for his audacity.
+
+The audacious should not complain.  A mere trader ought not to grumble at
+the tolls levied by a mighty king.  His mightiness was sometimes very
+overwhelming; but even when you had to defy him openly, as on the banks
+of the Agulhas homeward bound from the East Indies, or on the outward
+passage round the Horn, he struck at you fairly his stinging blows (full
+in the face, too), and it was your business not to get too much
+staggered.  And, after all, if you showed anything of a countenance, the
+good-natured barbarian would let you fight your way past the very steps
+of his throne.  It was only now and then that the sword descended and a
+head fell; but if you fell you were sure of impressive obsequies and of a
+roomy, generous grave.
+
+Such is the king to whom Viking chieftains bowed their heads, and whom
+the modern and palatial steamship defies with impunity seven times a
+week.  And yet it is but defiance, not victory.  The magnificent
+barbarian sits enthroned in a mantle of gold-lined clouds looking from on
+high on great ships gliding like mechanical toys upon his sea and on men
+who, armed with fire and iron, no longer need to watch anxiously for the
+slightest sign of his royal mood.  He is disregarded; but he has kept all
+his strength, all his splendour, and a great part of his power.  Time
+itself, that shakes all the thrones, is on the side of that king.  The
+sword in his hand remains as sharp as ever upon both its edges; and he
+may well go on playing his royal game of quoits with hurricanes, tossing
+them over from the continent of republics to the continent of kingdoms,
+in the assurance that both the new republics and the old kingdoms, the
+heat of fire and the strength of iron, with the untold generations of
+audacious men, shall crumble to dust at the steps of his throne, and pass
+away, and be forgotten before his own rule comes to an end.
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+
+THE estuaries of rivers appeal strongly to an adventurous imagination.
+This appeal is not always a charm, for there are estuaries of a
+particularly dispiriting ugliness: lowlands, mud-flats, or perhaps barren
+sandhills without beauty of form or amenity of aspect, covered with a
+shabby and scanty vegetation conveying the impression of poverty and
+uselessness.  Sometimes such an ugliness is merely a repulsive mask.  A
+river whose estuary resembles a breach in a sand rampart may flow through
+a most fertile country.  But all the estuaries of great rivers have their
+fascination, the attractiveness of an open portal.  Water is friendly to
+man.  The ocean, a part of Nature furthest removed in the
+unchangeableness and majesty of its might from the spirit of mankind, has
+ever been a friend to the enterprising nations of the earth.  And of all
+the elements this is the one to which men have always been prone to trust
+themselves, as if its immensity held a reward as vast as itself.
+
+From the offing the open estuary promises every possible fruition to
+adventurous hopes.  That road open to enterprise and courage invites the
+explorer of coasts to new efforts towards the fulfilment of great
+expectations.  The commander of the first Roman galley must have looked
+with an intense absorption upon the estuary of the Thames as he turned
+the beaked prow of his ship to the westward under the brow of the North
+Foreland.  The estuary of the Thames is not beautiful; it has no noble
+features, no romantic grandeur of aspect, no smiling geniality; but it is
+wide open, spacious, inviting, hospitable at the first glance, with a
+strange air of mysteriousness which lingers about it to this very day.
+The navigation of his craft must have engrossed all the Roman’s attention
+in the calm of a summer’s day (he would choose his weather), when the
+single row of long sweeps (the galley would be a light one, not a
+trireme) could fall in easy cadence upon a sheet of water like
+plate-glass, reflecting faithfully the classic form of his vessel and the
+contour of the lonely shores close on his left hand.  I assume he
+followed the land and passed through what is at present known as Margate
+Roads, groping his careful way along the hidden sandbanks, whose every
+tail and spit has its beacon or buoy nowadays.  He must have been
+anxious, though no doubt he had collected beforehand on the shores of the
+Gauls a store of information from the talk of traders, adventurers,
+fishermen, slave-dealers, pirates—all sorts of unofficial men connected
+with the sea in a more or less reputable way.  He would have heard of
+channels and sandbanks, of natural features of the land useful for
+sea-marks, of villages and tribes and modes of barter and precautions to
+take: with the instructive tales about native chiefs dyed more or less
+blue, whose character for greediness, ferocity, or amiability must have
+been expounded to him with that capacity for vivid language which seems
+joined naturally to the shadiness of moral character and recklessness of
+disposition.  With that sort of spiced food provided for his anxious
+thought, watchful for strange men, strange beasts, strange turns of the
+tide, he would make the best of his way up, a military seaman with a
+short sword on thigh and a bronze helmet on his head, the pioneer
+post-captain of an imperial fleet.  Was the tribe inhabiting the Isle of
+Thanet of a ferocious disposition, I wonder, and ready to fall with
+stone-studded clubs and wooden lances hardened in the fire, upon the
+backs of unwary mariners?
+
+Amongst the great commercial streams of these islands, the Thames is the
+only one, I think, open to romantic feeling, from the fact that the sight
+of human labour and the sounds of human industry do not come down its
+shores to the very sea, destroying the suggestion of mysterious vastness
+caused by the configuration of the shore.  The broad inlet of the shallow
+North Sea passes gradually into the contracted shape of the river; but
+for a long time the feeling of the open water remains with the ship
+steering to the westward through one of the lighted and buoyed
+passage-ways of the Thames, such as Queen’s Channel, Prince’s Channel,
+Four-Fathom Channel; or else coming down the Swin from the north.  The
+rush of the yellow flood-tide hurries her up as if into the unknown
+between the two fading lines of the coast.  There are no features to this
+land, no conspicuous, far-famed landmarks for the eye; there is nothing
+so far down to tell you of the greatest agglomeration of mankind on earth
+dwelling no more than five and twenty miles away, where the sun sets in a
+blaze of colour flaming on a gold background, and the dark, low shores
+trend towards each other.  And in the great silence the deep, faint
+booming of the big guns being tested at Shoeburyness hangs about the
+Nore—a historical spot in the keeping of one of England’s appointed
+guardians.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+
+The Nore sand remains covered at low-water, and never seen by human eye;
+but the Nore is a name to conjure with visions of historical events, of
+battles, of fleets, of mutinies, of watch and ward kept upon the great
+throbbing heart of the State.  This ideal point of the estuary, this
+centre of memories, is marked upon the steely gray expanse of the waters
+by a lightship painted red that, from a couple of miles off, looks like a
+cheap and bizarre little toy.  I remember how, on coming up the river for
+the first time, I was surprised at the smallness of that vivid object—a
+tiny warm speck of crimson lost in an immensity of gray tones.  I was
+startled, as if of necessity the principal beacon in the water-way of the
+greatest town on earth should have presented imposing proportions.  And,
+behold! the brown sprit-sail of a barge hid it entirely from my view.
+
+Coming in from the eastward, the bright colouring of the lightship
+marking the part of the river committed to the charge of an Admiral (the
+Commander-in-Chief at the Nore) accentuates the dreariness and the great
+breadth of the Thames Estuary.  But soon the course of the ship opens the
+entrance of the Medway, with its men-of-war moored in line, and the long
+wooden jetty of Port Victoria, with its few low buildings like the
+beginning of a hasty settlement upon a wild and unexplored shore.  The
+famous Thames barges sit in brown clusters upon the water with an effect
+of birds floating upon a pond.  On the imposing expanse of the great
+estuary the traffic of the port where so much of the world’s work and the
+world’s thinking is being done becomes insignificant, scattered,
+streaming away in thin lines of ships stringing themselves out into the
+eastern quarter through the various navigable channels of which the Nore
+lightship marks the divergence.  The coasting traffic inclines to the
+north; the deep-water ships steer east with a southern inclination, on
+through the Downs, to the most remote ends of the world.  In the widening
+of the shores sinking low in the gray, smoky distances the greatness of
+the sea receives the mercantile fleet of good ships that London sends out
+upon the turn of every tide.  They follow each other, going very close by
+the Essex shore.  Such as the beads of a rosary told by business-like
+shipowners for the greater profit of the world they slip one by one into
+the open: while in the offing the inward-bound ships come up singly and
+in bunches from under the sea horizon closing the mouth of the river
+between Orfordness and North Foreland.  They all converge upon the Nore,
+the warm speck of red upon the tones of drab and gray, with the distant
+shores running together towards the west, low and flat, like the sides of
+an enormous canal.  The sea-reach of the Thames is straight, and, once
+Sheerness is left behind, its banks seem very uninhabited, except for the
+cluster of houses which is Southend, or here and there a lonely wooden
+jetty where petroleum ships discharge their dangerous cargoes, and the
+oil-storage tanks, low and round with slightly-domed roofs, peep over the
+edge of the fore-shore, as it were a village of Central African huts
+imitated in iron.  Bordered by the black and shining mud-flats, the level
+marsh extends for miles.  Away in the far background the land rises,
+closing the view with a continuous wooded slope, forming in the distance
+an interminable rampart overgrown with bushes.
+
+Then, on the slight turn of the Lower Hope Reach, clusters of factory
+chimneys come distinctly into view, tall and slender above the squat
+ranges of cement works in Grays and Greenhithe.  Smoking quietly at the
+top against the great blaze of a magnificent sunset, they give an
+industrial character to the scene, speak of work, manufactures, and
+trade, as palm-groves on the coral strands of distant islands speak of
+the luxuriant grace, beauty and vigour of tropical nature.  The houses of
+Gravesend crowd upon the shore with an effect of confusion as if they had
+tumbled down haphazard from the top of the hill at the back.  The
+flatness of the Kentish shore ends there.  A fleet of steam-tugs lies at
+anchor in front of the various piers.  A conspicuous church spire, the
+first seen distinctly coming from the sea, has a thoughtful grace, the
+serenity of a fine form above the chaotic disorder of men’s houses.  But
+on the other side, on the flat Essex side, a shapeless and desolate red
+edifice, a vast pile of bricks with many windows and a slate roof more
+inaccessible than an Alpine slope, towers over the bend in monstrous
+ugliness, the tallest, heaviest building for miles around, a thing like
+an hotel, like a mansion of flats (all to let), exiled into these fields
+out of a street in West Kensington.  Just round the corner, as it were,
+on a pier defined with stone blocks and wooden piles, a white mast,
+slender like a stalk of straw and crossed by a yard like a
+knitting-needle, flying the signals of flag and balloon, watches over a
+set of heavy dock-gates.  Mast-heads and funnel-tops of ships peep above
+the ranges of corrugated iron roofs.  This is the entrance to Tilbury
+Dock, the most recent of all London docks, the nearest to the sea.
+
+Between the crowded houses of Gravesend and the monstrous red-brick pile
+on the Essex shore the ship is surrendered fairly to the grasp of the
+river.  That hint of loneliness, that soul of the sea which had
+accompanied her as far as the Lower Hope Reach, abandons her at the turn
+of the first bend above.  The salt, acrid flavour is gone out of the air,
+together with a sense of unlimited space opening free beyond the
+threshold of sandbanks below the Nore.  The waters of the sea rush on
+past Gravesend, tumbling the big mooring buoys laid along the face of the
+town; but the sea-freedom stops short there, surrendering the salt tide
+to the needs, the artifices, the contrivances of toiling men.  Wharves,
+landing-places, dock-gates, waterside stairs, follow each other
+continuously right up to London Bridge, and the hum of men’s work fills
+the river with a menacing, muttering note as of a breathless,
+ever-driving gale.  The water-way, so fair above and wide below, flows
+oppressed by bricks and mortar and stone, by blackened timber and grimed
+glass and rusty iron, covered with black barges, whipped up by paddles
+and screws, overburdened with craft, overhung with chains, overshadowed
+by walls making a steep gorge for its bed, filled with a haze of smoke
+and dust.
+
+This stretch of the Thames from London Bridge to the Albert Docks is to
+other watersides of river ports what a virgin forest would be to a
+garden.  It is a thing grown up, not made.  It recalls a jungle by the
+confused, varied, and impenetrable aspect of the buildings that line the
+shore, not according to a planned purpose, but as if sprung up by
+accident from scattered seeds.  Like the matted growth of bushes and
+creepers veiling the silent depths of an unexplored wilderness, they hide
+the depths of London’s infinitely varied, vigorous, seething life.  In
+other river ports it is not so.  They lie open to their stream, with
+quays like broad clearings, with streets like avenues cut through thick
+timber for the convenience of trade.  I am thinking now of river ports I
+have seen—of Antwerp, for instance; of Nantes or Bordeaux, or even old
+Rouen, where the night-watchmen of ships, elbows on rail, gaze at
+shop-windows and brilliant cafés, and see the audience go in and come out
+of the opera-house.  But London, the oldest and greatest of river ports,
+does not possess as much as a hundred yards of open quays upon its river
+front.  Dark and impenetrable at night, like the face of a forest, is the
+London waterside.  It is the waterside of watersides, where only one
+aspect of the world’s life can be seen, and only one kind of men toils on
+the edge of the stream.  The lightless walls seem to spring from the very
+mud upon which the stranded barges lie; and the narrow lanes coming down
+to the foreshore resemble the paths of smashed bushes and crumbled earth
+where big game comes to drink on the banks of tropical streams.
+
+Behind the growth of the London waterside the docks of London spread out
+unsuspected, smooth, and placid, lost amongst the buildings like dark
+lagoons hidden in a thick forest.  They lie concealed in the intricate
+growth of houses with a few stalks of mastheads here and there
+overtopping the roof of some four-story warehouse.
+
+It is a strange conjunction this of roofs and mastheads, of walls and
+yard-arms.  I remember once having the incongruity of the relation
+brought home to me in a practical way.  I was the chief officer of a fine
+ship, just docked with a cargo of wool from Sydney, after a ninety days’
+passage.  In fact, we had not been in more than half an hour and I was
+still busy making her fast to the stone posts of a very narrow quay in
+front of a lofty warehouse.  An old man with a gray whisker under the
+chin and brass buttons on his pilot-cloth jacket, hurried up along the
+quay hailing my ship by name.  He was one of those officials called
+berthing-masters—not the one who had berthed us, but another, who,
+apparently, had been busy securing a steamer at the other end of the
+dock.  I could see from afar his hard blue eyes staring at us, as if
+fascinated, with a queer sort of absorption.  I wondered what that worthy
+sea-dog had found to criticise in my ship’s rigging.  And I, too, glanced
+aloft anxiously.  I could see nothing wrong there.  But perhaps that
+superannuated fellow-craftsman was simply admiring the ship’s perfect
+order aloft, I thought, with some secret pride; for the chief officer is
+responsible for his ship’s appearance, and as to her outward condition,
+he is the man open to praise or blame.  Meantime the old salt
+(“ex-coasting skipper” was writ large all over his person) had hobbled up
+alongside in his bumpy, shiny boots, and, waving an arm, short and thick
+like the flipper of a seal, terminated by a paw red as an uncooked
+beef-steak, addressed the poop in a muffled, faint, roaring voice, as if
+a sample of every North-Sea fog of his life had been permanently lodged
+in his throat: “Haul ’em round, Mr. Mate!” were his words.  “If you don’t
+look sharp, you’ll have your topgallant yards through the windows of that
+’ere warehouse presently!”  This was the only cause of his interest in
+the ship’s beautiful spars.  I own that for a time I was struck dumb by
+the bizarre associations of yard-arms and window-panes.  To break windows
+is the last thing one would think of in connection with a ship’s
+topgallant yard, unless, indeed, one were an experienced berthing-master
+in one of the London docks.  This old chap was doing his little share of
+the world’s work with proper efficiency.  His little blue eyes had made
+out the danger many hundred yards off.  His rheumaticky feet, tired with
+balancing that squat body for many years upon the decks of small
+coasters, and made sore by miles of tramping upon the flagstones of the
+dock side, had hurried up in time to avert a ridiculous catastrophe.  I
+answered him pettishly, I fear, and as if I had known all about it
+before.
+
+“All right, all right! can’t do everything at once.”
+
+He remained near by, muttering to himself till the yards had been hauled
+round at my order, and then raised again his foggy, thick voice:
+
+“None too soon,” he observed, with a critical glance up at the towering
+side of the warehouse.  “That’s a half-sovereign in your pocket, Mr.
+Mate.  You should always look first how you are for them windows before
+you begin to breast in your ship to the quay.”
+
+It was good advice.  But one cannot think of everything or foresee
+contacts of things apparently as remote as stars and hop-poles.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+
+The view of ships lying moored in some of the older docks of London has
+always suggested to my mind the image of a flock of swans kept in the
+flooded backyard of grim tenement houses.  The flatness of the walls
+surrounding the dark pool on which they float brings out wonderfully the
+flowing grace of the lines on which a ship’s hull is built.  The
+lightness of these forms, devised to meet the winds and the seas, makes,
+by contrast with the great piles of bricks, the chains and cables of
+their moorings appear very necessary, as if nothing less could prevent
+them from soaring upwards and over the roofs.  The least puff of wind
+stealing round the corners of the dock buildings stirs these captives
+fettered to rigid shores.  It is as if the soul of a ship were impatient
+of confinement.  Those masted hulls, relieved of their cargo, become
+restless at the slightest hint of the wind’s freedom.  However tightly
+moored, they range a little at their berths, swaying imperceptibly the
+spire-like assemblages of cordage and spars.  You can detect their
+impatience by watching the sway of the mastheads against the motionless,
+the soulless gravity of mortar and stones.  As you pass alongside each
+hopeless prisoner chained to the quay, the slight grinding noise of the
+wooden fenders makes a sound of angry muttering.  But, after all, it may
+be good for ships to go through a period of restraint and repose, as the
+restraint and self-communion of inactivity may be good for an unruly
+soul—not, indeed, that I mean to say that ships are unruly; on the
+contrary, they are faithful creatures, as so many men can testify.  And
+faithfulness is a great restraint, the strongest bond laid upon the
+self-will of men and ships on this globe of land and sea.
+
+This interval of bondage in the docks rounds each period of a ship’s life
+with the sense of accomplished duty, of an effectively played part in the
+work of the world.  The dock is the scene of what the world would think
+the most serious part in the light, bounding, swaying life of a ship.
+But there are docks and docks.  The ugliness of some docks is appalling.
+Wild horses would not drag from me the name of a certain river in the
+north whose narrow estuary is inhospitable and dangerous, and whose docks
+are like a nightmare of dreariness and misery.  Their dismal shores are
+studded thickly with scaffold-like, enormous timber structures, whose
+lofty heads are veiled periodically by the infernal gritty night of a
+cloud of coal-dust.  The most important ingredient for getting the
+world’s work along is distributed there under the circumstances of the
+greatest cruelty meted out to helpless ships.  Shut up in the desolate
+circuit of these basins, you would think a free ship would droop and die
+like a wild bird put into a dirty cage.  But a ship, perhaps because of
+her faithfulness to men, will endure an extraordinary lot of ill-usage.
+Still, I have seen ships issue from certain docks like half-dead
+prisoners from a dungeon, bedraggled, overcome, wholly disguised in dirt,
+and with their men rolling white eyeballs in black and worried faces
+raised to a heaven which, in its smoky and soiled aspect, seemed to
+reflect the sordidness of the earth below.  One thing, however, may be
+said for the docks of the Port of London on both sides of the river: for
+all the complaints of their insufficient equipment, of their obsolete
+rules, of failure (they say) in the matter of quick despatch, no ship
+need ever issue from their gates in a half-fainting condition.  London is
+a general cargo port, as is only proper for the greatest capital of the
+world to be.  General cargo ports belong to the aristocracy of the
+earth’s trading places, and in that aristocracy London, as it is its way,
+has a unique physiognomy.
+
+The absence of picturesqueness cannot be laid to the charge of the docks
+opening into the Thames.  For all my unkind comparisons to swans and
+backyards, it cannot be denied that each dock or group of docks along the
+north side of the river has its own individual attractiveness.  Beginning
+with the cosy little St. Katherine’s Dock, lying overshadowed and black
+like a quiet pool amongst rocky crags, through the venerable and
+sympathetic London Docks, with not a single line of rails in the whole of
+their area and the aroma of spices lingering between its warehouses, with
+their far-famed wine-cellars—down through the interesting group of West
+India Docks, the fine docks at Blackwall, on past the Galleons Reach
+entrance of the Victoria and Albert Docks, right down to the vast gloom
+of the great basins in Tilbury, each of those places of restraint for
+ships has its own peculiar physiognomy, its own expression.  And what
+makes them unique and attractive is their common trait of being romantic
+in their usefulness.
+
+In their way they are as romantic as the river they serve is unlike all
+the other commercial streams of the world.  The cosiness of the St.
+Katherine’s Dock, the old-world air of the London Docks, remain impressed
+upon the memory.  The docks down the river, abreast of Woolwich, are
+imposing by their proportions and the vast scale of the ugliness that
+forms their surroundings—ugliness so picturesque as to become a delight
+to the eye.  When one talks of the Thames docks, “beauty” is a vain word,
+but romance has lived too long upon this river not to have thrown a
+mantle of glamour upon its banks.
+
+The antiquity of the port appeals to the imagination by the long chain of
+adventurous enterprises that had their inception in the town and floated
+out into the world on the waters of the river.  Even the newest of the
+docks, the Tilbury Dock, shares in the glamour conferred by historical
+associations.  Queen Elizabeth has made one of her progresses down there,
+not one of her journeys of pomp and ceremony, but an anxious business
+progress at a crisis of national history.  The menace of that time has
+passed away, and now Tilbury is known by its docks.  These are very
+modern, but their remoteness and isolation upon the Essex marsh, the days
+of failure attending their creation, invested them with a romantic air.
+Nothing in those days could have been more striking than the vast, empty
+basins, surrounded by miles of bare quays and the ranges of cargo-sheds,
+where two or three ships seemed lost like bewitched children in a forest
+of gaunt, hydraulic cranes.  One received a wonderful impression of utter
+abandonment, of wasted efficiency.  From the first the Tilbury Docks were
+very efficient and ready for their task, but they had come, perhaps, too
+soon into the field.  A great future lies before Tilbury Docks.  They
+shall never fill a long-felt want (in the sacramental phrase that is
+applied to railways, tunnels, newspapers, and new editions of books).
+They were too early in the field.  The want shall never be felt because,
+free of the trammels of the tide, easy of access, magnificent and
+desolate, they are already there, prepared to take and keep the biggest
+ships that float upon the sea.  They are worthy of the oldest river port
+in the world.
+
+And, truth to say, for all the criticisms flung upon the heads of the
+dock companies, the other docks of the Thames are no disgrace to the town
+with a population greater than that of some commonwealths.  The growth of
+London as a well-equipped port has been slow, while not unworthy of a
+great capital, of a great centre of distribution.  It must not be
+forgotten that London has not the backing of great industrial districts
+or great fields of natural exploitation.  In this it differs from
+Liverpool, from Cardiff, from Newcastle, from Glasgow; and therein the
+Thames differs from the Mersey, from the Tyne, from the Clyde.  It is an
+historical river; it is a romantic stream flowing through the centre of
+great affairs, and for all the criticism of the river’s administration,
+my contention is that its development has been worthy of its dignity.
+For a long time the stream itself could accommodate quite easily the
+oversea and coasting traffic.  That was in the days when, in the part
+called the Pool, just below London Bridge, the vessels moored stem and
+stern in the very strength of the tide formed one solid mass like an
+island covered with a forest of gaunt, leafless trees; and when the trade
+had grown too big for the river there came the St. Katherine’s Docks and
+the London Docks, magnificent undertakings answering to the need of their
+time.  The same may be said of the other artificial lakes full of ships
+that go in and out upon this high road to all parts of the world.  The
+labour of the imperial waterway goes on from generation to generation,
+goes on day and night.  Nothing ever arrests its sleepless industry but
+the coming of a heavy fog, which clothes the teeming stream in a mantle
+of impenetrable stillness.
+
+After the gradual cessation of all sound and movement on the faithful
+river, only the ringing of ships’ bells is heard, mysterious and muffled
+in the white vapour from London Bridge right down to the Nore, for miles
+and miles in a decrescendo tinkling, to where the estuary broadens out
+into the North Sea, and the anchored ships lie scattered thinly in the
+shrouded channels between the sand-banks of the Thames’ mouth.  Through
+the long and glorious tale of years of the river’s strenuous service to
+its people these are its only breathing times.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+
+A SHIP in dock, surrounded by quays and the walls of warehouses, has the
+appearance of a prisoner meditating upon freedom in the sadness of a free
+spirit put under restraint.  Chain cables and stout ropes keep her bound
+to stone posts at the edge of a paved shore, and a berthing-master, with
+brass buttons on his coat, walks about like a weather-beaten and ruddy
+gaoler, casting jealous, watchful glances upon the moorings that fetter a
+ship lying passive and still and safe, as if lost in deep regrets of her
+days of liberty and danger on the sea.
+
+The swarm of renegades—dock-masters, berthing-masters, gatemen, and such
+like—appear to nurse an immense distrust of the captive ship’s
+resignation.  There never seem chains and ropes enough to satisfy their
+minds concerned with the safe binding of free ships to the strong, muddy,
+enslaved earth.  “You had better put another bight of a hawser astern,
+Mr. Mate,” is the usual phrase in their mouth.  I brand them for
+renegades, because most of them have been sailors in their time.  As if
+the infirmities of old age—the gray hair, the wrinkles at the corners of
+the eyes, and the knotted veins of the hands—were the symptoms of moral
+poison, they prowl about the quays with an underhand air of gloating over
+the broken spirit of noble captives.  They want more fenders, more
+breasting-ropes; they want more springs, more shackles, more fetters;
+they want to make ships with volatile souls as motionless as square
+blocks of stone.  They stand on the mud of pavements, these degraded
+sea-dogs, with long lines of railway-trucks clanking their couplings
+behind their backs, and run malevolent glances over your ship from
+headgear to taffrail, only wishing to tyrannize over the poor creature
+under the hypocritical cloak of benevolence and care.  Here and there
+cargo cranes looking like instruments of torture for ships swing cruel
+hooks at the end of long chains.  Gangs of dock-labourers swarm with
+muddy feet over the gangways.  It is a moving sight this, of so many men
+of the earth, earthy, who never cared anything for a ship, trampling
+unconcerned, brutal and hob-nailed upon her helpless body.
+
+Fortunately, nothing can deface the beauty of a ship.  That sense of a
+dungeon, that sense of a horrible and degrading misfortune overtaking a
+creature fair to see and safe to trust, attaches only to ships moored in
+the docks of great European ports.  You feel that they are dishonestly
+locked up, to be hunted about from wharf to wharf on a dark, greasy,
+square pool of black water as a brutal reward at the end of a faithful
+voyage.
+
+A ship anchored in an open roadstead, with cargo-lighters alongside and
+her own tackle swinging the burden over the rail, is accomplishing in
+freedom a function of her life.  There is no restraint; there is space:
+clear water around her, and a clear sky above her mastheads, with a
+landscape of green hills and charming bays opening around her anchorage.
+She is not abandoned by her own men to the tender mercies of shore
+people.  She still shelters, and is looked after by, her own little
+devoted band, and you feel that presently she will glide between the
+headlands and disappear.  It is only at home, in dock, that she lies
+abandoned, shut off from freedom by all the artifices of men that think
+of quick despatch and profitable freights.  It is only then that the
+odious, rectangular shadows of walls and roofs fall upon her decks, with
+showers of soot.
+
+To a man who has never seen the extraordinary nobility, strength, and
+grace that the devoted generations of ship-builders have evolved from
+some pure nooks of their simple souls, the sight that could be seen
+five-and-twenty years ago of a large fleet of clippers moored along the
+north side of the New South Dock was an inspiring spectacle.  Then there
+was a quarter of a mile of them, from the iron dockyard-gates guarded by
+policemen, in a long, forest-like perspective of masts, moored two and
+two to many stout wooden jetties.  Their spars dwarfed with their
+loftiness the corrugated-iron sheds, their jibbooms extended far over the
+shore, their white-and-gold figure-heads, almost dazzling in their
+purity, overhung the straight, long quay above the mud and dirt of the
+wharfside, with the busy figures of groups and single men moving to and
+fro, restless and grimy under their soaring immobility.
+
+At tide-time you would see one of the loaded ships with battened-down
+hatches drop out of the ranks and float in the clear space of the dock,
+held by lines dark and slender, like the first threads of a spider’s web,
+extending from her bows and her quarters to the mooring-posts on shore.
+There, graceful and still, like a bird ready to spread its wings, she
+waited till, at the opening of the gates, a tug or two would hurry in
+noisily, hovering round her with an air of fuss and solicitude, and take
+her out into the river, tending, shepherding her through open bridges,
+through dam-like gates between the flat pier-heads, with a bit of green
+lawn surrounded by gravel and a white signal-mast with yard and gaff,
+flying a couple of dingy blue, red, or white flags.
+
+This New South Dock (it was its official name), round which my earlier
+professional memories are centred, belongs to the group of West India
+Docks, together with two smaller and much older basins called Import and
+Export respectively, both with the greatness of their trade departed from
+them already.  Picturesque and clean as docks go, these twin basins
+spread side by side the dark lustre of their glassy water, sparely
+peopled by a few ships laid up on buoys or tucked far away from each
+other at the end of sheds in the corners of empty quays, where they
+seemed to slumber quietly remote, untouched by the bustle of men’s
+affairs—in retreat rather than in captivity.  They were quaint and
+sympathetic, those two homely basins, unfurnished and silent, with no
+aggressive display of cranes, no apparatus of hurry and work on their
+narrow shores.  No railway-lines cumbered them.  The knots of labourers
+trooping in clumsily round the corners of cargo-sheds to eat their food
+in peace out of red cotton handkerchiefs had the air of picnicking by the
+side of a lonely mountain pool.  They were restful (and I should say very
+unprofitable), those basins, where the chief officer of one of the ships
+involved in the harassing, strenuous, noisy activity of the New South
+Dock only a few yards away could escape in the dinner-hour to stroll,
+unhampered by men and affairs, meditating (if he chose) on the vanity of
+all things human.  At one time they must have been full of good old slow
+West Indiamen of the square-stern type, that took their captivity, one
+imagines, as stolidly as they had faced the buffeting of the waves with
+their blunt, honest bows, and disgorged sugar, rum, molasses, coffee, or
+logwood sedately with their own winch and tackle.  But when I knew them,
+of exports there was never a sign that one could detect; and all the
+imports I have ever seen were some rare cargoes of tropical timber,
+enormous baulks roughed out of iron trunks grown in the woods about the
+Gulf of Mexico.  They lay piled up in stacks of mighty boles, and it was
+hard to believe that all this mass of dead and stripped trees had come
+out of the flanks of a slender, innocent-looking little barque with, as
+likely as not, a homely woman’s name—Ellen this or Annie that—upon her
+fine bows.  But this is generally the case with a discharged cargo.  Once
+spread at large over the quay, it looks the most impossible bulk to have
+all come there out of that ship alongside.
+
+They were quiet, serene nooks in the busy world of docks, these basins
+where it has never been my good luck to get a berth after some more or
+less arduous passage.  But one could see at a glance that men and ships
+were never hustled there.  They were so quiet that, remembering them
+well, one comes to doubt that they ever existed—places of repose for
+tired ships to dream in, places of meditation rather than work, where
+wicked ships—the cranky, the lazy, the wet, the bad sea boats, the wild
+steerers, the capricious, the pig-headed, the generally
+ungovernable—would have full leisure to take count and repent of their
+sins, sorrowful and naked, with their rent garments of sailcloth stripped
+off them, and with the dust and ashes of the London atmosphere upon their
+mastheads.  For that the worst of ships would repent if she were ever
+given time I make no doubt.  I have known too many of them.  No ship is
+wholly bad; and now that their bodies that had braved so many tempests
+have been blown off the face of the sea by a puff of steam, the evil and
+the good together into the limbo of things that have served their time,
+there can be no harm in affirming that in these vanished generations of
+willing servants there never has been one utterly unredeemable soul.
+
+In the New South Dock there was certainly no time for remorse,
+introspection, repentance, or any phenomena of inner life either for the
+captive ships or for their officers.  From six in the morning till six at
+night the hard labour of the prison-house, which rewards the valiance of
+ships that win the harbour went on steadily, great slings of general
+cargo swinging over the rail, to drop plumb into the hatchways at the
+sign of the gangway-tender’s hand.  The New South Dock was especially a
+loading dock for the Colonies in those great (and last) days of smart
+wool-clippers, good to look at and—well—exciting to handle.  Some of them
+were more fair to see than the others; many were (to put it mildly)
+somewhat over-masted; all were expected to make good passages; and of all
+that line of ships, whose rigging made a thick, enormous network against
+the sky, whose brasses flashed almost as far as the eye of the policeman
+at the gates could reach, there was hardly one that knew of any other
+port amongst all the ports on the wide earth but London and Sydney, or
+London and Melbourne, or London and Adelaide, perhaps with Hobart Town
+added for those of smaller tonnage.  One could almost have believed, as
+her gray-whiskered second mate used to say of the old _Duke of S—_, that
+they knew the road to the Antipodes better than their own skippers, who,
+year in, year out, took them from London—the place of captivity—to some
+Australian port where, twenty-five years ago, though moored well and
+tight enough to the wooden wharves, they felt themselves no captives, but
+honoured guests.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+
+These towns of the Antipodes, not so great then as they are now, took an
+interest in the shipping, the running links with “home,” whose numbers
+confirmed the sense of their growing importance.  They made it part and
+parcel of their daily interests.  This was especially the case in Sydney,
+where, from the heart of the fair city, down the vista of important
+streets, could be seen the wool-clippers lying at the Circular Quay—no
+walled prison-house of a dock that, but the integral part of one of the
+finest, most beautiful, vast, and safe bays the sun ever shone upon.  Now
+great steam-liners lie at these berths, always reserved for the sea
+aristocracy—grand and imposing enough ships, but here to-day and gone
+next week; whereas the general cargo, emigrant, and passenger clippers of
+my time, rigged with heavy spars, and built on fine lines, used to remain
+for months together waiting for their load of wool.  Their names attained
+the dignity of household words.  On Sundays and holidays the citizens
+trooped down, on visiting bent, and the lonely officer on duty solaced
+himself by playing the cicerone—especially to the citizenesses with
+engaging manners and a well-developed sense of the fun that may be got
+out of the inspection of a ship’s cabins and state-rooms.  The tinkle of
+more or less untuned cottage pianos floated out of open stern-ports till
+the gas-lamps began to twinkle in the streets, and the ship’s
+night-watchman, coming sleepily on duty after his unsatisfactory day
+slumbers, hauled down the flags and fastened a lighted lantern at the
+break of the gangway.  The night closed rapidly upon the silent ships
+with their crews on shore.  Up a short, steep ascent by the King’s Head
+pub., patronized by the cooks and stewards of the fleet, the voice of a
+man crying “Hot saveloys!” at the end of George Street, where the cheap
+eating-houses (sixpence a meal) were kept by Chinamen (Sun-kum-on’s was
+not bad), is heard at regular intervals.  I have listened for hours to
+this most pertinacious pedlar (I wonder whether he is dead or has made a
+fortune), while sitting on the rail of the old _Duke of S—_ (she’s dead,
+poor thing! a violent death on the coast of New Zealand), fascinated by
+the monotony, the regularity, the abruptness of the recurring cry, and so
+exasperated at the absurd spell, that I wished the fellow would choke
+himself to death with a mouthful of his own infamous wares.
+
+A stupid job, and fit only for an old man, my comrades used to tell me,
+to be the night-watchman of a captive (though honoured) ship.  And
+generally the oldest of the able seamen in a ship’s crew does get it.
+But sometimes neither the oldest nor any other fairly steady seaman is
+forthcoming.  Ships’ crews had the trick of melting away swiftly in those
+days.  So, probably on account of my youth, innocence, and pensive habits
+(which made me sometimes dilatory in my work about the rigging), I was
+suddenly nominated, in our chief mate Mr. B—’s most sardonic tones, to
+that enviable situation.  I do not regret the experience.  The night
+humours of the town descended from the street to the waterside in the
+still watches of the night: larrikins rushing down in bands to settle
+some quarrel by a stand-up fight, away from the police, in an indistinct
+ring half hidden by piles of cargo, with the sounds of blows, a groan now
+and then, the stamping of feet, and the cry of “Time!” rising suddenly
+above the sinister and excited murmurs; night-prowlers, pursued or
+pursuing, with a stifled shriek followed by a profound silence, or
+slinking stealthily alongside like ghosts, and addressing me from the
+quay below in mysterious tones with incomprehensible propositions.  The
+cabmen, too, who twice a week, on the night when the A.S.N. Company’s
+passenger-boat was due to arrive, used to range a battalion of blazing
+lamps opposite the ship, were very amusing in their way.  They got down
+from their perches and told each other impolite stories in racy language,
+every word of which reached me distinctly over the bulwarks as I sat
+smoking on the main-hatch.  On one occasion I had an hour or so of a most
+intellectual conversation with a person whom I could not see distinctly,
+a gentleman from England, he said, with a cultivated voice, I on deck and
+he on the quay sitting on the case of a piano (landed out of our hold
+that very afternoon), and smoking a cigar which smelt very good.  We
+touched, in our discourse, upon science, politics, natural history, and
+operatic singers.  Then, after remarking abruptly, “You seem to be rather
+intelligent, my man,” he informed me pointedly that his name was Mr.
+Senior, and walked off—to his hotel, I suppose.  Shadows!  Shadows!  I
+think I saw a white whisker as he turned under the lamp-post.  It is a
+shock to think that in the natural course of nature he must be dead by
+now.  There was nothing to object to in his intelligence but a little
+dogmatism maybe.  And his name was Senior!  Mr. Senior!
+
+The position had its drawbacks, however.  One wintry, blustering, dark
+night in July, as I stood sleepily out of the rain under the break of the
+poop something resembling an ostrich dashed up the gangway.  I say
+ostrich because the creature, though it ran on two legs, appeared to help
+its progress by working a pair of short wings; it was a man, however,
+only his coat, ripped up the back and flapping in two halves above his
+shoulders, gave him that weird and fowl-like appearance.  At least, I
+suppose it was his coat, for it was impossible to make him out
+distinctly.  How he managed to come so straight upon me, at speed and
+without a stumble over a strange deck, I cannot imagine.  He must have
+been able to see in the dark better than any cat.  He overwhelmed me with
+panting entreaties to let him take shelter till morning in our
+forecastle.  Following my strict orders, I refused his request, mildly at
+first, in a sterner tone as he insisted with growing impudence.
+
+“For God’s sake let me, matey!  Some of ’em are after me—and I’ve got
+hold of a ticker here.”
+
+“You clear out of this!” I said.
+
+“Don’t be hard on a chap, old man!” he whined pitifully.
+
+“Now then, get ashore at once.  Do you hear?”
+
+Silence.  He appeared to cringe, mute, as if words had failed him through
+grief; then—bang! came a concussion and a great flash of light in which
+he vanished, leaving me prone on my back with the most abominable black
+eye that anybody ever got in the faithful discharge of duty.  Shadows!
+Shadows!  I hope he escaped the enemies he was fleeing from to live and
+flourish to this day.  But his fist was uncommonly hard and his aim
+miraculously true in the dark.
+
+There were other experiences, less painful and more funny for the most
+part, with one amongst them of a dramatic complexion; but the greatest
+experience of them all was Mr. B—, our chief mate himself.
+
+He used to go ashore every night to foregather in some hotel’s parlour
+with his crony, the mate of the barque _Cicero_, lying on the other side
+of the Circular Quay.  Late at night I would hear from afar their
+stumbling footsteps and their voices raised in endless argument.  The
+mate of the _Cicero_ was seeing his friend on board.  They would continue
+their senseless and muddled discourse in tones of profound friendship for
+half an hour or so at the shore end of our gangway, and then I would hear
+Mr. B— insisting that he must see the other on board his ship.  And away
+they would go, their voices, still conversing with excessive amity, being
+heard moving all round the harbour.  It happened more than once that they
+would thus perambulate three or four times the distance, each seeing the
+other on board his ship out of pure and disinterested affection.  Then,
+through sheer weariness, or perhaps in a moment of forgetfulness, they
+would manage to part from each other somehow, and by-and-by the planks of
+our long gangway would bend and creak under the weight of Mr. B— coming
+on board for good at last.
+
+On the rail his burly form would stop and stand swaying.
+
+“Watchman!”
+
+“Sir.”
+
+A pause.
+
+He waited for a moment of steadiness before negotiating the three steps
+of the inside ladder from rail to deck; and the watchman, taught by
+experience, would forbear offering help which would be received as an
+insult at that particular stage of the mate’s return.  But many times I
+trembled for his neck.  He was a heavy man.
+
+Then with a rush and a thump it would be done.  He never had to pick
+himself up; but it took him a minute or so to pull himself together after
+the descent.
+
+“Watchman!”
+
+“Sir.”
+
+“Captain aboard?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+Pause.
+
+“Dog aboard?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+Pause.
+
+Our dog was a gaunt and unpleasant beast, more like a wolf in poor health
+than a dog, and I never noticed Mr. B— at any other time show the
+slightest interest in the doings of the animal.  But that question never
+failed.
+
+“Let’s have your arm to steady me along.”
+
+I was always prepared for that request.  He leaned on me heavily till
+near enough the cabin-door to catch hold of the handle.  Then he would
+let go my arm at once.
+
+“That’ll do.  I can manage now.”
+
+And he could manage.  He could manage to find his way into his berth,
+light his lamp, get into his bed—ay, and get out of it when I called him
+at half-past five, the first man on deck, lifting the cup of morning
+coffee to his lips with a steady hand, ready for duty as though he had
+virtuously slept ten solid hours—a better chief officer than many a man
+who had never tasted grog in his life.  He could manage all that, but
+could never manage to get on in life.
+
+Only once he failed to seize the cabin-door handle at the first grab.  He
+waited a little, tried again, and again failed.  His weight was growing
+heavier on my arm.  He sighed slowly.
+
+“D—n that handle!”
+
+Without letting go his hold of me he turned about, his face lit up bright
+as day by the full moon.
+
+“I wish she were out at sea,” he growled savagely.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+I felt the need to say something, because he hung on to me as if lost,
+breathing heavily.
+
+“Ports are no good—ships rot, men go to the devil!”
+
+I kept still, and after a while he repeated with a sigh.
+
+“I wish she were at sea out of this.”
+
+“So do I, sir,” I ventured.
+
+Holding my shoulder, he turned upon me.
+
+“You!  What’s that to you where she is?  You don’t—drink.”
+
+And even on that night he “managed it” at last.  He got hold of the
+handle.  But he did not manage to light his lamp (I don’t think he even
+tried), though in the morning as usual he was the first on deck,
+bull-necked, curly-headed, watching the hands turn-to with his sardonic
+expression and unflinching gaze.
+
+I met him ten years afterwards, casually, unexpectedly, in the street, on
+coming out of my consignee office.  I was not likely to have forgotten
+him with his “I can manage now.”  He recognised me at once, remembered my
+name, and in what ship I had served under his orders.  He looked me over
+from head to foot.
+
+“What are you doing here?” he asked.
+
+“I am commanding a little barque,” I said, “loading here for Mauritius.”
+Then, thoughtlessly, I added: “And what are you doing, Mr. B-?”
+
+“I,” he said, looking at me unflinchingly, with his old sardonic grin—“I
+am looking for something to do.”
+
+I felt I would rather have bitten out my tongue.  His jet-black, curly
+hair had turned iron-gray; he was scrupulously neat as ever, but
+frightfully threadbare.  His shiny boots were worn down at heel.  But he
+forgave me, and we drove off together in a hansom to dine on board my
+ship.  He went over her conscientiously, praised her heartily,
+congratulated me on my command with absolute sincerity.  At dinner, as I
+offered him wine and beer he shook his head, and as I sat looking at him
+interrogatively, muttered in an undertone:
+
+“I’ve given up all that.”
+
+After dinner we came again on deck.  It seemed as though he could not
+tear himself away from the ship.  We were fitting some new lower rigging,
+and he hung about, approving, suggesting, giving me advice in his old
+manner.  Twice he addressed me as “My boy,” and corrected himself quickly
+to “Captain.”  My mate was about to leave me (to get married), but I
+concealed the fact from Mr. B—.  I was afraid he would ask me to give him
+the berth in some ghastly jocular hint that I could not refuse to take.
+I was afraid.  It would have been impossible.  I could not have given
+orders to Mr. B—, and I am sure he would not have taken them from me very
+long.  He could not have managed that, though he had managed to break
+himself from drink—too late.
+
+He said good-bye at last.  As I watched his burly, bull-necked figure
+walk away up the street, I wondered with a sinking heart whether he had
+much more than the price of a night’s lodging in his pocket.  And I
+understood that if that very minute I were to call out after him, he
+would not even turn his head.  He, too, is no more than a shadow, but I
+seem to hear his words spoken on the moonlit deck of the old _Duke_ —:
+
+“Ports are no good—ships rot, men go to the devil!”
+
+
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+
+“Ships!” exclaimed an elderly seaman in clean shore togs.  “Ships”—and
+his keen glance, turning away from my face, ran along the vista of
+magnificent figure-heads that in the late seventies used to overhang in a
+serried rank the muddy pavement by the side of the New South Dock—“ships
+are all right; it’s the men in ’em. . .”
+
+Fifty hulls, at least, moulded on lines of beauty and speed—hulls of
+wood, of iron, expressing in their forms the highest achievement of
+modern ship-building—lay moored all in a row, stem to quay, as if
+assembled there for an exhibition, not of a great industry, but of a
+great art.  Their colours were gray, black, dark green, with a narrow
+strip of yellow moulding defining their sheer, or with a row of painted
+ports decking in warlike decoration their robust flanks of cargo-carriers
+that would know no triumph but of speed in carrying a burden, no glory
+other than of a long service, no victory but that of an endless, obscure
+contest with the sea.  The great empty hulls with swept holds, just out
+of dry-dock, with their paint glistening freshly, sat high-sided with
+ponderous dignity alongside the wooden jetties, looking more like
+unmovable buildings than things meant to go afloat; others, half loaded,
+far on the way to recover the true sea-physiognomy of a ship brought down
+to her load-line, looked more accessible.  Their less steeply slanting
+gangways seemed to invite the strolling sailors in search of a berth to
+walk on board and try “for a chance” with the chief mate, the guardian of
+a ship’s efficiency.  As if anxious to remain unperceived amongst their
+overtopping sisters, two or three “finished” ships floated low, with an
+air of straining at the leash of their level headfasts, exposing to view
+their cleared decks and covered hatches, prepared to drop stern first out
+of the labouring ranks, displaying the true comeliness of form which only
+her proper sea-trim gives to a ship.  And for a good quarter of a mile,
+from the dockyard gate to the farthest corner, where the old housed-in
+hulk, the _President_ (drill-ship, then, of the Naval Reserve), used to
+lie with her frigate side rubbing against the stone of the quay, above
+all these hulls, ready and unready, a hundred and fifty lofty masts, more
+or less, held out the web of their rigging like an immense net, in whose
+close mesh, black against the sky, the heavy yards seemed to be entangled
+and suspended.
+
+It was a sight.  The humblest craft that floats makes its appeal to a
+seaman by the faithfulness of her life; and this was the place where one
+beheld the aristocracy of ships.  It was a noble gathering of the fairest
+and the swiftest, each bearing at the bow the carved emblem of her name,
+as in a gallery of plaster-casts, figures of women with mural crowns,
+women with flowing robes, with gold fillets on their hair or blue scarves
+round their waists, stretching out rounded arms as if to point the way;
+heads of men helmeted or bare; full lengths of warriors, of kings, of
+statesmen, of lords and princesses, all white from top to toe; with here
+and there a dusky turbaned figure, bedizened in many colours, of some
+Eastern sultan or hero, all inclined forward under the slant of mighty
+bowsprits as if eager to begin another run of 11,000 miles in their
+leaning attitudes.  These were the fine figure-heads of the finest ships
+afloat.  But why, unless for the love of the life those effigies shared
+with us in their wandering impassivity, should one try to reproduce in
+words an impression of whose fidelity there can be no critic and no
+judge, since such an exhibition of the art of shipbuilding and the art of
+figure-head carving as was seen from year’s end to year’s end in the
+open-air gallery of the New South Dock no man’s eye shall behold again?
+All that patient, pale company of queens and princesses, of kings and
+warriors, of allegorical women, of heroines and statesmen and heathen
+gods, crowned, helmeted, bare-headed, has run for good off the sea
+stretching to the last above the tumbling foam their fair, rounded arms;
+holding out their spears, swords, shields, tridents in the same
+unwearied, striving forward pose.  And nothing remains but lingering
+perhaps in the memory of a few men, the sound of their names, vanished a
+long time ago from the first page of the great London dailies; from big
+posters in railway-stations and the doors of shipping offices; from the
+minds of sailors, dockmasters, pilots, and tugmen; from the hail of gruff
+voices and the flutter of signal flags exchanged between ships closing
+upon each other and drawing apart in the open immensity of the sea.
+
+The elderly, respectable seaman, withdrawing his gaze from that multitude
+of spars, gave me a glance to make sure of our fellowship in the craft
+and mystery of the sea.  We had met casually, and had got into contact as
+I had stopped near him, my attention being caught by the same peculiarity
+he was looking at in the rigging of an obviously new ship, a ship with
+her reputation all to make yet in the talk of the seamen who were to
+share their life with her.  Her name was already on their lips.  I had
+heard it uttered between two thick, red-necked fellows of the
+semi-nautical type at the Fenchurch Street Railway-station, where, in
+those days, the everyday male crowd was attired in jerseys and
+pilot-cloth mostly, and had the air of being more conversant with the
+times of high-water than with the times of the trains.  I had noticed
+that new ship’s name on the first page of my morning paper.  I had stared
+at the unfamiliar grouping of its letters, blue on white ground, on the
+advertisement-boards, whenever the train came to a standstill alongside
+one of the shabby, wooden, wharf-like platforms of the dock railway-line.
+She had been named, with proper observances, on the day she came off the
+stocks, no doubt, but she was very far yet from “having a name.”
+Untried, ignorant of the ways of the sea, she had been thrust amongst
+that renowned company of ships to load for her maiden voyage.  There was
+nothing to vouch for her soundness and the worth of her character, but
+the reputation of the building-yard whence she was launched headlong into
+the world of waters.  She looked modest to me.  I imagined her diffident,
+lying very quiet, with her side nestling shyly against the wharf to which
+she was made fast with very new lines, intimidated by the company of her
+tried and experienced sisters already familiar with all the violences of
+the ocean and the exacting love of men.  They had had more long voyages
+to make their names in than she had known weeks of carefully tended life,
+for a new ship receives as much attention as if she were a young bride.
+Even crabbed old dock-masters look at her with benevolent eyes.  In her
+shyness at the threshold of a laborious and uncertain life, where so much
+is expected of a ship, she could not have been better heartened and
+comforted, had she only been able to hear and understand, than by the
+tone of deep conviction in which my elderly, respectable seaman repeated
+the first part of his saying, “Ships are all right . . .”
+
+His civility prevented him from repeating the other, the bitter part.  It
+had occurred to him that it was perhaps indelicate to insist.  He had
+recognised in me a ship’s officer, very possibly looking for a berth like
+himself, and so far a comrade, but still a man belonging to that
+sparsely-peopled after-end of a ship, where a great part of her
+reputation as a “good ship,” in seaman’s parlance, is made or marred.
+
+“Can you say that of all ships without exception?” I asked, being in an
+idle mood, because, if an obvious ship’s officer, I was not, as a matter
+of fact, down at the docks to “look for a berth,” an occupation as
+engrossing as gambling, and as little favourable to the free exchange of
+ideas, besides being destructive of the kindly temper needed for casual
+intercourse with one’s fellow-creatures.
+
+“You can always put up with ’em,” opined the respectable seaman
+judicially.
+
+He was not averse from talking, either.  If he had come down to the dock
+to look for a berth, he did not seem oppressed by anxiety as to his
+chances.  He had the serenity of a man whose estimable character is
+fortunately expressed by his personal appearance in an unobtrusive, yet
+convincing, manner which no chief officer in want of hands could resist.
+And, true enough, I learned presently that the mate of the _Hyperion_ had
+“taken down” his name for quarter-master.  “We sign on Friday, and join
+next day for the morning tide,” he remarked, in a deliberate, careless
+tone, which contrasted strongly with his evident readiness to stand there
+yarning for an hour or so with an utter stranger.
+
+“_Hyperion_,” I said.  “I don’t remember ever seeing that ship anywhere.
+What sort of a name has she got?”
+
+It appeared from his discursive answer that she had not much of a name
+one way or another.  She was not very fast.  It took no fool, though, to
+steer her straight, he believed.  Some years ago he had seen her in
+Calcutta, and he remembered being told by somebody then, that on her
+passage up the river she had carried away both her hawse-pipes.  But that
+might have been the pilot’s fault.  Just now, yarning with the
+apprentices on board, he had heard that this very voyage, brought up in
+the Downs, outward bound, she broke her sheer, struck adrift, and lost an
+anchor and chain.  But that might have occurred through want of careful
+tending in a tideway.  All the same, this looked as though she were
+pretty hard on her ground-tackle.  Didn’t it?  She seemed a heavy ship to
+handle, anyway.  For the rest, as she had a new captain and a new mate
+this voyage, he understood, one couldn’t say how she would turn out. . . .
+
+In such marine shore-talk as this is the name of a ship slowly
+established, her fame made for her, the tale of her qualities and of her
+defects kept, her idiosyncrasies commented upon with the zest of personal
+gossip, her achievements made much of, her faults glossed over as things
+that, being without remedy in our imperfect world, should not be dwelt
+upon too much by men who, with the help of ships, wrest out a bitter
+living from the rough grasp of the sea.  All that talk makes up her
+“name,” which is handed over from one crew to another without bitterness,
+without animosity, with the indulgence of mutual dependence, and with the
+feeling of close association in the exercise of her perfections and in
+the danger of her defects.
+
+This feeling explains men’s pride in ships.  “Ships are all right,” as my
+middle-aged, respectable quartermaster said with much conviction and some
+irony; but they are not exactly what men make them.  They have their own
+nature; they can of themselves minister to our self-esteem by the demand
+their qualities make upon our skill and their shortcomings upon our
+hardiness and endurance.  Which is the more flattering exaction it is
+hard to say; but there is the fact that in listening for upwards of
+twenty years to the sea-talk that goes on afloat and ashore I have never
+detected the true note of animosity.  I won’t deny that at sea,
+sometimes, the note of profanity was audible enough in those chiding
+interpellations a wet, cold, weary seaman addresses to his ship, and in
+moments of exasperation is disposed to extend to all ships that ever were
+launched—to the whole everlastingly exacting brood that swims in deep
+waters.  And I have heard curses launched at the unstable element itself,
+whose fascination, outlasting the accumulated experience of ages, had
+captured him as it had captured the generations of his forebears.
+
+For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore)
+have professed to feel for it, for all the celebrations it had been the
+object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man.  At
+most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness, and playing the
+part of dangerous abettor of world-wide ambitions.  Faithful to no race
+after the manner of the kindly earth, receiving no impress from valour
+and toil and self-sacrifice, recognising no finality of dominion, the sea
+has never adopted the cause of its masters like those lands where the
+victorious nations of mankind have taken root, rocking their cradles and
+setting up their gravestones.  He—man or people—who, putting his trust in
+the friendship of the sea, neglects the strength and cunning of his right
+hand, is a fool!  As if it were too great, too mighty for common virtues,
+the ocean has no compassion, no faith, no law, no memory.  Its fickleness
+is to be held true to men’s purposes only by an undaunted resolution and
+by a sleepless, armed, jealous vigilance, in which, perhaps, there has
+always been more hate than love.  _Odi et amo_ may well be the confession
+of those who consciously or blindly have surrendered their existence to
+the fascination of the sea.  All the tempestuous passions of mankind’s
+young days, the love of loot and the love of glory, the love of adventure
+and the love of danger, with the great love of the unknown and vast
+dreams of dominion and power, have passed like images reflected from a
+mirror, leaving no record upon the mysterious face of the sea.
+Impenetrable and heartless, the sea has given nothing of itself to the
+suitors for its precarious favours.  Unlike the earth, it cannot be
+subjugated at any cost of patience and toil.  For all its fascination
+that has lured so many to a violent death, its immensity has never been
+loved as the mountains, the plains, the desert itself, have been loved.
+Indeed, I suspect that, leaving aside the protestations and tributes of
+writers who, one is safe in saying, care for little else in the world
+than the rhythm of their lines and the cadence of their phrase, the love
+of the sea, to which some men and nations confess so readily, is a
+complex sentiment wherein pride enters for much, necessity for not a
+little, and the love of ships—the untiring servants of our hopes and our
+self-esteem—for the best and most genuine part.  For the hundreds who
+have reviled the sea, beginning with Shakespeare in the line—
+
+    “More fell than hunger, anguish, or the sea,”
+
+down to the last obscure sea-dog of the “old model,” having but few words
+and still fewer thoughts, there could not be found, I believe, one sailor
+who has ever coupled a curse with the good or bad name of a ship.  If
+ever his profanity, provoked by the hardships of the sea, went so far as
+to touch his ship, it would be lightly, as a hand may, without sin, be
+laid in the way of kindness on a woman.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+
+The love that is given to ships is profoundly different from the love men
+feel for every other work of their hands—the love they bear to their
+houses, for instance—because it is untainted by the pride of possession.
+The pride of skill, the pride of responsibility, the pride of endurance
+there may be, but otherwise it is a disinterested sentiment.  No seaman
+ever cherished a ship, even if she belonged to him, merely because of the
+profit she put in his pocket.  No one, I think, ever did; for a
+ship-owner, even of the best, has always been outside the pale of that
+sentiment embracing in a feeling of intimate, equal fellowship the ship
+and the man, backing each other against the implacable, if sometimes
+dissembled, hostility of their world of waters.  The sea—this truth must
+be confessed—has no generosity.  No display of manly qualities—courage,
+hardihood, endurance, faithfulness—has ever been known to touch its
+irresponsible consciousness of power.  The ocean has the conscienceless
+temper of a savage autocrat spoiled by much adulation.  He cannot brook
+the slightest appearance of defiance, and has remained the irreconcilable
+enemy of ships and men ever since ships and men had the unheard of
+audacity to go afloat together in the face of his frown.  From that day
+he has gone on swallowing up fleets and men without his resentment being
+glutted by the number of victims—by so many wrecked ships and wrecked
+lives.  To-day, as ever, he is ready to beguile and betray, to smash and
+to drown the incorrigible optimism of men who, backed by the fidelity of
+ships, are trying to wrest from him the fortune of their house, the
+dominion of their world, or only a dole of food for their hunger.  If not
+always in the hot mood to smash, he is always stealthily ready for a
+drowning.  The most amazing wonder of the deep is its unfathomable
+cruelty.
+
+I felt its dread for the first time in mid-Atlantic one day, many years
+ago, when we took off the crew of a Danish brig homeward bound from the
+West Indies.  A thin, silvery mist softened the calm and majestic
+splendour of light without shadows—seemed to render the sky less remote
+and the ocean less immense.  It was one of the days, when the might of
+the sea appears indeed lovable, like the nature of a strong man in
+moments of quiet intimacy.  At sunrise we had made out a black speck to
+the westward, apparently suspended high up in the void behind a stirring,
+shimmering veil of silvery blue gauze that seemed at times to stir and
+float in the breeze which fanned us slowly along.  The peace of that
+enchanting forenoon was so profound, so untroubled, that it seemed that
+every word pronounced loudly on our deck would penetrate to the very
+heart of that infinite mystery born from the conjunction of water and
+sky.  We did not raise our voices.  “A water-logged derelict, I think,
+sir,” said the second officer quietly, coming down from aloft with the
+binoculars in their case slung across his shoulders; and our captain,
+without a word, signed to the helmsman to steer for the black speck.
+Presently we made out a low, jagged stump sticking up forward—all that
+remained of her departed masts.
+
+The captain was expatiating in a low conversational tone to the chief
+mate upon the danger of these derelicts, and upon his dread of coming
+upon them at night, when suddenly a man forward screamed out, “There’s
+people on board of her, sir!  I see them!” in a most extraordinary
+voice—a voice never heard before in our ship; the amazing voice of a
+stranger.  It gave the signal for a sudden tumult of shouts.  The watch
+below ran up the forecastle head in a body, the cook dashed out of the
+galley.  Everybody saw the poor fellows now.  They were there!  And all
+at once our ship, which had the well-earned name of being without a rival
+for speed in light winds, seemed to us to have lost the power of motion,
+as if the sea, becoming viscous, had clung to her sides.  And yet she
+moved.  Immensity, the inseparable companion of a ship’s life, chose that
+day to breathe upon her as gently as a sleeping child.  The clamour of
+our excitement had died out, and our living ship, famous for never losing
+steerage way as long as there was air enough to float a feather, stole,
+without a ripple, silent and white as a ghost, towards her mutilated and
+wounded sister, come upon at the point of death in the sunlit haze of a
+calm day at sea.
+
+With the binoculars glued to his eyes, the captain said in a quavering
+tone: “They are waving to us with something aft there.”  He put down the
+glasses on the skylight brusquely, and began to walk about the poop.  “A
+shirt or a flag,” he ejaculated irritably.  “Can’t make it out. . . Some
+damn rag or other!”  He took a few more turns on the poop, glancing down
+over the rail now and then to see how fast we were moving.  His nervous
+footsteps rang sharply in the quiet of the ship, where the other men, all
+looking the same way, had forgotten themselves in a staring immobility.
+“This will never do!” he cried out suddenly.  “Lower the boats at once!
+Down with them!”
+
+Before I jumped into mine he took me aside, as being an inexperienced
+junior, for a word of warning:
+
+“You look out as you come alongside that she doesn’t take you down with
+her.  You understand?”
+
+He murmured this confidentially, so that none of the men at the falls
+should overhear, and I was shocked.  “Heavens! as if in such an emergency
+one stopped to think of danger!” I exclaimed to myself mentally, in scorn
+of such cold-blooded caution.
+
+It takes many lessons to make a real seaman, and I got my rebuke at once.
+My experienced commander seemed in one searching glance to read my
+thoughts on my ingenuous face.
+
+“What you’re going for is to save life, not to drown your boat’s crew for
+nothing,” he growled severely in my ear.  But as we shoved off he leaned
+over and cried out: “It all rests on the power of your arms, men.  Give
+way for life!”
+
+We made a race of it, and I would never have believed that a common
+boat’s crew of a merchantman could keep up so much determined fierceness
+in the regular swing of their stroke.  What our captain had clearly
+perceived before we left had become plain to all of us since.  The issue
+of our enterprise hung on a hair above that abyss of waters which will
+not give up its dead till the Day of Judgment.  It was a race of two
+ship’s boats matched against Death for a prize of nine men’s lives, and
+Death had a long start.  We saw the crew of the brig from afar working at
+the pumps—still pumping on that wreck, which already had settled so far
+down that the gentle, low swell, over which our boats rose and fell
+easily without a check to their speed, welling up almost level with her
+head-rails, plucked at the ends of broken gear swinging desolately under
+her naked bowsprit.
+
+We could not, in all conscience, have picked out a better day for our
+regatta had we had the free choice of all the days that ever dawned upon
+the lonely struggles and solitary agonies of ships since the Norse rovers
+first steered to the westward against the run of Atlantic waves.  It was
+a very good race.  At the finish there was not an oar’s length between
+the first and second boat, with Death coming in a good third on the top
+of the very next smooth swell, for all one knew to the contrary.  The
+scuppers of the brig gurgled softly all together when the water rising
+against her sides subsided sleepily with a low wash, as if playing about
+an immovable rock.  Her bulwarks were gone fore and aft, and one saw her
+bare deck low-lying like a raft and swept clean of boats, spars,
+houses—of everything except the ringbolts and the heads of the pumps.  I
+had one dismal glimpse of it as I braced myself up to receive upon my
+breast the last man to leave her, the captain, who literally let himself
+fall into my arms.
+
+It had been a weirdly silent rescue—a rescue without a hail, without a
+single uttered word, without a gesture or a sign, without a conscious
+exchange of glances.  Up to the very last moment those on board stuck to
+their pumps, which spouted two clear streams of water upon their bare
+feet.  Their brown skin showed through the rents of their shirts; and the
+two small bunches of half-naked, tattered men went on bowing from the
+waist to each other in their back-breaking labour, up and down, absorbed,
+with no time for a glance over the shoulder at the help that was coming
+to them.  As we dashed, unregarded, alongside a voice let out one, only
+one hoarse howl of command, and then, just as they stood, without caps,
+with the salt drying gray in the wrinkles and folds of their hairy,
+haggard faces, blinking stupidly at us their red eyelids, they made a
+bolt away from the handles, tottering and jostling against each other,
+and positively flung themselves over upon our very heads.  The clatter
+they made tumbling into the boats had an extraordinarily destructive
+effect upon the illusion of tragic dignity our self-esteem had thrown
+over the contests of mankind with the sea.  On that exquisite day of
+gently breathing peace and veiled sunshine perished my romantic love to
+what men’s imagination had proclaimed the most august aspect of Nature.
+The cynical indifference of the sea to the merits of human suffering and
+courage, laid bare in this ridiculous, panic-tainted performance extorted
+from the dire extremity of nine good and honourable seamen, revolted me.
+I saw the duplicity of the sea’s most tender mood.  It was so because it
+could not help itself, but the awed respect of the early days was gone.
+I felt ready to smile bitterly at its enchanting charm and glare
+viciously at its furies.  In a moment, before we shoved off, I had looked
+coolly at the life of my choice.  Its illusions were gone, but its
+fascination remained.  I had become a seaman at last.
+
+We pulled hard for a quarter of an hour, then laid on our oars waiting
+for our ship.  She was coming down on us with swelling sails, looking
+delicately tall and exquisitely noble through the mist.  The captain of
+the brig, who sat in the stern sheets by my side with his face in his
+hands, raised his head and began to speak with a sort of sombre
+volubility.  They had lost their masts and sprung a leak in a hurricane;
+drifted for weeks, always at the pumps, met more bad weather; the ships
+they sighted failed to make them out, the leak gained upon them slowly,
+and the seas had left them nothing to make a raft of.  It was very hard
+to see ship after ship pass by at a distance, “as if everybody had agreed
+that we must be left to drown,” he added.  But they went on trying to
+keep the brig afloat as long as possible, and working the pumps
+constantly on insufficient food, mostly raw, till “yesterday evening,” he
+continued monotonously, “just as the sun went down, the men’s hearts
+broke.”
+
+He made an almost imperceptible pause here, and went on again with
+exactly the same intonation:
+
+“They told me the brig could not be saved, and they thought they had done
+enough for themselves.  I said nothing to that.  It was true.  It was no
+mutiny.  I had nothing to say to them.  They lay about aft all night, as
+still as so many dead men.  I did not lie down.  I kept a look-out.  When
+the first light came I saw your ship at once.  I waited for more light;
+the breeze began to fail on my face.  Then I shouted out as loud as I was
+able, ‘Look at that ship!’ but only two men got up very slowly and came
+to me.  At first only we three stood alone, for a long time, watching you
+coming down to us, and feeling the breeze drop to a calm almost; but
+afterwards others, too, rose, one after another, and by-and-by I had all
+my crew behind me.  I turned round and said to them that they could see
+the ship was coming our way, but in this small breeze she might come too
+late after all, unless we turned to and tried to keep the brig afloat
+long enough to give you time to save us all.  I spoke like that to them,
+and then I gave the command to man the pumps.”
+
+He gave the command, and gave the example, too, by going himself to the
+handles, but it seems that these men did actually hang back for a moment,
+looking at each other dubiously before they followed him.  “He! he! he!”
+He broke out into a most unexpected, imbecile, pathetic, nervous little
+giggle.  “Their hearts were broken so!  They had been played with too
+long,” he explained apologetically, lowering his eyes, and became silent.
+
+Twenty-five years is a long time—a quarter of a century is a dim and
+distant past; but to this day I remember the dark-brown feet, hands, and
+faces of two of these men whose hearts had been broken by the sea.  They
+were lying very still on their sides on the bottom boards between the
+thwarts, curled up like dogs.  My boat’s crew, leaning over the looms of
+their oars, stared and listened as if at the play.  The master of the
+brig looked up suddenly to ask me what day it was.
+
+They had lost the date.  When I told him it was Sunday, the 22nd, he
+frowned, making some mental calculation, then nodded twice sadly to
+himself, staring at nothing.
+
+His aspect was miserably unkempt and wildly sorrowful.  Had it not been
+for the unquenchable candour of his blue eyes, whose unhappy, tired
+glance every moment sought his abandoned, sinking brig, as if it could
+find rest nowhere else, he would have appeared mad.  But he was too
+simple to go mad, too simple with that manly simplicity which alone can
+bear men unscathed in mind and body through an encounter with the deadly
+playfulness of the sea or with its less abominable fury.
+
+Neither angry, nor playful, nor smiling, it enveloped our distant ship
+growing bigger as she neared us, our boats with the rescued men and the
+dismantled hull of the brig we were leaving behind, in the large and
+placid embrace of its quietness, half lost in the fair haze, as if in a
+dream of infinite and tender clemency.  There was no frown, no wrinkle on
+its face, not a ripple.  And the run of the slight swell was so smooth
+that it resembled the graceful undulation of a piece of shimmering gray
+silk shot with gleams of green.  We pulled an easy stroke; but when the
+master of the brig, after a glance over his shoulder, stood up with a low
+exclamation, my men feathered their oars instinctively, without an order,
+and the boat lost her way.
+
+He was steadying himself on my shoulder with a strong grip, while his
+other arm, flung up rigidly, pointed a denunciatory finger at the immense
+tranquillity of the ocean.  After his first exclamation, which stopped
+the swing of our oars, he made no sound, but his whole attitude seemed to
+cry out an indignant “Behold!” . . . I could not imagine what vision of
+evil had come to him.  I was startled, and the amazing energy of his
+immobilized gesture made my heart beat faster with the anticipation of
+something monstrous and unsuspected.  The stillness around us became
+crushing.
+
+For a moment the succession of silky undulations ran on innocently.  I
+saw each of them swell up the misty line of the horizon, far, far away
+beyond the derelict brig, and the next moment, with a slight friendly
+toss of our boat, it had passed under us and was gone.  The lulling
+cadence of the rise and fall, the invariable gentleness of this
+irresistible force, the great charm of the deep waters, warmed my breast
+deliciously, like the subtle poison of a love-potion.  But all this
+lasted only a few soothing seconds before I jumped up too, making the
+boat roll like the veriest landlubber.
+
+Something startling, mysterious, hastily confused, was taking place.  I
+watched it with incredulous and fascinated awe, as one watches the
+confused, swift movements of some deed of violence done in the dark.  As
+if at a given signal, the run of the smooth undulations seemed checked
+suddenly around the brig.  By a strange optical delusion the whole sea
+appeared to rise upon her in one overwhelming heave of its silky surface,
+where in one spot a smother of foam broke out ferociously.  And then the
+effort subsided.  It was all over, and the smooth swell ran on as before
+from the horizon in uninterrupted cadence of motion, passing under us
+with a slight friendly toss of our boat.  Far away, where the brig had
+been, an angry white stain undulating on the surface of steely-gray
+waters, shot with gleams of green, diminished swiftly, without a hiss,
+like a patch of pure snow melting in the sun.  And the great stillness
+after this initiation into the sea’s implacable hate seemed full of dread
+thoughts and shadows of disaster.
+
+“Gone!” ejaculated from the depths of his chest my bowman in a final
+tone.  He spat in his hands, and took a better grip on his oar.  The
+captain of the brig lowered his rigid arm slowly, and looked at our faces
+in a solemnly conscious silence, which called upon us to share in his
+simple-minded, marvelling awe.  All at once he sat down by my side, and
+leaned forward earnestly at my boat’s crew, who, swinging together in a
+long, easy stroke, kept their eyes fixed upon him faithfully.
+
+“No ship could have done so well,” he addressed them firmly, after a
+moment of strained silence, during which he seemed with trembling lips to
+seek for words fit to bear such high testimony.  “She was small, but she
+was good.  I had no anxiety.  She was strong.  Last voyage I had my wife
+and two children in her.  No other ship could have stood so long the
+weather she had to live through for days and days before we got dismasted
+a fortnight ago.  She was fairly worn out, and that’s all.  You may
+believe me.  She lasted under us for days and days, but she could not
+last for ever.  It was long enough.  I am glad it is over.  No better
+ship was ever left to sink at sea on such a day as this.”
+
+He was competent to pronounce the funereal oration of a ship, this son of
+ancient sea-folk, whose national existence, so little stained by the
+excesses of manly virtues, had demanded nothing but the merest foothold
+from the earth.  By the merits of his sea-wise forefathers and by the
+artlessness of his heart, he was made fit to deliver this excellent
+discourse.  There was nothing wanting in its orderly arrangement—neither
+piety nor faith, nor the tribute of praise due to the worthy dead, with
+the edifying recital of their achievement.  She had lived, he had loved
+her; she had suffered, and he was glad she was at rest.  It was an
+excellent discourse.  And it was orthodox, too, in its fidelity to the
+cardinal article of a seaman’s faith, of which it was a single-minded
+confession.  “Ships are all right.”  They are.  They who live with the
+sea have got to hold by that creed first and last; and it came to me, as
+I glanced at him sideways, that some men were not altogether unworthy in
+honour and conscience to pronounce the funereal eulogium of a ship’s
+constancy in life and death.
+
+After this, sitting by my side with his loosely-clasped hands hanging
+between his knees, he uttered no word, made no movement till the shadow
+of our ship’s sails fell on the boat, when, at the loud cheer greeting
+the return of the victors with their prize, he lifted up his troubled
+face with a faint smile of pathetic indulgence.  This smile of the worthy
+descendant of the most ancient sea-folk whose audacity and hardihood had
+left no trace of greatness and glory upon the waters, completed the cycle
+of my initiation.  There was an infinite depth of hereditary wisdom in
+its pitying sadness.  It made the hearty bursts of cheering sound like a
+childish noise of triumph.  Our crew shouted with immense
+confidence—honest souls!  As if anybody could ever make sure of having
+prevailed against the sea, which has betrayed so many ships of great
+“name,” so many proud men, so many towering ambitions of fame, power,
+wealth, greatness!
+
+As I brought the boat under the falls my captain, in high good-humour,
+leaned over, spreading his red and freckled elbows on the rail, and
+called down to me sarcastically, out of the depths of his cynic
+philosopher’s beard:
+
+“So you have brought the boat back after all, have you?”
+
+Sarcasm was “his way,” and the most that can be said for it is that it
+was natural.  This did not make it lovable.  But it is decorous and
+expedient to fall in with one’s commander’s way.  “Yes.  I brought the
+boat back all right, sir,” I answered.  And the good man believed me.  It
+was not for him to discern upon me the marks of my recent initiation.
+And yet I was not exactly the same youngster who had taken the boat
+away—all impatience for a race against death, with the prize of nine
+men’s lives at the end.
+
+Already I looked with other eyes upon the sea.  I knew it capable of
+betraying the generous ardour of youth as implacably as, indifferent to
+evil and good, it would have betrayed the basest greed or the noblest
+heroism.  My conception of its magnanimous greatness was gone.  And I
+looked upon the true sea—the sea that plays with men till their hearts
+are broken, and wears stout ships to death.  Nothing can touch the
+brooding bitterness of its heart.  Open to all and faithful to none, it
+exercises its fascination for the undoing of the best.  To love it is not
+well.  It knows no bond of plighted troth, no fidelity to misfortune, to
+long companionship, to long devotion.  The promise it holds out
+perpetually is very great; but the only secret of its possession is
+strength, strength—the jealous, sleepless strength of a man guarding a
+coveted treasure within his gates.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+
+THE cradle of oversea traffic and of the art of naval combats, the
+Mediterranean, apart from all the associations of adventure and glory,
+the common heritage of all mankind, makes a tender appeal to a seaman.
+It has sheltered the infancy of his craft.  He looks upon it as a man may
+look at a vast nursery in an old, old mansion where innumerable
+generations of his own people have learned to walk.  I say his own people
+because, in a sense, all sailors belong to one family: all are descended
+from that adventurous and shaggy ancestor who, bestriding a shapeless log
+and paddling with a crooked branch, accomplished the first coasting-trip
+in a sheltered bay ringing with the admiring howls of his tribe.  It is a
+matter of regret that all those brothers in craft and feeling, whose
+generations have learned to walk a ship’s deck in that nursery, have been
+also more than once fiercely engaged in cutting each other’s throats
+there.  But life, apparently, has such exigencies.  Without human
+propensity to murder and other sorts of unrighteousness there would have
+been no historical heroism.  It is a consoling reflection.  And then, if
+one examines impartially the deeds of violence, they appear of but small
+consequence.  From Salamis to Actium, through Lepanto and the Nile to the
+naval massacre of Navarino, not to mention other armed encounters of
+lesser interest, all the blood heroically spilt into the Mediterranean
+has not stained with a single trail of purple the deep azure of its
+classic waters.
+
+Of course, it may be argued that battles have shaped the destiny of
+mankind.  The question whether they have shaped it well would remain
+open, however.  But it would be hardly worth discussing.  It is very
+probable that, had the Battle of Salamis never been fought, the face of
+the world would have been much as we behold it now, fashioned by the
+mediocre inspiration and the short-sighted labours of men.  From a long
+and miserable experience of suffering, injustice, disgrace and aggression
+the nations of the earth are mostly swayed by fear—fear of the sort that
+a little cheap oratory turns easily to rage, hate, and violence.
+Innocent, guileless fear has been the cause of many wars.  Not, of
+course, the fear of war itself, which, in the evolution of sentiments and
+ideas, has come to be regarded at last as a half-mystic and glorious
+ceremony with certain fashionable rites and preliminary incantations,
+wherein the conception of its true nature has been lost.  To apprehend
+the true aspect, force, and morality of war as a natural function of
+mankind one requires a feather in the hair and a ring in the nose, or,
+better still, teeth filed to a point and a tattooed breast.
+Unfortunately, a return to such simple ornamentation is impossible.  We
+are bound to the chariot of progress.  There is no going back; and, as
+bad luck would have it, our civilization, which has done so much for the
+comfort and adornment of our bodies and the elevation of our minds, has
+made lawful killing frightfully and needlessly expensive.
+
+The whole question of improved armaments has been approached by the
+governments of the earth in a spirit of nervous and unreflecting haste,
+whereas the right way was lying plainly before them, and had only to be
+pursued with calm determination.  The learned vigils and labours of a
+certain class of inventors should have been rewarded with honourable
+liberality as justice demanded; and the bodies of the inventors should
+have been blown to pieces by means of their own perfected explosives and
+improved weapons with extreme publicity as the commonest prudence
+dictated.  By this method the ardour of research in that direction would
+have been restrained without infringing the sacred privileges of science.
+For the lack of a little cool thinking in our guides and masters this
+course has not been followed, and a beautiful simplicity has been
+sacrificed for no real advantage.  A frugal mind cannot defend itself
+from considerable bitterness when reflecting that at the Battle of Actium
+(which was fought for no less a stake than the dominion of the world) the
+fleet of Octavianus Cæsar and the fleet of Antonius, including the
+Egyptian division and Cleopatra’s galley with purple sails, probably cost
+less than two modern battleships, or, as the modern naval book-jargon has
+it, two capital units.  But no amount of lubberly book-jargon can
+disguise a fact well calculated to afflict the soul of every sound
+economist.  It is not likely that the Mediterranean will ever behold a
+battle with a greater issue; but when the time comes for another
+historical fight its bottom will be enriched as never before by a
+quantity of jagged scrap-iron, paid for at pretty nearly its weight of
+gold by the deluded populations inhabiting the isles and continents of
+this planet.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+
+Happy he who, like Ulysses, has made an adventurous voyage; and there is
+no such sea for adventurous voyages as the Mediterranean—the inland sea
+which the ancients looked upon as so vast and so full of wonders.  And,
+indeed, it was terrible and wonderful; for it is we alone who, swayed by
+the audacity of our minds and the tremors of our hearts, are the sole
+artisans of all the wonder and romance of the world.
+
+It was for the Mediterranean sailors that fair-haired sirens sang among
+the black rocks seething in white foam and mysterious voices spoke in the
+darkness above the moving wave—voices menacing, seductive, or prophetic,
+like that voice heard at the beginning of the Christian era by the master
+of an African vessel in the Gulf of Syrta, whose calm nights are full of
+strange murmurs and flitting shadows.  It called him by name, bidding him
+go and tell all men that the great god Pan was dead.  But the great
+legend of the Mediterranean, the legend of traditional song and grave
+history, lives, fascinating and immortal, in our minds.
+
+The dark and fearful sea of the subtle Ulysses’ wanderings, agitated by
+the wrath of Olympian gods, harbouring on its isles the fury of strange
+monsters and the wiles of strange women; the highway of heroes and sages,
+of warriors, pirates, and saints; the workaday sea of Carthaginian
+merchants and the pleasure lake of the Roman Cæsars, claims the
+veneration of every seaman as the historical home of that spirit of open
+defiance against the great waters of the earth which is the very soul of
+his calling.  Issuing thence to the west and south, as a youth leaves the
+shelter of his parental house, this spirit found the way to the Indies,
+discovered the coasts of a new continent, and traversed at last the
+immensity of the great Pacific, rich in groups of islands remote and
+mysterious like the constellations of the sky.
+
+The first impulse of navigation took its visible form in that tideless
+basin freed from hidden shoals and treacherous currents, as if in tender
+regard for the infancy of the art.  The steep shores of the Mediterranean
+favoured the beginners in one of humanity’s most daring enterprises, and
+the enchanting inland sea of classic adventure has led mankind gently
+from headland to headland, from bay to bay, from island to island, out
+into the promise of world-wide oceans beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX.
+
+
+The charm of the Mediterranean dwells in the unforgettable flavour of my
+early days, and to this hour this sea, upon which the Romans alone ruled
+without dispute, has kept for me the fascination of youthful romance.
+The very first Christmas night I ever spent away from land was employed
+in running before a Gulf of Lions gale, which made the old ship groan in
+every timber as she skipped before it over the short seas until we
+brought her to, battered and out of breath, under the lee of Majorca,
+where the smooth water was torn by fierce cat’s-paws under a very stormy
+sky.
+
+We—or, rather, they, for I had hardly had two glimpses of salt water in
+my life till then—kept her standing off and on all that day, while I
+listened for the first time with the curiosity of my tender years to the
+song of the wind in a ship’s rigging.  The monotonous and vibrating note
+was destined to grow into the intimacy of the heart, pass into blood and
+bone, accompany the thoughts and acts of two full decades, remain to
+haunt like a reproach the peace of the quiet fireside, and enter into the
+very texture of respectable dreams dreamed safely under a roof of rafters
+and tiles.  The wind was fair, but that day we ran no more.
+
+The thing (I will not call her a ship twice in the same half-hour)
+leaked.  She leaked fully, generously, overflowingly, all over—like a
+basket.  I took an enthusiastic part in the excitement caused by that
+last infirmity of noble ships, without concerning myself much with the
+why or the wherefore.  The surmise of my maturer years is that, bored by
+her interminable life, the venerable antiquity was simply yawning with
+ennui at every seam.  But at the time I did not know; I knew generally
+very little, and least of all what I was doing in that _galère_.
+
+I remember that, exactly as in the comedy of Molière, my uncle asked the
+precise question in the very words—not of my confidential valet, however,
+but across great distances of land, in a letter whose mocking but
+indulgent turn ill concealed his almost paternal anxiety.  I fancy I
+tried to convey to him my (utterly unfounded) impression that the West
+Indies awaited my coming.  I had to go there.  It was a sort of mystic
+conviction—something in the nature of a call.  But it was difficult to
+state intelligibly the grounds of this belief to that man of rigorous
+logic, if of infinite charity.
+
+The truth must have been that, all unversed in the arts of the wily
+Greek, the deceiver of gods, the lover of strange women, the evoker of
+bloodthirsty shades, I yet longed for the beginning of my own obscure
+Odyssey, which, as was proper for a modern, should unroll its wonders and
+terrors beyond the Pillars of Hercules.  The disdainful ocean did not
+open wide to swallow up my audacity, though the ship, the ridiculous and
+ancient _galère_ of my folly, the old, weary, disenchanted sugar-waggon,
+seemed extremely disposed to open out and swallow up as much salt water
+as she could hold.  This, if less grandiose, would have been as final a
+catastrophe.
+
+But no catastrophe occurred.  I lived to watch on a strange shore a black
+and youthful Nausicaa, with a joyous train of attendant maidens, carrying
+baskets of linen to a clear stream overhung by the heads of slender
+palm-trees.  The vivid colours of their draped raiment and the gold of
+their earrings invested with a barbaric and regal magnificence their
+figures, stepping out freely in a shower of broken sunshine.  The
+whiteness of their teeth was still more dazzling than the splendour of
+jewels at their ears.  The shaded side of the ravine gleamed with their
+smiles.  They were as unabashed as so many princesses, but, alas! not one
+of them was the daughter of a jet-black sovereign.  Such was my
+abominable luck in being born by the mere hair’s breadth of twenty-five
+centuries too late into a world where kings have been growing scarce with
+scandalous rapidity, while the few who remain have adopted the
+uninteresting manners and customs of simple millionaires.  Obviously it
+was a vain hope in 187– to see the ladies of a royal household walk in
+chequered sunshine, with baskets of linen on their heads, to the banks of
+a clear stream overhung by the starry fronds of palm-trees.  It was a
+vain hope.  If I did not ask myself whether, limited by such discouraging
+impossibilities, life were still worth living, it was only because I had
+then before me several other pressing questions, some of which have
+remained unanswered to this day.  The resonant, laughing voices of these
+gorgeous maidens scared away the multitude of humming-birds, whose
+delicate wings wreathed with the mist of their vibration the tops of
+flowering bushes.
+
+No, they were not princesses.  Their unrestrained laughter filling the
+hot, fern-clad ravine had a soulless limpidity, as of wild, inhuman
+dwellers in tropical woodlands.  Following the example of certain prudent
+travellers, I withdrew unseen—and returned, not much wiser, to the
+Mediterranean, the sea of classic adventures.
+
+
+
+
+XL.
+
+
+IT was written that there, in the nursery of our navigating ancestors, I
+should learn to walk in the ways of my craft and grow in the love of the
+sea, blind as young love often is, but absorbing and disinterested as all
+true love must be.  I demanded nothing from it—not even adventure.  In
+this I showed, perhaps, more intuitive wisdom than high self-denial.  No
+adventure ever came to one for the asking.  He who starts on a deliberate
+quest of adventure goes forth but to gather dead-sea fruit, unless,
+indeed, he be beloved of the gods and great amongst heroes, like that
+most excellent cavalier Don Quixote de la Mancha.  By us ordinary mortals
+of a mediocre animus that is only too anxious to pass by wicked giants
+for so many honest windmills, adventures are entertained like visiting
+angels.  They come upon our complacency unawares.  As unbidden guests are
+apt to do, they often come at inconvenient times.  And we are glad to let
+them go unrecognised, without any acknowledgment of so high a favour.
+After many years, on looking back from the middle turn of life’s way at
+the events of the past, which, like a friendly crowd, seem to gaze sadly
+after us hastening towards the Cimmerian shore, we may see here and
+there, in the gray throng, some figure glowing with a faint radiance, as
+though it had caught all the light of our already crepuscular sky.  And
+by this glow we may recognise the faces of our true adventures, of the
+once unbidden guests entertained unawares in our young days.
+
+If the Mediterranean, the venerable (and sometimes atrociously
+ill-tempered) nurse of all navigators, was to rock my youth, the
+providing of the cradle necessary for that operation was entrusted by
+Fate to the most casual assemblage of irresponsible young men (all,
+however, older than myself) that, as if drunk with Provençal sunshine,
+frittered life away in joyous levity on the model of Balzac’s “Histoire
+des Treize” qualified by a dash of romance _de cape et d’épée_.
+
+She who was my cradle in those years had been built on the River of
+Savona by a famous builder of boats, was rigged in Corsica by another
+good man, and was described on her papers as a ‘tartane’ of sixty tons.
+In reality, she was a true balancelle, with two short masts raking
+forward and two curved yards, each as long as her hull; a true child of
+the Latin lake, with a spread of two enormous sails resembling the
+pointed wings on a sea-bird’s slender body, and herself, like a bird
+indeed, skimming rather than sailing the seas.
+
+Her name was the _Tremolino_.  How is this to be translated?  The
+_Quiverer_?  What a name to give the pluckiest little craft that ever
+dipped her sides in angry foam!  I had felt her, it is true, trembling
+for nights and days together under my feet, but it was with the
+high-strung tenseness of her faithful courage.  In her short, but
+brilliant, career she has taught me nothing, but she has given me
+everything.  I owe to her the awakened love for the sea that, with the
+quivering of her swift little body and the humming of the wind under the
+foot of her lateen sails, stole into my heart with a sort of gentle
+violence, and brought my imagination under its despotic sway.  The
+_Tremolino_!  To this day I cannot utter or even write that name without
+a strange tightening of the breast and the gasp of mingled delight and
+dread of one’s first passionate experience.
+
+
+
+
+XLI.
+
+
+We four formed (to use a term well understood nowadays in every social
+sphere) a “syndicate” owning the _Tremolino_: an international and
+astonishing syndicate.  And we were all ardent Royalists of the
+snow-white Legitimist complexion—Heaven only knows why!  In all
+associations of men there is generally one who, by the authority of age
+and of a more experienced wisdom, imparts a collective character to the
+whole set.  If I mention that the oldest of us was very old, extremely
+old—nearly thirty years old—and that he used to declare with gallant
+carelessness, “I live by my sword,” I think I have given enough
+information on the score of our collective wisdom.  He was a North
+Carolinian gentleman, J. M. K. B. were the initials of his name, and he
+really did live by the sword, as far as I know.  He died by it, too,
+later on, in a Balkanian squabble, in the cause of some Serbs or else
+Bulgarians, who were neither Catholics nor gentlemen—at least, not in the
+exalted but narrow sense he attached to that last word.
+
+Poor J. M. K. B., _Américain_, _Catholique_, _et gentilhomme_, as he was
+disposed to describe himself in moments of lofty expansion!  Are there
+still to be found in Europe gentlemen keen of face and elegantly slight
+of body, of distinguished aspect, with a fascinating drawing-room manner
+and with a dark, fatal glance, who live by their swords, I wonder?  His
+family had been ruined in the Civil War, I fancy, and seems for a decade
+or so to have led a wandering life in the Old World.  As to Henry C—, the
+next in age and wisdom of our band, he had broken loose from the
+unyielding rigidity of his family, solidly rooted, if I remember rightly,
+in a well-to-do London suburb.  On their respectable authority he
+introduced himself meekly to strangers as a “black sheep.”  I have never
+seen a more guileless specimen of an outcast.  Never.
+
+However, his people had the grace to send him a little money now and
+then.  Enamoured of the South, of Provence, of its people, its life, its
+sunshine and its poetry, narrow-chested, tall and short-sighted, he
+strode along the streets and the lanes, his long feet projecting far in
+advance of his body, and his white nose and gingery moustache buried in
+an open book: for he had the habit of reading as he walked.  How he
+avoided falling into precipices, off the quays, or down staircases is a
+great mystery.  The sides of his overcoat bulged out with pocket editions
+of various poets.  When not engaged in reading Virgil, Homer, or Mistral,
+in parks, restaurants, streets, and suchlike public places, he indited
+sonnets (in French) to the eyes, ears, chin, hair, and other visible
+perfections of a nymph called Thérèse, the daughter, honesty compels me
+to state, of a certain Madame Leonore who kept a small café for sailors
+in one of the narrowest streets of the old town.
+
+No more charming face, clear-cut like an antique gem, and delicate in
+colouring like the petal of a flower, had ever been set on, alas! a
+somewhat squat body.  He read his verses aloud to her in the very café
+with the innocence of a little child and the vanity of a poet.  We
+followed him there willingly enough, if only to watch the divine Thérèse
+laugh, under the vigilant black eyes of Madame Leonore, her mother.  She
+laughed very prettily, not so much at the sonnets, which she could not
+but esteem, as at poor Henry’s French accent, which was unique,
+resembling the warbling of birds, if birds ever warbled with a
+stuttering, nasal intonation.
+
+Our third partner was Roger P. de la S—, the most Scandinavian-looking of
+Provençal squires, fair, and six feet high, as became a descendant of
+sea-roving Northmen, authoritative, incisive, wittily scornful, with a
+comedy in three acts in his pocket, and in his breast a heart blighted by
+a hopeless passion for his beautiful cousin, married to a wealthy hide
+and tallow merchant.  He used to take us to lunch at their house without
+ceremony.  I admired the good lady’s sweet patience.  The husband was a
+conciliatory soul, with a great fund of resignation, which he expended on
+“Roger’s friends.”  I suspect he was secretly horrified at these
+invasions.  But it was a Carlist salon, and as such we were made welcome.
+The possibility of raising Catalonia in the interest of the _Rey netto_,
+who had just then crossed the Pyrenees, was much discussed there.
+
+Don Carlos, no doubt, must have had many queer friends (it is the common
+lot of all Pretenders), but amongst them none more extravagantly
+fantastic than the _Tremolino_ Syndicate, which used to meet in a tavern
+on the quays of the old port.  The antique city of Massilia had surely
+never, since the days of the earliest Phoenicians, known an odder set of
+ship-owners.  We met to discuss and settle the plan of operations for
+each voyage of the _Tremolino_.  In these operations a banking-house,
+too, was concerned—a very respectable banking-house.  But I am afraid I
+shall end by saying too much.  Ladies, too, were concerned (I am really
+afraid I am saying too much)—all sorts of ladies, some old enough to know
+better than to put their trust in princes, others young and full of
+illusions.
+
+One of these last was extremely amusing in the imitations, she gave us in
+confidence, of various highly-placed personages she was perpetually
+rushing off to Paris to interview in the interests of the cause—_Por el
+Rey_!  For she was a Carlist, and of Basque blood at that, with something
+of a lioness in the expression of her courageous face (especially when
+she let her hair down), and with the volatile little soul of a sparrow
+dressed in fine Parisian feathers, which had the trick of coming off
+disconcertingly at unexpected moments.
+
+But her imitations of a Parisian personage, very highly placed indeed, as
+she represented him standing in the corner of a room with his face to the
+wall, rubbing the back of his head and moaning helplessly, “Rita, you are
+the death of me!” were enough to make one (if young and free from cares)
+split one’s sides laughing.  She had an uncle still living, a very
+effective Carlist, too, the priest of a little mountain parish in
+Guipuzcoa.  As the sea-going member of the syndicate (whose plans
+depended greatly on Doña Rita’s information), I used to be charged with
+humbly affectionate messages for the old man.  These messages I was
+supposed to deliver to the Arragonese muleteers (who were sure to await
+at certain times the _Tremolino_ in the neighbourhood of the Gulf of
+Rosas), for faithful transportation inland, together with the various
+unlawful goods landed secretly from under the _Tremolino’s_ hatches.
+
+Well, now, I have really let out too much (as I feared I should in the
+end) as to the usual contents of my sea-cradle.  But let it stand.  And
+if anybody remarks cynically that I must have been a promising infant in
+those days, let that stand, too.  I am concerned but for the good name of
+the _Tremolino_, and I affirm that a ship is ever guiltless of the sins,
+transgressions, and follies of her men.
+
+
+
+
+XLII.
+
+
+It was not _Tremolino’s_ fault that the syndicate depended so much on the
+wit and wisdom and the information of Doña Rita.  She had taken a little
+furnished house on the Prado for the good of the cause—_Por el Rey_!  She
+was always taking little houses for somebody’s good, for the sick or the
+sorry, for broken-down artists, cleaned-out gamblers, temporarily unlucky
+speculators—_vieux amis_—old friends, as she used to explain
+apologetically, with a shrug of her fine shoulders.
+
+Whether Don Carlos was one of the “old friends,” too, it’s hard to say.
+More unlikely things have been heard of in smoking-rooms.  All I know is
+that one evening, entering incautiously the salon of the little house
+just after the news of a considerable Carlist success had reached the
+faithful, I was seized round the neck and waist and whirled recklessly
+three times round the room, to the crash of upsetting furniture and the
+humming of a valse tune in a warm contralto voice.
+
+When released from the dizzy embrace, I sat down on the carpet—suddenly,
+without affectation.  In this unpretentious attitude I became aware that
+J. M. K. B. had followed me into the room, elegant, fatal, correct and
+severe in a white tie and large shirt-front.  In answer to his politely
+sinister, prolonged glance of inquiry, I overheard Doña Rita murmuring,
+with some confusion and annoyance, “_Vous êtes bête mon cher_.  _Voyons_!
+_Ça n’a aucune conséquence_.”  Well content in this case to be of no
+particular consequence, I had already about me the elements of some
+worldly sense.
+
+Rearranging my collar, which, truth to say, ought to have been a round
+one above a short jacket, but was not, I observed felicitously that I had
+come to say good-bye, being ready to go off to sea that very night with
+the _Tremolino_.  Our hostess, slightly panting yet, and just a shade
+dishevelled, turned tartly upon J. M. K. B., desiring to know when _he_
+would be ready to go off by the _Tremolino_, or in any other way, in
+order to join the royal headquarters.  Did he intend, she asked
+ironically, to wait for the very eve of the entry into Madrid?  Thus by a
+judicious exercise of tact and asperity we re-established the atmospheric
+equilibrium of the room long before I left them a little before midnight,
+now tenderly reconciled, to walk down to the harbour and hail the
+_Tremolino_ by the usual soft whistle from the edge of the quay.  It was
+our signal, invariably heard by the ever-watchful Dominic, the _padrone_.
+
+He would raise a lantern silently to light my steps along the narrow,
+springy plank of our primitive gangway.  “And so we are going off,” he
+would murmur directly my foot touched the deck.  I was the harbinger of
+sudden departures, but there was nothing in the world sudden enough to
+take Dominic unawares.  His thick black moustaches, curled every morning
+with hot tongs by the barber at the corner of the quay, seemed to hide a
+perpetual smile.  But nobody, I believe, had ever seen the true shape of
+his lips.  From the slow, imperturbable gravity of that broad-chested man
+you would think he had never smiled in his life.  In his eyes lurked a
+look of perfectly remorseless irony, as though he had been provided with
+an extremely experienced soul; and the slightest distension of his
+nostrils would give to his bronzed face a look of extraordinary boldness.
+This was the only play of feature of which he seemed capable, being a
+Southerner of a concentrated, deliberate type.  His ebony hair curled
+slightly on the temples.  He may have been forty years old, and he was a
+great voyager on the inland sea.
+
+Astute and ruthless, he could have rivalled in resource the unfortunate
+son of Laertes and Anticlea.  If he did not pit his craft and audacity
+against the very gods, it is only because the Olympian gods are dead.
+Certainly no woman could frighten him.  A one-eyed giant would not have
+had the ghost of a chance against Dominic Cervoni, of Corsica, not
+Ithaca; and no king, son of kings, but of very respectable
+family—authentic Caporali, he affirmed.  But that is as it may be.  The
+Caporali families date back to the twelfth century.
+
+For want of more exalted adversaries Dominic turned his audacity fertile
+in impious stratagems against the powers of the earth, as represented by
+the institution of Custom-houses and every mortal belonging
+thereto—scribes, officers, and guardacostas afloat and ashore.  He was
+the very man for us, this modern and unlawful wanderer with his own
+legend of loves, dangers, and bloodshed.  He told us bits of it sometimes
+in measured, ironic tones.  He spoke Catalonian, the Italian of Corsica
+and the French of Provençe with the same easy naturalness.  Dressed in
+shore-togs, a white starched shirt, black jacket, and round hat, as I
+took him once to see Doña Rita, he was extremely presentable.  He could
+make himself interesting by a tactful and rugged reserve set off by a
+grim, almost imperceptible, playfulness of tone and manner.
+
+He had the physical assurance of strong-hearted men.  After half an
+hour’s interview in the dining-room, during which they got in touch with
+each other in an amazing way, Rita told us in her best _grande dame_
+manner: “_Mais il esi parfait_, _cet homme_.”  He was perfect.  On board
+the _Tremolino_, wrapped up in a black _caban_, the picturesque cloak of
+Mediterranean seamen, with those massive moustaches and his remorseless
+eyes set off by the shadow of the deep hood, he looked piratical and
+monkish and darkly initiated into the most awful mysteries of the sea.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII.
+
+
+Anyway, he was perfect, as Doña Rita had declared.  The only thing
+unsatisfactory (and even inexplicable) about our Dominic was his nephew,
+Cesar.  It was startling to see a desolate expression of shame veil the
+remorseless audacity in the eyes of that man superior to all scruples and
+terrors.
+
+“I would never have dared to bring him on board your balancelle,” he once
+apologized to me.  “But what am I to do?  His mother is dead, and my
+brother has gone into the bush.”
+
+In this way I learned that our Dominic had a brother.  As to “going into
+the bush,” this only means that a man has done his duty successfully in
+the pursuit of a hereditary vendetta.  The feud which had existed for
+ages between the families of Cervoni and Brunaschi was so old that it
+seemed to have smouldered out at last.  One evening Pietro Brunaschi,
+after a laborious day amongst his olive-trees, sat on a chair against the
+wall of his house with a bowl of broth on his knees and a piece of bread
+in his hand.  Dominic’s brother, going home with a gun on his shoulder,
+found a sudden offence in this picture of content and rest so obviously
+calculated to awaken the feelings of hatred and revenge.  He and Pietro
+had never had any personal quarrel; but, as Dominic explained, “all our
+dead cried out to him.”  He shouted from behind a wall of stones, “O
+Pietro!  Behold what is coming!”  And as the other looked up innocently
+he took aim at the forehead and squared the old vendetta account so
+neatly that, according to Dominic, the dead man continued to sit with the
+bowl of broth on his knees and the piece of bread in his hand.
+
+This is why—because in Corsica your dead will not leave you
+alone—Dominic’s brother had to go into the _maquis_, into the bush on the
+wild mountain-side, to dodge the gendarmes for the insignificant
+remainder of his life, and Dominic had charge of his nephew with a
+mission to make a man of him.
+
+No more unpromising undertaking could be imagined.  The very material for
+the task seemed wanting.  The Cervonis, if not handsome men, were good
+sturdy flesh and blood.  But this extraordinarily lean and livid youth
+seemed to have no more blood in him than a snail.
+
+“Some cursed witch must have stolen my brother’s child from the cradle
+and put that spawn of a starved devil in its place,” Dominic would say to
+me.  “Look at him!  Just look at him!”
+
+To look at Cesar was not pleasant.  His parchment skin, showing dead
+white on his cranium through the thin wisps of dirty brown hair, seemed
+to be glued directly and tightly upon his big bones, Without being in any
+way deformed, he was the nearest approach which I have ever seen or could
+imagine to what is commonly understood by the word “monster.”  That the
+source of the effect produced was really moral I have no doubt.  An
+utterly, hopelessly depraved nature was expressed in physical terms, that
+taken each separately had nothing positively startling.  You imagined him
+clammily cold to the touch, like a snake.  The slightest reproof, the
+most mild and justifiable remonstrance, would be met by a resentful glare
+and an evil shrinking of his thin dry upper lip, a snarl of hate to which
+he generally added the agreeable sound of grinding teeth.
+
+It was for this venomous performance rather than for his lies, impudence,
+and laziness that his uncle used to knock him down.  It must not be
+imagined that it was anything in the nature of a brutal assault.
+Dominic’s brawny arm would be seen describing deliberately an ample
+horizontal gesture, a dignified sweep, and Cesar would go over suddenly
+like a ninepin—which was funny to see.  But, once down, he would writhe
+on the deck, gnashing his teeth in impotent rage—which was pretty
+horrible to behold.  And it also happened more than once that he would
+disappear completely—which was startling to observe.  This is the exact
+truth.  Before some of these majestic cuffs Cesar would go down and
+vanish.  He would vanish heels overhead into open hatchways, into
+scuttles, behind up-ended casks, according to the place where he happened
+to come into contact with his uncle’s mighty arm.
+
+Once—it was in the old harbour, just before the _Tremolino’s_ last
+voyage—he vanished thus overboard to my infinite consternation.  Dominic
+and I had been talking business together aft, and Cesar had sneaked up
+behind us to listen, for, amongst his other perfections, he was a
+consummate eavesdropper and spy.  At the sound of the heavy plop
+alongside horror held me rooted to the spot; but Dominic stepped quietly
+to the rail and leaned over, waiting for his nephew’s miserable head to
+bob up for the first time.
+
+“Ohé, Cesar!” he yelled contemptuously to the spluttering wretch.  “Catch
+hold of that mooring hawser—_charogne_!”
+
+He approached me to resume the interrupted conversation.
+
+“What about Cesar?” I asked anxiously.
+
+“Canallia!  Let him hang there,” was his answer.  And he went on talking
+over the business in hand calmly, while I tried vainly to dismiss from my
+mind the picture of Cesar steeped to the chin in the water of the old
+harbour, a decoction of centuries of marine refuse.  I tried to dismiss
+it, because the mere notion of that liquid made me feel very sick.
+Presently Dominic, hailing an idle boatman, directed him to go and fish
+his nephew out; and by-and-by Cesar appeared walking on board from the
+quay, shivering, streaming with filthy water, with bits of rotten straws
+in his hair and a piece of dirty orange-peel stranded on his shoulder.
+His teeth chattered; his yellow eyes squinted balefully at us as he
+passed forward.  I thought it my duty to remonstrate.
+
+“Why are you always knocking him about, Dominic?” I asked.  Indeed, I
+felt convinced it was no earthly good—a sheer waste of muscular force.
+
+“I must try to make a man of him,” Dominic answered hopelessly.
+
+I restrained the obvious retort that in this way he ran the risk of
+making, in the words of the immortal Mr. Mantalini, “a demnition damp,
+unpleasant corpse of him.”
+
+“He wants to be a locksmith!” burst out Cervoni.  “To learn how to pick
+locks, I suppose,” he added with sardonic bitterness.
+
+“Why not let him be a locksmith?” I ventured.
+
+“Who would teach him?” he cried.  “Where could I leave him?” he asked,
+with a drop in his voice; and I had my first glimpse of genuine despair.
+“He steals, you know, alas!  _Par ta Madonne_!  I believe he would put
+poison in your food and mine—the viper!”
+
+He raised his face and both his clenched fists slowly to heaven.
+However, Cesar never dropped poison into our cups.  One cannot be sure,
+but I fancy he went to work in another way.
+
+This voyage, of which the details need not be given, we had to range far
+afield for sufficient reasons.  Coming up from the South to end it with
+the important and really dangerous part of the scheme in hand, we found
+it necessary to look into Barcelona for certain definite information.
+This appears like running one’s head into the very jaws of the lion, but
+in reality it was not so.  We had one or two high, influential friends
+there, and many others humble but valuable because bought for good hard
+cash.  We were in no danger of being molested; indeed, the important
+information reached us promptly by the hands of a Custom-house officer,
+who came on board full of showy zeal to poke an iron rod into the layer
+of oranges which made the visible part of our cargo in the hatchway.
+
+I forgot to mention before that the _Tremolino_ was officially known as a
+fruit and cork-wood trader.  The zealous officer managed to slip a useful
+piece of paper into Dominic’s hand as he went ashore, and a few hours
+afterwards, being off duty, he returned on board again athirst for drinks
+and gratitude.  He got both as a matter of course.  While he sat sipping
+his liqueur in the tiny cabin, Dominic plied him with questions as to the
+whereabouts of the guardacostas.  The preventive service afloat was
+really the one for us to reckon with, and it was material for our success
+and safety to know the exact position of the patrol craft in the
+neighbourhood.  The news could not have been more favourable.  The
+officer mentioned a small place on the coast some twelve miles off,
+where, unsuspicious and unready, she was lying at anchor, with her sails
+unbent, painting yards and scraping spars.  Then he left us after the
+usual compliments, smirking reassurringly over his shoulder.
+
+I had kept below pretty close all day from excess of prudence.  The stake
+played on that trip was big.
+
+“We are ready to go at once, but for Cesar, who has been missing ever
+since breakfast,” announced Dominic to me in his slow, grim way.
+
+Where the fellow had gone, and why, we could not imagine.  The usual
+surmises in the case of a missing seaman did not apply to Cesar’s
+absence.  He was too odious for love, friendship, gambling, or even
+casual intercourse.  But once or twice he had wandered away like this
+before.
+
+Dominic went ashore to look for him, but returned at the end of two hours
+alone and very angry, as I could see by the token of the invisible smile
+under his moustache being intensified.  We wondered what had become of
+the wretch, and made a hurried investigation amongst our portable
+property.  He had stolen nothing.
+
+“He will be back before long,” I said confidently.
+
+Ten minutes afterwards one of the men on deck called out loudly:
+
+“I can see him coming.”
+
+Cesar had only his shirt and trousers on.  He had sold his coat,
+apparently for pocket-money.
+
+“You knave!” was all Dominic said, with a terrible softness of voice.  He
+restrained his choler for a time.  “Where have you been, vagabond?” he
+asked menacingly.
+
+Nothing would induce Cesar to answer that question.  It was as if he even
+disdained to lie.  He faced us, drawing back his lips and gnashing his
+teeth, and did not shrink an inch before the sweep of Dominic’s arm.  He
+went down as if shot, of course.  But this time I noticed that, when
+picking himself up, he remained longer than usual on all fours, baring
+his big teeth over his shoulder and glaring upwards at his uncle with a
+new sort of hate in his round, yellow eyes.  That permanent sentiment
+seemed pointed at that moment by especial malice and curiosity.  I became
+quite interested.  If he ever manages to put poison in the dishes, I
+thought to myself, this is how he will look at us as we sit at our meal.
+But I did not, of course, believe for a moment that he would ever put
+poison in our food.  He ate the same things himself.  Moreover, he had no
+poison.  And I could not imagine a human being so blinded by cupidity as
+to sell poison to such an atrocious creature.
+
+
+
+
+XLIV.
+
+
+We slipped out to sea quietly at dusk, and all through the night
+everything went well.  The breeze was gusty; a southerly blow was making
+up.  It was fair wind for our course.  Now and then Dominic slowly and
+rhythmically struck his hands together a few times, as if applauding the
+performance of the _Tremolino_.  The balancelle hummed and quivered as
+she flew along, dancing lightly under our feet.
+
+At daybreak I pointed out to Dominic, amongst the several sail in view
+running before the gathering storm, one particular vessel.  The press of
+canvas she carried made her loom up high, end-on, like a gray column
+standing motionless directly in our wake.
+
+“Look at this fellow, Dominic,” I said.  “He seems to be in a hurry.”
+
+The Padrone made no remark, but, wrapping his black cloak close about
+him, stood up to look.  His weather-tanned face, framed in the hood, had
+an aspect of authority and challenging force, with the deep-set eyes
+gazing far away fixedly, without a wink, like the intent, merciless,
+steady eyes of a sea-bird.
+
+“_Chi va piano va sano_,” he remarked at last, with a derisive glance
+over the side, in ironic allusion to our own tremendous speed.
+
+The _Tremolino_ was doing her best, and seemed to hardly touch the great
+burst of foam over which she darted.  I crouched down again to get some
+shelter from the low bulwark.  After more than half an hour of swaying
+immobility expressing a concentrated, breathless watchfulness, Dominic
+sank on the deck by my side.  Within the monkish cowl his eyes gleamed
+with a fierce expression which surprised me.  All he said was:
+
+“He has come out here to wash the new paint off his yards, I suppose.”
+
+“What?” I shouted, getting up on my knees.  “Is she the guardacosta?”
+
+The perpetual suggestion of a smile under Dominic’s piratical moustaches
+seemed to become more accentuated—quite real, grim, actually almost
+visible through the wet and uncurled hair.  Judging by that symptom, he
+must have been in a towering rage.  But I could also see that he was
+puzzled, and that discovery affected me disagreeably.  Dominic puzzled!
+For a long time, leaning against the bulwark, I gazed over the stern at
+the gray column that seemed to stand swaying slightly in our wake always
+at the same distance.
+
+Meanwhile Dominic, black and cowled, sat cross-legged on the deck, with
+his back to the wind, recalling vaguely an Arab chief in his burnuss
+sitting on the sand.  Above his motionless figure the little cord and
+tassel on the stiff point of the hood swung about inanely in the gale.
+At last I gave up facing the wind and rain, and crouched down by his
+side.  I was satisfied that the sail was a patrol craft.  Her presence
+was not a thing to talk about, but soon, between two clouds charged with
+hail-showers, a burst of sunshine fell upon her sails, and our men
+discovered her character for themselves.  From that moment I noticed that
+they seemed to take no heed of each other or of anything else.  They
+could spare no eyes and no thought but for the slight column-shape astern
+of us.  Its swaying had become perceptible.  For a moment she remained
+dazzlingly white, then faded away slowly to nothing in a squall, only to
+reappear again, nearly black, resembling a post stuck upright against the
+slaty background of solid cloud.  Since first noticed she had not gained
+on us a foot.
+
+“She will never catch the _Tremolino_,” I said exultingly.
+
+Dominic did not look at me.  He remarked absently, but justly, that the
+heavy weather was in our pursuer’s favour.  She was three times our size.
+What we had to do was to keep our distance till dark, which we could
+manage easily, and then haul off to seaward and consider the situation.
+But his thoughts seemed to stumble in the darkness of some not-solved
+enigma, and soon he fell silent.  We ran steadily, wing-and-wing.  Cape
+San Sebastian nearly ahead seemed to recede from us in the squalls of
+rain, and come out again to meet our rush, every time more distinct
+between the showers.
+
+For my part I was by no means certain that this _gabelou_ (as our men
+alluded to her opprobriously) was after us at all.  There were nautical
+difficulties in such a view which made me express the sanguine opinion
+that she was in all innocence simply changing her station.  At this
+Dominic condescended to turn his head.
+
+“I tell you she is in chase,” he affirmed moodily, after one short glance
+astern.
+
+I never doubted his opinion.  But with all the ardour of a neophyte and
+the pride of an apt learner I was at that time a great nautical casuist.
+
+“What I can’t understand,” I insisted subtly, “is how on earth, with this
+wind, she has managed to be just where she was when we first made her
+out.  It is clear that she could not, and did not, gain twelve miles on
+us during the night.  And there are other impossibilities. . . .”
+
+Dominic had been sitting motionless, like an inanimate black cone posed
+on the stern deck, near the rudder-head, with a small tassel fluttering
+on its sharp point, and for a time he preserved the immobility of his
+meditation.  Then, bending over with a short laugh, he gave my ear the
+bitter fruit of it.  He understood everything now perfectly.  She was
+where we had seen her first, not because she had caught us up, but
+because we had passed her during the night while she was already waiting
+for us, hove-to, most likely, on our very track.
+
+“Do you understand—already?” Dominic muttered in a fierce undertone.
+“Already!  You know we left a good eight hours before we were expected to
+leave, otherwise she would have been in time to lie in wait for us on the
+other side of the Cape, and”—he snapped his teeth like a wolf close to my
+face—“and she would have had us like—that.”
+
+I saw it all plainly enough now.  They had eyes in their heads and all
+their wits about them in that craft.  We had passed them in the dark as
+they jogged on easily towards their ambush with the idea that we were yet
+far behind.  At daylight, however, sighting a balancelle ahead under a
+press of canvas, they had made sail in chase.  But if that was so, then—
+
+Dominic seized my arm.
+
+“Yes, yes!  She came out on an information—do you see, it?—on
+information. . . . We have been sold—betrayed.  Why?  How?  What for?  We
+always paid them all so well on shore. . . . No!  But it is my head that
+is going to burst.”
+
+He seemed to choke, tugged at the throat button of the cloak, jumped up
+open-mouthed as if to hurl curses and denunciation, but instantly
+mastered himself, and, wrapping up the cloak closer about him, sat down
+on the deck again as quiet as ever.
+
+“Yes, it must be the work of some scoundrel ashore,” I observed.
+
+He pulled the edge of the hood well forward over his brow before he
+muttered:
+
+“A scoundrel. . . . Yes. . . . It’s evident.”
+
+“Well,” I said, “they can’t get us, that’s clear.”
+
+“No,” he assented quietly, “they cannot.”
+
+We shaved the Cape very close to avoid an adverse current.  On the other
+side, by the effect of the land, the wind failed us so completely for a
+moment that the _Tremolino’s_ two great lofty sails hung idle to the
+masts in the thundering uproar of the seas breaking upon the shore we had
+left behind.  And when the returning gust filled them again, we saw with
+amazement half of the new mainsail, which we thought fit to drive the
+boat under before giving way, absolutely fly out of the bolt-ropes.  We
+lowered the yard at once, and saved it all, but it was no longer a sail;
+it was only a heap of soaked strips of canvas cumbering the deck and
+weighting the craft.  Dominic gave the order to throw the whole lot
+overboard.
+
+I would have had the yard thrown overboard, too, he said, leading me aft
+again, “if it had not been for the trouble.  Let no sign escape you,” he
+continued, lowering his voice, “but I am going to tell you something
+terrible.  Listen: I have observed that the roping stitches on that sail
+have been cut!  You hear?  Cut with a knife in many places.  And yet it
+stood all that time.  Not enough cut.  That flap did it at last.  What
+matters it?  But look! there’s treachery seated on this very deck.  By
+the horns of the devil! seated here at our very backs.  Do not turn,
+signorine.”
+
+We were facing aft then.
+
+“What’s to be done?” I asked, appalled.
+
+“Nothing.  Silence!  Be a man, signorine.”
+
+“What else?” I said.
+
+To show I could be a man, I resolved to utter no sound as long as Dominic
+himself had the force to keep his lips closed.  Nothing but silence
+becomes certain situations.  Moreover, the experience of treachery seemed
+to spread a hopeless drowsiness over my thoughts and senses.  For an hour
+or more we watched our pursuer surging out nearer and nearer from amongst
+the squalls that sometimes hid her altogether.  But even when not seen,
+we felt her there like a knife at our throats.  She gained on us
+frightfully.  And the _Tremolino_, in a fierce breeze and in much
+smoother water, swung on easily under her one sail, with something
+appallingly careless in the joyous freedom of her motion.  Another
+half-hour went by.  I could not stand it any longer.
+
+“They will get the poor barky,” I stammered out suddenly, almost on the
+verge of tears.
+
+Dominic stirred no more than a carving.  A sense of catastrophic
+loneliness overcame my inexperienced soul.  The vision of my companions
+passed before me.  The whole Royalist gang was in Monte Carlo now, I
+reckoned.  And they appeared to me clear-cut and very small, with
+affected voices and stiff gestures, like a procession of rigid
+marionettes upon a toy stage.  I gave a start.  What was this?  A
+mysterious, remorseless whisper came from within the motionless black
+hood at my side.
+
+“_Il faul la tuer_.”
+
+I heard it very well.
+
+“What do you say, Dominic?” I asked, moving nothing but my lips.
+
+And the whisper within the hood repeated mysteriously, “She must be
+killed.”
+
+My heart began to beat violently.
+
+“That’s it,” I faltered out.  “But how?”
+
+“You love her well?”
+
+“I do.”
+
+“Then you must find the heart for that work too.  You must steer her
+yourself, and I shall see to it that she dies quickly, without leaving as
+much as a chip behind.”
+
+“Can you?” I murmured, fascinated by the black hood turned immovably over
+the stern, as if in unlawful communion with that old sea of magicians,
+slave-dealers, exiles and warriors, the sea of legends and terrors, where
+the mariners of remote antiquity used to hear the restless shade of an
+old wanderer weep aloud in the dark.
+
+“I know a rock,” whispered the initiated voice within the hood secretly.
+“But—caution!  It must be done before our men perceive what we are about.
+Whom can we trust now?  A knife drawn across the fore halyards would
+bring the foresail down, and put an end to our liberty in twenty minutes.
+And the best of our men may be afraid of drowning.  There is our little
+boat, but in an affair like this no one can be sure of being saved.”
+
+The voice ceased.  We had started from Barcelona with our dinghy in tow;
+afterwards it was too risky to try to get her in, so we let her take her
+chance of the seas at the end of a comfortable scope of rope.  Many times
+she had seemed to us completely overwhelmed, but soon we would see her
+bob up again on a wave, apparently as buoyant and whole as ever.
+
+“I understand,” I said softly.  “Very well, Dominic.  When?”
+
+“Not yet.  We must get a little more in first,” answered the voice from
+the hood in a ghostly murmur.
+
+
+
+
+XLV.
+
+
+It was settled.  I had now the courage to turn about.  Our men crouched
+about the decks here and there with anxious, crestfallen faces, all
+turned one way to watch the chaser.  For the first time that morning I
+perceived Cesar stretched out full length on the deck near the foremast
+and wondered where he had been skulking till then.  But he might in truth
+have been at my elbow all the time for all I knew.  We had been too
+absorbed in watching our fate to pay attention to each other.  Nobody had
+eaten anything that morning, but the men had been coming constantly to
+drink at the water-butt.
+
+I ran down to the cabin.  I had there, put away in a locker, ten thousand
+francs in gold of whose presence on board, so far as I was aware, not a
+soul, except Dominic had the slightest inkling.  When I emerged on deck
+again Dominic had turned about and was peering from under his cowl at the
+coast.  Cape Creux closed the view ahead.  To the left a wide bay, its
+waters torn and swept by fierce squalls, seemed full of smoke.  Astern
+the sky had a menacing look.
+
+Directly he saw me, Dominic, in a placid tone, wanted to know what was
+the matter.  I came close to him and, looking as unconcerned as I could,
+told him in an undertone that I had found the locker broken open and the
+money-belt gone.  Last evening it was still there.
+
+“What did you want to do with it?” he asked me, trembling violently.
+
+“Put it round my waist, of course,” I answered, amazed to hear his teeth
+chattering.
+
+“Cursed gold!” he muttered.  “The weight of the money might have cost you
+your life, perhaps.”  He shuddered.  “There is no time to talk about that
+now.”
+
+“I am ready.”
+
+“Not yet.  I am waiting for that squall to come over,” he muttered.  And
+a few leaden minutes passed.
+
+The squall came over at last.  Our pursuer, overtaken by a sort of murky
+whirlwind, disappeared from our sight.  The _Tremolino_ quivered and
+bounded forward.  The land ahead vanished, too, and we seemed to be left
+alone in a world of water and wind.
+
+“_Prenez la barre_, _monsieur_,” Dominic broke the silence suddenly in an
+austere voice.  “Take hold of the tiller.”  He bent his hood to my ear.
+“The balancelle is yours.  Your own hands must deal the blow.  I—I have
+yet another piece of work to do.”  He spoke up loudly to the man who
+steered.  “Let the signorino take the tiller, and you with the others
+stand by to haul the boat alongside quickly at the word.”
+
+The man obeyed, surprised, but silent.  The others stirred, and pricked
+up their ears at this.  I heard their murmurs.  “What now?  Are we going
+to run in somewhere and take to our heels?  The Padrone knows what he is
+doing.”
+
+Dominic went forward.  He paused to look down at Cesar, who, as I have
+said before, was lying full length face down by the foremast, then
+stepped over him, and dived out of my sight under the foresail.  I saw
+nothing ahead.  It was impossible for me to see anything except the
+foresail open and still, like a great shadowy wing.  But Dominic had his
+bearings.  His voice came to me from forward, in a just audible cry:
+
+“Now, signorino!”
+
+I bore on the tiller, as instructed before.  Again I heard him faintly,
+and then I had only to hold her straight.  No ship ran so joyously to her
+death before.  She rose and fell, as if floating in space, and darted
+forward, whizzing like an arrow.  Dominic, stooping under the foot of the
+foresail, reappeared, and stood steadying himself against the mast, with
+a raised forefinger in an attitude of expectant attention.  A second
+before the shock his arm fell down by his side.  At that I set my teeth.
+And then—
+
+Talk of splintered planks and smashed timbers!  This shipwreck lies upon
+my soul with the dread and horror of a homicide, with the unforgettable
+remorse of having crushed a living, faithful heart at a single blow.  At
+one moment the rush and the soaring swing of speed; the next a crash, and
+death, stillness—a moment of horrible immobility, with the song of the
+wind changed to a strident wail, and the heavy waters boiling up menacing
+and sluggish around the corpse.  I saw in a distracting minute the
+foreyard fly fore and aft with a brutal swing, the men all in a heap,
+cursing with fear, and hauling frantically at the line of the boat.  With
+a strange welcoming of the familiar I saw also Cesar amongst them, and
+recognised Dominic’s old, well-known, effective gesture, the horizontal
+sweep of his powerful arm.  I recollect distinctly saying to myself,
+“Cesar must go down, of course,” and then, as I was scrambling on all
+fours, the swinging tiller I had let go caught me a crack under the ear,
+and knocked me over senseless.
+
+I don’t think I was actually unconscious for more than a few minutes, but
+when I came to myself the dinghy was driving before the wind into a
+sheltered cove, two men just keeping her straight with their oars.
+Dominic, with his arm round my shoulders, supported me in the
+stern-sheets.
+
+We landed in a familiar part of the country.  Dominic took one of the
+boat’s oars with him.  I suppose he was thinking of the stream we would
+have presently to cross, on which there was a miserable specimen of a
+punt, often robbed of its pole.  But first of all we had to ascend the
+ridge of land at the back of the Cape.  He helped me up.  I was dizzy.
+My head felt very large and heavy.  At the top of the ascent I clung to
+him, and we stopped to rest.
+
+To the right, below us, the wide, smoky bay was empty.  Dominic had kept
+his word.  There was not a chip to be seen around the black rock from
+which the _Tremolino_, with her plucky heart crushed at one blow, had
+slipped off into deep water to her eternal rest.  The vastness of the
+open sea was smothered in driving mists, and in the centre of the
+thinning squall, phantom-like, under a frightful press of canvas, the
+unconscious guardacosta dashed on, still chasing to the northward.  Our
+men were already descending the reverse slope to look for that punt which
+we knew from experience was not always to be found easily.  I looked
+after them with dazed, misty eyes.  One, two, three, four.
+
+“Dominic, where’s Cesar?” I cried.
+
+As if repulsing the very sound of the name, the Padrone made that ample,
+sweeping, knocking-down gesture.  I stepped back a pace and stared at him
+fearfully.  His open shirt uncovered his muscular neck and the thick hair
+on his chest.  He planted the oar upright in the soft soil, and rolling
+up slowly his right sleeve, extended the bare arm before my face.
+
+“This,” he began, with an extreme deliberation, whose superhuman
+restraint vibrated with the suppressed violence of his feelings, “is the
+arm which delivered the blow.  I am afraid it is your own gold that did
+the rest.  I forgot all about your money.”  He clasped his hands together
+in sudden distress.  “I forgot, I forgot,” he repeated disconsolately.
+
+“Cesar stole the belt?” I stammered out, bewildered.
+
+“And who else?  _Canallia_!  He must have been spying on you for days.
+And he did the whole thing.  Absent all day in Barcelona.  _Traditore_!
+Sold his jacket—to hire a horse.  Ha! ha!  A good affair!  I tell you it
+was he who set him at us. . . .”
+
+Dominic pointed at the sea, where the guardacosta was a mere dark speck.
+His chin dropped on his breast.
+
+“. . . On information,” he murmured, in a gloomy voice.  “A Cervoni!  Oh!
+my poor brother! . . .”
+
+“And you drowned him,” I said feebly.
+
+“I struck once, and the wretch went down like a stone—with the gold.
+Yes.  But he had time to read in my eyes that nothing could save him
+while I was alive.  And had I not the right—I, Dominic Cervoni, Padrone,
+who brought him aboard your fellucca—my nephew, a traitor?”
+
+He pulled the oar out of the ground and helped me carefully down the
+slope.  All the time he never once looked me in the face.  He punted us
+over, then shouldered the oar again and waited till our men were at some
+distance before he offered me his arm.  After we had gone a little way,
+the fishing hamlet we were making for came into view.  Dominic stopped.
+
+“Do you think you can make your way as far as the houses by yourself?” he
+asked me quietly.
+
+“Yes, I think so.  But why?  Where are you going, Dominic?”
+
+“Anywhere.  What a question!  Signorino, you are but little more than a
+boy to ask such a question of a man having this tale in his family.
+_Ah_!  _Traditore_!  What made me ever own that spawn of a hungry devil
+for our own blood!  Thief, cheat, coward, liar—other men can deal with
+that.  But I was his uncle, and so . . . I wish he had poisoned
+me—_charogne_!  But this: that I, a confidential man and a Corsican,
+should have to ask your pardon for bringing on board your vessel, of
+which I was Padrone, a Cervoni, who has betrayed you—a traitor!—that is
+too much.  It is too much.  Well, I beg your pardon; and you may spit in
+Dominic’s face because a traitor of our blood taints us all.  A theft may
+be made good between men, a lie may be set right, a death avenged, but
+what can one do to atone for a treachery like this? . . . Nothing.”
+
+He turned and walked away from me along the bank of the stream,
+flourishing a vengeful arm and repeating to himself slowly, with savage
+emphasis: “_Ah_!  _Canaille_!  _Canaille_!  _Canaille_! . . .”  He left
+me there trembling with weakness and mute with awe.  Unable to make a
+sound, I gazed after the strangely desolate figure of that seaman
+carrying an oar on his shoulder up a barren, rock-strewn ravine under the
+dreary leaden sky of _Tremolino’s_ last day.  Thus, walking deliberately,
+with his back to the sea, Dominic vanished from my sight.
+
+With the quality of our desires, thoughts, and wonder proportioned to our
+infinite littleness, we measure even time itself by our own stature.
+Imprisoned in the house of personal illusions, thirty centuries in
+mankind’s history seem less to look back upon than thirty years of our
+own life.  And Dominic Cervoni takes his place in my memory by the side
+of the legendary wanderer on the sea of marvels and terrors, by the side
+of the fatal and impious adventurer, to whom the evoked shade of the
+soothsayer predicted a journey inland with an oar on his shoulder, till
+he met men who had never set eyes on ships and oars.  It seems to me I
+can see them side by side in the twilight of an arid land, the
+unfortunate possessors of the secret lore of the sea, bearing the emblem
+of their hard calling on their shoulders, surrounded by silent and
+curious men: even as I, too, having turned my back upon the sea, am
+bearing those few pages in the twilight, with the hope of finding in an
+inland valley the silent welcome of some patient listener.
+
+
+
+
+XLVI.
+
+
+“A FELLOW has now no chance of promotion unless he jumps into the muzzle
+of a gun and crawls out of the touch-hole.”
+
+He who, a hundred years ago, more or less, pronounced the above words in
+the uneasiness of his heart, thirsting for professional distinction, was
+a young naval officer.  Of his life, career, achievements, and end
+nothing is preserved for the edification of his young successors in the
+fleet of to-day—nothing but this phrase, which, sailor-like in the
+simplicity of personal sentiment and strength of graphic expression,
+embodies the spirit of the epoch.  This obscure but vigorous testimony
+has its price, its significance, and its lesson.  It comes to us from a
+worthy ancestor.  We do not know whether he lived long enough for a
+chance of that promotion whose way was so arduous.  He belongs to the
+great array of the unknown—who are great, indeed, by the sum total of the
+devoted effort put out, and the colossal scale of success attained by
+their insatiable and steadfast ambition.  We do not know his name; we
+only know of him what is material for us to know—that he was never
+backward on occasions of desperate service.  We have this on the
+authority of a distinguished seaman of Nelson’s time.  Departing this
+life as Admiral of the Fleet on the eve of the Crimean War, Sir Thomas
+Byam Martin has recorded for us amongst his all too short
+autobiographical notes these few characteristic words uttered by one
+young man of the many who must have felt that particular inconvenience of
+a heroic age.
+
+The distinguished Admiral had lived through it himself, and was a good
+judge of what was expected in those days from men and ships.  A brilliant
+frigate captain, a man of sound judgment, of dashing bravery and of
+serene mind, scrupulously concerned for the welfare and honour of the
+navy, he missed a larger fame only by the chances of the service.  We may
+well quote on this day the words written of Nelson, in the decline of a
+well-spent life, by Sir T. B. Martin, who died just fifty years ago on
+the very anniversary of Trafalgar.
+
+“Nelson’s nobleness of mind was a prominent and beautiful part of his
+character.  His foibles—faults if you like—will never be dwelt upon in
+any memorandum of mine,” he declares, and goes on—“he whose splendid and
+matchless achievements will be remembered with admiration while there is
+gratitude in the hearts of Britons, or while a ship floats upon the
+ocean; he whose example on the breaking out of the war gave so chivalrous
+an impulse to the younger men of the service that all rushed into rivalry
+of daring which disdained every warning of prudence, and led to acts of
+heroic enterprise which tended greatly to exalt the glory of our nation.”
+
+These are his words, and they are true.  The dashing young frigate
+captain, the man who in middle age was nothing loth to give chase
+single-handed in his seventy-four to a whole fleet, the man of enterprise
+and consummate judgment, the old Admiral of the Fleet, the good and
+trusted servant of his country under two kings and a queen, had felt
+correctly Nelson’s influence, and expressed himself with precision out of
+the fulness of his seaman’s heart.
+
+“Exalted,” he wrote, not “augmented.”  And therein his feeling and his
+pen captured the very truth.  Other men there were ready and able to add
+to the treasure of victories the British navy has given to the nation.
+It was the lot of Lord Nelson to exalt all this glory.  Exalt! the word
+seems to be created for the man.
+
+
+
+
+XLVII.
+
+
+The British navy may well have ceased to count its victories.  It is rich
+beyond the wildest dreams of success and fame.  It may well, rather, on a
+culminating day of its history, cast about for the memory of some
+reverses to appease the jealous fates which attend the prosperity and
+triumphs of a nation.  It holds, indeed, the heaviest inheritance that
+has ever been entrusted to the courage and fidelity of armed men.
+
+It is too great for mere pride.  It should make the seamen of to-day
+humble in the secret of their hearts, and indomitable in their unspoken
+resolution.  In all the records of history there has never been a time
+when a victorious fortune has been so faithful to men making war upon the
+sea.  And it must be confessed that on their part they knew how to be
+faithful to their victorious fortune.  They were exalted.  They were
+always watching for her smile; night or day, fair weather or foul, they
+waited for her slightest sign with the offering of their stout hearts in
+their hands.  And for the inspiration of this high constancy they were
+indebted to Lord Nelson alone.  Whatever earthly affection he abandoned
+or grasped, the great Admiral was always, before all, beyond all, a lover
+of Fame.  He loved her jealously, with an inextinguishable ardour and an
+insatiable desire—he loved her with a masterful devotion and an infinite
+trustfulness.  In the plenitude of his passion he was an exacting lover.
+And she never betrayed the greatness of his trust!  She attended him to
+the end of his life, and he died pressing her last gift (nineteen prizes)
+to his heart.  “Anchor, Hardy—anchor!” was as much the cry of an ardent
+lover as of a consummate seaman.  Thus he would hug to his breast the
+last gift of Fame.
+
+It was this ardour which made him great.  He was a flaming example to the
+wooers of glorious fortune.  There have been great officers before—Lord
+Hood, for instance, whom he himself regarded as the greatest sea officer
+England ever had.  A long succession of great commanders opened the sea
+to the vast range of Nelson’s genius.  His time had come; and, after the
+great sea officers, the great naval tradition passed into the keeping of
+a great man.  Not the least glory of the navy is that it understood
+Nelson.  Lord Hood trusted him.  Admiral Keith told him: “We can’t spare
+you either as Captain or Admiral.”  Earl St. Vincent put into his hands,
+untrammelled by orders, a division of his fleet, and Sir Hyde Parker gave
+him two more ships at Copenhagen than he had asked for.  So much for the
+chiefs; the rest of the navy surrendered to him their devoted affection,
+trust, and admiration.  In return he gave them no less than his own
+exalted soul.  He breathed into them his own ardour and his own ambition.
+In a few short years he revolutionized, not the strategy or tactics of
+sea-warfare, but the very conception of victory itself.  And this is
+genius.  In that alone, through the fidelity of his fortune and the power
+of his inspiration, he stands unique amongst the leaders of fleets and
+sailors.  He brought heroism into the line of duty.  Verily he is a
+terrible ancestor.
+
+And the men of his day loved him.  They loved him not only as victorious
+armies have loved great commanders; they loved him with a more intimate
+feeling as one of themselves.  In the words of a contemporary, he had “a
+most happy way of gaining the affectionate respect of all who had the
+felicity to serve under his command.”
+
+To be so great and to remain so accessible to the affection of one’s
+fellow-men is the mark of exceptional humanity.  Lord Nelson’s greatness
+was very human.  It had a moral basis; it needed to feel itself
+surrounded by the warm devotion of a band of brothers.  He was vain and
+tender.  The love and admiration which the navy gave him so unreservedly
+soothed the restlessness of his professional pride.  He trusted them as
+much as they trusted him.  He was a seaman of seamen.  Sir T. B. Martin
+states that he never conversed with any officer who had served under
+Nelson “without hearing the heartiest expressions of attachment to his
+person and admiration of his frank and conciliatory manner to his
+subordinates.”  And Sir Robert Stopford, who commanded one of the ships
+with which Nelson chased to the West Indies a fleet nearly double in
+number, says in a letter: “We are half-starved and otherwise
+inconvenienced by being so long out of port, but our reward is that we
+are with Nelson.”
+
+This heroic spirit of daring and endurance, in which all public and
+private differences were sunk throughout the whole fleet, is Lord
+Nelson’s great legacy, triply sealed by the victorious impress of the
+Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar.  This is a legacy whose value the
+changes of time cannot affect.  The men and the ships he knew how to lead
+lovingly to the work of courage and the reward of glory have passed away,
+but Nelson’s uplifting touch remains in the standard of achievement he
+has set for all time.  The principles of strategy may be immutable.  It
+is certain they have been, and shall be again, disregarded from timidity,
+from blindness, through infirmity of purpose.  The tactics of great
+captains on land and sea can be infinitely discussed.  The first object
+of tactics is to close with the adversary on terms of the greatest
+possible advantage; yet no hard-and-fast rules can be drawn from
+experience, for this capital reason, amongst others—that the quality of
+the adversary is a variable element in the problem.  The tactics of Lord
+Nelson have been amply discussed, with much pride and some profit.  And
+yet, truly, they are already of but archaic interest.  A very few years
+more and the hazardous difficulties of handling a fleet under canvas
+shall have passed beyond the conception of seamen who hold in trust for
+their country Lord Nelson’s legacy of heroic spirit.  The change in the
+character of the ships is too great and too radical.  It is good and
+proper to study the acts of great men with thoughtful reverence, but
+already the precise intention of Lord Nelson’s famous memorandum seems to
+lie under that veil which Time throws over the clearest conceptions of
+every great art.  It must not be forgotten that this was the first time
+when Nelson, commanding in chief, had his opponents under way—the first
+time and the last.  Had he lived, had there been other fleets left to
+oppose him, we would, perhaps, have learned something more of his
+greatness as a sea officer.  Nothing could have been added to his
+greatness as a leader.  All that can be affirmed is, that on no other day
+of his short and glorious career was Lord Nelson more splendidly true to
+his genius and to his country’s fortune.
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII.
+
+
+And yet the fact remains that, had the wind failed and the fleet lost
+steerage way, or, worse still, had it been taken aback from the eastward,
+with its leaders within short range of the enemy’s guns, nothing, it
+seems, could have saved the headmost ships from capture or destruction.
+No skill of a great sea officer would have availed in such a contingency.
+Lord Nelson was more than that, and his genius would have remained
+undiminished by defeat.  But obviously tactics, which are so much at the
+mercy of irremediable accident, must seem to a modern seaman a poor
+matter of study.  The Commander-in-Chief in the great fleet action that
+will take its place next to the Battle of Trafalgar in the history of the
+British navy will have no such anxiety, and will feel the weight of no
+such dependence.  For a hundred years now no British fleet has engaged
+the enemy in line of battle.  A hundred years is a long time, but the
+difference of modern conditions is enormous.  The gulf is great.  Had the
+last great fight of the English navy been that of the First of June, for
+instance, had there been no Nelson’s victories, it would have been
+wellnigh impassable.  The great Admiral’s slight and passion-worn figure
+stands at the parting of the ways.  He had the audacity of genius, and a
+prophetic inspiration.
+
+The modern naval man must feel that the time has come for the tactical
+practice of the great sea officers of the past to be laid by in the
+temple of august memories.  The fleet tactics of the sailing days have
+been governed by two points: the deadly nature of a raking fire, and the
+dread, natural to a commander dependent upon the winds, to find at some
+crucial moment part of his fleet thrown hopelessly to leeward.  These two
+points were of the very essence of sailing tactics, and these two points
+have been eliminated from the modern tactical problem by the changes of
+propulsion and armament.  Lord Nelson was the first to disregard them
+with conviction and audacity sustained by an unbounded trust in the men
+he led.  This conviction, this audacity and this trust stand out from
+amongst the lines of the celebrated memorandum, which is but a
+declaration of his faith in a crushing superiority of fire as the only
+means of victory and the only aim of sound tactics.  Under the
+difficulties of the then existing conditions he strove for that, and for
+that alone, putting his faith into practice against every risk.  And in
+that exclusive faith Lord Nelson appears to us as the first of the
+moderns.
+
+Against every risk, I have said; and the men of to-day, born and bred to
+the use of steam, can hardly realize how much of that risk was in the
+weather.  Except at the Nile, where the conditions were ideal for
+engaging a fleet moored in shallow water, Lord Nelson was not lucky in
+his weather.  Practically it was nothing but a quite unusual failure of
+the wind which cost him his arm during the Teneriffe expedition.  On
+Trafalgar Day the weather was not so much unfavourable as extremely
+dangerous.
+
+It was one of these covered days of fitful sunshine, of light, unsteady
+winds, with a swell from the westward, and hazy in general, but with the
+land about the Cape at times distinctly visible.  It has been my lot to
+look with reverence upon the very spot more than once, and for many hours
+together.  All but thirty years ago, certain exceptional circumstances
+made me very familiar for a time with that bight in the Spanish coast
+which would be enclosed within a straight line drawn from Faro to
+Spartel.  My well-remembered experience has convinced me that, in that
+corner of the ocean, once the wind has got to the northward of west (as
+it did on the 20th, taking the British fleet aback), appearances of
+westerly weather go for nothing, and that it is infinitely more likely to
+veer right round to the east than to shift back again.  It was in those
+conditions that, at seven on the morning of the 21st, the signal for the
+fleet to bear up and steer east was made.  Holding a clear recollection
+of these languid easterly sighs rippling unexpectedly against the run of
+the smooth swell, with no other warning than a ten-minutes’ calm and a
+queer darkening of the coast-line, I cannot think, without a gasp of
+professional awe, of that fateful moment.  Perhaps personal experience,
+at a time of life when responsibility had a special freshness and
+importance, has induced me to exaggerate to myself the danger of the
+weather.  The great Admiral and good seaman could read aright the signs
+of sea and sky, as his order to prepare to anchor at the end of the day
+sufficiently proves; but, all the same, the mere idea of these baffling
+easterly airs, coming on at any time within half an hour or so, after the
+firing of the first shot, is enough to take one’s breath away, with the
+image of the rearmost ships of both divisions falling off, unmanageable,
+broadside on to the westerly swell, and of two British Admirals in
+desperate jeopardy.  To this day I cannot free myself from the impression
+that, for some forty minutes, the fate of the great battle hung upon a
+breath of wind such as I have felt stealing from behind, as it were, upon
+my cheek while engaged in looking to the westward for the signs of the
+true weather.
+
+Never more shall British seamen going into action have to trust the
+success of their valour to a breath of wind.  The God of gales and
+battles favouring her arms to the last, has let the sun of England’s
+sailing-fleet and of its greatest master set in unclouded glory.  And now
+the old ships and their men are gone; the new ships and the new men, many
+of them bearing the old, auspicious names, have taken up their watch on
+the stern and impartial sea, which offers no opportunities but to those
+who know how to grasp them with a ready hand and an undaunted heart.
+
+
+
+
+XLIX.
+
+
+This the navy of the Twenty Years’ War knew well how to do, and never
+better than when Lord Nelson had breathed into its soul his own passion
+of honour and fame.  It was a fortunate navy.  Its victories were no mere
+smashing of helpless ships and massacres of cowed men.  It was spared
+that cruel favour, for which no brave heart had ever prayed.  It was
+fortunate in its adversaries.  I say adversaries, for on recalling such
+proud memories we should avoid the word “enemies,” whose hostile sound
+perpetuates the antagonisms and strife of nations, so irremediable
+perhaps, so fateful—and also so vain.  War is one of the gifts of life;
+but, alas! no war appears so very necessary when time has laid its
+soothing hand upon the passionate misunderstandings and the passionate
+desires of great peoples.  “Le temps,” as a distinguished Frenchman has
+said, “est un galant homme.”  He fosters the spirit of concord and
+justice, in whose work there is as much glory to be reaped as in the
+deeds of arms.
+
+One of them disorganized by revolutionary changes, the other rusted in
+the neglect of a decayed monarchy, the two fleets opposed to us entered
+the contest with odds against them from the first.  By the merit of our
+daring and our faithfulness, and the genius of a great leader, we have in
+the course of the war augmented our advantage and kept it to the last.
+But in the exulting illusion of irresistible might a long series of
+military successes brings to a nation the less obvious aspect of such a
+fortune may perchance be lost to view.  The old navy in its last days
+earned a fame that no belittling malevolence dare cavil at.  And this
+supreme favour they owe to their adversaries alone.
+
+Deprived by an ill-starred fortune of that self-confidence which
+strengthens the hands of an armed host, impaired in skill but not in
+courage, it may safely be said that our adversaries managed yet to make a
+better fight of it in 1797 than they did in 1793.  Later still, the
+resistance offered at the Nile was all, and more than all, that could be
+demanded from seamen, who, unless blind or without understanding, must
+have seen their doom sealed from the moment that the _Goliath_, bearing
+up under the bows of the _Guerrier_, took up an inshore berth.  The
+combined fleets of 1805, just come out of port, and attended by nothing
+but the disturbing memories of reverses, presented to our approach a
+determined front, on which Captain Blackwood, in a knightly spirit,
+congratulated his Admiral.  By the exertions of their valour our
+adversaries have but added a greater lustre to our arms.  No friend could
+have done more, for even in war, which severs for a time all the
+sentiments of human fellowship, this subtle bond of association remains
+between brave men—that the final testimony to the value of victory must
+be received at the hands of the vanquished.
+
+Those who from the heat of that battle sank together to their repose in
+the cool depths of the ocean would not understand the watchwords of our
+day, would gaze with amazed eyes at the engines of our strife.  All
+passes, all changes: the animosity of peoples, the handling of fleets,
+the forms of ships; and even the sea itself seems to wear a different and
+diminished aspect from the sea of Lord Nelson’s day.  In this ceaseless
+rush of shadows and shades, that, like the fantastic forms of clouds cast
+darkly upon the waters on a windy day, fly past us to fall headlong below
+the hard edge of an implacable horizon, we must turn to the national
+spirit, which, superior in its force and continuity to good and evil
+fortune, can alone give us the feeling of an enduring existence and of an
+invincible power against the fates.
+
+Like a subtle and mysterious elixir poured into the perishable clay of
+successive generations, it grows in truth, splendour, and potency with
+the march of ages.  In its incorruptible flow all round the globe of the
+earth it preserves from the decay and forgetfulness of death the
+greatness of our great men, and amongst them the passionate and gentle
+greatness of Nelson, the nature of whose genius was, on the faith of a
+brave seaman and distinguished Admiral, such as to “Exalt the glory of
+our nation.”
+
+
+
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Mirror of the Sea, by Joseph Conrad
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Mirror of the Sea
+       Memories and Impressions
+
+
+Author: Joseph Conrad
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 7, 2013  [eBook #1058]
+[This file was first posted on October 10, 1997]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MIRROR OF THE SEA***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1907 Methuen &amp; Co. edition by David
+Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
+<h1>THE MIRROR OF THE SEA<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">MEMORIES AND IMPRESSIONS</span></h1>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br
+/>
+<b>JOSEPH CONRAD</b></p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo; . . . for this miracle or this wonder<br
+/>
+troubleth me right greatly.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="GutSmall">BOETHIUS DE
+CON: PHIL: B. IV., PROSE VI.</span></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">THIRD
+EDITION</span></p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center">METHUEN &amp; CO.<br />
+36 ESSEX STREET&nbsp; W.C.<br />
+LONDON</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>First published</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p><i>October</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><i>1906</i></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>Second Edition</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p><i>December</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><i>1906</i></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>Third Edition</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p><i>January</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><i>1907</i></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">TO</span><br
+/>
+KATHERINE SANDERSON</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">WHOSE WARM
+WELCOME AND GRACIOUS HOSPITALITY</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">EXTENDED TO THE FRIEND OF HER
+SON</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">CHEERED THE FIRST DARK DAYS OF MY PARTING
+WITH THE SEA</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THESE PAGES ARE AFFECTIONATELY
+INSCRIBED</span></p>
+<h2>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="3"><p>THE MIRROR OF THE SEA:&mdash;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="GutSmall">LANDFALLS AND DEPARTURES</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">I.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page1">1</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="GutSmall">EMBLEMS OF HOPE</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">IV.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page17">17</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="GutSmall">THE FINE ART</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">VII.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page33">33</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="GutSmall">COBWEBS AND GOSSAMER</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">X.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page52">52</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="GutSmall">THE WEIGHT OF THE BURDEN</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XIII.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page69">69</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="GutSmall">OVERDUE AND MISSING</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XVI.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page86">86</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="GutSmall">THE GRIP OF THE LAND</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XX.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page102">102</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="GutSmall">THE CHARACTER OF THE FOE</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XXII.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page109">109</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="GutSmall">RULES OF EAST AND WEST</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XXV.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page123">123</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="GutSmall">THE FAITHFUL RIVER</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XXX.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page157">157</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="GutSmall">IN CAPTIVITY</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XXXIII.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page180">180</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="GutSmall">INITIATION</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XXXV.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page201">201</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="GutSmall">THE NURSERY OF THE CRAFT</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XXXVII.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page233">233</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="GutSmall">THE </span><span
+class="GutSmall"><i>TREMOLINO</i></span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XL.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page244">244</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="GutSmall">THE HEROIC AGE</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">XLVI.</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page289">289</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>I.</h2>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;And shippes by the brinke comen and gon,<br
+/>
+And in swich forme endure a day or two.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>The Frankeleyn&rsquo;s
+Tale</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><span class="smcap">Landfall</span> and Departure mark the
+rhythmical swing of a seaman&rsquo;s life and of a ship&rsquo;s
+career.&nbsp; From land to land is the most concise definition of
+a ship&rsquo;s earthly fate.</p>
+<p>A &ldquo;Departure&rdquo; is not what a vain people of
+landsmen may think.&nbsp; The term &ldquo;Landfall&rdquo; is more
+easily understood; you fall in with the land, and it is a matter
+of a quick eye and of a clear atmosphere.&nbsp; The Departure is
+not the ship&rsquo;s going away from her port any more than the
+Landfall can be looked upon as the synonym of arrival.&nbsp; But
+there is this difference in the Departure: that the term does not
+imply so much a sea event as a definite act entailing a
+process&mdash;the precise observation of certain landmarks by
+means of the compass card.</p>
+<p>Your Landfall, be it a peculiarly-shaped mountain, a rocky
+headland, or a stretch of sand-dunes, you meet at first with a
+single glance.&nbsp; Further recognition will follow in due
+course; but essentially a Landfall, good or bad, is made and done
+with at the first cry of &ldquo;Land ho!&rdquo;&nbsp; The
+Departure is distinctly a ceremony of navigation.&nbsp; A ship
+may have left her port some time before; she may have been at
+sea, in the fullest sense of the phrase, for days; but, for all
+that, as long as the coast she was about to leave remained in
+sight, a southern-going ship of yesterday had not in the
+sailor&rsquo;s sense begun the enterprise of a passage.</p>
+<p>The taking of Departure, if not the last sight of the land,
+is, perhaps, the last professional recognition of the land on the
+part of a sailor.&nbsp; It is the technical, as distinguished
+from the sentimental, &ldquo;good-bye.&rdquo;&nbsp; Henceforth he
+has done with the coast astern of his ship.&nbsp; It is a matter
+personal to the man.&nbsp; It is not the ship that takes her
+departure; the seaman takes his Departure by means of
+cross-bearings which fix the place of the first tiny pencil-cross
+on the white expanse of the track-chart, where the ship&rsquo;s
+position at noon shall be marked by just such another tiny pencil
+cross for every day of her passage.&nbsp; And there may be sixty,
+eighty, any number of these crosses on the ship&rsquo;s track
+from land to land.&nbsp; The greatest number in my experience was
+a hundred and thirty of such crosses from the pilot station at
+the Sand Heads in the Bay of Bengal to the Scilly&rsquo;s
+light.&nbsp; A bad passage. . .</p>
+<p>A Departure, the last professional sight of land, is always
+good, or at least good enough.&nbsp; For, even if the weather be
+thick, it does not matter much to a ship having all the open sea
+before her bows.&nbsp; A Landfall may be good or bad.&nbsp; You
+encompass the earth with one particular spot of it in your
+eye.&nbsp; In all the devious tracings the course of a
+sailing-ship leaves upon the white paper of a chart she is always
+aiming for that one little spot&mdash;maybe a small island in the
+ocean, a single headland upon the long coast of a continent, a
+lighthouse on a bluff, or simply the peaked form of a mountain
+like an ant-heap afloat upon the waters.&nbsp; But if you have
+sighted it on the expected bearing, then that Landfall is
+good.&nbsp; Fogs, snowstorms, gales thick with clouds and
+rain&mdash;those are the enemies of good Landfalls.</p>
+<h2>II.</h2>
+<p>Some commanders of ships take their Departure from the home
+coast sadly, in a spirit of grief and discontent.&nbsp; They have
+a wife, children perhaps, some affection at any rate, or perhaps
+only some pet vice, that must be left behind for a year or
+more.&nbsp; I remember only one man who walked his deck with a
+springy step, and gave the first course of the passage in an
+elated voice.&nbsp; But he, as I learned afterwards, was leaving
+nothing behind him, except a welter of debts and threats of legal
+proceedings.</p>
+<p>On the other hand, I have known many captains who, directly
+their ship had left the narrow waters of the Channel, would
+disappear from the sight of their ship&rsquo;s company altogether
+for some three days or more.&nbsp; They would take a long dive,
+as it were, into their state-room, only to emerge a few days
+afterwards with a more or less serene brow.&nbsp; Those were the
+men easy to get on with.&nbsp; Besides, such a complete
+retirement seemed to imply a satisfactory amount of trust in
+their officers, and to be trusted displeases no seaman worthy of
+the name.</p>
+<p>On my first voyage as chief mate with good Captain MacW&mdash;
+I remember that I felt quite flattered, and went blithely about
+my duties, myself a commander for all practical purposes.&nbsp;
+Still, whatever the greatness of my illusion, the fact remained
+that the real commander was there, backing up my self-confidence,
+though invisible to my eyes behind a maple-wood veneered
+cabin-door with a white china handle.</p>
+<p>That is the time, after your Departure is taken, when the
+spirit of your commander communes with you in a muffled voice, as
+if from the sanctum sanctorum of a temple; because, call her a
+temple or a &ldquo;hell afloat&rdquo;&mdash;as some ships have
+been called&mdash;the captain&rsquo;s state-room is surely the
+august place in every vessel.</p>
+<p>The good MacW&mdash; would not even come out to his meals, and
+fed solitarily in his holy of holies from a tray covered with a
+white napkin.&nbsp; Our steward used to bend an ironic glance at
+the perfectly empty plates he was bringing out from there.&nbsp;
+This grief for his home, which overcomes so many married seamen,
+did not deprive Captain MacW&mdash; of his legitimate
+appetite.&nbsp; In fact, the steward would almost invariably come
+up to me, sitting in the captain&rsquo;s chair at the head of the
+table, to say in a grave murmur, &ldquo;The captain asks for one
+more slice of meat and two potatoes.&rdquo;&nbsp; We, his
+officers, could hear him moving about in his berth, or lightly
+snoring, or fetching deep sighs, or splashing and blowing in his
+bath-room; and we made our reports to him through the keyhole, as
+it were.&nbsp; It was the crowning achievement of his amiable
+character that the answers we got were given in a quite mild and
+friendly tone.&nbsp; Some commanders in their periods of
+seclusion are constantly grumpy, and seem to resent the mere
+sound of your voice as an injury and an insult.</p>
+<p>But a grumpy recluse cannot worry his subordinates: whereas
+the man in whom the sense of duty is strong (or, perhaps, only
+the sense of self-importance), and who persists in airing on deck
+his moroseness all day&mdash;and perhaps half the
+night&mdash;becomes a grievous infliction.&nbsp; He walks the
+poop darting gloomy glances, as though he wished to poison the
+sea, and snaps your head off savagely whenever you happen to
+blunder within earshot.&nbsp; And these vagaries are the harder
+to bear patiently, as becomes a man and an officer, because no
+sailor is really good-tempered during the first few days of a
+voyage.&nbsp; There are regrets, memories, the instinctive
+longing for the departed idleness, the instinctive hate of all
+work.&nbsp; Besides, things have a knack of going wrong at the
+start, especially in the matter of irritating trifles.&nbsp; And
+there is the abiding thought of a whole year of more or less hard
+life before one, because there was hardly a southern-going voyage
+in the yesterday of the sea which meant anything less than a
+twelvemonth.&nbsp; Yes; it needed a few days after the taking of
+your departure for a ship&rsquo;s company to shake down into
+their places, and for the soothing deep-water ship routine to
+establish its beneficent sway.</p>
+<p>It is a great doctor for sore hearts and sore heads, too, your
+ship&rsquo;s routine, which I have seen soothe&mdash;at least for
+a time&mdash;the most turbulent of spirits.&nbsp; There is health
+in it, and peace, and satisfaction of the accomplished round; for
+each day of the ship&rsquo;s life seems to close a circle within
+the wide ring of the sea horizon.&nbsp; It borrows a certain
+dignity of sameness from the majestic monotony of the sea.&nbsp;
+He who loves the sea loves also the ship&rsquo;s routine.</p>
+<p>Nowhere else than upon the sea do the days, weeks and months
+fall away quicker into the past.&nbsp; They seem to be left
+astern as easily as the light air-bubbles in the swirls of the
+ship&rsquo;s wake, and vanish into a great silence in which your
+ship moves on with a sort of magical effect.&nbsp; They pass
+away, the days, the weeks, the months.&nbsp; Nothing but a gale
+can disturb the orderly life of the ship; and the spell of
+unshaken monotony that seems to have fallen upon the very voices
+of her men is broken only by the near prospect of a Landfall.</p>
+<p>Then is the spirit of the ship&rsquo;s commander stirred
+strongly again.&nbsp; But it is not moved to seek seclusion, and
+to remain, hidden and inert, shut up in a small cabin with the
+solace of a good bodily appetite.&nbsp; When about to make the
+land, the spirit of the ship&rsquo;s commander is tormented by an
+unconquerable restlessness.&nbsp; It seems unable to abide for
+many seconds together in the holy of holies of the
+captain&rsquo;s state-room; it will out on deck and gaze ahead,
+through straining eyes, as the appointed moment comes
+nearer.&nbsp; It is kept vigorously upon the stretch of excessive
+vigilance.&nbsp; Meantime the body of the ship&rsquo;s commander
+is being enfeebled by want of appetite; at least, such is my
+experience, though &ldquo;enfeebled&rdquo; is perhaps not exactly
+the word.&nbsp; I might say, rather, that it is spiritualized by
+a disregard for food, sleep, and all the ordinary comforts, such
+as they are, of sea life.&nbsp; In one or two cases I have known
+that detachment from the grosser needs of existence remain
+regrettably incomplete in the matter of drink.</p>
+<p>But these two cases were, properly speaking, pathological
+cases, and the only two in all my sea experience.&nbsp; In one of
+these two instances of a craving for stimulants, developed from
+sheer anxiety, I cannot assert that the man&rsquo;s seamanlike
+qualities were impaired in the least.&nbsp; It was a very anxious
+case, too, the land being made suddenly, close-to, on a wrong
+bearing, in thick weather, and during a fresh onshore gale.&nbsp;
+Going below to speak to him soon after, I was unlucky enough to
+catch my captain in the very act of hasty cork-drawing.&nbsp; The
+sight, I may say, gave me an awful scare.&nbsp; I was well aware
+of the morbidly sensitive nature of the man.&nbsp; Fortunately, I
+managed to draw back unseen, and, taking care to stamp heavily
+with my sea-boots at the foot of the cabin stairs, I made my
+second entry.&nbsp; But for this unexpected glimpse, no act of
+his during the next twenty-four hours could have given me the
+slightest suspicion that all was not well with his nerve.</p>
+<h2>III.</h2>
+<p>Quite another case, and having nothing to do with drink, was
+that of poor Captain B&mdash;.&nbsp; He used to suffer from sick
+headaches, in his young days, every time he was approaching a
+coast.&nbsp; Well over fifty years of age when I knew him, short,
+stout, dignified, perhaps a little pompous, he was a man of a
+singularly well-informed mind, the least sailor-like in outward
+aspect, but certainly one of the best seamen whom it has been my
+good luck to serve under.&nbsp; He was a Plymouth man, I think,
+the son of a country doctor, and both his elder boys were
+studying medicine.&nbsp; He commanded a big London ship, fairly
+well known in her day.&nbsp; I thought no end of him, and that is
+why I remember with a peculiar satisfaction the last words he
+spoke to me on board his ship after an eighteen months&rsquo;
+voyage.&nbsp; It was in the dock in Dundee, where we had brought
+a full cargo of jute from Calcutta.&nbsp; We had been paid off
+that morning, and I had come on board to take my sea-chest away
+and to say good-bye.&nbsp; In his slightly lofty but courteous
+way he inquired what were my plans.&nbsp; I replied that I
+intended leaving for London by the afternoon train, and thought
+of going up for examination to get my master&rsquo;s
+certificate.&nbsp; I had just enough service for that.&nbsp; He
+commended me for not wasting my time, with such an evident
+interest in my case that I was quite surprised; then, rising from
+his chair, he said:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Have you a ship in view after you have
+passed?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I answered that I had nothing whatever in view.</p>
+<p>He shook hands with me, and pronounced the memorable
+words:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If you happen to be in want of employment, remember
+that as long as I have a ship you have a ship, too.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the way of compliment there is nothing to beat this from a
+ship&rsquo;s captain to his second mate at the end of a voyage,
+when the work is over and the subordinate is done with.&nbsp; And
+there is a pathos in that memory, for the poor fellow never went
+to sea again after all.&nbsp; He was already ailing when we
+passed St. Helena; was laid up for a time when we were off the
+Western Islands, but got out of bed to make his Landfall.&nbsp;
+He managed to keep up on deck as far as the Downs, where, giving
+his orders in an exhausted voice, he anchored for a few hours to
+send a wire to his wife and take aboard a North Sea pilot to help
+him sail the ship up the east coast.&nbsp; He had not felt equal
+to the task by himself, for it is the sort of thing that keeps a
+deep-water man on his feet pretty well night and day.</p>
+<p>When we arrived in Dundee, Mrs. B&mdash; was already there,
+waiting to take him home.&nbsp; We travelled up to London by the
+same train; but by the time I had managed to get through with my
+examination the ship had sailed on her next voyage without him,
+and, instead of joining her again, I went by request to see my
+old commander in his home.&nbsp; This is the only one of my
+captains I have ever visited in that way.&nbsp; He was out of bed
+by then, &ldquo;quite convalescent,&rdquo; as he declared, making
+a few tottering steps to meet me at the sitting-room door.&nbsp;
+Evidently he was reluctant to take his final cross-bearings of
+this earth for a Departure on the only voyage to an unknown
+destination a sailor ever undertakes.&nbsp; And it was all very
+nice&mdash;the large, sunny room; his deep, easy-chair in a bow
+window, with pillows and a footstool; the quiet, watchful care of
+the elderly, gentle woman who had borne him five children, and
+had not, perhaps, lived with him more than five full years out of
+the thirty or so of their married life.&nbsp; There was also
+another woman there in a plain black dress, quite gray-haired,
+sitting very erect on her chair with some sewing, from which she
+snatched side-glances in his direction, and uttering not a single
+word during all the time of my call.&nbsp; Even when, in due
+course, I carried over to her a cup of tea, she only nodded at me
+silently, with the faintest ghost of a smile on her tight-set
+lips.&nbsp; I imagine she must have been a maiden sister of Mrs.
+B&mdash; come to help nurse her brother-in-law.&nbsp; His
+youngest boy, a late-comer, a great cricketer it seemed, twelve
+years old or thereabouts, chattered enthusiastically of the
+exploits of W. G. Grace.&nbsp; And I remember his eldest son,
+too, a newly-fledged doctor, who took me out to smoke in the
+garden, and, shaking his head with professional gravity, but with
+genuine concern, muttered: &ldquo;Yes, but he doesn&rsquo;t get
+back his appetite.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t like that&mdash;I
+don&rsquo;t like that at all.&rdquo;&nbsp; The last sight of
+Captain B&mdash; I had was as he nodded his head to me out of the
+bow window when I turned round to close the front gate.</p>
+<p>It was a distinct and complete impression, something that I
+don&rsquo;t know whether to call a Landfall or a Departure.&nbsp;
+Certainly he had gazed at times very fixedly before him with the
+Landfall&rsquo;s vigilant look, this sea-captain seated
+incongruously in a deep-backed chair.&nbsp; He had not then
+talked to me of employment, of ships, of being ready to take
+another command; but he had discoursed of his early days, in the
+abundant but thin flow of a wilful invalid&rsquo;s talk.&nbsp;
+The women looked worried, but sat still, and I learned more of
+him in that interview than in the whole eighteen months we had
+sailed together.&nbsp; It appeared he had &ldquo;served his
+time&rdquo; in the copper-ore trade, the famous copper-ore trade
+of old days between Swansea and the Chilian coast, coal out and
+ore in, deep-loaded both ways, as if in wanton defiance of the
+great Cape Horn seas&mdash;a work, this, for staunch ships, and a
+great school of staunchness for West-Country seamen.&nbsp; A
+whole fleet of copper-bottomed barques, as strong in rib and
+planking, as well-found in gear, as ever was sent upon the seas,
+manned by hardy crews and commanded by young masters, was engaged
+in that now long defunct trade.&nbsp; &ldquo;That was the school
+I was trained in,&rdquo; he said to me almost boastfully, lying
+back amongst his pillows with a rug over his legs.&nbsp; And it
+was in that trade that he obtained his first command at a very
+early age.&nbsp; It was then that he mentioned to me how, as a
+young commander, he was always ill for a few days before making
+land after a long passage.&nbsp; But this sort of sickness used
+to pass off with the first sight of a familiar landmark.&nbsp;
+Afterwards, he added, as he grew older, all that nervousness wore
+off completely; and I observed his weary eyes gaze steadily
+ahead, as if there had been nothing between him and the straight
+line of sea and sky, where whatever a seaman is looking for is
+first bound to appear.&nbsp; But I have also seen his eyes rest
+fondly upon the faces in the room, upon the pictures on the wall,
+upon all the familiar objects of that home, whose abiding and
+clear image must have flashed often on his memory in times of
+stress and anxiety at sea.&nbsp; Was he looking out for a strange
+Landfall, or taking with an untroubled mind the bearings for his
+last Departure?</p>
+<p>It is hard to say; for in that voyage from which no man
+returns Landfall and Departure are instantaneous, merging
+together into one moment of supreme and final attention.&nbsp;
+Certainly I do not remember observing any sign of faltering in
+the set expression of his wasted face, no hint of the nervous
+anxiety of a young commander about to make land on an uncharted
+shore.&nbsp; He had had too much experience of Departures and
+Landfalls!&nbsp; And had he not &ldquo;served his time&rdquo; in
+the famous copper-ore trade out of the Bristol Channel, the work
+of the staunchest ships afloat, and the school of staunch
+seamen?</p>
+<h2><a name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+17</span>IV.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Before</span> an anchor can ever be
+raised, it must be let go; and this perfectly obvious truism
+brings me at once to the subject of the degradation of the sea
+language in the daily press of this country.</p>
+<p>Your journalist, whether he takes charge of a ship or a fleet,
+almost invariably &ldquo;casts&rdquo; his anchor.&nbsp; Now, an
+anchor is never cast, and to take a liberty with technical
+language is a crime against the clearness, precision, and beauty
+of perfected speech.</p>
+<p>An anchor is a forged piece of iron, admirably adapted to its
+end, and technical language is an instrument wrought into
+perfection by ages of experience, a flawless thing for its
+purpose.&nbsp; An anchor of yesterday (because nowadays there are
+contrivances like mushrooms and things like claws, of no
+particular expression or shape&mdash;just hooks)&mdash;an anchor
+of yesterday is in its way a most efficient instrument.&nbsp; To
+its perfection its size bears witness, for there is no other
+appliance so small for the great work it has to do.&nbsp; Look at
+the anchors hanging from the cat-heads of a big ship!&nbsp; How
+tiny they are in proportion to the great size of the hull!&nbsp;
+Were they made of gold they would look like trinkets, like
+ornamental toys, no bigger in proportion than a jewelled drop in
+a woman&rsquo;s ear.&nbsp; And yet upon them will depend, more
+than once, the very life of the ship.</p>
+<p>An anchor is forged and fashioned for faithfulness; give it
+ground that it can bite, and it will hold till the cable parts,
+and then, whatever may afterwards befall its ship, that anchor is
+&ldquo;lost.&rdquo;&nbsp; The honest, rough piece of iron, so
+simple in appearance, has more parts than the human body has
+limbs: the ring, the stock, the crown, the flukes, the palms, the
+shank.&nbsp; All this, according to the journalist, is
+&ldquo;cast&rdquo; when a ship arriving at an anchorage is
+brought up.</p>
+<p>This insistence in using the odious word arises from the fact
+that a particularly benighted landsman must imagine the act of
+anchoring as a process of throwing something overboard, whereas
+the anchor ready for its work is already overboard, and is not
+thrown over, but simply allowed to fall.&nbsp; It hangs from the
+ship&rsquo;s side at the end of a heavy, projecting timber called
+the cat-head, in the bight of a short, thick chain whose end link
+is suddenly released by a blow from a top-maul or the pull of a
+lever when the order is given.&nbsp; And the order is not
+&ldquo;Heave over!&rdquo; as the paragraphist seems to imagine,
+but &ldquo;Let go!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>As a matter of fact, nothing is ever cast in that sense on
+board ship but the lead, of which a cast is taken to search the
+depth of water on which she floats.&nbsp; A lashed boat, a spare
+spar, a cask or what not secured about the decks, is &ldquo;cast
+adrift&rdquo; when it is untied.&nbsp; Also the ship herself is
+&ldquo;cast to port or starboard&rdquo; when getting under
+way.&nbsp; She, however, never &ldquo;casts&rdquo; her
+anchor.</p>
+<p>To speak with severe technicality, a ship or a fleet is
+&ldquo;brought up&rdquo;&mdash;the complementary words
+unpronounced and unwritten being, of course, &ldquo;to an
+anchor.&rdquo;&nbsp; Less technically, but not less correctly,
+the word &ldquo;anchored,&rdquo; with its characteristic
+appearance and resolute sound, ought to be good enough for the
+newspapers of the greatest maritime country in the world.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The fleet anchored at Spithead&rdquo;: can anyone want a
+better sentence for brevity and seamanlike ring?&nbsp; But the
+&ldquo;cast-anchor&rdquo; trick, with its affectation of being a
+sea-phrase&mdash;for why not write just as well &ldquo;threw
+anchor,&rdquo; &ldquo;flung anchor,&rdquo; or &ldquo;shied
+anchor&rdquo;?&mdash;is intolerably odious to a sailor&rsquo;s
+ear.&nbsp; I remember a coasting pilot of my early acquaintance
+(he used to read the papers assiduously) who, to define the
+utmost degree of lubberliness in a landsman, used to say,
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s one of them poor, miserable
+&lsquo;cast-anchor&rsquo; devils.&rdquo;</p>
+<h2>V.</h2>
+<p>From first to last the seaman&rsquo;s thoughts are very much
+concerned with his anchors.&nbsp; It is not so much that the
+anchor is a symbol of hope as that it is the heaviest object that
+he has to handle on board his ship at sea in the usual routine of
+his duties.&nbsp; The beginning and the end of every passage are
+marked distinctly by work about the ship&rsquo;s anchors.&nbsp; A
+vessel in the Channel has her anchors always ready, her cables
+shackled on, and the land almost always in sight.&nbsp; The
+anchor and the land are indissolubly connected in a
+sailor&rsquo;s thoughts.&nbsp; But directly she is clear of the
+narrow seas, heading out into the world with nothing solid to
+speak of between her and the South Pole, the anchors are got in
+and the cables disappear from the deck.&nbsp; But the anchors do
+not disappear.&nbsp; Technically speaking, they are
+&ldquo;secured in-board&rdquo;; and, on the forecastle head,
+lashed down to ring-bolts with ropes and chains, under the
+straining sheets of the head-sails, they look very idle and as if
+asleep.&nbsp; Thus bound, but carefully looked after, inert and
+powerful, those emblems of hope make company for the look-out man
+in the night watches; and so the days glide by, with a long rest
+for those characteristically shaped pieces of iron, reposing
+forward, visible from almost every part of the ship&rsquo;s deck,
+waiting for their work on the other side of the world somewhere,
+while the ship carries them on with a great rush and splutter of
+foam underneath, and the sprays of the open sea rust their heavy
+limbs.</p>
+<p>The first approach to the land, as yet invisible to the
+crew&rsquo;s eyes, is announced by the brisk order of the chief
+mate to the boatswain: &ldquo;We will get the anchors over this
+afternoon&rdquo; or &ldquo;first thing to-morrow morning,&rdquo;
+as the case may be.&nbsp; For the chief mate is the keeper of the
+ship&rsquo;s anchors and the guardian of her cable.&nbsp; There
+are good ships and bad ships, comfortable ships and ships where,
+from first day to last of the voyage, there is no rest for a
+chief mate&rsquo;s body and soul.&nbsp; And ships are what men
+make them: this is a pronouncement of sailor wisdom, and, no
+doubt, in the main it is true.</p>
+<p>However, there are ships where, as an old grizzled mate once
+told me, &ldquo;nothing ever seems to go right!&rdquo;&nbsp; And,
+looking from the poop where we both stood (I had paid him a
+neighbourly call in dock), he added: &ldquo;She&rsquo;s one of
+them.&rdquo;&nbsp; He glanced up at my face, which expressed a
+proper professional sympathy, and set me right in my natural
+surmise: &ldquo;Oh no; the old man&rsquo;s right enough.&nbsp; He
+never interferes.&nbsp; Anything that&rsquo;s done in a
+seamanlike way is good enough for him.&nbsp; And yet, somehow,
+nothing ever seems to go right in this ship.&nbsp; I tell you
+what: she is naturally unhandy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The &ldquo;old man,&rdquo; of course, was his captain, who
+just then came on deck in a silk hat and brown overcoat, and,
+with a civil nod to us, went ashore.&nbsp; He was certainly not
+more than thirty, and the elderly mate, with a murmur to me of
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s my old man,&rdquo; proceeded to give
+instances of the natural unhandiness of the ship in a sort of
+deprecatory tone, as if to say, &ldquo;You mustn&rsquo;t think I
+bear a grudge against her for that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The instances do not matter.&nbsp; The point is that there are
+ships where things <i>do</i> go wrong; but whatever the
+ship&mdash;good or bad, lucky or unlucky&mdash;it is in the
+forepart of her that her chief mate feels most at home.&nbsp; It
+is emphatically <i>his</i> end of the ship, though, of course, he
+is the executive supervisor of the whole.&nbsp; There are
+<i>his</i> anchors, <i>his</i> headgear, his foremast, his
+station for manoeuvring when the captain is in charge.&nbsp; And
+there, too, live the men, the ship&rsquo;s hands, whom it is his
+duty to keep employed, fair weather or foul, for the ship&rsquo;s
+welfare.&nbsp; It is the chief mate, the only figure of the
+ship&rsquo;s afterguard, who comes bustling forward at the cry of
+&ldquo;All hands on deck!&rdquo;&nbsp; He is the satrap of that
+province in the autocratic realm of the ship, and more personally
+responsible for anything that may happen there.</p>
+<p>There, too, on the approach to the land, assisted by the
+boatswain and the carpenter, he &ldquo;gets the anchors
+over&rdquo; with the men of his own watch, whom he knows better
+than the others.&nbsp; There he sees the cable ranged, the
+windlass disconnected, the compressors opened; and there, after
+giving his own last order, &ldquo;Stand clear of the
+cable!&rdquo; he waits attentive, in a silent ship that forges
+slowly ahead towards her picked-out berth, for the sharp shout
+from aft, &ldquo;Let go!&rdquo;&nbsp; Instantly bending over, he
+sees the trusty iron fall with a heavy plunge under his eyes,
+which watch and note whether it has gone clear.</p>
+<p>For the anchor &ldquo;to go clear&rdquo; means to go clear of
+its own chain.&nbsp; Your anchor must drop from the bow of your
+ship with no turn of cable on any of its limbs, else you would be
+riding to a foul anchor.&nbsp; Unless the pull of the cable is
+fair on the ring, no anchor can be trusted even on the best of
+holding ground.&nbsp; In time of stress it is bound to drag, for
+implements and men must be treated fairly to give you the
+&ldquo;virtue&rdquo; which is in them.&nbsp; The anchor is an
+emblem of hope, but a foul anchor is worse than the most
+fallacious of false hopes that ever lured men or nations into a
+sense of security.&nbsp; And the sense of security, even the most
+warranted, is a bad councillor.&nbsp; It is the sense which, like
+that exaggerated feeling of well-being ominous of the coming on
+of madness, precedes the swift fall of disaster.&nbsp; A seaman
+labouring under an undue sense of security becomes at once worth
+hardly half his salt.&nbsp; Therefore, of all my chief officers,
+the one I trusted most was a man called B&mdash;.&nbsp; He had a
+red moustache, a lean face, also red, and an uneasy eye.&nbsp; He
+was worth all his salt.</p>
+<p>On examining now, after many years, the residue of the feeling
+which was the outcome of the contact of our personalities, I
+discover, without much surprise, a certain flavour of
+dislike.&nbsp; Upon the whole, I think he was one of the most
+uncomfortable shipmates possible for a young commander.&nbsp; If
+it is permissible to criticise the absent, I should say he had a
+little too much of the sense of insecurity which is so invaluable
+in a seaman.&nbsp; He had an extremely disturbing air of being
+everlastingly ready (even when seated at table at my right hand
+before a plate of salt beef) to grapple with some impending
+calamity.&nbsp; I must hasten to add that he had also the other
+qualification necessary to make a trustworthy seaman&mdash;that
+of an absolute confidence in himself.&nbsp; What was really wrong
+with him was that he had these qualities in an unrestful
+degree.&nbsp; His eternally watchful demeanour, his jerky,
+nervous talk, even his, as it were, determined silences, seemed
+to imply&mdash;and, I believe, they did imply&mdash;that to his
+mind the ship was never safe in my hands.&nbsp; Such was the man
+who looked after the anchors of a less than five-hundred-ton
+barque, my first command, now gone from the face of the earth,
+but sure of a tenderly remembered existence as long as I
+live.&nbsp; No anchor could have gone down foul under Mr.
+B&mdash;&rsquo;s piercing eye.&nbsp; It was good for one to be
+sure of that when, in an open roadstead, one heard in the cabin
+the wind pipe up; but still, there were moments when I detested
+Mr. B&mdash; exceedingly.&nbsp; From the way he used to glare
+sometimes, I fancy that more than once he paid me back with
+interest.&nbsp; It so happened that we both loved the little
+barque very much.&nbsp; And it was just the defect of Mr.
+B&mdash;&rsquo;s inestimable qualities that he would never
+persuade himself to believe that the ship was safe in my
+hands.&nbsp; To begin with, he was more than five years older
+than myself at a time of life when five years really do count, I
+being twenty-nine and he thirty-four; then, on our first leaving
+port (I don&rsquo;t see why I should make a secret of the fact
+that it was Bangkok), a bit of manoeuvring of mine amongst the
+islands of the Gulf of Siam had given him an unforgettable
+scare.&nbsp; Ever since then he had nursed in secret a bitter
+idea of my utter recklessness.&nbsp; But upon the whole, and
+unless the grip of a man&rsquo;s hand at parting means nothing
+whatever, I conclude that we did like each other at the end of
+two years and three months well enough.</p>
+<p>The bond between us was the ship; and therein a ship, though
+she has female attributes and is loved very unreasonably, is
+different from a woman.&nbsp; That I should have been
+tremendously smitten with my first command is nothing to wonder
+at, but I suppose I must admit that Mr. B&mdash;&rsquo;s
+sentiment was of a higher order.&nbsp; Each of us, of course, was
+extremely anxious about the good appearance of the beloved
+object; and, though I was the one to glean compliments ashore,
+B&mdash; had the more intimate pride of feeling, resembling that
+of a devoted handmaiden.&nbsp; And that sort of faithful and
+proud devotion went so far as to make him go about flicking the
+dust off the varnished teak-wood rail of the little craft with a
+silk pocket-handkerchief&mdash;a present from Mrs. B&mdash;, I
+believe.</p>
+<p>That was the effect of his love for the barque.&nbsp; The
+effect of his admirable lack of the sense of security once went
+so far as to make him remark to me: &ldquo;Well, sir, you
+<i>are</i> a lucky man!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was said in a tone full of significance, but not exactly
+offensive, and it was, I suppose, my innate tact that prevented
+my asking, &ldquo;What on earth do you mean by that?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Later on his meaning was illustrated more fully on a dark
+night in a tight corner during a dead on-shore gale.&nbsp; I had
+called him up on deck to help me consider our extremely
+unpleasant situation.&nbsp; There was not much time for deep
+thinking, and his summing-up was: &ldquo;It looks pretty bad,
+whichever we try; but, then, sir, you always do get out of a mess
+somehow.&rdquo;</p>
+<h2>VI.</h2>
+<p>It is difficult to disconnect the idea of ships&rsquo; anchors
+from the idea of the ship&rsquo;s chief mate&mdash;the man who
+sees them go down clear and come up sometimes foul; because not
+even the most unremitting care can always prevent a ship,
+swinging to winds and tide, from taking an awkward turn of the
+cable round stock or fluke.&nbsp; Then the business of
+&ldquo;getting the anchor&rdquo; and securing it afterwards is
+unduly prolonged, and made a weariness to the chief mate.&nbsp;
+He is the man who watches the growth of the cable&mdash;a
+sailor&rsquo;s phrase which has all the force, precision, and
+imagery of technical language that, created by simple men with
+keen eyes for the real aspect of the things they see in their
+trade, achieves the just expression seizing upon the essential,
+which is the ambition of the artist in words.&nbsp; Therefore the
+sailor will never say, &ldquo;cast anchor,&rdquo; and the
+ship-master aft will hail his chief mate on the forecastle in
+impressionistic phrase: &ldquo;How does the cable
+grow?&rdquo;&nbsp; Because &ldquo;grow&rdquo; is the right word
+for the long drift of a cable emerging aslant under the strain,
+taut as a bow-string above the water.&nbsp; And it is the voice
+of the keeper of the ship&rsquo;s anchors that will answer:
+&ldquo;Grows right ahead, sir,&rdquo; or &ldquo;Broad on the
+bow,&rdquo; or whatever concise and deferential shout will fit
+the case.</p>
+<p>There is no order more noisily given or taken up with lustier
+shouts on board a homeward-bound merchant ship than the command,
+&ldquo;Man the windlass!&rdquo;&nbsp; The rush of expectant men
+out of the forecastle, the snatching of hand-spikes, the tramp of
+feet, the clink of the pawls, make a stirring accompaniment to a
+plaintive up-anchor song with a roaring chorus; and this burst of
+noisy activity from a whole ship&rsquo;s crew seems like a
+voiceful awakening of the ship herself, till then, in the
+picturesque phrase of Dutch seamen, &ldquo;lying asleep upon her
+iron.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For a ship with her sails furled on her squared yards, and
+reflected from truck to water-line in the smooth gleaming sheet
+of a landlocked harbour, seems, indeed, to a seaman&rsquo;s eye
+the most perfect picture of slumbering repose.&nbsp; The getting
+of your anchor was a noisy operation on board a merchant ship of
+yesterday&mdash;an inspiring, joyous noise, as if, with the
+emblem of hope, the ship&rsquo;s company expected to drag up out
+of the depths, each man all his personal hopes into the reach of
+a securing hand&mdash;the hope of home, the hope of rest, of
+liberty, of dissipation, of hard pleasure, following the hard
+endurance of many days between sky and water.&nbsp; And this
+noisiness, this exultation at the moment of the ship&rsquo;s
+departure, make a tremendous contrast to the silent moments of
+her arrival in a foreign roadstead&mdash;the silent moments when,
+stripped of her sails, she forges ahead to her chosen berth, the
+loose canvas fluttering softly in the gear above the heads of the
+men standing still upon her decks, the master gazing intently
+forward from the break of the poop.&nbsp; Gradually she loses her
+way, hardly moving, with the three figures on her forecastle
+waiting attentively about the cat-head for the last order of,
+perhaps, full ninety days at sea: &ldquo;Let go!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This is the final word of a ship&rsquo;s ended journey, the
+closing word of her toil and of her achievement.&nbsp; In a life
+whose worth is told out in passages from port to port, the splash
+of the anchor&rsquo;s fall and the thunderous rumbling of the
+chain are like the closing of a distinct period, of which she
+seems conscious with a slight deep shudder of all her
+frame.&nbsp; By so much is she nearer to her appointed death, for
+neither years nor voyages can go on for ever.&nbsp; It is to her
+like the striking of a clock, and in the pause which follows she
+seems to take count of the passing time.</p>
+<p>This is the last important order; the others are mere routine
+directions.&nbsp; Once more the master is heard: &ldquo;Give her
+forty-five fathom to the water&rsquo;s edge,&rdquo; and then he,
+too, is done for a time.&nbsp; For days he leaves all the harbour
+work to his chief mate, the keeper of the ship&rsquo;s anchor and
+of the ship&rsquo;s routine.&nbsp; For days his voice will not be
+heard raised about the decks, with that curt, austere accent of
+the man in charge, till, again, when the hatches are on, and in a
+silent and expectant ship, he shall speak up from aft in
+commanding tones: &ldquo;Man the windlass!&rdquo;</p>
+<h2><a name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+33</span>VII.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> other year, looking through a
+newspaper of sound principles, but whose staff <i>will</i>
+persist in &ldquo;casting&rdquo; anchors and going to sea
+&ldquo;on&rdquo; a ship (ough!), I came across an article upon
+the season&rsquo;s yachting.&nbsp; And, behold! it was a good
+article.&nbsp; To a man who had but little to do with pleasure
+sailing (though all sailing is a pleasure), and certainly nothing
+whatever with racing in open waters, the writer&rsquo;s
+strictures upon the handicapping of yachts were just intelligible
+and no more.&nbsp; And I do not pretend to any interest in the
+enumeration of the great races of that year.&nbsp; As to the
+52-foot linear raters, praised so much by the writer, I am warmed
+up by his approval of their performances; but, as far as any
+clear conception goes, the descriptive phrase, so precise to the
+comprehension of a yachtsman, evokes no definite image in my
+mind.</p>
+<p>The writer praises that class of pleasure vessels, and I am
+willing to endorse his words, as any man who loves every craft
+afloat would be ready to do.&nbsp; I am disposed to admire and
+respect the 52-foot linear raters on the word of a man who
+regrets in such a sympathetic and understanding spirit the
+threatened decay of yachting seamanship.</p>
+<p>Of course, yacht racing is an organized pastime, a function of
+social idleness ministering to the vanity of certain wealthy
+inhabitants of these isles nearly as much as to their inborn love
+of the sea.&nbsp; But the writer of the article in question goes
+on to point out, with insight and justice, that for a great
+number of people (20,000, I think he says) it is a means of
+livelihood&mdash;that it is, in his own words, an industry.&nbsp;
+Now, the moral side of an industry, productive or unproductive,
+the redeeming and ideal aspect of this bread-winning, is the
+attainment and preservation of the highest possible skill on the
+part of the craftsmen.&nbsp; Such skill, the skill of technique,
+is more than honesty; it is something wider, embracing honesty
+and grace and rule in an elevated and clear sentiment, not
+altogether utilitarian, which may be called the honour of
+labour.&nbsp; It is made up of accumulated tradition, kept alive
+by individual pride, rendered exact by professional opinion, and,
+like the higher arts, it spurred on and sustained by
+discriminating praise.</p>
+<p>This is why the attainment of proficiency, the pushing of your
+skill with attention to the most delicate shades of excellence,
+is a matter of vital concern.&nbsp; Efficiency of a practically
+flawless kind may be reached naturally in the struggle for
+bread.&nbsp; But there is something beyond&mdash;a higher point,
+a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond mere
+skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish
+which is almost art&mdash;which <i>is</i> art.</p>
+<p>As men of scrupulous honour set up a high standard of public
+conscience above the dead-level of an honest community, so men of
+that skill which passes into art by ceaseless striving raise the
+dead-level of correct practice in the crafts of land and
+sea.&nbsp; The conditions fostering the growth of that supreme,
+alive excellence, as well in work as in play, ought to be
+preserved with a most careful regard lest the industry or the
+game should perish of an insidious and inward decay.&nbsp;
+Therefore I have read with profound regret, in that article upon
+the yachting season of a certain year, that the seamanship on
+board racing yachts is not now what it used to be only a few,
+very few, years ago.</p>
+<p>For that was the gist of that article, written evidently by a
+man who not only knows but <i>understands</i>&mdash;a thing (let
+me remark in passing) much rarer than one would expect, because
+the sort of understanding I mean is inspired by love; and love,
+though in a sense it may be admitted to be stronger than death,
+is by no means so universal and so sure.&nbsp; In fact, love is
+rare&mdash;the love of men, of things, of ideas, the love of
+perfected skill.&nbsp; For love is the enemy of haste; it takes
+count of passing days, of men who pass away, of a fine art
+matured slowly in the course of years and doomed in a short time
+to pass away too, and be no more.&nbsp; Love and regret go hand
+in hand in this world of changes swifter than the shifting of the
+clouds reflected in the mirror of the sea.</p>
+<p>To penalize a yacht in proportion to the fineness of her
+performance is unfair to the craft and to her men.&nbsp; It is
+unfair to the perfection of her form and to the skill of her
+servants.&nbsp; For we men are, in fact, the servants of our
+creations.&nbsp; We remain in everlasting bondage to the
+productions of our brain and to the work of our hands.&nbsp; A
+man is born to serve his time on this earth, and there is
+something fine in the service being given on other grounds than
+that of utility.&nbsp; The bondage of art is very exacting.&nbsp;
+And, as the writer of the article which started this train of
+thought says with lovable warmth, the sailing of yachts is a fine
+art.</p>
+<p>His contention is that racing, without time allowances for
+anything else but tonnage&mdash;that is, for size&mdash;has
+fostered the fine art of sailing to the pitch of
+perfection.&nbsp; Every sort of demand is made upon the master of
+a sailing-yacht, and to be penalized in proportion to your
+success may be of advantage to the sport itself, but it has an
+obviously deteriorating effect upon the seamanship.&nbsp; The
+fine art is being lost.</p>
+<h2>VIII.</h2>
+<p>The sailing and racing of yachts has developed a class of
+fore-and-aft sailors, men born and bred to the sea, fishing in
+winter and yachting in summer; men to whom the handling of that
+particular rig presents no mystery.&nbsp; It is their striving
+for victory that has elevated the sailing of pleasure craft to
+the dignity of a fine art in that special sense.&nbsp; As I have
+said, I know nothing of racing and but little of fore-and-aft
+rig; but the advantages of such a rig are obvious, especially for
+purposes of pleasure, whether in cruising or racing.&nbsp; It
+requires less effort in handling; the trimming of the sail-planes
+to the wind can be done with speed and accuracy; the unbroken
+spread of the sail-area is of infinite advantage; and the
+greatest possible amount of canvas can be displayed upon the
+least possible quantity of spars.&nbsp; Lightness and
+concentrated power are the great qualities of fore-and-aft
+rig.</p>
+<p>A fleet of fore-and-afters at anchor has its own slender
+graciousness.&nbsp; The setting of their sails resembles more
+than anything else the unfolding of a bird&rsquo;s wings; the
+facility of their evolutions is a pleasure to the eye.&nbsp; They
+are birds of the sea, whose swimming is like flying, and
+resembles more a natural function than the handling of
+man-invented appliances.&nbsp; The fore-and-aft rig in its
+simplicity and the beauty of its aspect under every angle of
+vision is, I believe, unapproachable.&nbsp; A schooner, yawl, or
+cutter in charge of a capable man seems to handle herself as if
+endowed with the power of reasoning and the gift of swift
+execution.&nbsp; One laughs with sheer pleasure at a smart piece
+of manoeuvring, as at a manifestation of a living
+creature&rsquo;s quick wit and graceful precision.</p>
+<p>Of those three varieties of fore-and-aft rig, the
+cutter&mdash;the racing rig <i>par excellence</i>&mdash;is of an
+appearance the most imposing, from the fact that practically all
+her canvas is in one piece.&nbsp; The enormous mainsail of a
+cutter, as she draws slowly past a point of land or the end of a
+jetty under your admiring gaze, invests her with an air of lofty
+and silent majesty.&nbsp; At anchor a schooner looks better; she
+has an aspect of greater efficiency and a better balance to the
+eye, with her two masts distributed over the hull with a
+swaggering rake aft.&nbsp; The yawl rig one comes in time to
+love.&nbsp; It is, I should think, the easiest of all to
+manage.</p>
+<p>For racing, a cutter; for a long pleasure voyage, a schooner;
+for cruising in home waters, the yawl; and the handling of them
+all is indeed a fine art.&nbsp; It requires not only the
+knowledge of the general principles of sailing, but a particular
+acquaintance with the character of the craft.&nbsp; All vessels
+are handled in the same way as far as theory goes, just as you
+may deal with all men on broad and rigid principles.&nbsp; But if
+you want that success in life which comes from the affection and
+confidence of your fellows, then with no two men, however similar
+they may appear in their nature, will you deal in the same
+way.&nbsp; There may be a rule of conduct; there is no rule of
+human fellowship.&nbsp; To deal with men is as fine an art as it
+is to deal with ships.&nbsp; Both men and ships live in an
+unstable element, are subject to subtle and powerful influences,
+and want to have their merits understood rather than their faults
+found out.</p>
+<p>It is not what your ship will <i>not</i> do that you want to
+know to get on terms of successful partnership with her; it is,
+rather, that you ought to have a precise knowledge of what she
+will do for you when called upon to put forth what is in her by a
+sympathetic touch.&nbsp; At first sight the difference does not
+seem great in either line of dealing with the difficult problem
+of limitations.&nbsp; But the difference is great.&nbsp; The
+difference lies in the spirit in which the problem is
+approached.&nbsp; After all, the art of handling ships is finer,
+perhaps, than the art of handling men.</p>
+<p>And, like all fine arts, it must be based upon a broad, solid
+sincerity, which, like a law of Nature, rules an infinity of
+different phenomena.&nbsp; Your endeavour must be
+single-minded.&nbsp; You would talk differently to a coal-heaver
+and to a professor.&nbsp; But is this duplicity?&nbsp; I deny
+it.&nbsp; The truth consists in the genuineness of the feeling,
+in the genuine recognition of the two men, so similar and so
+different, as your two partners in the hazard of life.&nbsp;
+Obviously, a humbug, thinking only of winning his little race,
+would stand a chance of profiting by his artifices.&nbsp; Men,
+professors or coal-heavers, are easily deceived; they even have
+an extraordinary knack of lending themselves to deception, a sort
+of curious and inexplicable propensity to allow themselves to be
+led by the nose with their eyes open.&nbsp; But a ship is a
+creature which we have brought into the world, as it were on
+purpose to keep us up to the mark.&nbsp; In her handling a ship
+will not put up with a mere pretender, as, for instance, the
+public will do with Mr. X, the popular statesman, Mr. Y, the
+popular scientist, or Mr. Z, the popular&mdash;what shall we
+say?&mdash;anything from a teacher of high morality to a
+bagman&mdash;who have won their little race.&nbsp; But I would
+like (though not accustomed to betting) to wager a large sum that
+not one of the few first-rate skippers of racing yachts has ever
+been a humbug.&nbsp; It would have been too difficult.&nbsp; The
+difficulty arises from the fact that one does not deal with ships
+in a mob, but with a ship as an individual.&nbsp; So we may have
+to do with men.&nbsp; But in each of us there lurks some particle
+of the mob spirit, of the mob temperament.&nbsp; No matter how
+earnestly we strive against each other, we remain brothers on the
+lowest side of our intellect and in the instability of our
+feelings.&nbsp; With ships it is not so.&nbsp; Much as they are
+to us, they are nothing to each other.&nbsp; Those sensitive
+creatures have no ears for our blandishments.&nbsp; It takes
+something more than words to cajole them to do our will, to cover
+us with glory.&nbsp; Luckily, too, or else there would have been
+more shoddy reputations for first-rate seamanship.&nbsp; Ships
+have no ears, I repeat, though, indeed, I think I have known
+ships who really seemed to have had eyes, or else I cannot
+understand on what ground a certain 1,000-ton barque of my
+acquaintance on one particular occasion refused to answer her
+helm, thereby saving a frightful smash to two ships and to a very
+good man&rsquo;s reputation.&nbsp; I knew her intimately for two
+years, and in no other instance either before or since have I
+known her to do that thing.&nbsp; The man she had served so well
+(guessing, perhaps, at the depths of his affection for her) I
+have known much longer, and in bare justice to him I must say
+that this confidence-shattering experience (though so fortunate)
+only augmented his trust in her.&nbsp; Yes, our ships have no
+ears, and thus they cannot be deceived.&nbsp; I would illustrate
+my idea of fidelity as between man and ship, between the master
+and his art, by a statement which, though it might appear
+shockingly sophisticated, is really very simple.&nbsp; I would
+say that a racing-yacht skipper who thought of nothing else but
+the glory of winning the race would never attain to any eminence
+of reputation.&nbsp; The genuine masters of their craft&mdash;I
+say this confidently from my experience of ships&mdash;have
+thought of nothing but of doing their very best by the vessel
+under their charge.&nbsp; To forget one&rsquo;s self, to
+surrender all personal feeling in the service of that fine art,
+is the only way for a seaman to the faithful discharge of his
+trust.</p>
+<p>Such is the service of a fine art and of ships that sail the
+sea.&nbsp; And therein I think I can lay my finger upon the
+difference between the seamen of yesterday, who are still with
+us, and the seamen of to-morrow, already entered upon the
+possession of their inheritance.&nbsp; History repeats itself,
+but the special call of an art which has passed away is never
+reproduced.&nbsp; It is as utterly gone out of the world as the
+song of a destroyed wild bird.&nbsp; Nothing will awaken the same
+response of pleasurable emotion or conscientious endeavour.&nbsp;
+And the sailing of any vessel afloat is an art whose fine form
+seems already receding from us on its way to the overshadowed
+Valley of Oblivion.&nbsp; The taking of a modern steamship about
+the world (though one would not minimize its responsibilities)
+has not the same quality of intimacy with nature, which, after
+all, is an indispensable condition to the building up of an
+art.&nbsp; It is less personal and a more exact calling; less
+arduous, but also less gratifying in the lack of close communion
+between the artist and the medium of his art.&nbsp; It is, in
+short, less a matter of love.&nbsp; Its effects are measured
+exactly in time and space as no effect of an art can be.&nbsp; It
+is an occupation which a man not desperately subject to
+sea-sickness can be imagined to follow with content, without
+enthusiasm, with industry, without affection.&nbsp; Punctuality
+is its watchword.&nbsp; The incertitude which attends closely
+every artistic endeavour is absent from its regulated
+enterprise.&nbsp; It has no great moments of self-confidence, or
+moments not less great of doubt and heart-searching.&nbsp; It is
+an industry which, like other industries, has its romance, its
+honour and its rewards, its bitter anxieties and its hours of
+ease.&nbsp; But such sea-going has not the artistic quality of a
+single-handed struggle with something much greater than yourself;
+it is not the laborious absorbing practice of an art whose
+ultimate result remains on the knees of the gods.&nbsp; It is not
+an individual, temperamental achievement, but simply the skilled
+use of a captured force, merely another step forward upon the way
+of universal conquest.</p>
+<h2>IX.</h2>
+<p>Every passage of a ship of yesterday, whose yards were braced
+round eagerly the very moment the pilot, with his pockets full of
+letters, had got over the side, was like a race&mdash;a race
+against time, against an ideal standard of achievement
+outstripping the expectations of common men.&nbsp; Like all true
+art, the general conduct of a ship and her handling in particular
+cases had a technique which could be discussed with delight and
+pleasure by men who found in their work, not bread alone, but an
+outlet for the peculiarities of their temperament.&nbsp; To get
+the best and truest effect from the infinitely varying moods of
+sky and sea, not pictorially, but in the spirit of their calling,
+was their vocation, one and all; and they recognised this with as
+much sincerity, and drew as much inspiration from this reality,
+as any man who ever put brush to canvas.&nbsp; The diversity of
+temperaments was immense amongst those masters of the fine
+art.</p>
+<p>Some of them were like Royal Academicians of a certain
+kind.&nbsp; They never startled you by a touch of originality, by
+a fresh audacity of inspiration.&nbsp; They were safe, very
+safe.&nbsp; They went about solemnly in the assurance of their
+consecrated and empty reputation.&nbsp; Names are odious, but I
+remember one of them who might have been their very president,
+the P.R.A. of the sea-craft.&nbsp; His weather-beaten and
+handsome face, his portly presence, his shirt-fronts and broad
+cuffs and gold links, his air of bluff distinction, impressed the
+humble beholders (stevedores, tally clerks, tide-waiters) as he
+walked ashore over the gangway of his ship lying at the Circular
+Quay in Sydney.&nbsp; His voice was deep, hearty, and
+authoritative&mdash;the voice of a very prince amongst
+sailors.&nbsp; He did everything with an air which put your
+attention on the alert and raised your expectations, but the
+result somehow was always on stereotyped lines, unsuggestive,
+empty of any lesson that one could lay to heart.&nbsp; He kept
+his ship in apple-pie order, which would have been seamanlike
+enough but for a finicking touch in its details.&nbsp; His
+officers affected a superiority over the rest of us, but the
+boredom of their souls appeared in their manner of dreary
+submission to the fads of their commander.&nbsp; It was only his
+apprenticed boys whose irrepressible spirits were not affected by
+the solemn and respectable mediocrity of that artist.&nbsp; There
+were four of these youngsters: one the son of a doctor, another
+of a colonel, the third of a jeweller; the name of the fourth was
+Twentyman, and this is all I remember of his parentage.&nbsp; But
+not one of them seemed to possess the smallest spark of gratitude
+in his composition.&nbsp; Though their commander was a kind man
+in his way, and had made a point of introducing them to the best
+people in the town in order that they should not fall into the
+bad company of boys belonging to other ships, I regret to say
+that they made faces at him behind his back, and imitated the
+dignified carriage of his head without any concealment
+whatever.</p>
+<p>This master of the fine art was a personage and nothing more;
+but, as I have said, there was an infinite diversity of
+temperament amongst the masters of the fine art I have
+known.&nbsp; Some were great impressionists.&nbsp; They impressed
+upon you the fear of God and Immensity&mdash;or, in other words,
+the fear of being drowned with every circumstance of terrific
+grandeur.&nbsp; One may think that the locality of your passing
+away by means of suffocation in water does not really matter very
+much.&nbsp; I am not so sure of that.&nbsp; I am, perhaps, unduly
+sensitive, but I confess that the idea of being suddenly spilt
+into an infuriated ocean in the midst of darkness and uproar
+affected me always with a sensation of shrinking distaste.&nbsp;
+To be drowned in a pond, though it might be called an ignominious
+fate by the ignorant, is yet a bright and peaceful ending in
+comparison with some other endings to one&rsquo;s earthly career
+which I have mentally quaked at in the intervals or even in the
+midst of violent exertions.</p>
+<p>But let that pass.&nbsp; Some of the masters whose influence
+left a trace upon my character to this very day, combined a
+fierceness of conception with a certitude of execution upon the
+basis of just appreciation of means and ends which is the highest
+quality of the man of action.&nbsp; And an artist is a man of
+action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient,
+or finds the issue of a complicated situation.</p>
+<p>There were masters, too, I have known, whose very art
+consisted in avoiding every conceivable situation.&nbsp; It is
+needless to say that they never did great things in their craft;
+but they were not to be despised for that.&nbsp; They were
+modest; they understood their limitations.&nbsp; Their own
+masters had not handed the sacred fire into the keeping of their
+cold and skilful hands.&nbsp; One of those last I remember
+specially, now gone to his rest from that sea which his
+temperament must have made a scene of little more than a peaceful
+pursuit.&nbsp; Once only did he attempt a stroke of audacity, one
+early morning, with a steady breeze, entering a crowded
+roadstead.&nbsp; But he was not genuine in this display which
+might have been art.&nbsp; He was thinking of his own self; he
+hankered after the meretricious glory of a showy performance.</p>
+<p>As, rounding a dark, wooded point, bathed in fresh air and
+sunshine, we opened to view a crowd of shipping at anchor lying
+half a mile ahead of us perhaps, he called me aft from my station
+on the forecastle head, and, turning over and over his binoculars
+in his brown hands, said: &ldquo;Do you see that big, heavy ship
+with white lower masts?&nbsp; I am going to take up a berth
+between her and the shore.&nbsp; Now do you see to it that the
+men jump smartly at the first order.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I answered, &ldquo;Ay, ay, sir,&rdquo; and verily believed
+that this would be a fine performance.&nbsp; We dashed on through
+the fleet in magnificent style.&nbsp; There must have been many
+open mouths and following eyes on board those ships&mdash;Dutch,
+English, with a sprinkling of Americans and a German or
+two&mdash;who had all hoisted their flags at eight o&rsquo;clock
+as if in honour of our arrival.&nbsp; It would have been a fine
+performance if it had come off, but it did not.&nbsp; Through a
+touch of self-seeking that modest artist of solid merit became
+untrue to his temperament.&nbsp; It was not with him art for
+art&rsquo;s sake: it was art for his own sake; and a dismal
+failure was the penalty he paid for that greatest of sins.&nbsp;
+It might have been even heavier, but, as it happened, we did not
+run our ship ashore, nor did we knock a large hole in the big
+ship whose lower masts were painted white.&nbsp; But it is a
+wonder that we did not carry away the cables of both our anchors,
+for, as may be imagined, I did not stand upon the order to
+&ldquo;Let go!&rdquo; that came to me in a quavering, quite
+unknown voice from his trembling lips.&nbsp; I let them both go
+with a celerity which to this day astonishes my memory.&nbsp; No
+average merchantman&rsquo;s anchors have ever been let go with
+such miraculous smartness.&nbsp; And they both held.&nbsp; I <a
+name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 52</span>could have
+kissed their rough, cold iron palms in gratitude if they had not
+been buried in slimy mud under ten fathoms of water.&nbsp;
+Ultimately they brought us up with the jibboom of a Dutch brig
+poking through our spanker&mdash;nothing worse.&nbsp; And a miss
+is as good as a mile.</p>
+<p>But not in art.&nbsp; Afterwards the master said to me in a
+shy mumble, &ldquo;She wouldn&rsquo;t luff up in time,
+somehow.&nbsp; What&rsquo;s the matter with her?&rdquo;&nbsp; And
+I made no answer.</p>
+<p>Yet the answer was clear.&nbsp; The ship had found out the
+momentary weakness of her man.&nbsp; Of all the living creatures
+upon land and sea, it is ships alone that cannot be taken in by
+barren pretences, that will not put up with bad art from their
+masters.</p>
+<h2>X.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">From</span> the main truck of the average
+tall ship the horizon describes a circle of many miles, in which
+you can see another ship right down to her water-line; and these
+very eyes which follow this writing have counted in their time
+over a hundred sail becalmed, as if within a magic ring, not very
+far from the Azores&mdash;ships more or less tall.&nbsp; There
+were hardly two of them heading exactly the same way, as if each
+had meditated breaking out of the enchanted circle at a different
+point of the compass.&nbsp; But the spell of the calm is a strong
+magic.&nbsp; The following day still saw them scattered within
+sight of each other and heading different ways; but when, at
+last, the breeze came with the darkling ripple that ran very blue
+on a pale sea, they all went in the same direction
+together.&nbsp; For this was the homeward-bound fleet from the
+far-off ends of the earth, and a Falmouth fruit-schooner, the
+smallest of them all, was heading the flight.&nbsp; One could
+have imagined her very fair, if not divinely tall, leaving a
+scent of lemons and oranges in her wake.</p>
+<p>The next day there were very few ships in sight from our
+mast-heads&mdash;seven at most, perhaps, with a few more distant
+specks, hull down, beyond the magic ring of the horizon.&nbsp;
+The spell of the fair wind has a subtle power to scatter a
+white-winged company of ships looking all the same way, each with
+its white fillet of tumbling foam under the bow.&nbsp; It is the
+calm that brings ships mysteriously together; it is your wind
+that is the great separator.</p>
+<p>The taller the ship, the further she can be seen; and her
+white tallness breathed upon by the wind first proclaims her
+size.&nbsp; The tall masts holding aloft the white canvas, spread
+out like a snare for catching the invisible power of the air,
+emerge gradually from the water, sail after sail, yard after
+yard, growing big, till, under the towering structure of her
+machinery, you perceive the insignificant, tiny speck of her
+hull.</p>
+<p>The tall masts are the pillars supporting the balanced planes
+that, motionless and silent, catch from the air the ship&rsquo;s
+motive-power, as it were a gift from Heaven vouchsafed to the
+audacity of man; and it is the ship&rsquo;s tall spars, stripped
+and shorn of their white glory, that incline themselves before
+the anger of the clouded heaven.</p>
+<p>When they yield to a squall in a gaunt and naked submission,
+their tallness is brought best home even to the mind of a
+seaman.&nbsp; The man who has looked upon his ship going over too
+far is made aware of the preposterous tallness of a ship&rsquo;s
+spars.&nbsp; It seems impossible but that those gilt trucks which
+one had to tilt one&rsquo;s head back to see, now falling into
+the lower plane of vision, must perforce hit the very edge of the
+horizon.&nbsp; Such an experience gives you a better impression
+of the loftiness of your spars than any amount of running aloft
+could do.&nbsp; And yet in my time the royal yards of an average
+profitable ship were a good way up above her decks.</p>
+<p>No doubt a fair amount of climbing up iron ladders can be
+achieved by an active man in a ship&rsquo;s engine-room, but I
+remember moments when even to my supple limbs and pride of
+nimbleness the sailing-ship&rsquo;s machinery seemed to reach up
+to the very stars.</p>
+<p>For machinery it is, doing its work in perfect silence and
+with a motionless grace, that seems to hide a capricious and not
+always governable power, taking nothing away from the material
+stores of the earth.&nbsp; Not for it the unerring precision of
+steel moved by white steam and living by red fire and fed with
+black coal.&nbsp; The other seems to draw its strength from the
+very soul of the world, its formidable ally, held to obedience by
+the frailest bonds, like a fierce ghost captured in a snare of
+something even finer than spun silk.&nbsp; For what is the array
+of the strongest ropes, the tallest spars and the stoutest canvas
+against the mighty breath of the infinite, but thistle stalks,
+cobwebs and gossamer?</p>
+<h2>XI.</h2>
+<p>Indeed, it is less than nothing, and I have seen, when the
+great soul of the world turned over with a heavy sigh, a
+perfectly new, extra-stout foresail vanish like a bit of some
+airy stuff much lighter than gossamer.&nbsp; Then was the time
+for the tall spars to stand fast in the great uproar.&nbsp; The
+machinery must do its work even if the soul of the world has gone
+mad.</p>
+<p>The modern steamship advances upon a still and overshadowed
+sea with a pulsating tremor of her frame, an occasional clang in
+her depths, as if she had an iron heart in her iron body; with a
+thudding rhythm in her progress and the regular beat of her
+propeller, heard afar in the night with an august and plodding
+sound as of the march of an inevitable future.&nbsp; But in a
+gale, the silent machinery of a sailing-ship would catch not only
+the power, but the wild and exulting voice of the world&rsquo;s
+soul.&nbsp; Whether she ran with her tall spars swinging, or
+breasted it with her tall spars lying over, there was always that
+wild song, deep like a chant, for a bass to the shrill pipe of
+the wind played on the sea-tops, with a punctuating crash, now
+and then, of a breaking wave.&nbsp; At times the weird effects of
+that invisible orchestra would get upon a man&rsquo;s nerves till
+he wished himself deaf.</p>
+<p>And this recollection of a personal wish, experienced upon
+several oceans, where the soul of the world has plenty of room to
+turn over with a mighty sigh, brings me to the remark that in
+order to take a proper care of a ship&rsquo;s spars it is just as
+well for a seaman to have nothing the matter with his ears.&nbsp;
+Such is the intimacy with which a seaman had to live with his
+ship of yesterday that his senses were like her senses, that the
+stress upon his body made him judge of the strain upon the
+ship&rsquo;s masts.</p>
+<p>I had been some time at sea before I became aware of the fact
+that hearing plays a perceptible part in gauging the force of the
+wind.&nbsp; It was at night.&nbsp; The ship was one of those iron
+wool-clippers that the Clyde had floated out in swarms upon the
+world during the seventh decade of the last century.&nbsp; It was
+a fine period in ship-building, and also, I might say, a period
+of over-masting.&nbsp; The spars rigged up on the narrow hulls
+were indeed tall then, and the ship of which I think, with her
+coloured-glass skylight ends bearing the motto, &ldquo;Let
+Glasgow Flourish,&rdquo; was certainly one of the most
+heavily-sparred specimens.&nbsp; She was built for hard driving,
+and unquestionably she got all the driving she could stand.&nbsp;
+Our captain was a man famous for the quick passages he had been
+used to make in the old <i>Tweed</i>, a ship famous the world
+over for her speed.&nbsp; The <i>Tweed</i> had been a wooden
+vessel, and he brought the tradition of quick passages with him
+into the iron clipper.&nbsp; I was the junior in her, a third
+mate, keeping watch with the chief officer; and it was just
+during one of the night watches in a strong, freshening breeze
+that I overheard two men in a sheltered nook of the main deck
+exchanging these informing remarks.&nbsp; Said one:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Should think &rsquo;twas time some of them light sails
+were coming off her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And the other, an older man, uttered grumpily: &ldquo;No fear!
+not while the chief mate&rsquo;s on deck.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s that
+deaf he can&rsquo;t tell how much wind there is.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And, indeed, poor P&mdash;, quite young, and a smart seaman,
+was very hard of hearing.&nbsp; At the same time, he had the name
+of being the very devil of a fellow for carrying on sail on a
+ship.&nbsp; He was wonderfully clever at concealing his deafness,
+and, as to carrying on heavily, though he was a fearless man, I
+don&rsquo;t think that he ever meant to take undue risks.&nbsp; I
+can never forget his na&iuml;ve sort of astonishment when
+remonstrated with for what appeared a most dare-devil
+performance.&nbsp; The only person, of course, that could
+remonstrate with telling effect was our captain, himself a man of
+dare-devil tradition; and really, for me, who knew under whom I
+was serving, those were impressive scenes.&nbsp; Captain S&mdash;
+had a great name for sailor-like qualities&mdash;the sort of name
+that compelled my youthful admiration.&nbsp; To this day I
+preserve his memory, for, indeed, it was he in a sense who
+completed my training.&nbsp; It was often a stormy process, but
+let that pass.&nbsp; I am sure he meant well, and I am certain
+that never, not even at the time, could I bear him malice for his
+extraordinary gift of incisive criticism.&nbsp; And to hear
+<i>him</i> make a fuss about too much sail on the ship seemed one
+of those incredible experiences that take place only in
+one&rsquo;s dreams.</p>
+<p>It generally happened in this way: Night, clouds racing
+overhead, wind howling, royals set, and the ship rushing on in
+the dark, an immense white sheet of foam level with the lee
+rail.&nbsp; Mr. P&mdash;, in charge of the deck, hooked on to the
+windward mizzen rigging in a state of perfect serenity; myself,
+the third mate, also hooked on somewhere to windward of the
+slanting poop, in a state of the utmost preparedness to jump at
+the very first hint of some sort of order, but otherwise in a
+perfectly acquiescent state of mind.&nbsp; Suddenly, out of the
+companion would appear a tall, dark figure, bareheaded, with a
+short white beard of a perpendicular cut, very visible in the
+dark&mdash;Captain S&mdash;, disturbed in his reading down below
+by the frightful bounding and lurching of the ship.&nbsp; Leaning
+very much against the precipitous incline of the deck, he would
+take a turn or two, perfectly silent, hang on by the compass for
+a while, take another couple of turns, and suddenly burst
+out:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What are you trying to do with the ship?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And Mr. P&mdash;, who was not good at catching what was
+shouted in the wind, would say interrogatively:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then in the increasing gale of the sea there would be a little
+private ship&rsquo;s storm going on in which you could detect
+strong language, pronounced in a tone of passion and exculpatory
+protestations uttered with every possible inflection of injured
+innocence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By Heavens, Mr. P-!&nbsp; I used to carry on sail in my
+time, but&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And the rest would be lost to me in a stormy gust of wind.</p>
+<p>Then, in a lull, P&mdash;&rsquo;s protesting innocence would
+become audible:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She seems to stand it very well.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And then another burst of an indignant voice:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Any fool can carry sail on a ship&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And so on and so on, the ship meanwhile rushing on her way
+with a heavier list, a noisier splutter, a more threatening hiss
+of the white, almost blinding, sheet of foam to leeward.&nbsp;
+For the best of it was that Captain S&mdash; seemed
+constitutionally incapable of giving his officers a definite
+order to shorten sail; and so that extraordinarily vague row
+would go on till at last it dawned upon them both, in some
+particularly alarming gust, that it was time to do
+something.&nbsp; There is nothing like the fearful inclination of
+your tall spars overloaded with canvas to bring a deaf man and an
+angry one to their senses.</p>
+<h2>XII.</h2>
+<p>So sail did get shortened more or less in time even in that
+ship, and her tall spars never went overboard while I served in
+her.&nbsp; However, all the time I was with them, Captain
+S&mdash; and Mr. P&mdash; did not get on very well
+together.&nbsp; If P&mdash; carried on &ldquo;like the very
+devil&rdquo; because he was too deaf to know how much wind there
+was, Captain S&mdash; (who, as I have said, seemed
+constitutionally incapable of ordering one of his officers to
+shorten sail) resented the necessity forced upon him by Mr.
+P&mdash;&rsquo;s desperate goings on.&nbsp; It was in Captain
+S&mdash;&rsquo;s tradition rather to reprove his officers for not
+carrying on quite enough&mdash;in his phrase &ldquo;for not
+taking every ounce of advantage of a fair wind.&rdquo;&nbsp; But
+there was also a psychological motive that made him extremely
+difficult to deal with on board that iron clipper.&nbsp; He had
+just come out of the marvellous <i>Tweed</i>, a ship, I have
+heard, heavy to look at but of phenomenal speed.&nbsp; In the
+middle sixties she had beaten by a day and a half the steam
+mail-boat from Hong Kong to Singapore.&nbsp; There was something
+peculiarly lucky, perhaps, in the placing of her masts&mdash;who
+knows?&nbsp; Officers of men-of-war used to come on board to take
+the exact dimensions of her sail-plan.&nbsp; Perhaps there had
+been a touch of genius or the finger of good fortune in the
+fashioning of her lines at bow and stern.&nbsp; It is impossible
+to say.&nbsp; She was built in the East Indies somewhere, of
+teak-wood throughout, except the deck.&nbsp; She had a great
+sheer, high bows, and a clumsy stern.&nbsp; The men who had seen
+her described her to me as &ldquo;nothing much to look
+at.&rdquo;&nbsp; But in the great Indian famine of the seventies
+that ship, already old then, made some wonderful dashes across
+the Gulf of Bengal with cargoes of rice from Rangoon to
+Madras.</p>
+<p>She took the secret of her speed with her, and, unsightly as
+she was, her image surely has its glorious place in the mirror of
+the old sea.</p>
+<p>The point, however, is that Captain S&mdash;, who used to say
+frequently, &ldquo;She never made a decent passage after I left
+her,&rdquo; seemed to think that the secret of her speed lay in
+her famous commander.&nbsp; No doubt the secret of many a
+ship&rsquo;s excellence does lie with the man on board, but it
+was hopeless for Captain S&mdash; to try to make his new iron
+clipper equal the feats which made the old <i>Tweed</i> a name of
+praise upon the lips of English-speaking seamen.&nbsp; There was
+something pathetic in it, as in the endeavour of an artist in his
+old age to equal the masterpieces of his youth&mdash;for the
+<i>Tweed&rsquo;s</i> famous passages were Captain
+S&mdash;&rsquo;s masterpieces.&nbsp; It was pathetic, and perhaps
+just the least bit dangerous.&nbsp; At any rate, I am glad that,
+what between Captain S&mdash;&rsquo;s yearning for old triumphs
+and Mr. P&mdash;&rsquo;s deafness, I have seen some memorable
+carrying on to make a passage.&nbsp; And I have carried on myself
+upon the tall spars of that Clyde shipbuilder&rsquo;s masterpiece
+as I have never carried on in a ship before or since.</p>
+<p>The second mate falling ill during the passage, I was promoted
+to officer of the watch, alone in charge of the deck.&nbsp; Thus
+the immense leverage of the ship&rsquo;s tall masts became a
+matter very near my own heart.&nbsp; I suppose it was something
+of a compliment for a young fellow to be trusted, apparently
+without any supervision, by such a commander as Captain S&mdash;;
+though, as far as I can remember, neither the tone, nor the
+manner, nor yet the drift of Captain S&mdash;&rsquo;s remarks
+addressed to myself did ever, by the most strained
+interpretation, imply a favourable opinion of my abilities.&nbsp;
+And he was, I must say, a most uncomfortable commander to get
+your orders from at night.&nbsp; If I had the watch from eight
+till midnight, he would leave the deck about nine with the words,
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t take any sail off her.&rdquo;&nbsp; Then, on
+the point of disappearing down the companion-way, he would add
+curtly: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t carry anything away.&rdquo;&nbsp; I am
+glad to say that I never did; one night, however, I was caught,
+not quite prepared, by a sudden shift of wind.</p>
+<p>There was, of course, a good deal of noise&mdash;running
+about, the shouts of the sailors, the thrashing of the
+sails&mdash;enough, in fact, to wake the dead.&nbsp; But S&mdash;
+never came on deck.&nbsp; When I was relieved by the chief mate
+an hour afterwards, he sent for me.&nbsp; I went into his
+state-room; he was lying on his couch wrapped up in a rug, with a
+pillow under his head.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What was the matter with you up there just now?&rdquo;
+he asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Wind flew round on the lee quarter, sir,&rdquo; I
+said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t you see the shift coming?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir, I thought it wasn&rsquo;t very far
+off.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you have your courses hauled up at
+once, then?&rdquo; he asked in a tone that ought to have made my
+blood run cold.</p>
+<p>But this was my chance, and I did not let it slip.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; I said in an apologetic tone,
+&ldquo;she was going eleven knots very nicely, and I thought she
+would do for another half-hour or so.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He gazed at me darkly out of his head, lying very still on the
+white pillow, for a time.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, yes, another half-hour.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s the way
+ships get dismasted.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And that was all I got in the way of a wigging.&nbsp; I waited
+a little while and then went out, shutting carefully the door of
+the state-room after me.</p>
+<p>Well, I have loved, lived with, and left the sea without ever
+seeing a ship&rsquo;s tall fabric of sticks, cobwebs and gossamer
+go by the board.&nbsp; Sheer good luck, no doubt.&nbsp; But as to
+poor P&mdash;, I am sure that he would not have got off scot-free
+like this but for the god of gales, who called him away early
+from this earth, which is three parts ocean, and therefore a fit
+abode for sailors.&nbsp; A few years afterwards I met in an
+Indian port a man who had served in the ships of the same
+company.&nbsp; Names came up in our talk, names of our colleagues
+in the same employ, and, naturally enough, I asked after
+P&mdash;.&nbsp; Had he got a command yet?&nbsp; And the other man
+answered carelessly:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No; but he&rsquo;s provided for, anyhow.&nbsp; A heavy
+sea took him off the poop in the run between New Zealand and the
+Horn.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Thus P&mdash; passed away from amongst the tall spars of ships
+that he had tried to their utmost in many a spell of boisterous
+weather.&nbsp; He had shown me what carrying on meant, but he was
+not a man to learn discretion from.&nbsp; He could not help his
+deafness.&nbsp; One can only remember his cheery temper, his
+admiration for the jokes in <i>Punch</i>, his little
+oddities&mdash;like his strange passion for borrowing
+looking-glasses, for instance.&nbsp; Each of our cabins had its
+own looking-glass screwed to the bulkhead, and what he wanted
+with more of them we never could fathom.&nbsp; He asked for the
+loan in confidential tones.&nbsp; Why?&nbsp; Mystery.&nbsp; We
+made various surmises.&nbsp; No one will ever know now.&nbsp; At
+any rate, it was a harmless eccentricity, and may the god of
+gales, who took him away so abruptly between New Zealand and the
+Horn, let his soul rest in some Paradise of true seamen, where no
+amount of carrying on will ever dismast a ship!</p>
+<h2><a name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+69</span>XIII.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">There</span> has been a time when a
+ship&rsquo;s chief mate, pocket-book in hand and pencil behind
+his ear, kept one eye aloft upon his riggers and the other down
+the hatchway on the stevedores, and watched the disposition of
+his ship&rsquo;s cargo, knowing that even before she started he
+was already doing his best to secure for her an easy and quick
+passage.</p>
+<p>The hurry of the times, the loading and discharging
+organization of the docks, the use of hoisting machinery which
+works quickly and will not wait, the cry for prompt despatch, the
+very size of his ship, stand nowadays between the modern seaman
+and the thorough knowledge of his craft.</p>
+<p>There are profitable ships and unprofitable ships.&nbsp; The
+profitable ship will carry a large load through all the hazards
+of the weather, and, when at rest, will stand up in dock and
+shift from berth to berth without ballast.&nbsp; There is a point
+of perfection in a ship as a worker when she is spoken of as
+being able to <i>sail</i> without ballast.&nbsp; I have never met
+that sort of paragon myself, but I have seen these paragons
+advertised amongst ships for sale.&nbsp; Such excess of virtue
+and good-nature on the part of a ship always provoked my
+mistrust.&nbsp; It is open to any man to say that his ship will
+sail without ballast; and he will say it, too, with every mark of
+profound conviction, especially if he is not going to sail in her
+himself.&nbsp; The risk of advertising her as able to sail
+without ballast is not great, since the statement does not imply
+a warranty of her arriving anywhere.&nbsp; Moreover, it is
+strictly true that most ships will sail without ballast for some
+little time before they turn turtle upon the crew.</p>
+<p>A shipowner loves a profitable ship; the seaman is proud of
+her; a doubt of her good looks seldom exists in his mind; but if
+he can boast of her more useful qualities it is an added
+satisfaction for his self-love.</p>
+<p>The loading of ships was once a matter of skill, judgment, and
+knowledge.&nbsp; Thick books have been written about it.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Stevens on Stowage&rdquo; is a portly volume with the
+renown and weight (in its own world) of Coke on Littleton.&nbsp;
+Stevens is an agreeable writer, and, as is the case with men of
+talent, his gifts adorn his sterling soundness.&nbsp; He gives
+you the official teaching on the whole subject, is precise as to
+rules, mentions illustrative events, quotes law cases where
+verdicts turned upon a point of stowage.&nbsp; He is never
+pedantic, and, for all his close adherence to broad principles,
+he is ready to admit that no two ships can be treated exactly
+alike.</p>
+<p>Stevedoring, which had been a skilled labour, is fast becoming
+a labour without the skill.&nbsp; The modern steamship with her
+many holds is not loaded within the sailor-like meaning of the
+word.&nbsp; She is filled up.&nbsp; Her cargo is not stowed in
+any sense; it is simply dumped into her through six hatchways,
+more or less, by twelve winches or so, with clatter and hurry and
+racket and heat, in a cloud of steam and a mess of
+coal-dust.&nbsp; As long as you keep her propeller under water
+and take care, say, not to fling down barrels of oil on top of
+bales of silk, or deposit an iron bridge-girder of five ton or so
+upon a bed of coffee-bags, you have done about all in the way of
+duty that the cry for prompt despatch will allow you to do.</p>
+<h2>XIV.</h2>
+<p>The sailing-ship, when I knew her in her days of perfection,
+was a sensible creature.&nbsp; When I say her days of perfection,
+I mean perfection of build, gear, seaworthy qualities and ease of
+handling, not the perfection of speed.&nbsp; That quality has
+departed with the change of building material.&nbsp; No iron ship
+of yesterday ever attained the marvels of speed which the
+seamanship of men famous in their time had obtained from their
+wooden, copper-sheeted predecessors.&nbsp; Everything had been
+done to make the iron ship perfect, but no wit of man had managed
+to devise an efficient coating composition to keep her bottom
+clean with the smooth cleanness of yellow metal sheeting.&nbsp;
+After a spell of a few weeks at sea, an iron ship begins to lag
+as if she had grown tired too soon.&nbsp; It is only her bottom
+that is getting foul.&nbsp; A very little affects the speed of an
+iron ship which is not driven on by a merciless propeller.&nbsp;
+Often it is impossible to tell what inconsiderate trifle puts her
+off her stride.&nbsp; A certain mysteriousness hangs around the
+quality of speed as it was displayed by the old sailing-ships
+commanded by a competent seaman.&nbsp; In those days the speed
+depended upon the seaman; therefore, apart from the laws, rules,
+and regulations for the good preservation of his cargo, he was
+careful of his loading,&mdash;or what is technically called the
+trim of his ship.&nbsp; Some ships sailed fast on an even keel,
+others had to be trimmed quite one foot by the stern, and I have
+heard of a ship that gave her best speed on a wind when so loaded
+as to float a couple of inches by the head.</p>
+<p>I call to mind a winter landscape in Amsterdam&mdash;a flat
+foreground of waste land, with here and there stacks of timber,
+like the huts of a camp of some very miserable tribe; the long
+stretch of the Handelskade; cold, stone-faced quays, with the
+snow-sprinkled ground and the hard, frozen water of the canal, in
+which were set ships one behind another with their frosty
+mooring-ropes hanging slack and their decks idle and deserted,
+because, as the master stevedore (a gentle, pale person, with a
+few golden hairs on his chin and a reddened nose) informed me,
+their cargoes were frozen-in up-country on barges and
+schuyts.&nbsp; In the distance, beyond the waste ground, and
+running parallel with the line of ships, a line of brown,
+warm-toned houses seemed bowed under snow-laden roofs.&nbsp; From
+afar at the end of Tsar Peter Straat, issued in the frosty air
+the tinkle of bells of the horse tramcars, appearing and
+disappearing in the opening between the buildings, like little
+toy carriages harnessed with toy horses and played with by people
+that appeared no bigger than children.</p>
+<p>I was, as the French say, biting my fists with impatience for
+that cargo frozen up-country; with rage at that canal set fast,
+at the wintry and deserted aspect of all those ships that seemed
+to decay in grim depression for want of the open water.&nbsp; I
+was chief mate, and very much alone.&nbsp; Directly I had joined
+I received from my owners instructions to send all the
+ship&rsquo;s apprentices away on leave together, because in such
+weather there was nothing for anybody to do, unless to keep up a
+fire in the cabin stove.&nbsp; That was attended to by a snuffy
+and mop-headed, inconceivably dirty, and weirdly toothless Dutch
+ship-keeper, who could hardly speak three words of English, but
+who must have had some considerable knowledge of the language,
+since he managed invariably to interpret in the contrary sense
+everything that was said to him.</p>
+<p>Notwithstanding the little iron stove, the ink froze on the
+swing-table in the cabin, and I found it more convenient to go
+ashore stumbling over the arctic waste-land and shivering in
+glazed tramcars in order to write my evening letter to my owners
+in a gorgeous caf&eacute; in the centre of the town.&nbsp; It was
+an immense place, lofty and gilt, upholstered in red plush, full
+of electric lights and so thoroughly warmed that even the marble
+tables felt tepid to the touch.&nbsp; The waiter who brought me
+my cup of coffee bore, by comparison with my utter isolation, the
+dear aspect of an intimate friend.&nbsp; There, alone in a noisy
+crowd, I would write slowly a letter addressed to Glasgow, of
+which the gist would be: There is no cargo, and no prospect of
+any coming till late spring apparently.&nbsp; And all the time I
+sat there the necessity of getting back to the ship bore heavily
+on my already half-congealed spirits&mdash;the shivering in
+glazed tramcars, the stumbling over the snow-sprinkled waste
+ground, the vision of ships frozen in a row, appearing vaguely
+like corpses of black vessels in a white world, so silent, so
+lifeless, so soulless they seemed to be.</p>
+<p>With precaution I would go up the side of my own particular
+corpse, and would feel her as cold as ice itself and as slippery
+under my feet.&nbsp; My cold berth would swallow up like a chilly
+burial niche my bodily shivers and my mental excitement.&nbsp; It
+was a cruel winter.&nbsp; The very air seemed as hard and
+trenchant as steel; but it would have taken much more than this
+to extinguish my sacred fire for the exercise of my craft.&nbsp;
+No young man of twenty-four appointed chief mate for the first
+time in his life would have let that Dutch tenacious winter
+penetrate into his heart.&nbsp; I think that in those days I
+never forgot the fact of my elevation for five consecutive
+minutes.&nbsp; I fancy it kept me warm, even in my slumbers,
+better than the high pile of blankets, which positively crackled
+with frost as I threw them off in the morning.&nbsp; And I would
+get up early for no reason whatever except that I was in sole
+charge.&nbsp; The new captain had not been appointed yet.</p>
+<p>Almost each morning a letter from my owners would arrive,
+directing me to go to the charterers and clamour for the
+ship&rsquo;s cargo; to threaten them with the heaviest penalties
+of demurrage; to demand that this assortment of varied
+merchandise, set fast in a landscape of ice and windmills
+somewhere up-country, should be put on rail instantly, and fed up
+to the ship in regular quantities every day.&nbsp; After drinking
+some hot coffee, like an Arctic explorer setting off on a sledge
+journey towards the North Pole, I would go ashore and roll
+shivering in a tramcar into the very heart of the town, past
+clean-faced houses, past thousands of brass knockers upon a
+thousand painted doors glimmering behind rows of trees of the
+pavement species, leafless, gaunt, seemingly dead for ever.</p>
+<p>That part of the expedition was easy enough, though the horses
+were painfully glistening with icicles, and the aspect of the
+tram-conductors&rsquo; faces presented a repulsive blending of
+crimson and purple.&nbsp; But as to frightening or bullying, or
+even wheedling some sort of answer out of Mr. Hudig, that was
+another matter altogether.&nbsp; He was a big, swarthy
+Netherlander, with black moustaches and a bold glance.&nbsp; He
+always began by shoving me into a chair before I had time to open
+my mouth, gave me cordially a large cigar, and in excellent
+English would start to talk everlastingly about the phenomenal
+severity of the weather.&nbsp; It was impossible to threaten a
+man who, though he possessed the language perfectly, seemed
+incapable of understanding any phrase pronounced in a tone of
+remonstrance or discontent.&nbsp; As to quarrelling with him, it
+would have been stupid.&nbsp; The weather was too bitter for
+that.&nbsp; His office was so warm, his fire so bright, his sides
+shook so heartily with laughter, that I experienced always a
+great difficulty in making up my mind to reach for my hat.</p>
+<p>At last the cargo did come.&nbsp; At first it came dribbling
+in by rail in trucks, till the thaw set in; and then fast, in a
+multitude of barges, with a great rush of unbound waters.&nbsp;
+The gentle master stevedore had his hands very full at last; and
+the chief mate became worried in his mind as to the proper
+distribution of the weight of his first cargo in a ship he did
+not personally know before.</p>
+<p>Ships do want humouring.&nbsp; They want humouring in
+handling; and if you mean to handle them well, they must have
+been humoured in the distribution of the weight which you ask
+them to carry through the good and evil fortune of a
+passage.&nbsp; Your ship is a tender creature, whose
+idiosyncrasies must be attended to if you mean her to come with
+credit to herself and you through the rough-and-tumble of her
+life.</p>
+<h2>XV.</h2>
+<p>So seemed to think the new captain, who arrived the day after
+we had finished loading, on the very eve of the day of
+sailing.&nbsp; I first beheld him on the quay, a complete
+stranger to me, obviously not a Hollander, in a black bowler and
+a short drab overcoat, ridiculously out of tone with the winter
+aspect of the waste-lands, bordered by the brown fronts of houses
+with their roofs dripping with melting snow.</p>
+<p>This stranger was walking up and down absorbed in the marked
+contemplation of the ship&rsquo;s fore and aft trim; but when I
+saw him squat on his heels in the slush at the very edge of the
+quay to peer at the draught of water under her counter, I said to
+myself, &ldquo;This is the captain.&rdquo;&nbsp; And presently I
+descried his luggage coming along&mdash;a real sailor&rsquo;s
+chest, carried by means of rope-beckets between two men, with a
+couple of leather portmanteaus and a roll of charts sheeted in
+canvas piled upon the lid.&nbsp; The sudden, spontaneous agility
+with which he bounded aboard right off the rail afforded me the
+first glimpse of his real character.&nbsp; Without further
+preliminaries than a friendly nod, he addressed me: &ldquo;You
+have got her pretty well in her fore and aft trim.&nbsp; Now,
+what about your weights?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I told him I had managed to keep the weight sufficiently well
+up, as I thought, one-third of the whole being in the upper part
+&ldquo;above the beams,&rdquo; as the technical expression has
+it.&nbsp; He whistled &ldquo;Phew!&rdquo; scrutinizing me from
+head to foot.&nbsp; A sort of smiling vexation was visible on his
+ruddy face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, we shall have a lively time of it this passage, I
+bet,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+<p>He knew.&nbsp; It turned out he had been chief mate of her for
+the two preceding voyages; and I was already familiar with his
+handwriting in the old log-books I had been perusing in my cabin
+with a natural curiosity, looking up the records of my new
+ship&rsquo;s luck, of her behaviour, of the good times she had
+had, and of the troubles she had escaped.</p>
+<p>He was right in his prophecy.&nbsp; On our passage from
+Amsterdam to Samarang with a general cargo, of which, alas! only
+one-third in weight was stowed &ldquo;above the beams,&rdquo; we
+had a lively time of it.&nbsp; It was lively, but not
+joyful.&nbsp; There was not even a single moment of comfort in
+it, because no seaman can feel comfortable in body or mind when
+he has made his ship uneasy.</p>
+<p>To travel along with a cranky ship for ninety days or so is no
+doubt a nerve-trying experience; but in this case what was wrong
+with our craft was this: that by my system of loading she had
+been made much too stable.</p>
+<p>Neither before nor since have I felt a ship roll so abruptly,
+so violently, so heavily.&nbsp; Once she began, you felt that she
+would never stop, and this hopeless sensation, characterizing the
+motion of ships whose centre of gravity is brought down too low
+in loading, made everyone on board weary of keeping on his
+feet.&nbsp; I remember once over-hearing one of the hands say:
+&ldquo;By Heavens, Jack!&nbsp; I feel as if I didn&rsquo;t mind
+how soon I let myself go, and let the blamed hooker knock my
+brains out if she likes.&rdquo;&nbsp; The captain used to remark
+frequently: &ldquo;Ah, yes; I dare say one-third weight above
+beams would have been quite enough for most ships.&nbsp; But
+then, you see, there&rsquo;s no two of them alike on the seas,
+and she&rsquo;s an uncommonly ticklish jade to load.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Down south, running before the gales of high latitudes, she
+made our life a burden to us.&nbsp; There were days when nothing
+would keep even on the swing-tables, when there was no position
+where you could fix yourself so as not to feel a constant strain
+upon all the muscles of your body.&nbsp; She rolled and rolled
+with an awful dislodging jerk and that dizzily fast sweep of her
+masts on every swing.&nbsp; It was a wonder that the men sent
+aloft were not flung off the yards, the yards not flung off the
+masts, the masts not flung overboard.&nbsp; The captain in his
+armchair, holding on grimly at the head of the table, with the
+soup-tureen rolling on one side of the cabin and the steward
+sprawling on the other, would observe, looking at me:
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s your one-third above the beams.&nbsp; The
+only thing that surprises me is that the sticks have stuck to her
+all this time.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ultimately some of the minor spars did go&mdash;nothing
+important: spanker-booms and such-like&mdash;because at times the
+frightful impetus of her rolling would part a fourfold tackle of
+new three-inch Manilla line as if it were weaker than
+pack-thread.</p>
+<p>It was only poetic justice that the chief mate who had made a
+mistake&mdash;perhaps a half-excusable one&mdash;about the
+distribution of his ship&rsquo;s cargo should pay the
+penalty.&nbsp; A piece of one of the minor spars that did carry
+away flew against the chief mate&rsquo;s back, and sent him
+sliding on his face for quite a considerable distance along the
+main deck.&nbsp; Thereupon followed various and unpleasant
+consequences of a physical order&mdash;&ldquo;queer
+symptoms,&rdquo; as the captain, who treated them, used to say;
+inexplicable periods of powerlessness, sudden accesses of
+mysterious pain; and the patient agreed fully with the regretful
+mutters of his very attentive captain wishing that it had been a
+straightforward broken leg.&nbsp; Even the Dutch doctor who took
+the case up in Samarang offered no scientific explanation.&nbsp;
+All he said was: &ldquo;Ah, friend, you are young yet; it may be
+very serious for your whole life.&nbsp; You must leave your ship;
+you must quite silent be for three months&mdash;quite
+silent.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Of course, he meant the chief mate to keep quiet&mdash;to lay
+up, as a matter of fact.&nbsp; His manner was impressive enough,
+if his English was childishly imperfect when compared with the
+fluency of Mr. Hudig, the figure at the other end of that
+passage, and memorable enough in its way.&nbsp; In a great airy
+ward of a Far Eastern hospital, lying on my back, I had plenty of
+leisure to remember the dreadful cold and snow of Amsterdam,
+while looking at the fronds of the palm-trees tossing and
+rustling at the height of the window.&nbsp; I could remember the
+elated feeling and the soul-gripping cold of those tramway
+journeys taken into town to put what in diplomatic language is
+called pressure upon the good Hudig, with his warm fire, his
+armchair, his big cigar, and the never-failing suggestion in his
+good-natured voice: &ldquo;I suppose in the end it is you they
+will appoint captain before the ship sails?&rdquo;&nbsp; It may
+have been his extreme good-nature, the serious, unsmiling
+good-nature of a fat, swarthy man with coal-black moustache and
+steady eyes; but he might have been a bit of a diplomatist,
+too.&nbsp; His enticing suggestions I used to repel modestly by
+the assurance that it was extremely unlikely, as I had not enough
+experience.&nbsp; &ldquo;You know very well how to go about
+business matters,&rdquo; he used to say, with a sort of affected
+moodiness clouding his serene round face.&nbsp; I wonder whether
+he ever laughed to himself after I had left the office.&nbsp; I
+dare say he never did, because I understand that diplomatists, in
+and out of the career, take themselves and their tricks with an
+exemplary seriousness.</p>
+<p>But he had nearly persuaded me that I was fit in every way to
+be trusted with a command.&nbsp; There came three months of
+mental worry, hard rolling, remorse, and physical pain to drive
+home the lesson of insufficient experience.</p>
+<p>Yes, your ship wants to be humoured with knowledge.&nbsp; You
+must treat with an understanding consideration the mysteries of
+her feminine nature, and then she will stand by you faithfully in
+the unceasing struggle with forces wherein defeat is no
+shame.&nbsp; It is a serious relation, that in which a man stands
+to his ship.&nbsp; She has her <a name="page86"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 86</span>rights as though she could breathe
+and speak; and, indeed, there are ships that, for the right man,
+will do anything but speak, as the saying goes.</p>
+<p>A ship is not a slave.&nbsp; You must make her easy in a
+seaway, you must never forget that you owe her the fullest share
+of your thought, of your skill, of your self-love.&nbsp; If you
+remember that obligation, naturally and without effort, as if it
+were an instinctive feeling of your inner life, she will sail,
+stay, run for you as long as she is able, or, like a sea-bird
+going to rest upon the angry waves, she will lay out the heaviest
+gale that ever made you doubt living long enough to see another
+sunrise.</p>
+<h2>XVI.</h2>
+<p>Often I turn with melancholy eagerness to the space reserved
+in the newspapers under the general heading of &ldquo;Shipping
+Intelligence.&rdquo;&nbsp; I meet there the names of ships I have
+known.&nbsp; Every year some of these names disappear&mdash;the
+names of old friends.&nbsp; &ldquo;Tempi passati!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The different divisions of that kind of news are set down in
+their order, which varies but slightly in its arrangement of
+concise headlines.&nbsp; And first comes
+&ldquo;Speakings&rdquo;&mdash;reports of ships met and signalled
+at sea, name, port, where from, where bound for, so many days
+out, ending frequently with the words &ldquo;All
+well.&rdquo;&nbsp; Then come &ldquo;Wrecks and
+Casualties&rdquo;&mdash;a longish array of paragraphs, unless the
+weather has been fair and clear, and friendly to ships all over
+the world.</p>
+<p>On some days there appears the heading
+&ldquo;Overdue&rdquo;&mdash;an ominous threat of loss and sorrow
+trembling yet in the balance of fate.&nbsp; There is something
+sinister to a seaman in the very grouping of the letters which
+form this word, clear in its meaning, and seldom threatening in
+vain.</p>
+<p>Only a very few days more&mdash;appallingly few to the hearts
+which had set themselves bravely to hope against hope&mdash;three
+weeks, a month later, perhaps, the name of ships under the blight
+of the &ldquo;Overdue&rdquo; heading shall appear again in the
+column of &ldquo;Shipping Intelligence,&rdquo; but under the
+final declaration of &ldquo;Missing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The ship, or barque, or brig So-and-so, bound from such
+a port, with such and such cargo, for such another port, having
+left at such and such a date, last spoken at sea on such a day,
+and never having been heard of since, was posted to-day as
+missing.&rdquo;&nbsp; Such in its strictly official eloquence is
+the form of funeral orations on ships that, perhaps wearied with
+a long struggle, or in some unguarded moment that may come to the
+readiest of us, had let themselves be overwhelmed by a sudden
+blow from the enemy.</p>
+<p>Who can say?&nbsp; Perhaps the men she carried had asked her
+to do too much, had stretched beyond breaking-point the enduring
+faithfulness which seems wrought and hammered into that
+assemblage of iron ribs and plating, of wood and steel and canvas
+and wire, which goes to the making of a ship&mdash;a complete
+creation endowed with character, individuality, qualities and
+defects, by men whose hands launch her upon the water, and that
+other men shall learn to know with an intimacy surpassing the
+intimacy of man with man, to love with a love nearly as great as
+that of man for woman, and often as blind in its infatuated
+disregard of defects.</p>
+<p>There are ships which bear a bad name, but I have yet to meet
+one whose crew for the time being failed to stand up angrily for
+her against every criticism.&nbsp; One ship which I call to mind
+now had the reputation of killing somebody every voyage she
+made.&nbsp; This was no calumny, and yet I remember well,
+somewhere far back in the late seventies, that the crew of that
+ship were, if anything, rather proud of her evil fame, as if they
+had been an utterly corrupt lot of desperadoes glorying in their
+association with an atrocious creature.&nbsp; We, belonging to
+other vessels moored all about the Circular Quay in Sydney, used
+to shake our heads at her with a great sense of the unblemished
+virtue of our own well-loved ships.</p>
+<p>I shall not pronounce her name.&nbsp; She is
+&ldquo;missing&rdquo; now, after a sinister but, from the point
+of view of her owners, a useful career extending over many years,
+and, I should say, across every ocean of our globe.&nbsp; Having
+killed a man for every voyage, and perhaps rendered more
+misanthropic by the infirmities that come with years upon a ship,
+she had made up her mind to kill all hands at once before leaving
+the scene of her exploits.&nbsp; A fitting end, this, to a life
+of usefulness and crime&mdash;in a last outburst of an evil
+passion supremely satisfied on some wild night, perhaps, to the
+applauding clamour of wind and wave.</p>
+<p>How did she do it?&nbsp; In the word &ldquo;missing&rdquo;
+there is a horrible depth of doubt and speculation.&nbsp; Did she
+go quickly from under the men&rsquo;s feet, or did she resist to
+the end, letting the sea batter her to pieces, start her butts,
+wrench her frame, load her with an increasing weight of salt
+water, and, dismasted, unmanageable, rolling heavily, her boats
+gone, her decks swept, had she wearied her men half to death with
+the unceasing labour at the pumps before she sank with them like
+a stone?</p>
+<p>However, such a case must be rare.&nbsp; I imagine a raft of
+some sort could always be contrived; and, even if it saved no
+one, it would float on and be picked up, perhaps conveying some
+hint of the vanished name.&nbsp; Then that ship would not be,
+properly speaking, missing.&nbsp; She would be &ldquo;lost with
+all hands,&rdquo; and in that distinction there is a subtle
+difference&mdash;less horror and a less appalling darkness.</p>
+<h2>XVII.</h2>
+<p>The unholy fascination of dread dwells in the thought of the
+last moments of a ship reported as &ldquo;missing&rdquo; in the
+columns of the <i>Shipping Gazette</i>.&nbsp; Nothing of her ever
+comes to light&mdash;no grating, no lifebuoy, no piece of boat or
+branded oar&mdash;to give a hint of the place and date of her
+sudden end.&nbsp; The <i>Shipping Gazette</i> does not even call
+her &ldquo;lost with all hands.&rdquo;&nbsp; She remains simply
+&ldquo;missing&rdquo;; she has disappeared enigmatically into a
+mystery of fate as big as the world, where your imagination of a
+brother-sailor, of a fellow-servant and lover of ships, may range
+unchecked.</p>
+<p>And yet sometimes one gets a hint of what the last scene may
+be like in the life of a ship and her crew, which resembles a
+drama in its struggle against a great force bearing it up,
+formless, ungraspable, chaotic and mysterious, as fate.</p>
+<p>It was on a gray afternoon in the lull of a three days&rsquo;
+gale that had left the Southern Ocean tumbling heavily upon our
+ship, under a sky hung with rags of clouds that seemed to have
+been cut and hacked by the keen edge of a sou&rsquo;-west
+gale.</p>
+<p>Our craft, a Clyde-built barque of 1,000 tons, rolled so
+heavily that something aloft had carried away.&nbsp; No matter
+what the damage was, but it was serious enough to induce me to go
+aloft myself with a couple of hands and the carpenter to see the
+temporary repairs properly done.</p>
+<p>Sometimes we had to drop everything and cling with both hands
+to the swaying spars, holding our breath in fear of a terribly
+heavy roll.&nbsp; And, wallowing as if she meant to turn over
+with us, the barque, her decks full of water, her gear flying in
+bights, ran at some ten knots an hour.&nbsp; We had been driven
+far south&mdash;much farther that way than we had meant to go;
+and suddenly, up there in the slings of the foreyard, in the
+midst of our work, I felt my shoulder gripped with such force in
+the carpenter&rsquo;s powerful paw that I positively yelled with
+unexpected pain.&nbsp; The man&rsquo;s eyes stared close in my
+face, and he shouted, &ldquo;Look, sir! look!&nbsp; What&rsquo;s
+this?&rdquo; pointing ahead with his other hand.</p>
+<p>At first I saw nothing.&nbsp; The sea was one empty wilderness
+of black and white hills.&nbsp; Suddenly, half-concealed in the
+tumult of the foaming rollers I made out awash, something
+enormous, rising and falling&mdash;something spread out like a
+burst of foam, but with a more bluish, more solid look.</p>
+<p>It was a piece of an ice-floe melted down to a fragment, but
+still big enough to sink a ship, and floating lower than any
+raft, right in our way, as if ambushed among the waves with
+murderous intent.&nbsp; There was no time to get down on
+deck.&nbsp; I shouted from aloft till my head was ready to
+split.&nbsp; I was heard aft, and we managed to clear the sunken
+floe which had come all the way from the Southern ice-cap to have
+a try at our unsuspecting lives.&nbsp; Had it been an hour later,
+nothing could have saved the ship, for no eye could have made out
+in the dusk that pale piece of ice swept over by the
+white-crested waves.</p>
+<p>And as we stood near the taffrail side by side, my captain and
+I, looking at it, hardly discernible already, but still quite
+close-to on our quarter, he remarked in a meditative tone:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But for the turn of that wheel just in time, there
+would have been another case of a &lsquo;missing&rsquo;
+ship.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Nobody ever comes back from a &ldquo;missing&rdquo; ship to
+tell how hard was the death of the craft, and how sudden and
+overwhelming the last anguish of her men.&nbsp; Nobody can say
+with what thoughts, with what regrets, with what words on their
+lips they died.&nbsp; But there is something fine in the sudden
+passing away of these hearts from the extremity of struggle and
+stress and tremendous uproar&mdash;from the vast, unrestful rage
+of the surface to the profound peace of the depths, sleeping
+untroubled since the beginning of ages.</p>
+<h2>XVIII.</h2>
+<p>But if the word &ldquo;missing&rdquo; brings all hope to an
+end and settles the loss of the underwriters, the word
+&ldquo;overdue&rdquo; confirms the fears already born in many
+homes ashore, and opens the door of speculation in the market of
+risks.</p>
+<p>Maritime risks, be it understood.&nbsp; There is a class of
+optimists ready to reinsure an &ldquo;overdue&rdquo; ship at a
+heavy premium.&nbsp; But nothing can insure the hearts on shore
+against the bitterness of waiting for the worst.</p>
+<p>For if a &ldquo;missing&rdquo; ship has never turned up within
+the memory of seamen of my generation, the name of an
+&ldquo;overdue&rdquo; ship, trembling as it were on the edge of
+the fatal heading, has been known to appear as
+&ldquo;arrived.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It must blaze up, indeed, with a great brilliance the dull
+printer&rsquo;s ink expended on the assemblage of the few letters
+that form the ship&rsquo;s name to the anxious eyes scanning the
+page in fear and trembling.&nbsp; It is like the message of
+reprieve from the sentence of sorrow suspended over many a home,
+even if some of the men in her have been the most homeless
+mortals that you may find among the wanderers of the sea.</p>
+<p>The reinsurer, the optimist of ill-luck and disaster, slaps
+his pocket with satisfaction.&nbsp; The underwriter, who had been
+trying to minimize the amount of impending loss, regrets his
+premature pessimism.&nbsp; The ship has been stauncher, the skies
+more merciful, the seas less angry, or perhaps the men on board
+of a finer temper than he has been willing to take for
+granted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The ship So-and-so, bound to such a port, and posted as
+&lsquo;overdue,&rsquo; has been reported yesterday as having
+arrived safely at her destination.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Thus run the official words of the reprieve addressed to the
+hearts ashore lying under a heavy sentence.&nbsp; And they come
+swiftly from the other side of the earth, over wires and cables,
+for your electric telegraph is a great alleviator of
+anxiety.&nbsp; Details, of course, shall follow.&nbsp; And they
+may unfold a tale of narrow escape, of steady ill-luck, of high
+winds and heavy weather, of ice, of interminable calms or endless
+head-gales; a tale of difficulties overcome, of adversity defied
+by a small knot of men upon the great loneliness of the sea; a
+tale of resource, of courage&mdash;of helplessness, perhaps.</p>
+<p>Of all ships disabled at sea, a steamer who has lost her
+propeller is the most helpless.&nbsp; And if she drifts into an
+unpopulated part of the ocean she may soon become overdue.&nbsp;
+The menace of the &ldquo;overdue&rdquo; and the finality of
+&ldquo;missing&rdquo; come very quickly to steamers whose life,
+fed on coals and breathing the black breath of smoke into the
+air, goes on in disregard of wind and wave.&nbsp; Such a one, a
+big steamship, too, whose working life had been a record of
+faithful keeping time from land to land, in disregard of wind and
+sea, once lost her propeller down south, on her passage out to
+New Zealand.</p>
+<p>It was the wintry, murky time of cold gales and heavy
+seas.&nbsp; With the snapping of her tail-shaft her life seemed
+suddenly to depart from her big body, and from a stubborn,
+arrogant existence she passed all at once into the passive state
+of a drifting log.&nbsp; A ship sick with her own weakness has
+not the pathos of a ship vanquished in a battle with the
+elements, wherein consists the inner drama of her life.&nbsp; No
+seaman can look without compassion upon a disabled ship, but to
+look at a sailing-vessel with her lofty spars gone is to look
+upon a defeated but indomitable warrior.&nbsp; There is defiance
+in the remaining stumps of her masts, raised up like maimed limbs
+against the menacing scowl of a stormy sky; there is high courage
+in the upward sweep of her lines towards the bow; and as soon as,
+on a hastily-rigged spar, a strip of canvas is shown to the wind
+to keep her head to sea, she faces the waves again with an
+unsubdued courage.</p>
+<h2>XIX.</h2>
+<p>The efficiency of a steamship consists not so much in her
+courage as in the power she carries within herself.&nbsp; It
+beats and throbs like a pulsating heart within her iron ribs, and
+when it stops, the steamer, whose life is not so much a contest
+as the disdainful ignoring of the sea, sickens and dies upon the
+waves.&nbsp; The sailing-ship, with her unthrobbing body, seemed
+to lead mysteriously a sort of unearthly existence, bordering
+upon the magic of the invisible forces, sustained by the
+inspiration of life-giving and death-dealing winds.</p>
+<p>So that big steamer, dying by a sudden stroke, drifted, an
+unwieldy corpse, away from the track of other ships.&nbsp; And
+she would have been posted really as &ldquo;overdue,&rdquo; or
+maybe as &ldquo;missing,&rdquo; had she not been sighted in a
+snowstorm, vaguely, like a strange rolling island, by a whaler
+going north from her Polar cruising ground.&nbsp; There was
+plenty of food on board, and I don&rsquo;t know whether the
+nerves of her passengers were at all affected by anything else
+than the sense of interminable boredom or the vague fear of that
+unusual situation.&nbsp; Does a passenger ever feel the life of
+the ship in which he is being carried like a sort of honoured
+bale of highly sensitive goods?&nbsp; For a man who has never
+been a passenger it is impossible to say.&nbsp; But I know that
+there is no harder trial for a seaman than to feel a dead ship
+under his feet.</p>
+<p>There is no mistaking that sensation, so dismal, so tormenting
+and so subtle, so full of unhappiness and unrest.&nbsp; I could
+imagine no worse eternal punishment for evil seamen who die
+unrepentant upon the earthly sea than that their souls should be
+condemned to man the ghosts of disabled ships, drifting for ever
+across a ghostly and tempestuous ocean.</p>
+<p>She must have looked ghostly enough, that broken-down steamer,
+rolling in that snowstorm&mdash;a dark apparition in a world of
+white snowflakes to the staring eyes of that whaler&rsquo;s
+crew.&nbsp; Evidently they didn&rsquo;t believe in ghosts, for on
+arrival into port her captain unromantically reported having
+sighted a disabled steamer in latitude somewhere about 50 degrees
+S. and a longitude still more uncertain.&nbsp; Other steamers
+came out to look for her, and ultimately towed her away from the
+cold edge of the world into a harbour with docks and workshops,
+where, with many blows of hammers, her pulsating heart of steel
+was set going again to go forth presently in the renewed pride of
+its strength, fed on fire and water, breathing black smoke into
+the air, pulsating, throbbing, shouldering its arrogant way
+against the great rollers in blind disdain of winds and sea.</p>
+<p>The track she had made when drifting while her heart stood
+still within her iron ribs looked like a tangled thread on the
+white paper of the chart.&nbsp; It was shown to me by a friend,
+her second officer.&nbsp; In that surprising tangle there were
+words in minute letters&mdash;&ldquo;gales,&rdquo; &ldquo;thick
+fog,&rdquo; &ldquo;ice&rdquo;&mdash;written by him here and there
+as memoranda of the weather.&nbsp; She had interminably turned
+upon her tracks, she had crossed and recrossed her haphazard path
+till it resembled nothing so much as a puzzling maze of pencilled
+lines without a meaning.&nbsp; But in that maze there lurked all
+the romance of the &ldquo;overdue&rdquo; and a menacing hint of
+&ldquo;missing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We had three weeks of it,&rdquo; said my friend,
+&ldquo;just think of that!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How did you feel about it?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+<p>He waved his hand as much as to say: It&rsquo;s all in the
+day&rsquo;s work.&nbsp; But then, abruptly, as if making up his
+mind:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you.&nbsp; Towards the last I used to
+shut myself up in my berth and cry.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Cry?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Shed tears,&rdquo; he explained briefly, and rolled up
+the chart.</p>
+<p>I can answer for it, he was a good man&mdash;as good as ever
+stepped upon a ship&rsquo;s deck&mdash;but he could not bear the
+feeling of a dead ship under his feet: the sickly, disheartening
+feeling which the men of some &ldquo;overdue&rdquo; ships that
+come into harbour at last under a jury-rig must have felt,
+combated, and overcome in the faithful discharge of their
+duty.</p>
+<h2><a name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+102</span>XX.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is difficult for a seaman to
+believe that his stranded ship does not feel as unhappy at the
+unnatural predicament of having no water under her keel as he is
+himself at feeling her stranded.</p>
+<p>Stranding is, indeed, the reverse of sinking.&nbsp; The sea
+does not close upon the water-logged hull with a sunny ripple, or
+maybe with the angry rush of a curling wave, erasing her name
+from the roll of living ships.&nbsp; No.&nbsp; It is as if an
+invisible hand had been stealthily uplifted from the bottom to
+catch hold of her keel as it glides through the water.</p>
+<p>More than any other event does stranding bring to the sailor a
+sense of utter and dismal failure.&nbsp; There are strandings and
+strandings, but I am safe to say that 90 per cent. of them are
+occasions in which a sailor, without dishonour, may well wish
+himself dead; and I have no doubt that of those who had the
+experience of their ship taking the ground, 90 per cent. did
+actually for five seconds or so wish themselves dead.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Taking the ground&rdquo; is the professional expression
+for a ship that is stranded in gentle circumstances.&nbsp; But
+the feeling is more as if the ground had taken hold of her.&nbsp;
+It is for those on her deck a surprising sensation.&nbsp; It is
+as if your feet had been caught in an imponderable snare; you
+feel the balance of your body threatened, and the steady poise of
+your mind is destroyed at once.&nbsp; This sensation lasts only a
+second, for even while you stagger something seems to turn over
+in your head, bringing uppermost the mental exclamation, full of
+astonishment and dismay, &ldquo;By Jove! she&rsquo;s on the
+ground!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And that is very terrible.&nbsp; After all, the only mission
+of a seaman&rsquo;s calling is to keep ships&rsquo; keels off the
+ground.&nbsp; Thus the moment of her stranding takes away from
+him every excuse for his continued existence.&nbsp; To keep ships
+afloat is his business; it is his trust; it is the effective
+formula of the bottom of all these vague impulses, dreams, and
+illusions that go to the making up of a boy&rsquo;s
+vocation.&nbsp; The grip of the land upon the keel of your ship,
+even if nothing worse comes of it than the wear and tear of
+tackle and the loss of time, remains in a seaman&rsquo;s memory
+an indelibly fixed taste of disaster.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Stranded&rdquo; within the meaning of this paper stands
+for a more or less excusable mistake.&nbsp; A ship may be
+&ldquo;driven ashore&rdquo; by stress of weather.&nbsp; It is a
+catastrophe, a defeat.&nbsp; To be &ldquo;run ashore&rdquo; has
+the littleness, poignancy, and bitterness of human error.</p>
+<h2>XXI.</h2>
+<p>That is why your &ldquo;strandings&rdquo; are for the most
+part so unexpected.&nbsp; In fact, they are all unexpected,
+except those heralded by some short glimpse of the danger, full
+of agitation and excitement, like an awakening from a dream of
+incredible folly.</p>
+<p>The land suddenly at night looms up right over your bows, or
+perhaps the cry of &ldquo;Broken water ahead!&rdquo; is raised,
+and some long mistake, some complicated edifice of self-delusion,
+over-confidence, and wrong reasoning is brought down in a fatal
+shock, and the heart-searing experience of your ship&rsquo;s keel
+scraping and scrunching over, say, a coral reef.&nbsp; It is a
+sound, for its size, far more terrific to your soul than that of
+a world coming violently to an end.&nbsp; But out of that chaos
+your belief in your own prudence and sagacity reasserts
+itself.&nbsp; You ask yourself, Where on earth did I get
+to?&nbsp; How on earth did I get there? with a conviction that it
+could not be your own act, that there has been at work some
+mysterious conspiracy of accident; that the charts are all wrong,
+and if the charts are not wrong, that land and sea have changed
+their places; that your misfortune shall for ever remain
+inexplicable, since you have lived always with the sense of your
+trust, the last thing on closing your eyes, the first on opening
+them, as if your mind had kept firm hold of your responsibility
+during the hours of sleep.</p>
+<p>You contemplate mentally your mischance, till little by little
+your mood changes, cold doubt steals into the very marrow of your
+bones, you see the inexplicable fact in another light.&nbsp; That
+is the time when you ask yourself, How on earth could I have been
+fool enough to get there?&nbsp; And you are ready to renounce all
+belief in your good sense, in your knowledge, in your fidelity,
+in what you thought till then was the best in you, giving you the
+daily bread of life and the moral support of other men&rsquo;s
+confidence.</p>
+<p>The ship is lost or not lost.&nbsp; Once stranded, you have to
+do your best by her.&nbsp; She may be saved by your efforts, by
+your resource and fortitude bearing up against the heavy weight
+of guilt and failure.&nbsp; And there are justifiable strandings
+in fogs, on uncharted seas, on dangerous shores, through
+treacherous tides.&nbsp; But, saved or not saved, there remains
+with her commander a distinct sense of loss, a flavour in the
+mouth of the real, abiding danger that lurks in all the forms of
+human existence.&nbsp; It is an acquisition, too, that
+feeling.&nbsp; A man may be the better for it, but he will not be
+the same.&nbsp; Damocles has seen the sword suspended by a hair
+over his head, and though a good man need not be made less
+valuable by such a knowledge, the feast shall not henceforth have
+the same flavour.</p>
+<p>Years ago I was concerned as chief mate in a case of stranding
+which was not fatal to the ship.&nbsp; We went to work for ten
+hours on end, laying out anchors in readiness to heave off at
+high water.&nbsp; While I was still busy about the decks forward
+I heard the steward at my elbow saying: &ldquo;The captain asks
+whether you mean to come in, sir, and have something to eat
+to-day.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I went into the cuddy.&nbsp; My captain sat at the head of the
+table like a statue.&nbsp; There was a strange motionlessness of
+everything in that pretty little cabin.&nbsp; The swing-table
+which for seventy odd days had been always on the move, if ever
+so little, hung quite still above the soup-tureen.&nbsp; Nothing
+could have altered the rich colour of my commander&rsquo;s
+complexion, laid on generously by wind and sea; but between the
+two tufts of fair hair above his ears, his skull, generally
+suffused with the hue of blood, shone dead white, like a dome of
+ivory.&nbsp; And he looked strangely untidy.&nbsp; I perceived he
+had not shaved himself that day; and yet the wildest motion of
+the ship in the most stormy latitudes we had passed through,
+never made him miss one single morning ever since we left the
+Channel.&nbsp; The fact must be that a commander cannot possibly
+shave himself when his ship is aground.&nbsp; I have commanded
+ships myself, but I don&rsquo;t know; I have never tried to shave
+in my life.</p>
+<p>He did not offer to help me or himself till I had coughed
+markedly several times.&nbsp; I talked to him professionally in a
+cheery tone, and ended with the confident assertion:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We shall get her off before midnight, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He smiled faintly without looking up, and muttered as if to
+himself:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, yes; the captain put the ship ashore and we got
+her off.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then, raising his head, he attacked grumpily the steward, a
+lanky, anxious youth with a long, pale face and two big front
+teeth.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What makes this soup so bitter?&nbsp; I am surprised
+the mate can swallow the beastly stuff.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m sure the
+cook&rsquo;s ladled some salt water into it by
+mistake.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The charge was so outrageous that the steward for all answer
+only dropped his eyelids bashfully.</p>
+<p>There was nothing the matter with the soup.&nbsp; I had a
+second helping.&nbsp; My heart was warm with hours of hard work
+at the head of a willing crew.&nbsp; I was elated with having
+handled heavy anchors, cables, boats without the slightest hitch;
+<a name="page109"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 109</span>pleased
+with having laid out scientifically bower, stream, and kedge
+exactly where I believed they would do most good.&nbsp; On that
+occasion the bitter taste of a stranding was not for my
+mouth.&nbsp; That experience came later, and it was only then
+that I understood the loneliness of the man in charge.</p>
+<p>It&rsquo;s the captain who puts the ship ashore; it&rsquo;s we
+who get her off.</p>
+<h2>XXII.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> seems to me that no man born and
+truthful to himself could declare that he ever saw the sea
+looking young as the earth looks young in spring.&nbsp; But some
+of us, regarding the ocean with understanding and affection, have
+seen it looking old, as if the immemorial ages had been stirred
+up from the undisturbed bottom of ooze.&nbsp; For it is a gale of
+wind that makes the sea look old.</p>
+<p>From a distance of years, looking at the remembered aspects of
+the storms lived through, it is that impression which disengages
+itself clearly from the great body of impressions left by many
+years of intimate contact.</p>
+<p>If you would know the age of the earth, look upon the sea in a
+storm.&nbsp; The grayness of the whole immense surface, the wind
+furrows upon the faces of the waves, the great masses of foam,
+tossed about and waving, like matted white locks, give to the sea
+in a gale an appearance of hoary age, lustreless, dull, without
+gleams, as though it had been created before light itself.</p>
+<p>Looking back after much love and much trouble, the instinct of
+primitive man, who seeks to personify the forces of Nature for
+his affection and for his fear, is awakened again in the breast
+of one civilized beyond that stage even in his infancy.&nbsp; One
+seems to have known gales as enemies, and even as enemies one
+embraces them in that affectionate regret which clings to the
+past.</p>
+<p>Gales have their personalities, and, after all, perhaps it is
+not strange; for, when all is said and done, they are adversaries
+whose wiles you must defeat, whose violence you must resist, and
+yet with whom you must live in the intimacies of nights and
+days.</p>
+<p>Here speaks the man of masts and sails, to whom the sea is not
+a navigable element, but an intimate companion.&nbsp; The length
+of passages, the growing sense of solitude, the close dependence
+upon the very forces that, friendly to-day, without changing
+their nature, by the mere putting forth of their might, become
+dangerous to-morrow, make for that sense of fellowship which
+modern seamen, good men as they are, cannot hope to know.&nbsp;
+And, besides, your modern ship which is a steamship makes her
+passages on other principles than yielding to the weather and
+humouring the sea.&nbsp; She receives smashing blows, but she
+advances; it is a slogging fight, and not a scientific
+campaign.&nbsp; The machinery, the steel, the fire, the steam,
+have stepped in between the man and the sea.&nbsp; A modern fleet
+of ships does not so much make use of the sea as exploit a
+highway.&nbsp; The modern ship is not the sport of the
+waves.&nbsp; Let us say that each of her voyages is a triumphant
+progress; and yet it is a question whether it is not a more
+subtle and more human triumph to be the sport of the waves and
+yet survive, achieving your end.</p>
+<p>In his own time a man is always very modern.&nbsp; Whether the
+seamen of three hundred years hence will have the faculty of
+sympathy it is impossible to say.&nbsp; An incorrigible mankind
+hardens its heart in the progress of its own
+perfectability.&nbsp; How will they feel on seeing the
+illustrations to the sea novels of our day, or of our
+yesterday?&nbsp; It is impossible to guess.&nbsp; But the seaman
+of the last generation, brought into sympathy with the caravels
+of ancient time by his sailing-ship, their lineal descendant,
+cannot look upon those lumbering forms navigating the na&iuml;ve
+seas of ancient woodcuts without a feeling of surprise, of
+affectionate derision, envy, and admiration.&nbsp; For those
+things, whose unmanageableness, even when represented on paper,
+makes one gasp with a sort of amused horror, were manned by men
+who are his direct professional ancestors.</p>
+<p>No; the seamen of three hundred years hence will probably be
+neither touched nor moved to derision, affection, or
+admiration.&nbsp; They will glance at the photogravures of our
+nearly defunct sailing-ships with a cold, inquisitive and
+indifferent eye.&nbsp; Our ships of yesterday will stand to their
+ships as no lineal ancestors, but as mere predecessors whose
+course will have been run and the race extinct.&nbsp; Whatever
+craft he handles with skill, the seaman of the future shall be,
+not our descendant, but only our successor.</p>
+<h2>XXIII.</h2>
+<p>And so much depends upon the craft which, made by man, is one
+with man, that the sea shall wear for him another aspect.&nbsp; I
+remember once seeing the commander&mdash;officially the master,
+by courtesy the captain&mdash;of a fine iron ship of the old wool
+fleet shaking his head at a very pretty brigantine.&nbsp; She was
+bound the other way.&nbsp; She was a taut, trim, neat little
+craft, extremely well kept; and on that serene evening when we
+passed her close she looked the embodiment of coquettish comfort
+on the sea.&nbsp; It was somewhere near the Cape&mdash;<i>The</i>
+Cape being, of course, the Cape of Good Hope, the Cape of Storms
+of its Portuguese discoverer.&nbsp; And whether it is that the
+word &ldquo;storm&rdquo; should not be pronounced upon the sea
+where the storms dwell thickly, or because men are shy of
+confessing their good hopes, it has become the nameless
+cape&mdash;the Cape <i>tout court</i>.&nbsp; The other great cape
+of the world, strangely enough, is seldom if ever called a
+cape.&nbsp; We say, &ldquo;a voyage round the Horn&rdquo;;
+&ldquo;we rounded the Horn&rdquo;; &ldquo;we got a frightful
+battering off the Horn&rdquo;; but rarely &ldquo;Cape
+Horn,&rdquo; and, indeed, with some reason, for Cape Horn is as
+much an island as a cape.&nbsp; The third stormy cape of the
+world, which is the Leeuwin, receives generally its full name, as
+if to console its second-rate dignity.&nbsp; These are the capes
+that look upon the gales.</p>
+<p>The little brigantine, then, had doubled the Cape.&nbsp;
+Perhaps she was coming from Port Elizabeth, from East
+London&mdash;who knows?&nbsp; It was many years ago, but I
+remember well the captain of the wool-clipper nodding at her with
+the words, &ldquo;Fancy having to go about the sea in a thing
+like that!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He was a man brought up in big deep-water ships, and the size
+of the craft under his feet was a part of his conception of the
+sea.&nbsp; His own ship was certainly big as ships went
+then.&nbsp; He may have thought of the size of his cabin,
+or&mdash;unconsciously, perhaps&mdash;have conjured up a vision
+of a vessel so small tossing amongst the great seas.&nbsp; I
+didn&rsquo;t inquire, and to a young second mate the captain of
+the little pretty brigantine, sitting astride a camp stool with
+his chin resting on his hands that were crossed upon the rail,
+might have appeared a minor king amongst men.&nbsp; We passed her
+within earshot, without a hail, reading each other&rsquo;s names
+with the naked eye.</p>
+<p>Some years later, the second mate, the recipient of that
+almost involuntary mutter, could have told his captain that a man
+brought up in big ships may yet take a peculiar delight in what
+we should both then have called a small craft.&nbsp; Probably the
+captain of the big ship would not have understood very
+well.&nbsp; His answer would have been a gruff, &ldquo;Give me
+size,&rdquo; as I heard another man reply to a remark praising
+the handiness of a small vessel.&nbsp; It was not a love of the
+grandiose or the prestige attached to the command of great
+tonnage, for he continued, with an air of disgust and contempt,
+&ldquo;Why, you get flung out of your bunk as likely as not in
+any sort of heavy weather.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I don&rsquo;t know.&nbsp; I remember a few nights in my
+lifetime, and in a big ship, too (as big as they made them then),
+when one did not get flung out of one&rsquo;s bed simply because
+one never even attempted to get in; one had been made too weary,
+too hopeless, to try.&nbsp; The expedient of turning your bedding
+out on to a damp floor and lying on it there was no earthly good,
+since you could not keep your place or get a second&rsquo;s rest
+in that or any other position.&nbsp; But of the delight of seeing
+a small craft run bravely amongst the great seas there can be no
+question to him whose soul does not dwell ashore.&nbsp; Thus I
+well remember a three days&rsquo; run got out of a little barque
+of 400 tons somewhere between the islands of St. Paul and
+Amsterdam and Cape Otway on the Australian coast.&nbsp; It was a
+hard, long gale, gray clouds and green sea, heavy weather
+undoubtedly, but still what a sailor would call manageable.&nbsp;
+Under two lower topsails and a reefed foresail the barque seemed
+to race with a long, steady sea that did not becalm her in the
+troughs.&nbsp; The solemn thundering combers caught her up from
+astern, passed her with a fierce boiling up of foam level with
+the bulwarks, swept on ahead with a swish and a roar: and the
+little vessel, dipping her jib-boom into the tumbling froth,
+would go on running in a smooth, glassy hollow, a deep valley
+between two ridges of the sea, hiding the horizon ahead and
+astern.&nbsp; There was such fascination in her pluck,
+nimbleness, the continual exhibition of unfailing seaworthiness,
+in the semblance of courage and endurance, that I could not give
+up the delight of watching her run through the three
+unforgettable days of that gale which my mate also delighted to
+extol as &ldquo;a famous shove.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And this is one of those gales whose memory in after-years
+returns, welcome in dignified austerity, as you would remember
+with pleasure the noble features of a stranger with whom you
+crossed swords once in knightly encounter and are never to see
+again.&nbsp; In this way gales have their physiognomy.&nbsp; You
+remember them by your own feelings, and no two gales stamp
+themselves in the same way upon your emotions.&nbsp; Some cling
+to you in woebegone misery; others come back fiercely and
+weirdly, like ghouls bent upon sucking your strength away;
+others, again, have a catastrophic splendour; some are
+unvenerated recollections, as of spiteful wild-cats clawing at
+your agonized vitals; others are severe, like a visitation; and
+one or two rise up draped and mysterious, with an aspect of
+ominous menace.&nbsp; In each of them there is a characteristic
+point at which the whole feeling seems contained in one single
+moment.&nbsp; Thus there is a certain four o&rsquo;clock in the
+morning in the confused roar of a black and white world when
+coming on deck to take charge of my watch I received the
+instantaneous impression that the ship could not live for another
+hour in such a raging sea.</p>
+<p>I wonder what became of the men who silently (you
+couldn&rsquo;t hear yourself speak) must have shared that
+conviction with me.&nbsp; To be left to write about it is not,
+perhaps, the most enviable fate; but the point is that this
+impression resumes in its intensity the whole recollection of
+days and days of desperately dangerous weather.&nbsp; We were
+then, for reasons which it is not worth while to specify, in the
+close neighbourhood of Kerguelen Land; and now, when I open an
+atlas and look at the tiny dots on the map of the Southern Ocean,
+I see as if engraved upon the paper the enraged physiognomy of
+that gale.</p>
+<p>Another, strangely, recalls a silent man.&nbsp; And yet it was
+not din that was wanting; in fact, it was terrific.&nbsp; That
+one was a gale that came upon the ship swiftly, like a parnpero,
+which last is a very sudden wind indeed.&nbsp; Before we knew
+very well what was coming all the sails we had set had burst; the
+furled ones were blowing loose, ropes flying, sea
+hissing&mdash;it hissed tremendously&mdash;wind howling, and the
+ship lying on her side, so that half of the crew were swimming
+and the other half clawing desperately at whatever came to hand,
+according to the side of the deck each man had been caught on by
+the catastrophe, either to leeward or to windward.&nbsp; The
+shouting I need not mention&mdash;it was the merest drop in an
+ocean of noise&mdash;and yet the character of the gale seems
+contained in the recollection of one small, not particularly
+impressive, sallow man without a cap and with a very still
+face.&nbsp; Captain Jones&mdash;let us call him Jones&mdash;had
+been caught unawares.&nbsp; Two orders he had given at the first
+sign of an utterly unforeseen onset; after that the magnitude of
+his mistake seemed to have overwhelmed him.&nbsp; We were doing
+what was needed and feasible.&nbsp; The ship behaved well.&nbsp;
+Of course, it was some time before we could pause in our fierce
+and laborious exertions; but all through the work, the
+excitement, the uproar, and some dismay, we were aware of this
+silent little man at the break of the poop, perfectly motionless,
+soundless, and often hidden from us by the drift of sprays.</p>
+<p>When we officers clambered at last upon the poop, he seemed to
+come out of that numbed composure, and shouted to us down wind:
+&ldquo;Try the pumps.&rdquo;&nbsp; Afterwards he
+disappeared.&nbsp; As to the ship, I need not say that, although
+she was presently swallowed up in one of the blackest nights I
+can remember, she did not disappear.&nbsp; In truth, I
+don&rsquo;t fancy that there had ever been much danger of that,
+but certainly the experience was noisy and particularly
+distracting&mdash;and yet it is the memory of a very quiet
+silence that survives.</p>
+<h2>XXIV.</h2>
+<p>For, after all, a gale of wind, the thing of mighty sound, is
+inarticulate.&nbsp; It is man who, in a chance phrase, interprets
+the elemental passion of his enemy.&nbsp; Thus there is another
+gale in my memory, a thing of endless, deep, humming roar,
+moonlight, and a spoken sentence.</p>
+<p>It was off that other cape which is always deprived of its
+title as the Cape of Good Hope is robbed of its name.&nbsp; It
+was off the Horn.&nbsp; For a true expression of dishevelled
+wildness there is nothing like a gale in the bright moonlight of
+a high latitude.</p>
+<p>The ship, brought-to and bowing to enormous flashing seas,
+glistened wet from deck to trucks; her one set sail stood out a
+coal-black shape upon the gloomy blueness of the air.&nbsp; I was
+a youngster then, and suffering from weariness, cold, and
+imperfect oilskins which let water in at every seam.&nbsp; I
+craved human companionship, and, coming off the poop, took my
+place by the side of the boatswain (a man whom I did not like) in
+a comparatively dry spot where at worst we had water only up to
+our knees.&nbsp; Above our heads the explosive booming gusts of
+wind passed continuously, justifying the sailor&rsquo;s saying
+&ldquo;It blows great guns.&rdquo;&nbsp; And just from that need
+of human companionship, being very close to the man, I said, or
+rather shouted:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Blows very hard, boatswain.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>His answer was:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ay, and if it blows only a little harder things will
+begin to go.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t mind as long as everything
+holds, but when things begin to go it&rsquo;s bad.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The note of dread in the shouting voice, the practical truth
+of these words, heard years ago from a man I did not like, have
+stamped its peculiar character on that gale.</p>
+<p>A look in the eyes of a shipmate, a low murmur in the most
+sheltered spot where the watch on duty are huddled together, a
+meaning moan from one to the other with a glance at the windward
+sky, a sigh of weariness, a gesture of disgust passing into the
+keeping of the great wind, become part and parcel of the
+gale.&nbsp; The olive hue of hurricane clouds presents an aspect
+peculiarly appalling.&nbsp; The inky ragged wrack, flying before
+a nor&rsquo;-west wind, makes you dizzy with its headlong speed
+that depicts the rush of the invisible air.&nbsp; A hard
+sou&rsquo;-wester startles you with its close horizon and its low
+gray sky, as if the world were a dungeon wherein there is no rest
+for body or soul.&nbsp; And there are black squalls, white
+squalls, thunder squalls, and unexpected gusts that come without
+a single sign in the sky; and of each kind no one of them
+resembles another.</p>
+<p><a name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 123</span>There
+is infinite variety in the gales of wind at sea, and except for
+the peculiar, terrible, and mysterious moaning that may be heard
+sometimes passing through the roar of a hurricane&mdash;except
+for that unforgettable sound, as if the soul of the universe had
+been goaded into a mournful groan&mdash;it is, after all, the
+human voice that stamps the mark of human consciousness upon the
+character of a gale.</p>
+<h2>XXV.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">There</span> is no part of the world of
+coasts, continents, oceans, seas, straits, capes, and islands
+which is not under the sway of a reigning wind, the sovereign of
+its typical weather.&nbsp; The wind rules the aspects of the sky
+and the action of the sea.&nbsp; But no wind rules unchallenged
+his realm of land and water.&nbsp; As with the kingdoms of the
+earth, there are regions more turbulent than others.&nbsp; In the
+middle belt of the earth the Trade Winds reign supreme,
+undisputed, like monarchs of long-settled kingdoms, whose
+traditional power, checking all undue ambitions, is not so much
+an exercise of personal might as the working of long-established
+institutions.&nbsp; The intertropical kingdoms of the Trade Winds
+are favourable to the ordinary life of a merchantman.&nbsp; The
+trumpet-call of strife is seldom borne on their wings to the
+watchful ears of men on the decks of ships.&nbsp; The regions
+ruled by the north-east and south-east Trade Winds are
+serene.&nbsp; In a southern-going ship, bound out for a long
+voyage, the passage through their dominions is characterized by a
+relaxation of strain and vigilance on the part of the
+seamen.&nbsp; Those citizens of the ocean feel sheltered under
+the &aelig;gis of an uncontested law, of an undisputed
+dynasty.&nbsp; There, indeed, if anywhere on earth, the weather
+may be trusted.</p>
+<p>Yet not too implicitly.&nbsp; Even in the constitutional realm
+of Trade Winds, north and south of the equator, ships are
+overtaken by strange disturbances.&nbsp; Still, the easterly
+winds, and, generally speaking, the easterly weather all the
+world over, is characterized by regularity and persistence.</p>
+<p>As a ruler, the East Wind has a remarkable stability; as an
+invader of the high latitudes lying under the tumultuous sway of
+his great brother, the Wind of the West, he is extremely
+difficult to dislodge, by the reason of his cold craftiness and
+profound duplicity.</p>
+<p>The narrow seas around these isles, where British admirals
+keep watch and ward upon the marches of the Atlantic Ocean, are
+subject to the turbulent sway of the West Wind.&nbsp; Call it
+north-west or south-west, it is all one&mdash;a different phase
+of the same character, a changed expression on the same
+face.&nbsp; In the orientation of the winds that rule the seas,
+the north and south directions are of no importance.&nbsp; There
+are no North and South Winds of any account upon this
+earth.&nbsp; The North and South Winds are but small princes in
+the dynasties that make peace and war upon the sea.&nbsp; They
+never assert themselves upon a vast stage.&nbsp; They depend upon
+local causes&mdash;the configuration of coasts, the shapes of
+straits, the accidents of bold promontories round which they play
+their little part.&nbsp; In the polity of winds, as amongst the
+tribes of the earth, the real struggle lies between East and
+West.</p>
+<h2>XXVI.</h2>
+<p>The West Wind reigns over the seas surrounding the coasts of
+these kingdoms; and from the gateways of the channels, from
+promontories as if from watch-towers, from estuaries of rivers as
+if from postern gates, from passage-ways, inlets, straits,
+firths, the garrison of the Isle and the crews of the ships going
+and returning look to the westward to judge by the varied
+splendours of his sunset mantle the mood of that arbitrary
+ruler.&nbsp; The end of the day is the time to gaze at the kingly
+face of the Westerly Weather, who is the arbiter of ships&rsquo;
+destinies.&nbsp; Benignant and splendid, or splendid and
+sinister, the western sky reflects the hidden purposes of the
+royal mind.&nbsp; Clothed in a mantle of dazzling gold or draped
+in rags of black clouds like a beggar, the might of the Westerly
+Wind sits enthroned upon the western horizon with the whole North
+Atlantic as a footstool for his feet and the first twinkling
+stars making a diadem for his brow.&nbsp; Then the seamen,
+attentive courtiers of the weather, think of regulating the
+conduct of their ships by the mood of the master.&nbsp; The West
+Wind is too great a king to be a dissembler: he is no calculator
+plotting deep schemes in a sombre heart; he is too strong for
+small artifices; there is passion in all his moods, even in the
+soft mood of his serene days, in the grace of his blue sky whose
+immense and unfathomable tenderness reflected in the mirror of
+the sea embraces, possesses, lulls to sleep the ships with white
+sails.&nbsp; He is all things to all oceans; he is like a poet
+seated upon a throne&mdash;magnificent, simple, barbarous,
+pensive, generous, impulsive, changeable, unfathomable&mdash;but
+when you understand him, always the same.&nbsp; Some of his
+sunsets are like pageants devised for the delight of the
+multitude, when all the gems of the royal treasure-house are
+displayed above the sea.&nbsp; Others are like the opening of his
+royal confidence, tinged with thoughts of sadness and compassion
+in a melancholy splendour meditating upon the short-lived peace
+of the waters.&nbsp; And I have seen him put the pent-up anger of
+his heart into the aspect of the inaccessible sun, and cause it
+to glare fiercely like the eye of an implacable autocrat out of a
+pale and frightened sky.</p>
+<p>He is the war-lord who sends his battalions of Atlantic
+rollers to the assault of our seaboard.&nbsp; The compelling
+voice of the West Wind musters up to his service all the might of
+the ocean.&nbsp; At the bidding of the West Wind there arises a
+great commotion in the sky above these Islands, and a great rush
+of waters falls upon our shores.&nbsp; The sky of the westerly
+weather is full of flying clouds, of great big white clouds
+coming thicker and thicker till they seem to stand welded into a
+solid canopy, upon whose gray face the lower wrack of the gale,
+thin, black and angry-looking, flies past with vertiginous
+speed.&nbsp; Denser and denser grows this dome of vapours,
+descending lower and lower upon the sea, narrowing the horizon
+around the ship.&nbsp; And the characteristic aspect of westerly
+weather, the thick, gray, smoky and sinister tone sets in,
+circumscribing the view of the men, drenching their bodies,
+oppressing their souls, taking their breath away with booming
+gusts, deafening, blinding, driving, rushing them onwards in a
+swaying ship towards our coasts lost in mists and rain.</p>
+<p>The caprice of the winds, like the wilfulness of men, is
+fraught with the disastrous consequences of
+self-indulgence.&nbsp; Long anger, the sense of his uncontrolled
+power, spoils the frank and generous nature of the West
+Wind.&nbsp; It is as if his heart were corrupted by a malevolent
+and brooding rancour.&nbsp; He devastates his own kingdom in the
+wantonness of his force.&nbsp; South-west is the quarter of the
+heavens where he presents his darkened brow.&nbsp; He breathes
+his rage in terrific squalls, and overwhelms his realm with an
+inexhaustible welter of clouds.&nbsp; He strews the seeds of
+anxiety upon the decks of scudding ships, makes the foam-stripped
+ocean look old, and sprinkles with gray hairs the heads of
+ship-masters in the homeward-bound ships running for the
+Channel.&nbsp; The Westerly Wind asserting his sway from the
+south-west quarter is often like a monarch gone mad, driving
+forth with wild imprecations the most faithful of his courtiers
+to shipwreck, disaster, and death.</p>
+<p>The south-westerly weather is the thick weather <i>par
+excellence</i>.&nbsp; It is not the thickness of the fog; it is
+rather a contraction of the horizon, a mysterious veiling of the
+shores with clouds that seem to make a low-vaulted dungeon around
+the running ship.&nbsp; It is not blindness; it is a shortening
+of the sight.&nbsp; The West Wind does not say to the seaman,
+&ldquo;You shall be blind&rdquo;; it restricts merely the range
+of his vision and raises the dread of land within his
+breast.&nbsp; It makes of him a man robbed of half his force, of
+half his efficiency.&nbsp; Many times in my life, standing in
+long sea-boots and streaming oilskins at the elbow of my
+commander on the poop of a homeward-bound ship making for the
+Channel, and gazing ahead into the gray and tormented waste, I
+have heard a weary sigh shape itself into a studiously casual
+comment:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t see very far in this weather.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And have made answer in the same low, perfunctory tone</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It would be merely the instinctive voicing of an ever-present
+thought associated closely with the consciousness of the land
+somewhere ahead and of the great speed of the ship.&nbsp; Fair
+wind, fair wind!&nbsp; Who would dare to grumble at a fair
+wind?&nbsp; It was a favour of the Western King, who rules
+masterfully the North Atlantic from the latitude of the Azores to
+the latitude of Cape Farewell.&nbsp; A famous shove this to end a
+good passage with; and yet, somehow, one could not muster upon
+one&rsquo;s lips the smile of a courtier&rsquo;s gratitude.&nbsp;
+This favour was dispensed to you from under an overbearing scowl,
+which is the true expression of the great autocrat when he has
+made up his mind to give a battering to some ships and to hunt
+certain others home in one breath of cruelty and benevolence,
+equally distracting.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir.&nbsp; Can&rsquo;t see very far.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Thus would the mate&rsquo;s voice repeat the thought of the
+master, both gazing ahead, while under their feet the ship rushes
+at some twelve knots in the direction of the lee shore; and only
+a couple of miles in front of her swinging and dripping jib-boom,
+carried naked with an upward slant like a spear, a gray horizon
+closes the view with a multitude of waves surging upwards
+violently as if to strike at the stooping clouds.</p>
+<p>Awful and threatening scowls darken the face of the West Wind
+in his clouded, south-west mood; and from the King&rsquo;s
+throne-hall in the western board stronger gusts reach you, like
+the fierce shouts of raving fury to which only the gloomy
+grandeur of the scene imparts a saving dignity.&nbsp; A shower
+pelts the deck and the sails of the ship as if flung with a
+scream by an angry hand; and when the night closes in, the night
+of a south-westerly gale, it seems more hopeless than the shade
+of Hades.&nbsp; The south-westerly mood of the great West Wind is
+a lightless mood, without sun, moon, or stars, with no gleam of
+light but the phosphorescent flashes of the great sheets of foam
+that, boiling up on each side of the ship, fling bluish gleams
+upon her dark and narrow hull, rolling as she runs, chased by
+enormous seas, distracted in the tumult.</p>
+<p>There are some bad nights in the kingdom of the West Wind for
+homeward-bound ships making for the Channel; and the days of
+wrath dawn upon them colourless and vague like the timid turning
+up of invisible lights upon the scene of a tyrannical and
+passionate outbreak, awful in the monotony of its method and the
+increasing strength of its violence.&nbsp; It is the same wind,
+the same clouds, the same wildly racing seas, the same thick
+horizon around the ship.&nbsp; Only the wind is stronger, the
+clouds seem denser and more overwhelming, the waves appear to
+have grown bigger and more threatening during the night.&nbsp;
+The hours, whose minutes are marked by the crash of the breaking
+seas, slip by with the screaming, pelting squalls overtaking the
+ship as she runs on and on with darkened canvas, with streaming
+spars and dripping ropes.&nbsp; The down-pours thicken.&nbsp;
+Preceding each shower a mysterious gloom, like the passage of a
+shadow above the firmament of gray clouds, filters down upon the
+ship.&nbsp; Now and then the rain pours upon your head in streams
+as if from spouts.&nbsp; It seems as if your ship were going to
+be drowned before she sank, as if all atmosphere had turned to
+water.&nbsp; You gasp, you splutter, you are blinded and
+deafened, you are submerged, obliterated, dissolved, annihilated,
+streaming all over as if your limbs, too, had turned to
+water.&nbsp; And every nerve on the alert you watch for the
+clearing-up mood of the Western King, that shall come with a
+shift of wind as likely as not to whip all the three masts out of
+your ship in the twinkling of an eye.</p>
+<h2>XXVII.</h2>
+<p>Heralded by the increasing fierceness of the squalls,
+sometimes by a faint flash of lightning like the signal of a
+lighted torch waved far away behind the clouds, the shift of wind
+comes at last, the crucial moment of the change from the brooding
+and veiled violence of the south-west gale to the sparkling,
+flashing, cutting, clear-eyed anger of the King&rsquo;s
+north-westerly mood.&nbsp; You behold another phase of his
+passion, a fury bejewelled with stars, mayhap bearing the
+crescent of the moon on its brow, shaking the last vestiges of
+its torn cloud-mantle in inky-black squalls, with hail and sleet
+descending like showers of crystals and pearls, bounding off the
+spars, drumming on the sails, pattering on the oilskin coats,
+whitening the decks of homeward-bound ships.&nbsp; Faint, ruddy
+flashes of lightning flicker in the starlight upon her
+mastheads.&nbsp; A chilly blast hums in the taut rigging, causing
+the ship to tremble to her very keel, and the soaked men on her
+decks to shiver in their wet clothes to the very marrow of their
+bones.&nbsp; Before one squall has flown over to sink in the
+eastern board, the edge of another peeps up already above the
+western horizon, racing up swift, shapeless, like a black bag
+full of frozen water ready to burst over your devoted head.&nbsp;
+The temper of the ruler of the ocean has changed.&nbsp; Each gust
+of the clouded mood that seemed warmed by the heat of a heart
+flaming with anger has its counterpart in the chilly blasts that
+seem blown from a breast turned to ice with a sudden revulsion of
+feeling.&nbsp; Instead of blinding your eyes and crushing your
+soul with a terrible apparatus of cloud and mists and seas and
+rain, the King of the West turns his power to contemptuous
+pelting of your back with icicles, to making your weary eyes
+water as if in grief, and your worn-out carcass quake
+pitifully.&nbsp; But each mood of the great autocrat has its own
+greatness, and each is hard to bear.&nbsp; Only the north-west
+phase of that mighty display is not demoralizing to the same
+extent, because between the hail and sleet squalls of a
+north-westerly gale one can see a long way ahead.</p>
+<p>To see! to see!&mdash;this is the craving of the sailor, as of
+the rest of blind humanity.&nbsp; To have his path made clear for
+him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and
+tempestuous existence.&nbsp; I have heard a reserved, silent man,
+with no nerves to speak of, after three days of hard running in
+thick south-westerly weather, burst out passionately: &ldquo;I
+wish to God we could get sight of something!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We had just gone down below for a moment to commune in a
+battened-down cabin, with a large white chart lying limp and damp
+upon a cold and clammy table under the light of a smoky
+lamp.&nbsp; Sprawling over that seaman&rsquo;s silent and trusted
+adviser, with one elbow upon the coast of Africa and the other
+planted in the neighbourhood of Cape Hatteras (it was a general
+track-chart of the North Atlantic), my skipper lifted his rugged,
+hairy face, and glared at me in a half-exasperated,
+half-appealing way.&nbsp; We have seen no sun, moon, or stars for
+something like seven days.&nbsp; By the effect of the West
+Wind&rsquo;s wrath the celestial bodies had gone into hiding for
+a week or more, and the last three days had seen the force of a
+south-west gale grow from fresh, through strong, to heavy, as the
+entries in my log-book could testify.&nbsp; Then we separated, he
+to go on deck again, in obedience to that mysterious call that
+seems to sound for ever in a shipmaster&rsquo;s ears, I to
+stagger into my cabin with some vague notion of putting down the
+words &ldquo;Very heavy weather&rdquo; in a log-book not quite
+written up-to-date.&nbsp; But I gave it up, and crawled into my
+bunk instead, boots and hat on, all standing (it did not matter;
+everything was soaking wet, a heavy sea having burst the poop
+skylights the night before), to remain in a nightmarish state
+between waking and sleeping for a couple of hours of so-called
+rest.</p>
+<p>The south-westerly mood of the West Wind is an enemy of sleep,
+and even of a recumbent position, in the responsible officers of
+a ship.&nbsp; After two hours of futile, light-headed,
+inconsequent thinking upon all things under heaven in that dark,
+dank, wet and devastated cabin, I arose suddenly and staggered up
+on deck.&nbsp; The autocrat of the North Atlantic was still
+oppressing his kingdom and its outlying dependencies, even as far
+as the Bay of Biscay, in the dismal secrecy of thick, very thick,
+weather.&nbsp; The force of the wind, though we were running
+before it at the rate of some ten knots an hour, was so great
+that it drove me with a steady push to the front of the poop,
+where my commander was holding on.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What do you think of it?&rdquo; he addressed me in an
+interrogative yell.</p>
+<p>What I really thought was that we both had had just about
+enough of it.&nbsp; The manner in which the great West Wind
+chooses at times to administer his possessions does not commend
+itself to a person of peaceful and law-abiding disposition,
+inclined to draw distinctions between right and wrong in the face
+of natural forces, whose standard, naturally, is that of might
+alone.&nbsp; But, of course, I said nothing.&nbsp; For a man
+caught, as it were, between his skipper and the great West Wind
+silence is the safest sort of diplomacy.&nbsp; Moreover, I knew
+my skipper.&nbsp; He did not want to know what I thought.&nbsp;
+Shipmasters hanging on a breath before the thrones of the winds
+ruling the seas have their psychology, whose workings are as
+important to the ship and those on board of her as the changing
+moods of the weather.&nbsp; The man, as a matter of fact, under
+no circumstances, ever cared a brass farthing for what I or
+anybody else in his ship thought.&nbsp; He had had just about
+enough of it, I guessed, and what he was at really was a process
+of fishing for a suggestion.&nbsp; It was the pride of his life
+that he had never wasted a chance, no matter how boisterous,
+threatening, and dangerous, of a fair wind.&nbsp; Like men racing
+blindfold for a gap in a hedge, we were finishing a splendidly
+quick passage from the Antipodes, with a tremendous rush for the
+Channel in as thick a weather as any I can remember, but his
+psychology did not permit him to bring the ship to with a fair
+wind blowing&mdash;at least not on his own initiative.&nbsp; And
+yet he felt that very soon indeed something would have to be
+done.&nbsp; He wanted the suggestion to come from me, so that
+later on, when the trouble was over, he could argue this point
+with his own uncompromising spirit, laying the blame upon my
+shoulders.&nbsp; I must render him the justice that this sort of
+pride was his only weakness.</p>
+<p>But he got no suggestion from me.&nbsp; I understood his
+psychology.&nbsp; Besides, I had my own stock of weaknesses at
+the time (it is a different one now), and amongst them was the
+conceit of being remarkably well up in the psychology of the
+Westerly weather.&nbsp; I believed&mdash;not to mince
+matters&mdash;that I had a genius for reading the mind of the
+great ruler of high latitudes.&nbsp; I fancied I could discern
+already the coming of a change in his royal mood.&nbsp; And all I
+said was:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The weather&rsquo;s bound to clear up with the shift of
+wind.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Anybody knows that much!&rdquo; he snapped at me, at
+the highest pitch of his voice.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I mean before dark!&rdquo; I cried.</p>
+<p>This was all the opening he ever got from me.&nbsp; The
+eagerness with which he seized upon it gave me the measure of the
+anxiety he had been labouring under.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; he shouted, with an affectation of
+impatience, as if giving way to long entreaties.&nbsp; &ldquo;All
+right.&nbsp; If we don&rsquo;t get a shift by then we&rsquo;ll
+take that foresail off her and put her head under her wing for
+the night.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I was struck by the picturesque character of the phrase as
+applied to a ship brought-to in order to ride out a gale with
+wave after wave passing under her breast.&nbsp; I could see her
+resting in the tumult of the elements like a sea-bird sleeping in
+wild weather upon the raging waters with its head tucked under
+its wing.&nbsp; In imaginative precision, in true feeling, this
+is one of the most expressive sentences I have ever heard on
+human lips.&nbsp; But as to taking the foresail off that ship
+before we put her head under her wing, I had my grave
+doubts.&nbsp; They were justified.&nbsp; That long enduring piece
+of canvas was confiscated by the arbitrary decree of the West
+Wind, to whom belong the lives of men and the contrivances of
+their hands within the limits of his kingdom.&nbsp; With the
+sound of a faint explosion it vanished into the thick weather
+bodily, leaving behind of its stout substance not so much as one
+solitary strip big enough to be picked into a handful of lint
+for, say, a wounded elephant.&nbsp; Torn out of its bolt-ropes,
+it faded like a whiff of smoke in the smoky drift of clouds
+shattered and torn by the shift of wind.&nbsp; For the shift of
+wind had come.&nbsp; The unveiled, low sun glared angrily from a
+chaotic sky upon a confused and tremendous sea dashing itself
+upon a coast.&nbsp; We recognised the headland, and looked at
+each other in the silence of dumb wonder.&nbsp; Without knowing
+it in the least, we had run up alongside the Isle of Wight, and
+that tower, tinged a faint evening red in the salt wind-haze, was
+the lighthouse on St. Catherine&rsquo;s Point.</p>
+<p>My skipper recovered first from his astonishment.&nbsp; His
+bulging eyes sank back gradually into their orbits.&nbsp; His
+psychology, taking it all round, was really very creditable for
+an average sailor.&nbsp; He had been spared the humiliation of
+laying his ship to with a fair wind; and at once that man, of an
+open and truthful nature, spoke up in perfect good faith, rubbing
+together his brown, hairy hands&mdash;the hands of a
+master-craftsman upon the sea:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Humph! that&rsquo;s just about where I reckoned we had
+got to.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The transparency and ingenuousness, in a way, of that
+delusion, the airy tone, the hint of already growing pride, were
+perfectly delicious.&nbsp; But, in truth, this was one of the
+greatest surprises ever sprung by the clearing up mood of the
+West Wind upon one of the most accomplished of his courtiers.</p>
+<h2>XXVIII.</h2>
+<p>The winds of North and South are, as I have said, but small
+princes amongst the powers of the sea.&nbsp; They have no
+territory of their own; they are not reigning winds
+anywhere.&nbsp; Yet it is from their houses that the reigning
+dynasties which have shared between them the waters of the earth
+are sprung.&nbsp; All the weather of the world is based upon the
+contest of the Polar and Equatorial strains of that tyrannous
+race.&nbsp; The West Wind is the greatest king.&nbsp; The East
+rules between the Tropics.&nbsp; They have shared each ocean
+between them.&nbsp; Each has his genius of supreme rule.&nbsp;
+The King of the West never intrudes upon the recognised dominion
+of his kingly brother.&nbsp; He is a barbarian, of a northern
+type.&nbsp; Violent without craftiness, and furious without
+malice, one may imagine him seated masterfully with a
+double-edged sword on his knees upon the painted and gilt clouds
+of the sunset, bowing his shock head of golden locks, a flaming
+beard over his breast, imposing, colossal, mighty-limbed, with a
+thundering voice, distended cheeks and fierce blue eyes, urging
+the speed of his gales.&nbsp; The other, the East king, the king
+of blood-red sunrises, I represent to myself as a spare
+Southerner with clear-cut features, black-browed and dark-eyed,
+gray-robed, upright in sunshine, resting a smooth-shaven cheek in
+the palm of his hand, impenetrable, secret, full of wiles,
+fine-drawn, keen&mdash;meditating aggressions.</p>
+<p>The West Wind keeps faith with his brother, the King of the
+Easterly weather.&nbsp; &ldquo;What we have divided we have
+divided,&rdquo; he seems to say in his gruff voice, this ruler
+without guile, who hurls as if in sport enormous masses of cloud
+across the sky, and flings the great waves of the Atlantic clear
+across from the shores of the New World upon the hoary headlands
+of Old Europe, which harbours more kings and rulers upon its
+seamed and furrowed body than all the oceans of the world
+together.&nbsp; &ldquo;What we have divided we have divided; and
+if no rest and peace in this world have fallen to my share, leave
+me alone.&nbsp; Let me play at quoits with cyclonic gales,
+flinging the discs of spinning cloud and whirling air from one
+end of my dismal kingdom to the other: over the Great Banks or
+along the edges of pack-ice&mdash;this one with true aim right
+into the bight of the Bay of Biscay, that other upon the fiords
+of Norway, across the North Sea where the fishermen of many
+nations look watchfully into my angry eye.&nbsp; This is the time
+of kingly sport.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And the royal master of high latitudes sighs mightily, with
+the sinking sun upon his breast and the double-edged sword upon
+his knees, as if wearied by the innumerable centuries of a
+strenuous rule and saddened by the unchangeable aspect of the
+ocean under his feet&mdash;by the endless vista of future ages
+where the work of sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind shall
+go on and on till his realm of living waters becomes a frozen and
+motionless ocean.&nbsp; But the other, crafty and unmoved,
+nursing his shaven chin between the thumb and forefinger of his
+slim and treacherous hand, thinks deep within his heart full of
+guile: &ldquo;Aha! our brother of the West has fallen into the
+mood of kingly melancholy.&nbsp; He is tired of playing with
+circular gales, and blowing great guns, and unrolling thick
+streamers of fog in wanton sport at the cost of his own poor,
+miserable subjects.&nbsp; Their fate is most pitiful.&nbsp; Let
+us make a foray upon the dominions of that noisy barbarian, a
+great raid from Finisterre to Hatteras, catching his fishermen
+unawares, baffling the fleets that trust to his power, and
+shooting sly arrows into the livers of men who court his good
+graces.&nbsp; He is, indeed, a worthless fellow.&rdquo;&nbsp; And
+forthwith, while the West Wind meditates upon the vanity of his
+irresistible might, the thing is done, and the Easterly weather
+sets in upon the North Atlantic.</p>
+<p>The prevailing weather of the North Atlantic is typical of the
+way in which the West Wind rules his realm on which the sun never
+sets.&nbsp; North Atlantic is the heart of a great empire.&nbsp;
+It is the part of the West Wind&rsquo;s dominions most thickly
+populated with generations of fine ships and hardy men.&nbsp;
+Heroic deeds and adventurous exploits have been performed there,
+within the very stronghold of his sway.&nbsp; The best sailors in
+the world have been born and bred under the shadow of his
+sceptre, learning to manage their ships with skill and audacity
+before the steps of his stormy throne.&nbsp; Reckless
+adventurers, toiling fishermen, admirals as wise and brave as the
+world has ever known, have waited upon the signs of his westerly
+sky.&nbsp; Fleets of victorious ships have hung upon his
+breath.&nbsp; He has tossed in his hand squadrons of war-scarred
+three-deckers, and shredded out in mere sport the bunting of
+flags hallowed in the traditions of honour and glory.&nbsp; He is
+a good friend and a dangerous enemy, without mercy to unseaworthy
+ships and faint-hearted seamen.&nbsp; In his kingly way he has
+taken but little account of lives sacrificed to his impulsive
+policy; he is a king with a double-edged sword bared in his right
+hand.&nbsp; The East Wind, an interloper in the dominions of
+Westerly weather, is an impassive-faced tyrant with a sharp
+poniard held behind his back for a treacherous stab.</p>
+<p>In his forays into the North Atlantic the East Wind behaves
+like a subtle and cruel adventurer without a notion of honour or
+fair play.&nbsp; Veiling his clear-cut, lean face in a thin layer
+of a hard, high cloud, I have seen him, like a wizened robber
+sheik of the sea, hold up large caravans of ships to the number
+of three hundred or more at the very gates of the English
+Channel.&nbsp; And the worst of it was that there was no ransom
+that we could pay to satisfy his avidity; for whatever evil is
+wrought by the raiding East Wind, it is done only to spite his
+kingly brother of the West.&nbsp; We gazed helplessly at the
+systematic, cold, gray-eyed obstinacy of the Easterly weather,
+while short rations became the order of the day, and the pinch of
+hunger under the breast-bone grew familiar to every sailor in
+that held-up fleet.&nbsp; Every day added to our numbers.&nbsp;
+In knots and groups and straggling parties we flung to and fro
+before the closed gate.&nbsp; And meantime the outward-bound
+ships passed, running through our humiliated ranks under all the
+canvas they could show.&nbsp; It is my idea that the Easterly
+Wind helps the ships away from home in the wicked hope that they
+shall all come to an untimely end and be heard of no more.&nbsp;
+For six weeks did the robber sheik hold the trade route of the
+earth, while our liege lord, the West Wind, slept profoundly like
+a tired Titan, or else remained lost in a mood of idle sadness
+known only to frank natures.&nbsp; All was still to the westward;
+we looked in vain towards his stronghold: the King slumbered on
+so deeply that he let his foraging brother steal the very mantle
+of gold-lined purple clouds from his bowed shoulders.&nbsp; What
+had become of the dazzling hoard of royal jewels exhibited at
+every close of day?&nbsp; Gone, disappeared, extinguished,
+carried off without leaving a single gold band or the flash of a
+single sunbeam in the evening sky!&nbsp; Day after day through a
+cold streak of heavens as bare and poor as the inside of a rifled
+safe a rayless and despoiled sun would slink shamefacedly,
+without pomp or show, to hide in haste under the waters.&nbsp;
+And still the King slept on, or mourned the vanity of his might
+and his power, while the thin-lipped intruder put the impress of
+his cold and implacable spirit upon the sky and sea.&nbsp; With
+every daybreak the rising sun had to wade through a crimson
+stream, luminous and sinister, like the spilt blood of celestial
+bodies murdered during the night.</p>
+<p>In this particular instance the mean interloper held the road
+for some six weeks on end, establishing his particular
+administrative methods over the best part of the North
+Atlantic.&nbsp; It looked as if the easterly weather had come to
+stay for ever, or, at least, till we had all starved to death in
+the held-up fleet&mdash;starved within sight, as it were, of
+plenty, within touch, almost, of the bountiful heart of the
+Empire.&nbsp; There we were, dotting with our white dry sails the
+hard blueness of the deep sea.&nbsp; There we were, a growing
+company of ships, each with her burden of grain, of timber, of
+wool, of hides, and even of oranges, for we had one or two
+belated fruit schooners in company.&nbsp; There we were, in that
+memorable spring of a certain year in the late seventies, dodging
+to and fro, baffled on every tack, and with our stores running
+down to sweepings of bread-lockers and scrapings of
+sugar-casks.&nbsp; It was just like the East Wind&rsquo;s nature
+to inflict starvation upon the bodies of unoffending sailors,
+while he corrupted their simple souls by an exasperation leading
+to outbursts of profanity as lurid as his blood-red
+sunrises.&nbsp; They were followed by gray days under the cover
+of high, motionless clouds that looked as if carved in a slab of
+ash-coloured marble.&nbsp; And each mean starved sunset left us
+calling with imprecations upon the West Wind even in its most
+veiled misty mood to wake up and give us our liberty, if only to
+rush on and dash the heads of our ships against the very walls of
+our unapproachable home.</p>
+<h2>XXIX.</h2>
+<p>In the atmosphere of the Easterly weather, as pellucid as a
+piece of crystal and refracting like a prism, we could see the
+appalling numbers of our helpless company, even to those who in
+more normal conditions would have remained invisible, sails down
+under the horizon.&nbsp; It is the malicious pleasure of the East
+Wind to augment the power of your eyesight, in order, perhaps,
+that you should see better the perfect humiliation, the hopeless
+character of your captivity.&nbsp; Easterly weather is generally
+clear, and that is all that can be said for it&mdash;almost
+supernaturally clear when it likes; but whatever its mood, there
+is something uncanny in its nature.&nbsp; Its duplicity is such
+that it will deceive a scientific instrument.&nbsp; No barometer
+will give warning of an easterly gale, were it ever so wet.&nbsp;
+It would be an unjust and ungrateful thing to say that a
+barometer is a stupid contrivance.&nbsp; It is simply that the
+wiles of the East Wind are too much for its fundamental
+honesty.&nbsp; After years and years of experience the most
+trusty instrument of the sort that ever went to sea screwed on to
+a ship&rsquo;s cabin bulkhead will, almost invariably, be induced
+to rise by the diabolic ingenuity of the Easterly weather, just
+at the moment when the Easterly weather, discarding its methods
+of hard, dry, impassive cruelty, contemplates drowning what is
+left of your spirit in torrents of a peculiarly cold and horrid
+rain.&nbsp; The sleet-and-hail squalls following the lightning at
+the end of a westerly gale are cold and benumbing and stinging
+and cruel enough.&nbsp; But the dry, Easterly weather, when it
+turns to wet, seems to rain poisoned showers upon your
+head.&nbsp; It is a sort of steady, persistent, overwhelming,
+endlessly driving downpour, which makes your heart sick, and
+opens it to dismal forebodings.&nbsp; And the stormy mood of the
+Easterly weather looms black upon the sky with a peculiar and
+amazing blackness.&nbsp; The West Wind hangs heavy gray curtains
+of mist and spray before your gaze, but the Eastern interloper of
+the narrow seas, when he has mustered his courage and cruelty to
+the point of a gale, puts your eyes out, puts them out
+completely, makes you feel blind for life upon a lee-shore.&nbsp;
+It is the wind, also, that brings snow.</p>
+<p>Out of his black and merciless heart he flings a white
+blinding sheet upon the ships of the sea.&nbsp; He has more
+manners of villainy, and no more conscience than an Italian
+prince of the seventeenth century.&nbsp; His weapon is a dagger
+carried under a black cloak when he goes out on his unlawful
+enterprises.&nbsp; The mere hint of his approach fills with dread
+every craft that swims the sea, from fishing-smacks to
+four-masted ships that recognise the sway of the West Wind.&nbsp;
+Even in his most accommodating mood he inspires a dread of
+treachery.&nbsp; I have heard upwards of ten score of windlasses
+spring like one into clanking life in the dead of night, filling
+the Downs with a panic-struck sound of anchors being torn
+hurriedly out of the ground at the first breath of his
+approach.&nbsp; Fortunately, his heart often fails him: he does
+not always blow home upon our exposed coast; he has not the
+fearless temper of his Westerly brother.</p>
+<p>The natures of those two winds that share the dominions of the
+great oceans are fundamentally different.&nbsp; It is strange
+that the winds which men are prone to style capricious remain
+true to their character in all the various regions of the
+earth.&nbsp; To us here, for instance, the East Wind comes across
+a great continent, sweeping over the greatest body of solid land
+upon this earth.&nbsp; For the Australian east coast the East
+Wind is the wind of the ocean, coming across the greatest body of
+water upon the globe; and yet here and there its characteristics
+remain the same with a strange consistency in everything that is
+vile and base.&nbsp; The members of the West Wind&rsquo;s dynasty
+are modified in a way by the regions they rule, as a
+Hohenzollern, without ceasing to be himself, becomes a Roumanian
+by virtue of his throne, or a Saxe-Coburg learns to put the dress
+of Bulgarian phrases upon his particular thoughts, whatever they
+are.</p>
+<p>The autocratic sway of the West Wind, whether forty north or
+forty south of the Equator, is characterized by an open,
+generous, frank, barbarous recklessness.&nbsp; For he is a great
+autocrat, and to be a great autocrat you must be a great
+barbarian.&nbsp; I have been too much moulded to his sway to
+nurse now any idea of rebellion in my heart.&nbsp; Moreover, what
+is a rebellion within the four walls of a room against the
+tempestuous rule of the West Wind?&nbsp; I remain faithful to the
+memory of the mighty King with a double-edged sword in one hand,
+and in the other holding out rewards of great daily runs and
+famously quick passages to those of his courtiers who knew how to
+wait watchfully for every sign of his secret mood.&nbsp; As we
+deep-water men always reckoned, he made one year in three fairly
+lively for anybody having business upon the Atlantic or down
+there along the &ldquo;forties&rdquo; of the Southern
+Ocean.&nbsp; You had to take the bitter with the sweet; and it
+cannot be denied he played carelessly with our lives and
+fortunes.&nbsp; But, then, he was always a great king, fit to
+rule over the great waters where, strictly speaking, a man would
+have no business whatever but for his audacity.</p>
+<p>The audacious should not complain.&nbsp; A mere trader ought
+not to grumble at the tolls levied by a mighty king.&nbsp; His
+mightiness was sometimes very overwhelming; but even when you had
+to defy him openly, as on the banks of the Agulhas homeward bound
+from the East Indies, or on the outward passage round the Horn,
+he struck at you fairly his stinging blows (full in the face,
+too), and it was your business not to get too much
+staggered.&nbsp; And, after all, if you showed anything of a
+countenance, the good-natured barbarian would let you fight your
+way past the very steps of his throne.&nbsp; It was only now and
+then that the sword descended and a head fell; but if you fell
+you were sure of impressive obsequies and of a roomy, generous
+grave.</p>
+<p>Such is the king to whom Viking chieftains bowed their heads,
+and whom the modern and palatial steamship defies with impunity
+seven times a week.&nbsp; And yet it is but defiance, not
+victory.&nbsp; The magnificent barbarian sits enthroned in a
+mantle of gold-lined clouds looking from on high on great ships
+gliding like mechanical toys upon his sea and on men who, armed
+with fire and iron, no longer need to watch anxiously for the
+slightest sign of his royal mood.&nbsp; He is disregarded; but he
+has kept all his strength, all his splendour, and a great part of
+his power.&nbsp; Time itself, that shakes all the thrones, is on
+the side of that king.&nbsp; The sword in his hand remains as
+sharp as ever upon both its edges; and he may well go on playing
+his royal game of quoits with hurricanes, tossing them over from
+the continent of republics to the continent of kingdoms, in the
+assurance that both the new republics and the old <a
+name="page157"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 157</span>kingdoms,
+the heat of fire and the strength of iron, with the untold
+generations of audacious men, shall crumble to dust at the steps
+of his throne, and pass away, and be forgotten before his own
+rule comes to an end.</p>
+<h2>XXX.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> estuaries of rivers appeal
+strongly to an adventurous imagination.&nbsp; This appeal is not
+always a charm, for there are estuaries of a particularly
+dispiriting ugliness: lowlands, mud-flats, or perhaps barren
+sandhills without beauty of form or amenity of aspect, covered
+with a shabby and scanty vegetation conveying the impression of
+poverty and uselessness.&nbsp; Sometimes such an ugliness is
+merely a repulsive mask.&nbsp; A river whose estuary resembles a
+breach in a sand rampart may flow through a most fertile
+country.&nbsp; But all the estuaries of great rivers have their
+fascination, the attractiveness of an open portal.&nbsp; Water is
+friendly to man.&nbsp; The ocean, a part of Nature furthest
+removed in the unchangeableness and majesty of its might from the
+spirit of mankind, has ever been a friend to the enterprising
+nations of the earth.&nbsp; And of all the elements this is the
+one to which men have always been prone to trust themselves, as
+if its immensity held a reward as vast as itself.</p>
+<p>From the offing the open estuary promises every possible
+fruition to adventurous hopes.&nbsp; That road open to enterprise
+and courage invites the explorer of coasts to new efforts towards
+the fulfilment of great expectations.&nbsp; The commander of the
+first Roman galley must have looked with an intense absorption
+upon the estuary of the Thames as he turned the beaked prow of
+his ship to the westward under the brow of the North
+Foreland.&nbsp; The estuary of the Thames is not beautiful; it
+has no noble features, no romantic grandeur of aspect, no smiling
+geniality; but it is wide open, spacious, inviting, hospitable at
+the first glance, with a strange air of mysteriousness which
+lingers about it to this very day.&nbsp; The navigation of his
+craft must have engrossed all the Roman&rsquo;s attention in the
+calm of a summer&rsquo;s day (he would choose his weather), when
+the single row of long sweeps (the galley would be a light one,
+not a trireme) could fall in easy cadence upon a sheet of water
+like plate-glass, reflecting faithfully the classic form of his
+vessel and the contour of the lonely shores close on his left
+hand.&nbsp; I assume he followed the land and passed through what
+is at present known as Margate Roads, groping his careful way
+along the hidden sandbanks, whose every tail and spit has its
+beacon or buoy nowadays.&nbsp; He must have been anxious, though
+no doubt he had collected beforehand on the shores of the Gauls a
+store of information from the talk of traders, adventurers,
+fishermen, slave-dealers, pirates&mdash;all sorts of unofficial
+men connected with the sea in a more or less reputable way.&nbsp;
+He would have heard of channels and sandbanks, of natural
+features of the land useful for sea-marks, of villages and tribes
+and modes of barter and precautions to take: with the instructive
+tales about native chiefs dyed more or less blue, whose character
+for greediness, ferocity, or amiability must have been expounded
+to him with that capacity for vivid language which seems joined
+naturally to the shadiness of moral character and recklessness of
+disposition.&nbsp; With that sort of spiced food provided for his
+anxious thought, watchful for strange men, strange beasts,
+strange turns of the tide, he would make the best of his way up,
+a military seaman with a short sword on thigh and a bronze helmet
+on his head, the pioneer post-captain of an imperial fleet.&nbsp;
+Was the tribe inhabiting the Isle of Thanet of a ferocious
+disposition, I wonder, and ready to fall with stone-studded clubs
+and wooden lances hardened in the fire, upon the backs of unwary
+mariners?</p>
+<p>Amongst the great commercial streams of these islands, the
+Thames is the only one, I think, open to romantic feeling, from
+the fact that the sight of human labour and the sounds of human
+industry do not come down its shores to the very sea, destroying
+the suggestion of mysterious vastness caused by the configuration
+of the shore.&nbsp; The broad inlet of the shallow North Sea
+passes gradually into the contracted shape of the river; but for
+a long time the feeling of the open water remains with the ship
+steering to the westward through one of the lighted and buoyed
+passage-ways of the Thames, such as Queen&rsquo;s Channel,
+Prince&rsquo;s Channel, Four-Fathom Channel; or else coming down
+the Swin from the north.&nbsp; The rush of the yellow flood-tide
+hurries her up as if into the unknown between the two fading
+lines of the coast.&nbsp; There are no features to this land, no
+conspicuous, far-famed landmarks for the eye; there is nothing so
+far down to tell you of the greatest agglomeration of mankind on
+earth dwelling no more than five and twenty miles away, where the
+sun sets in a blaze of colour flaming on a gold background, and
+the dark, low shores trend towards each other.&nbsp; And in the
+great silence the deep, faint booming of the big guns being
+tested at Shoeburyness hangs about the Nore&mdash;a historical
+spot in the keeping of one of England&rsquo;s appointed
+guardians.</p>
+<h2>XXXI.</h2>
+<p>The Nore sand remains covered at low-water, and never seen by
+human eye; but the Nore is a name to conjure with visions of
+historical events, of battles, of fleets, of mutinies, of watch
+and ward kept upon the great throbbing heart of the State.&nbsp;
+This ideal point of the estuary, this centre of memories, is
+marked upon the steely gray expanse of the waters by a lightship
+painted red that, from a couple of miles off, looks like a cheap
+and bizarre little toy.&nbsp; I remember how, on coming up the
+river for the first time, I was surprised at the smallness of
+that vivid object&mdash;a tiny warm speck of crimson lost in an
+immensity of gray tones.&nbsp; I was startled, as if of necessity
+the principal beacon in the water-way of the greatest town on
+earth should have presented imposing proportions.&nbsp; And,
+behold! the brown sprit-sail of a barge hid it entirely from my
+view.</p>
+<p>Coming in from the eastward, the bright colouring of the
+lightship marking the part of the river committed to the charge
+of an Admiral (the Commander-in-Chief at the Nore) accentuates
+the dreariness and the great breadth of the Thames Estuary.&nbsp;
+But soon the course of the ship opens the entrance of the Medway,
+with its men-of-war moored in line, and the long wooden jetty of
+Port Victoria, with its few low buildings like the beginning of a
+hasty settlement upon a wild and unexplored shore.&nbsp; The
+famous Thames barges sit in brown clusters upon the water with an
+effect of birds floating upon a pond.&nbsp; On the imposing
+expanse of the great estuary the traffic of the port where so
+much of the world&rsquo;s work and the world&rsquo;s thinking is
+being done becomes insignificant, scattered, streaming away in
+thin lines of ships stringing themselves out into the eastern
+quarter through the various navigable channels of which the Nore
+lightship marks the divergence.&nbsp; The coasting traffic
+inclines to the north; the deep-water ships steer east with a
+southern inclination, on through the Downs, to the most remote
+ends of the world.&nbsp; In the widening of the shores sinking
+low in the gray, smoky distances the greatness of the sea
+receives the mercantile fleet of good ships that London sends out
+upon the turn of every tide.&nbsp; They follow each other, going
+very close by the Essex shore.&nbsp; Such as the beads of a
+rosary told by business-like shipowners for the greater profit of
+the world they slip one by one into the open: while in the offing
+the inward-bound ships come up singly and in bunches from under
+the sea horizon closing the mouth of the river between Orfordness
+and North Foreland.&nbsp; They all converge upon the Nore, the
+warm speck of red upon the tones of drab and gray, with the
+distant shores running together towards the west, low and flat,
+like the sides of an enormous canal.&nbsp; The sea-reach of the
+Thames is straight, and, once Sheerness is left behind, its banks
+seem very uninhabited, except for the cluster of houses which is
+Southend, or here and there a lonely wooden jetty where petroleum
+ships discharge their dangerous cargoes, and the oil-storage
+tanks, low and round with slightly-domed roofs, peep over the
+edge of the fore-shore, as it were a village of Central African
+huts imitated in iron.&nbsp; Bordered by the black and shining
+mud-flats, the level marsh extends for miles.&nbsp; Away in the
+far background the land rises, closing the view with a continuous
+wooded slope, forming in the distance an interminable rampart
+overgrown with bushes.</p>
+<p>Then, on the slight turn of the Lower Hope Reach, clusters of
+factory chimneys come distinctly into view, tall and slender
+above the squat ranges of cement works in Grays and
+Greenhithe.&nbsp; Smoking quietly at the top against the great
+blaze of a magnificent sunset, they give an industrial character
+to the scene, speak of work, manufactures, and trade, as
+palm-groves on the coral strands of distant islands speak of the
+luxuriant grace, beauty and vigour of tropical nature.&nbsp; The
+houses of Gravesend crowd upon the shore with an effect of
+confusion as if they had tumbled down haphazard from the top of
+the hill at the back.&nbsp; The flatness of the Kentish shore
+ends there.&nbsp; A fleet of steam-tugs lies at anchor in front
+of the various piers.&nbsp; A conspicuous church spire, the first
+seen distinctly coming from the sea, has a thoughtful grace, the
+serenity of a fine form above the chaotic disorder of men&rsquo;s
+houses.&nbsp; But on the other side, on the flat Essex side, a
+shapeless and desolate red edifice, a vast pile of bricks with
+many windows and a slate roof more inaccessible than an Alpine
+slope, towers over the bend in monstrous ugliness, the tallest,
+heaviest building for miles around, a thing like an hotel, like a
+mansion of flats (all to let), exiled into these fields out of a
+street in West Kensington.&nbsp; Just round the corner, as it
+were, on a pier defined with stone blocks and wooden piles, a
+white mast, slender like a stalk of straw and crossed by a yard
+like a knitting-needle, flying the signals of flag and balloon,
+watches over a set of heavy dock-gates.&nbsp; Mast-heads and
+funnel-tops of ships peep above the ranges of corrugated iron
+roofs.&nbsp; This is the entrance to Tilbury Dock, the most
+recent of all London docks, the nearest to the sea.</p>
+<p>Between the crowded houses of Gravesend and the monstrous
+red-brick pile on the Essex shore the ship is surrendered fairly
+to the grasp of the river.&nbsp; That hint of loneliness, that
+soul of the sea which had accompanied her as far as the Lower
+Hope Reach, abandons her at the turn of the first bend
+above.&nbsp; The salt, acrid flavour is gone out of the air,
+together with a sense of unlimited space opening free beyond the
+threshold of sandbanks below the Nore.&nbsp; The waters of the
+sea rush on past Gravesend, tumbling the big mooring buoys laid
+along the face of the town; but the sea-freedom stops short
+there, surrendering the salt tide to the needs, the artifices,
+the contrivances of toiling men.&nbsp; Wharves, landing-places,
+dock-gates, waterside stairs, follow each other continuously
+right up to London Bridge, and the hum of men&rsquo;s work fills
+the river with a menacing, muttering note as of a breathless,
+ever-driving gale.&nbsp; The water-way, so fair above and wide
+below, flows oppressed by bricks and mortar and stone, by
+blackened timber and grimed glass and rusty iron, covered with
+black barges, whipped up by paddles and screws, overburdened with
+craft, overhung with chains, overshadowed by walls making a steep
+gorge for its bed, filled with a haze of smoke and dust.</p>
+<p>This stretch of the Thames from London Bridge to the Albert
+Docks is to other watersides of river ports what a virgin forest
+would be to a garden.&nbsp; It is a thing grown up, not
+made.&nbsp; It recalls a jungle by the confused, varied, and
+impenetrable aspect of the buildings that line the shore, not
+according to a planned purpose, but as if sprung up by accident
+from scattered seeds.&nbsp; Like the matted growth of bushes and
+creepers veiling the silent depths of an unexplored wilderness,
+they hide the depths of London&rsquo;s infinitely varied,
+vigorous, seething life.&nbsp; In other river ports it is not
+so.&nbsp; They lie open to their stream, with quays like broad
+clearings, with streets like avenues cut through thick timber for
+the convenience of trade.&nbsp; I am thinking now of river ports
+I have seen&mdash;of Antwerp, for instance; of Nantes or
+Bordeaux, or even old Rouen, where the night-watchmen of ships,
+elbows on rail, gaze at shop-windows and brilliant caf&eacute;s,
+and see the audience go in and come out of the opera-house.&nbsp;
+But London, the oldest and greatest of river ports, does not
+possess as much as a hundred yards of open quays upon its river
+front.&nbsp; Dark and impenetrable at night, like the face of a
+forest, is the London waterside.&nbsp; It is the waterside of
+watersides, where only one aspect of the world&rsquo;s life can
+be seen, and only one kind of men toils on the edge of the
+stream.&nbsp; The lightless walls seem to spring from the very
+mud upon which the stranded barges lie; and the narrow lanes
+coming down to the foreshore resemble the paths of smashed bushes
+and crumbled earth where big game comes to drink on the banks of
+tropical streams.</p>
+<p>Behind the growth of the London waterside the docks of London
+spread out unsuspected, smooth, and placid, lost amongst the
+buildings like dark lagoons hidden in a thick forest.&nbsp; They
+lie concealed in the intricate growth of houses with a few stalks
+of mastheads here and there overtopping the roof of some
+four-story warehouse.</p>
+<p>It is a strange conjunction this of roofs and mastheads, of
+walls and yard-arms.&nbsp; I remember once having the incongruity
+of the relation brought home to me in a practical way.&nbsp; I
+was the chief officer of a fine ship, just docked with a cargo of
+wool from Sydney, after a ninety days&rsquo; passage.&nbsp; In
+fact, we had not been in more than half an hour and I was still
+busy making her fast to the stone posts of a very narrow quay in
+front of a lofty warehouse.&nbsp; An old man with a gray whisker
+under the chin and brass buttons on his pilot-cloth jacket,
+hurried up along the quay hailing my ship by name.&nbsp; He was
+one of those officials called berthing-masters&mdash;not the one
+who had berthed us, but another, who, apparently, had been busy
+securing a steamer at the other end of the dock.&nbsp; I could
+see from afar his hard blue eyes staring at us, as if fascinated,
+with a queer sort of absorption.&nbsp; I wondered what that
+worthy sea-dog had found to criticise in my ship&rsquo;s
+rigging.&nbsp; And I, too, glanced aloft anxiously.&nbsp; I could
+see nothing wrong there.&nbsp; But perhaps that superannuated
+fellow-craftsman was simply admiring the ship&rsquo;s perfect
+order aloft, I thought, with some secret pride; for the chief
+officer is responsible for his ship&rsquo;s appearance, and as to
+her outward condition, he is the man open to praise or
+blame.&nbsp; Meantime the old salt (&ldquo;ex-coasting
+skipper&rdquo; was writ large all over his person) had hobbled up
+alongside in his bumpy, shiny boots, and, waving an arm, short
+and thick like the flipper of a seal, terminated by a paw red as
+an uncooked beef-steak, addressed the poop in a muffled, faint,
+roaring voice, as if a sample of every North-Sea fog of his life
+had been permanently lodged in his throat: &ldquo;Haul &rsquo;em
+round, Mr. Mate!&rdquo; were his words.&nbsp; &ldquo;If you
+don&rsquo;t look sharp, you&rsquo;ll have your topgallant yards
+through the windows of that &rsquo;ere warehouse
+presently!&rdquo;&nbsp; This was the only cause of his interest
+in the ship&rsquo;s beautiful spars.&nbsp; I own that for a time
+I was struck dumb by the bizarre associations of yard-arms and
+window-panes.&nbsp; To break windows is the last thing one would
+think of in connection with a ship&rsquo;s topgallant yard,
+unless, indeed, one were an experienced berthing-master in one of
+the London docks.&nbsp; This old chap was doing his little share
+of the world&rsquo;s work with proper efficiency.&nbsp; His
+little blue eyes had made out the danger many hundred yards
+off.&nbsp; His rheumaticky feet, tired with balancing that squat
+body for many years upon the decks of small coasters, and made
+sore by miles of tramping upon the flagstones of the dock side,
+had hurried up in time to avert a ridiculous catastrophe.&nbsp; I
+answered him pettishly, I fear, and as if I had known all about
+it before.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All right, all right! can&rsquo;t do everything at
+once.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He remained near by, muttering to himself till the yards had
+been hauled round at my order, and then raised again his foggy,
+thick voice:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;None too soon,&rdquo; he observed, with a critical
+glance up at the towering side of the warehouse.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a half-sovereign in your pocket, Mr.
+Mate.&nbsp; You should always look first how you are for them
+windows before you begin to breast in your ship to the
+quay.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was good advice.&nbsp; But one cannot think of everything
+or foresee contacts of things apparently as remote as stars and
+hop-poles.</p>
+<h2>XXXII.</h2>
+<p>The view of ships lying moored in some of the older docks of
+London has always suggested to my mind the image of a flock of
+swans kept in the flooded backyard of grim tenement houses.&nbsp;
+The flatness of the walls surrounding the dark pool on which they
+float brings out wonderfully the flowing grace of the lines on
+which a ship&rsquo;s hull is built.&nbsp; The lightness of these
+forms, devised to meet the winds and the seas, makes, by contrast
+with the great piles of bricks, the chains and cables of their
+moorings appear very necessary, as if nothing less could prevent
+them from soaring upwards and over the roofs.&nbsp; The least
+puff of wind stealing round the corners of the dock buildings
+stirs these captives fettered to rigid shores.&nbsp; It is as if
+the soul of a ship were impatient of confinement.&nbsp; Those
+masted hulls, relieved of their cargo, become restless at the
+slightest hint of the wind&rsquo;s freedom.&nbsp; However tightly
+moored, they range a little at their berths, swaying
+imperceptibly the spire-like assemblages of cordage and
+spars.&nbsp; You can detect their impatience by watching the sway
+of the mastheads against the motionless, the soulless gravity of
+mortar and stones.&nbsp; As you pass alongside each hopeless
+prisoner chained to the quay, the slight grinding noise of the
+wooden fenders makes a sound of angry muttering.&nbsp; But, after
+all, it may be good for ships to go through a period of restraint
+and repose, as the restraint and self-communion of inactivity may
+be good for an unruly soul&mdash;not, indeed, that I mean to say
+that ships are unruly; on the contrary, they are faithful
+creatures, as so many men can testify.&nbsp; And faithfulness is
+a great restraint, the strongest bond laid upon the self-will of
+men and ships on this globe of land and sea.</p>
+<p>This interval of bondage in the docks rounds each period of a
+ship&rsquo;s life with the sense of accomplished duty, of an
+effectively played part in the work of the world.&nbsp; The dock
+is the scene of what the world would think the most serious part
+in the light, bounding, swaying life of a ship.&nbsp; But there
+are docks and docks.&nbsp; The ugliness of some docks is
+appalling.&nbsp; Wild horses would not drag from me the name of a
+certain river in the north whose narrow estuary is inhospitable
+and dangerous, and whose docks are like a nightmare of dreariness
+and misery.&nbsp; Their dismal shores are studded thickly with
+scaffold-like, enormous timber structures, whose lofty heads are
+veiled periodically by the infernal gritty night of a cloud of
+coal-dust.&nbsp; The most important ingredient for getting the
+world&rsquo;s work along is distributed there under the
+circumstances of the greatest cruelty meted out to helpless
+ships.&nbsp; Shut up in the desolate circuit of these basins, you
+would think a free ship would droop and die like a wild bird put
+into a dirty cage.&nbsp; But a ship, perhaps because of her
+faithfulness to men, will endure an extraordinary lot of
+ill-usage.&nbsp; Still, I have seen ships issue from certain
+docks like half-dead prisoners from a dungeon, bedraggled,
+overcome, wholly disguised in dirt, and with their men rolling
+white eyeballs in black and worried faces raised to a heaven
+which, in its smoky and soiled aspect, seemed to reflect the
+sordidness of the earth below.&nbsp; One thing, however, may be
+said for the docks of the Port of London on both sides of the
+river: for all the complaints of their insufficient equipment, of
+their obsolete rules, of failure (they say) in the matter of
+quick despatch, no ship need ever issue from their gates in a
+half-fainting condition.&nbsp; London is a general cargo port, as
+is only proper for the greatest capital of the world to be.&nbsp;
+General cargo ports belong to the aristocracy of the
+earth&rsquo;s trading places, and in that aristocracy London, as
+it is its way, has a unique physiognomy.</p>
+<p>The absence of picturesqueness cannot be laid to the charge of
+the docks opening into the Thames.&nbsp; For all my unkind
+comparisons to swans and backyards, it cannot be denied that each
+dock or group of docks along the north side of the river has its
+own individual attractiveness.&nbsp; Beginning with the cosy
+little St. Katherine&rsquo;s Dock, lying overshadowed and black
+like a quiet pool amongst rocky crags, through the venerable and
+sympathetic London Docks, with not a single line of rails in the
+whole of their area and the aroma of spices lingering between its
+warehouses, with their far-famed wine-cellars&mdash;down through
+the interesting group of West India Docks, the fine docks at
+Blackwall, on past the Galleons Reach entrance of the Victoria
+and Albert Docks, right down to the vast gloom of the great
+basins in Tilbury, each of those places of restraint for ships
+has its own peculiar physiognomy, its own expression.&nbsp; And
+what makes them unique and attractive is their common trait of
+being romantic in their usefulness.</p>
+<p>In their way they are as romantic as the river they serve is
+unlike all the other commercial streams of the world.&nbsp; The
+cosiness of the St. Katherine&rsquo;s Dock, the old-world air of
+the London Docks, remain impressed upon the memory.&nbsp; The
+docks down the river, abreast of Woolwich, are imposing by their
+proportions and the vast scale of the ugliness that forms their
+surroundings&mdash;ugliness so picturesque as to become a delight
+to the eye.&nbsp; When one talks of the Thames docks,
+&ldquo;beauty&rdquo; is a vain word, but romance has lived too
+long upon this river not to have thrown a mantle of glamour upon
+its banks.</p>
+<p>The antiquity of the port appeals to the imagination by the
+long chain of adventurous enterprises that had their inception in
+the town and floated out into the world on the waters of the
+river.&nbsp; Even the newest of the docks, the Tilbury Dock,
+shares in the glamour conferred by historical associations.&nbsp;
+Queen Elizabeth has made one of her progresses down there, not
+one of her journeys of pomp and ceremony, but an anxious business
+progress at a crisis of national history.&nbsp; The menace of
+that time has passed away, and now Tilbury is known by its
+docks.&nbsp; These are very modern, but their remoteness and
+isolation upon the Essex marsh, the days of failure attending
+their creation, invested them with a romantic air.&nbsp; Nothing
+in those days could have been more striking than the vast, empty
+basins, surrounded by miles of bare quays and the ranges of
+cargo-sheds, where two or three ships seemed lost like bewitched
+children in a forest of gaunt, hydraulic cranes.&nbsp; One
+received a wonderful impression of utter abandonment, of wasted
+efficiency.&nbsp; From the first the Tilbury Docks were very
+efficient and ready for their task, but they had come, perhaps,
+too soon into the field.&nbsp; A great future lies before Tilbury
+Docks.&nbsp; They shall never fill a long-felt want (in the
+sacramental phrase that is applied to railways, tunnels,
+newspapers, and new editions of books).&nbsp; They were too early
+in the field.&nbsp; The want shall never be felt because, free of
+the trammels of the tide, easy of access, magnificent and
+desolate, they are already there, prepared to take and keep the
+biggest ships that float upon the sea.&nbsp; They are worthy of
+the oldest river port in the world.</p>
+<p>And, truth to say, for all the criticisms flung upon the heads
+of the dock companies, the other docks of the Thames are no
+disgrace to the town with a population greater than that of some
+commonwealths.&nbsp; The growth of London as a well-equipped port
+has been slow, while not unworthy of a great capital, of a great
+centre of distribution.&nbsp; It must not be forgotten that
+London has not the backing of great industrial districts or great
+fields of natural exploitation.&nbsp; In this it differs from
+Liverpool, from Cardiff, from Newcastle, from Glasgow; and
+therein the Thames differs from the Mersey, from the Tyne, from
+the Clyde.&nbsp; It is an historical river; it is a romantic
+stream flowing through the centre of great affairs, and for all
+the criticism of the river&rsquo;s administration, my contention
+is that its development has been worthy of its dignity.&nbsp; For
+a long time the stream itself could accommodate quite easily the
+oversea and coasting traffic.&nbsp; That was in the days when, in
+the part called the Pool, just below London Bridge, the vessels
+moored stem and stern in the very strength of the tide formed one
+solid mass like an island covered with a forest of gaunt,
+leafless trees; and when the trade had grown too big for the
+river there came the St. Katherine&rsquo;s Docks and the London
+Docks, magnificent undertakings answering to the need of their
+time.&nbsp; The same may be said of the other artificial lakes
+full of ships that go in and out upon this high road to all parts
+of the world.&nbsp; The labour of the imperial waterway goes on
+from generation to generation, goes on day and night.&nbsp;
+Nothing ever arrests its sleepless industry but the coming of a
+heavy fog, which clothes the teeming stream in a mantle of
+impenetrable stillness.</p>
+<p>After the gradual cessation of all sound and movement on the
+faithful river, only the ringing of ships&rsquo; bells is heard,
+mysterious and muffled in the white vapour from London Bridge
+right down to the Nore, for miles and miles in a decrescendo
+tinkling, to where the estuary broadens out into the North Sea,
+and the anchored ships lie scattered thinly in the shrouded
+channels between the sand-banks of the Thames&rsquo; mouth.&nbsp;
+Through the <a name="page180"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+180</span>long and glorious tale of years of the river&rsquo;s
+strenuous service to its people these are its only breathing
+times.</p>
+<h2>XXXIII.</h2>
+<p>A <span class="smcap">ship</span> in dock, surrounded by quays
+and the walls of warehouses, has the appearance of a prisoner
+meditating upon freedom in the sadness of a free spirit put under
+restraint.&nbsp; Chain cables and stout ropes keep her bound to
+stone posts at the edge of a paved shore, and a berthing-master,
+with brass buttons on his coat, walks about like a weather-beaten
+and ruddy gaoler, casting jealous, watchful glances upon the
+moorings that fetter a ship lying passive and still and safe, as
+if lost in deep regrets of her days of liberty and danger on the
+sea.</p>
+<p>The swarm of renegades&mdash;dock-masters, berthing-masters,
+gatemen, and such like&mdash;appear to nurse an immense distrust
+of the captive ship&rsquo;s resignation.&nbsp; There never seem
+chains and ropes enough to satisfy their minds concerned with the
+safe binding of free ships to the strong, muddy, enslaved
+earth.&nbsp; &ldquo;You had better put another bight of a hawser
+astern, Mr. Mate,&rdquo; is the usual phrase in their
+mouth.&nbsp; I brand them for renegades, because most of them
+have been sailors in their time.&nbsp; As if the infirmities of
+old age&mdash;the gray hair, the wrinkles at the corners of the
+eyes, and the knotted veins of the hands&mdash;were the symptoms
+of moral poison, they prowl about the quays with an underhand air
+of gloating over the broken spirit of noble captives.&nbsp; They
+want more fenders, more breasting-ropes; they want more springs,
+more shackles, more fetters; they want to make ships with
+volatile souls as motionless as square blocks of stone.&nbsp;
+They stand on the mud of pavements, these degraded sea-dogs, with
+long lines of railway-trucks clanking their couplings behind
+their backs, and run malevolent glances over your ship from
+headgear to taffrail, only wishing to tyrannize over the poor
+creature under the hypocritical cloak of benevolence and
+care.&nbsp; Here and there cargo cranes looking like instruments
+of torture for ships swing cruel hooks at the end of long
+chains.&nbsp; Gangs of dock-labourers swarm with muddy feet over
+the gangways.&nbsp; It is a moving sight this, of so many men of
+the earth, earthy, who never cared anything for a ship, trampling
+unconcerned, brutal and hob-nailed upon her helpless body.</p>
+<p>Fortunately, nothing can deface the beauty of a ship.&nbsp;
+That sense of a dungeon, that sense of a horrible and degrading
+misfortune overtaking a creature fair to see and safe to trust,
+attaches only to ships moored in the docks of great European
+ports.&nbsp; You feel that they are dishonestly locked up, to be
+hunted about from wharf to wharf on a dark, greasy, square pool
+of black water as a brutal reward at the end of a faithful
+voyage.</p>
+<p>A ship anchored in an open roadstead, with cargo-lighters
+alongside and her own tackle swinging the burden over the rail,
+is accomplishing in freedom a function of her life.&nbsp; There
+is no restraint; there is space: clear water around her, and a
+clear sky above her mastheads, with a landscape of green hills
+and charming bays opening around her anchorage.&nbsp; She is not
+abandoned by her own men to the tender mercies of shore
+people.&nbsp; She still shelters, and is looked after by, her own
+little devoted band, and you feel that presently she will glide
+between the headlands and disappear.&nbsp; It is only at home, in
+dock, that she lies abandoned, shut off from freedom by all the
+artifices of men that think of quick despatch and profitable
+freights.&nbsp; It is only then that the odious, rectangular
+shadows of walls and roofs fall upon her decks, with showers of
+soot.</p>
+<p>To a man who has never seen the extraordinary nobility,
+strength, and grace that the devoted generations of ship-builders
+have evolved from some pure nooks of their simple souls, the
+sight that could be seen five-and-twenty years ago of a large
+fleet of clippers moored along the north side of the New South
+Dock was an inspiring spectacle.&nbsp; Then there was a quarter
+of a mile of them, from the iron dockyard-gates guarded by
+policemen, in a long, forest-like perspective of masts, moored
+two and two to many stout wooden jetties.&nbsp; Their spars
+dwarfed with their loftiness the corrugated-iron sheds, their
+jibbooms extended far over the shore, their white-and-gold
+figure-heads, almost dazzling in their purity, overhung the
+straight, long quay above the mud and dirt of the wharfside, with
+the busy figures of groups and single men moving to and fro,
+restless and grimy under their soaring immobility.</p>
+<p>At tide-time you would see one of the loaded ships with
+battened-down hatches drop out of the ranks and float in the
+clear space of the dock, held by lines dark and slender, like the
+first threads of a spider&rsquo;s web, extending from her bows
+and her quarters to the mooring-posts on shore.&nbsp; There,
+graceful and still, like a bird ready to spread its wings, she
+waited till, at the opening of the gates, a tug or two would
+hurry in noisily, hovering round her with an air of fuss and
+solicitude, and take her out into the river, tending, shepherding
+her through open bridges, through dam-like gates between the flat
+pier-heads, with a bit of green lawn surrounded by gravel and a
+white signal-mast with yard and gaff, flying a couple of dingy
+blue, red, or white flags.</p>
+<p>This New South Dock (it was its official name), round which my
+earlier professional memories are centred, belongs to the group
+of West India Docks, together with two smaller and much older
+basins called Import and Export respectively, both with the
+greatness of their trade departed from them already.&nbsp;
+Picturesque and clean as docks go, these twin basins spread side
+by side the dark lustre of their glassy water, sparely peopled by
+a few ships laid up on buoys or tucked far away from each other
+at the end of sheds in the corners of empty quays, where they
+seemed to slumber quietly remote, untouched by the bustle of
+men&rsquo;s affairs&mdash;in retreat rather than in
+captivity.&nbsp; They were quaint and sympathetic, those two
+homely basins, unfurnished and silent, with no aggressive display
+of cranes, no apparatus of hurry and work on their narrow
+shores.&nbsp; No railway-lines cumbered them.&nbsp; The knots of
+labourers trooping in clumsily round the corners of cargo-sheds
+to eat their food in peace out of red cotton handkerchiefs had
+the air of picnicking by the side of a lonely mountain
+pool.&nbsp; They were restful (and I should say very
+unprofitable), those basins, where the chief officer of one of
+the ships involved in the harassing, strenuous, noisy activity of
+the New South Dock only a few yards away could escape in the
+dinner-hour to stroll, unhampered by men and affairs, meditating
+(if he chose) on the vanity of all things human.&nbsp; At one
+time they must have been full of good old slow West Indiamen of
+the square-stern type, that took their captivity, one imagines,
+as stolidly as they had faced the buffeting of the waves with
+their blunt, honest bows, and disgorged sugar, rum, molasses,
+coffee, or logwood sedately with their own winch and
+tackle.&nbsp; But when I knew them, of exports there was never a
+sign that one could detect; and all the imports I have ever seen
+were some rare cargoes of tropical timber, enormous baulks
+roughed out of iron trunks grown in the woods about the Gulf of
+Mexico.&nbsp; They lay piled up in stacks of mighty boles, and it
+was hard to believe that all this mass of dead and stripped trees
+had come out of the flanks of a slender, innocent-looking little
+barque with, as likely as not, a homely woman&rsquo;s
+name&mdash;Ellen this or Annie that&mdash;upon her fine
+bows.&nbsp; But this is generally the case with a discharged
+cargo.&nbsp; Once spread at large over the quay, it looks the
+most impossible bulk to have all come there out of that ship
+alongside.</p>
+<p>They were quiet, serene nooks in the busy world of docks,
+these basins where it has never been my good luck to get a berth
+after some more or less arduous passage.&nbsp; But one could see
+at a glance that men and ships were never hustled there.&nbsp;
+They were so quiet that, remembering them well, one comes to
+doubt that they ever existed&mdash;places of repose for tired
+ships to dream in, places of meditation rather than work, where
+wicked ships&mdash;the cranky, the lazy, the wet, the bad sea
+boats, the wild steerers, the capricious, the pig-headed, the
+generally ungovernable&mdash;would have full leisure to take
+count and repent of their sins, sorrowful and naked, with their
+rent garments of sailcloth stripped off them, and with the dust
+and ashes of the London atmosphere upon their mastheads.&nbsp;
+For that the worst of ships would repent if she were ever given
+time I make no doubt.&nbsp; I have known too many of them.&nbsp;
+No ship is wholly bad; and now that their bodies that had braved
+so many tempests have been blown off the face of the sea by a
+puff of steam, the evil and the good together into the limbo of
+things that have served their time, there can be no harm in
+affirming that in these vanished generations of willing servants
+there never has been one utterly unredeemable soul.</p>
+<p>In the New South Dock there was certainly no time for remorse,
+introspection, repentance, or any phenomena of inner life either
+for the captive ships or for their officers.&nbsp; From six in
+the morning till six at night the hard labour of the
+prison-house, which rewards the valiance of ships that win the
+harbour went on steadily, great slings of general cargo swinging
+over the rail, to drop plumb into the hatchways at the sign of
+the gangway-tender&rsquo;s hand.&nbsp; The New South Dock was
+especially a loading dock for the Colonies in those great (and
+last) days of smart wool-clippers, good to look at
+and&mdash;well&mdash;exciting to handle.&nbsp; Some of them were
+more fair to see than the others; many were (to put it mildly)
+somewhat over-masted; all were expected to make good passages;
+and of all that line of ships, whose rigging made a thick,
+enormous network against the sky, whose brasses flashed almost as
+far as the eye of the policeman at the gates could reach, there
+was hardly one that knew of any other port amongst all the ports
+on the wide earth but London and Sydney, or London and Melbourne,
+or London and Adelaide, perhaps with Hobart Town added for those
+of smaller tonnage.&nbsp; One could almost have believed, as her
+gray-whiskered second mate used to say of the old <i>Duke of
+S&mdash;</i>, that they knew the road to the Antipodes better
+than their own skippers, who, year in, year out, took them from
+London&mdash;the place of captivity&mdash;to some Australian port
+where, twenty-five years ago, though moored well and tight enough
+to the wooden wharves, they felt themselves no captives, but
+honoured guests.</p>
+<h2>XXXIV.</h2>
+<p>These towns of the Antipodes, not so great then as they are
+now, took an interest in the shipping, the running links with
+&ldquo;home,&rdquo; whose numbers confirmed the sense of their
+growing importance.&nbsp; They made it part and parcel of their
+daily interests.&nbsp; This was especially the case in Sydney,
+where, from the heart of the fair city, down the vista of
+important streets, could be seen the wool-clippers lying at the
+Circular Quay&mdash;no walled prison-house of a dock that, but
+the integral part of one of the finest, most beautiful, vast, and
+safe bays the sun ever shone upon.&nbsp; Now great steam-liners
+lie at these berths, always reserved for the sea
+aristocracy&mdash;grand and imposing enough ships, but here
+to-day and gone next week; whereas the general cargo, emigrant,
+and passenger clippers of my time, rigged with heavy spars, and
+built on fine lines, used to remain for months together waiting
+for their load of wool.&nbsp; Their names attained the dignity of
+household words.&nbsp; On Sundays and holidays the citizens
+trooped down, on visiting bent, and the lonely officer on duty
+solaced himself by playing the cicerone&mdash;especially to the
+citizenesses with engaging manners and a well-developed sense of
+the fun that may be got out of the inspection of a ship&rsquo;s
+cabins and state-rooms.&nbsp; The tinkle of more or less untuned
+cottage pianos floated out of open stern-ports till the gas-lamps
+began to twinkle in the streets, and the ship&rsquo;s
+night-watchman, coming sleepily on duty after his unsatisfactory
+day slumbers, hauled down the flags and fastened a lighted
+lantern at the break of the gangway.&nbsp; The night closed
+rapidly upon the silent ships with their crews on shore.&nbsp; Up
+a short, steep ascent by the King&rsquo;s Head pub., patronized
+by the cooks and stewards of the fleet, the voice of a man crying
+&ldquo;Hot saveloys!&rdquo; at the end of George Street, where
+the cheap eating-houses (sixpence a meal) were kept by Chinamen
+(Sun-kum-on&rsquo;s was not bad), is heard at regular
+intervals.&nbsp; I have listened for hours to this most
+pertinacious pedlar (I wonder whether he is dead or has made a
+fortune), while sitting on the rail of the old <i>Duke of
+S&mdash;</i> (she&rsquo;s dead, poor thing! a violent death on
+the coast of New Zealand), fascinated by the monotony, the
+regularity, the abruptness of the recurring cry, and so
+exasperated at the absurd spell, that I wished the fellow would
+choke himself to death with a mouthful of his own infamous
+wares.</p>
+<p>A stupid job, and fit only for an old man, my comrades used to
+tell me, to be the night-watchman of a captive (though honoured)
+ship.&nbsp; And generally the oldest of the able seamen in a
+ship&rsquo;s crew does get it.&nbsp; But sometimes neither the
+oldest nor any other fairly steady seaman is forthcoming.&nbsp;
+Ships&rsquo; crews had the trick of melting away swiftly in those
+days.&nbsp; So, probably on account of my youth, innocence, and
+pensive habits (which made me sometimes dilatory in my work about
+the rigging), I was suddenly nominated, in our chief mate Mr.
+B&mdash;&rsquo;s most sardonic tones, to that enviable
+situation.&nbsp; I do not regret the experience.&nbsp; The night
+humours of the town descended from the street to the waterside in
+the still watches of the night: larrikins rushing down in bands
+to settle some quarrel by a stand-up fight, away from the police,
+in an indistinct ring half hidden by piles of cargo, with the
+sounds of blows, a groan now and then, the stamping of feet, and
+the cry of &ldquo;Time!&rdquo; rising suddenly above the sinister
+and excited murmurs; night-prowlers, pursued or pursuing, with a
+stifled shriek followed by a profound silence, or slinking
+stealthily alongside like ghosts, and addressing me from the quay
+below in mysterious tones with incomprehensible
+propositions.&nbsp; The cabmen, too, who twice a week, on the
+night when the A.S.N. Company&rsquo;s passenger-boat was due to
+arrive, used to range a battalion of blazing lamps opposite the
+ship, were very amusing in their way.&nbsp; They got down from
+their perches and told each other impolite stories in racy
+language, every word of which reached me distinctly over the
+bulwarks as I sat smoking on the main-hatch.&nbsp; On one
+occasion I had an hour or so of a most intellectual conversation
+with a person whom I could not see distinctly, a gentleman from
+England, he said, with a cultivated voice, I on deck and he on
+the quay sitting on the case of a piano (landed out of our hold
+that very afternoon), and smoking a cigar which smelt very
+good.&nbsp; We touched, in our discourse, upon science, politics,
+natural history, and operatic singers.&nbsp; Then, after
+remarking abruptly, &ldquo;You seem to be rather intelligent, my
+man,&rdquo; he informed me pointedly that his name was Mr.
+Senior, and walked off&mdash;to his hotel, I suppose.&nbsp;
+Shadows!&nbsp; Shadows!&nbsp; I think I saw a white whisker as he
+turned under the lamp-post.&nbsp; It is a shock to think that in
+the natural course of nature he must be dead by now.&nbsp; There
+was nothing to object to in his intelligence but a little
+dogmatism maybe.&nbsp; And his name was Senior!&nbsp; Mr.
+Senior!</p>
+<p>The position had its drawbacks, however.&nbsp; One wintry,
+blustering, dark night in July, as I stood sleepily out of the
+rain under the break of the poop something resembling an ostrich
+dashed up the gangway.&nbsp; I say ostrich because the creature,
+though it ran on two legs, appeared to help its progress by
+working a pair of short wings; it was a man, however, only his
+coat, ripped up the back and flapping in two halves above his
+shoulders, gave him that weird and fowl-like appearance.&nbsp; At
+least, I suppose it was his coat, for it was impossible to make
+him out distinctly.&nbsp; How he managed to come so straight upon
+me, at speed and without a stumble over a strange deck, I cannot
+imagine.&nbsp; He must have been able to see in the dark better
+than any cat.&nbsp; He overwhelmed me with panting entreaties to
+let him take shelter till morning in our forecastle.&nbsp;
+Following my strict orders, I refused his request, mildly at
+first, in a sterner tone as he insisted with growing
+impudence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For God&rsquo;s sake let me, matey!&nbsp; Some of
+&rsquo;em are after me&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve got hold of a ticker
+here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You clear out of this!&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be hard on a chap, old man!&rdquo; he
+whined pitifully.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now then, get ashore at once.&nbsp; Do you
+hear?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Silence.&nbsp; He appeared to cringe, mute, as if words had
+failed him through grief; then&mdash;bang! came a concussion and
+a great flash of light in which he vanished, leaving me prone on
+my back with the most abominable black eye that anybody ever got
+in the faithful discharge of duty.&nbsp; Shadows!&nbsp;
+Shadows!&nbsp; I hope he escaped the enemies he was fleeing from
+to live and flourish to this day.&nbsp; But his fist was
+uncommonly hard and his aim miraculously true in the dark.</p>
+<p>There were other experiences, less painful and more funny for
+the most part, with one amongst them of a dramatic complexion;
+but the greatest experience of them all was Mr. B&mdash;, our
+chief mate himself.</p>
+<p>He used to go ashore every night to foregather in some
+hotel&rsquo;s parlour with his crony, the mate of the barque
+<i>Cicero</i>, lying on the other side of the Circular
+Quay.&nbsp; Late at night I would hear from afar their stumbling
+footsteps and their voices raised in endless argument.&nbsp; The
+mate of the <i>Cicero</i> was seeing his friend on board.&nbsp;
+They would continue their senseless and muddled discourse in
+tones of profound friendship for half an hour or so at the shore
+end of our gangway, and then I would hear Mr. B&mdash; insisting
+that he must see the other on board his ship.&nbsp; And away they
+would go, their voices, still conversing with excessive amity,
+being heard moving all round the harbour.&nbsp; It happened more
+than once that they would thus perambulate three or four times
+the distance, each seeing the other on board his ship out of pure
+and disinterested affection.&nbsp; Then, through sheer weariness,
+or perhaps in a moment of forgetfulness, they would manage to
+part from each other somehow, and by-and-by the planks of our
+long gangway would bend and creak under the weight of Mr.
+B&mdash; coming on board for good at last.</p>
+<p>On the rail his burly form would stop and stand swaying.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Watchman!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A pause.</p>
+<p>He waited for a moment of steadiness before negotiating the
+three steps of the inside ladder from rail to deck; and the
+watchman, taught by experience, would forbear offering help which
+would be received as an insult at that particular stage of the
+mate&rsquo;s return.&nbsp; But many times I trembled for his
+neck.&nbsp; He was a heavy man.</p>
+<p>Then with a rush and a thump it would be done.&nbsp; He never
+had to pick himself up; but it took him a minute or so to pull
+himself together after the descent.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Watchman!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Captain aboard?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Pause.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dog aboard?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Pause.</p>
+<p>Our dog was a gaunt and unpleasant beast, more like a wolf in
+poor health than a dog, and I never noticed Mr. B&mdash; at any
+other time show the slightest interest in the doings of the
+animal.&nbsp; But that question never failed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s have your arm to steady me
+along.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I was always prepared for that request.&nbsp; He leaned on me
+heavily till near enough the cabin-door to catch hold of the
+handle.&nbsp; Then he would let go my arm at once.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;ll do.&nbsp; I can manage now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And he could manage.&nbsp; He could manage to find his way
+into his berth, light his lamp, get into his bed&mdash;ay, and
+get out of it when I called him at half-past five, the first man
+on deck, lifting the cup of morning coffee to his lips with a
+steady hand, ready for duty as though he had virtuously slept ten
+solid hours&mdash;a better chief officer than many a man who had
+never tasted grog in his life.&nbsp; He could manage all that,
+but could never manage to get on in life.</p>
+<p>Only once he failed to seize the cabin-door handle at the
+first grab.&nbsp; He waited a little, tried again, and again
+failed.&nbsp; His weight was growing heavier on my arm.&nbsp; He
+sighed slowly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;D&mdash;n that handle!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Without letting go his hold of me he turned about, his face
+lit up bright as day by the full moon.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wish she were out at sea,&rdquo; he growled
+savagely.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I felt the need to say something, because he hung on to me as
+if lost, breathing heavily.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ports are no good&mdash;ships rot, men go to the
+devil!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I kept still, and after a while he repeated with a sigh.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wish she were at sea out of this.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So do I, sir,&rdquo; I ventured.</p>
+<p>Holding my shoulder, he turned upon me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You!&nbsp; What&rsquo;s that to you where she is?&nbsp;
+You don&rsquo;t&mdash;drink.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And even on that night he &ldquo;managed it&rdquo; at
+last.&nbsp; He got hold of the handle.&nbsp; But he did not
+manage to light his lamp (I don&rsquo;t think he even tried),
+though in the morning as usual he was the first on deck,
+bull-necked, curly-headed, watching the hands turn-to with his
+sardonic expression and unflinching gaze.</p>
+<p>I met him ten years afterwards, casually, unexpectedly, in the
+street, on coming out of my consignee office.&nbsp; I was not
+likely to have forgotten him with his &ldquo;I can manage
+now.&rdquo;&nbsp; He recognised me at once, remembered my name,
+and in what ship I had served under his orders.&nbsp; He looked
+me over from head to foot.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am commanding a little barque,&rdquo; I said,
+&ldquo;loading here for Mauritius.&rdquo;&nbsp; Then,
+thoughtlessly, I added: &ldquo;And what are you doing, Mr.
+B-?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I,&rdquo; he said, looking at me unflinchingly, with
+his old sardonic grin&mdash;&ldquo;I am looking for something to
+do.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I felt I would rather have bitten out my tongue.&nbsp; His
+jet-black, curly hair had turned iron-gray; he was scrupulously
+neat as ever, but frightfully threadbare.&nbsp; His shiny boots
+were worn down at heel.&nbsp; But he forgave me, and we drove off
+together in a hansom to dine on board my ship.&nbsp; He went over
+her conscientiously, praised her heartily, congratulated me on my
+command with absolute sincerity.&nbsp; At dinner, as I offered
+him wine and beer he shook his head, and as I sat looking at him
+interrogatively, muttered in an undertone:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve given up all that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>After dinner we came again on deck.&nbsp; It seemed as though
+he could not tear himself away from the ship.&nbsp; We were
+fitting some new lower rigging, and he hung about, approving,
+suggesting, giving me advice in his old manner.&nbsp; Twice he
+addressed me as &ldquo;My boy,&rdquo; and corrected himself
+quickly to &ldquo;Captain.&rdquo;&nbsp; My mate was about to
+leave me (to get married), but I concealed the fact from Mr.
+B&mdash;.&nbsp; I was afraid he would ask me to give him the
+berth in some ghastly jocular hint that I could not refuse to
+take.&nbsp; I was afraid.&nbsp; It would have been
+impossible.&nbsp; I could not have given orders to Mr. B&mdash;,
+and I am sure he would not have taken them from me very
+long.&nbsp; He could not have managed that, though he had managed
+to break himself from drink&mdash;too late.</p>
+<p><a name="page201"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 201</span>He
+said good-bye at last.&nbsp; As I watched his burly, bull-necked
+figure walk away up the street, I wondered with a sinking heart
+whether he had much more than the price of a night&rsquo;s
+lodging in his pocket.&nbsp; And I understood that if that very
+minute I were to call out after him, he would not even turn his
+head.&nbsp; He, too, is no more than a shadow, but I seem to hear
+his words spoken on the moonlit deck of the old <i>Duke</i>
+&mdash;:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ports are no good&mdash;ships rot, men go to the
+devil!&rdquo;</p>
+<h2>XXXV.</h2>
+<p>&ldquo;Ships!&rdquo; exclaimed an elderly seaman in clean
+shore togs.&nbsp; &ldquo;Ships&rdquo;&mdash;and his keen glance,
+turning away from my face, ran along the vista of magnificent
+figure-heads that in the late seventies used to overhang in a
+serried rank the muddy pavement by the side of the New South
+Dock&mdash;&ldquo;ships are all right; it&rsquo;s the men in
+&rsquo;em. . .&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Fifty hulls, at least, moulded on lines of beauty and
+speed&mdash;hulls of wood, of iron, expressing in their forms the
+highest achievement of modern ship-building&mdash;lay moored all
+in a row, stem to quay, as if assembled there for an exhibition,
+not of a great industry, but of a great art.&nbsp; Their colours
+were gray, black, dark green, with a narrow strip of yellow
+moulding defining their sheer, or with a row of painted ports
+decking in warlike decoration their robust flanks of
+cargo-carriers that would know no triumph but of speed in
+carrying a burden, no glory other than of a long service, no
+victory but that of an endless, obscure contest with the
+sea.&nbsp; The great empty hulls with swept holds, just out of
+dry-dock, with their paint glistening freshly, sat high-sided
+with ponderous dignity alongside the wooden jetties, looking more
+like unmovable buildings than things meant to go afloat; others,
+half loaded, far on the way to recover the true sea-physiognomy
+of a ship brought down to her load-line, looked more
+accessible.&nbsp; Their less steeply slanting gangways seemed to
+invite the strolling sailors in search of a berth to walk on
+board and try &ldquo;for a chance&rdquo; with the chief mate, the
+guardian of a ship&rsquo;s efficiency.&nbsp; As if anxious to
+remain unperceived amongst their overtopping sisters, two or
+three &ldquo;finished&rdquo; ships floated low, with an air of
+straining at the leash of their level headfasts, exposing to view
+their cleared decks and covered hatches, prepared to drop stern
+first out of the labouring ranks, displaying the true comeliness
+of form which only her proper sea-trim gives to a ship.&nbsp; And
+for a good quarter of a mile, from the dockyard gate to the
+farthest corner, where the old housed-in hulk, the
+<i>President</i> (drill-ship, then, of the Naval Reserve), used
+to lie with her frigate side rubbing against the stone of the
+quay, above all these hulls, ready and unready, a hundred and
+fifty lofty masts, more or less, held out the web of their
+rigging like an immense net, in whose close mesh, black against
+the sky, the heavy yards seemed to be entangled and
+suspended.</p>
+<p>It was a sight.&nbsp; The humblest craft that floats makes its
+appeal to a seaman by the faithfulness of her life; and this was
+the place where one beheld the aristocracy of ships.&nbsp; It was
+a noble gathering of the fairest and the swiftest, each bearing
+at the bow the carved emblem of her name, as in a gallery of
+plaster-casts, figures of women with mural crowns, women with
+flowing robes, with gold fillets on their hair or blue scarves
+round their waists, stretching out rounded arms as if to point
+the way; heads of men helmeted or bare; full lengths of warriors,
+of kings, of statesmen, of lords and princesses, all white from
+top to toe; with here and there a dusky turbaned figure,
+bedizened in many colours, of some Eastern sultan or hero, all
+inclined forward under the slant of mighty bowsprits as if eager
+to begin another run of 11,000 miles in their leaning
+attitudes.&nbsp; These were the fine figure-heads of the finest
+ships afloat.&nbsp; But why, unless for the love of the life
+those effigies shared with us in their wandering impassivity,
+should one try to reproduce in words an impression of whose
+fidelity there can be no critic and no judge, since such an
+exhibition of the art of shipbuilding and the art of figure-head
+carving as was seen from year&rsquo;s end to year&rsquo;s end in
+the open-air gallery of the New South Dock no man&rsquo;s eye
+shall behold again?&nbsp; All that patient, pale company of
+queens and princesses, of kings and warriors, of allegorical
+women, of heroines and statesmen and heathen gods, crowned,
+helmeted, bare-headed, has run for good off the sea stretching to
+the last above the tumbling foam their fair, rounded arms;
+holding out their spears, swords, shields, tridents in the same
+unwearied, striving forward pose.&nbsp; And nothing remains but
+lingering perhaps in the memory of a few men, the sound of their
+names, vanished a long time ago from the first page of the great
+London dailies; from big posters in railway-stations and the
+doors of shipping offices; from the minds of sailors,
+dockmasters, pilots, and tugmen; from the hail of gruff voices
+and the flutter of signal flags exchanged between ships closing
+upon each other and drawing apart in the open immensity of the
+sea.</p>
+<p>The elderly, respectable seaman, withdrawing his gaze from
+that multitude of spars, gave me a glance to make sure of our
+fellowship in the craft and mystery of the sea.&nbsp; We had met
+casually, and had got into contact as I had stopped near him, my
+attention being caught by the same peculiarity he was looking at
+in the rigging of an obviously new ship, a ship with her
+reputation all to make yet in the talk of the seamen who were to
+share their life with her.&nbsp; Her name was already on their
+lips.&nbsp; I had heard it uttered between two thick, red-necked
+fellows of the semi-nautical type at the Fenchurch Street
+Railway-station, where, in those days, the everyday male crowd
+was attired in jerseys and pilot-cloth mostly, and had the air of
+being more conversant with the times of high-water than with the
+times of the trains.&nbsp; I had noticed that new ship&rsquo;s
+name on the first page of my morning paper.&nbsp; I had stared at
+the unfamiliar grouping of its letters, blue on white ground, on
+the advertisement-boards, whenever the train came to a standstill
+alongside one of the shabby, wooden, wharf-like platforms of the
+dock railway-line.&nbsp; She had been named, with proper
+observances, on the day she came off the stocks, no doubt, but
+she was very far yet from &ldquo;having a name.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Untried, ignorant of the ways of the sea, she had been thrust
+amongst that renowned company of ships to load for her maiden
+voyage.&nbsp; There was nothing to vouch for her soundness and
+the worth of her character, but the reputation of the
+building-yard whence she was launched headlong into the world of
+waters.&nbsp; She looked modest to me.&nbsp; I imagined her
+diffident, lying very quiet, with her side nestling shyly against
+the wharf to which she was made fast with very new lines,
+intimidated by the company of her tried and experienced sisters
+already familiar with all the violences of the ocean and the
+exacting love of men.&nbsp; They had had more long voyages to
+make their names in than she had known weeks of carefully tended
+life, for a new ship receives as much attention as if she were a
+young bride.&nbsp; Even crabbed old dock-masters look at her with
+benevolent eyes.&nbsp; In her shyness at the threshold of a
+laborious and uncertain life, where so much is expected of a
+ship, she could not have been better heartened and comforted, had
+she only been able to hear and understand, than by the tone of
+deep conviction in which my elderly, respectable seaman repeated
+the first part of his saying, &ldquo;Ships are all right . .
+.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>His civility prevented him from repeating the other, the
+bitter part.&nbsp; It had occurred to him that it was perhaps
+indelicate to insist.&nbsp; He had recognised in me a
+ship&rsquo;s officer, very possibly looking for a berth like
+himself, and so far a comrade, but still a man belonging to that
+sparsely-peopled after-end of a ship, where a great part of her
+reputation as a &ldquo;good ship,&rdquo; in seaman&rsquo;s
+parlance, is made or marred.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Can you say that of all ships without exception?&rdquo;
+I asked, being in an idle mood, because, if an obvious
+ship&rsquo;s officer, I was not, as a matter of fact, down at the
+docks to &ldquo;look for a berth,&rdquo; an occupation as
+engrossing as gambling, and as little favourable to the free
+exchange of ideas, besides being destructive of the kindly temper
+needed for casual intercourse with one&rsquo;s
+fellow-creatures.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You can always put up with &rsquo;em,&rdquo; opined the
+respectable seaman judicially.</p>
+<p>He was not averse from talking, either.&nbsp; If he had come
+down to the dock to look for a berth, he did not seem oppressed
+by anxiety as to his chances.&nbsp; He had the serenity of a man
+whose estimable character is fortunately expressed by his
+personal appearance in an unobtrusive, yet convincing, manner
+which no chief officer in want of hands could resist.&nbsp; And,
+true enough, I learned presently that the mate of the
+<i>Hyperion</i> had &ldquo;taken down&rdquo; his name for
+quarter-master.&nbsp; &ldquo;We sign on Friday, and join next day
+for the morning tide,&rdquo; he remarked, in a deliberate,
+careless tone, which contrasted strongly with his evident
+readiness to stand there yarning for an hour or so with an utter
+stranger.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Hyperion</i>,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t remember ever seeing that ship anywhere.&nbsp; What
+sort of a name has she got?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It appeared from his discursive answer that she had not much
+of a name one way or another.&nbsp; She was not very fast.&nbsp;
+It took no fool, though, to steer her straight, he
+believed.&nbsp; Some years ago he had seen her in Calcutta, and
+he remembered being told by somebody then, that on her passage up
+the river she had carried away both her hawse-pipes.&nbsp; But
+that might have been the pilot&rsquo;s fault.&nbsp; Just now,
+yarning with the apprentices on board, he had heard that this
+very voyage, brought up in the Downs, outward bound, she broke
+her sheer, struck adrift, and lost an anchor and chain.&nbsp; But
+that might have occurred through want of careful tending in a
+tideway.&nbsp; All the same, this looked as though she were
+pretty hard on her ground-tackle.&nbsp; Didn&rsquo;t it?&nbsp;
+She seemed a heavy ship to handle, anyway.&nbsp; For the rest, as
+she had a new captain and a new mate this voyage, he understood,
+one couldn&rsquo;t say how she would turn out. . . .</p>
+<p>In such marine shore-talk as this is the name of a ship slowly
+established, her fame made for her, the tale of her qualities and
+of her defects kept, her idiosyncrasies commented upon with the
+zest of personal gossip, her achievements made much of, her
+faults glossed over as things that, being without remedy in our
+imperfect world, should not be dwelt upon too much by men who,
+with the help of ships, wrest out a bitter living from the rough
+grasp of the sea.&nbsp; All that talk makes up her
+&ldquo;name,&rdquo; which is handed over from one crew to another
+without bitterness, without animosity, with the indulgence of
+mutual dependence, and with the feeling of close association in
+the exercise of her perfections and in the danger of her
+defects.</p>
+<p>This feeling explains men&rsquo;s pride in ships.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Ships are all right,&rdquo; as my middle-aged, respectable
+quartermaster said with much conviction and some irony; but they
+are not exactly what men make them.&nbsp; They have their own
+nature; they can of themselves minister to our self-esteem by the
+demand their qualities make upon our skill and their shortcomings
+upon our hardiness and endurance.&nbsp; Which is the more
+flattering exaction it is hard to say; but there is the fact that
+in listening for upwards of twenty years to the sea-talk that
+goes on afloat and ashore I have never detected the true note of
+animosity.&nbsp; I won&rsquo;t deny that at sea, sometimes, the
+note of profanity was audible enough in those chiding
+interpellations a wet, cold, weary seaman addresses to his ship,
+and in moments of exasperation is disposed to extend to all ships
+that ever were launched&mdash;to the whole everlastingly exacting
+brood that swims in deep waters.&nbsp; And I have heard curses
+launched at the unstable element itself, whose fascination,
+outlasting the accumulated experience of ages, had captured him
+as it had captured the generations of his forebears.</p>
+<p>For all that has been said of the love that certain natures
+(on shore) have professed to feel for it, for all the
+celebrations it had been the object of in prose and song, the sea
+has never been friendly to man.&nbsp; At most it has been the
+accomplice of human restlessness, and playing the part of
+dangerous abettor of world-wide ambitions.&nbsp; Faithful to no
+race after the manner of the kindly earth, receiving no impress
+from valour and toil and self-sacrifice, recognising no finality
+of dominion, the sea has never adopted the cause of its masters
+like those lands where the victorious nations of mankind have
+taken root, rocking their cradles and setting up their
+gravestones.&nbsp; He&mdash;man or people&mdash;who, putting his
+trust in the friendship of the sea, neglects the strength and
+cunning of his right hand, is a fool!&nbsp; As if it were too
+great, too mighty for common virtues, the ocean has no
+compassion, no faith, no law, no memory.&nbsp; Its fickleness is
+to be held true to men&rsquo;s purposes only by an undaunted
+resolution and by a sleepless, armed, jealous vigilance, in
+which, perhaps, there has always been more hate than love.&nbsp;
+<i>Odi et amo</i> may well be the confession of those who
+consciously or blindly have surrendered their existence to the
+fascination of the sea.&nbsp; All the tempestuous passions of
+mankind&rsquo;s young days, the love of loot and the love of
+glory, the love of adventure and the love of danger, with the
+great love of the unknown and vast dreams of dominion and power,
+have passed like images reflected from a mirror, leaving no
+record upon the mysterious face of the sea.&nbsp; Impenetrable
+and heartless, the sea has given nothing of itself to the suitors
+for its precarious favours.&nbsp; Unlike the earth, it cannot be
+subjugated at any cost of patience and toil.&nbsp; For all its
+fascination that has lured so many to a violent death, its
+immensity has never been loved as the mountains, the plains, the
+desert itself, have been loved.&nbsp; Indeed, I suspect that,
+leaving aside the protestations and tributes of writers who, one
+is safe in saying, care for little else in the world than the
+rhythm of their lines and the cadence of their phrase, the love
+of the sea, to which some men and nations confess so readily, is
+a complex sentiment wherein pride enters for much, necessity for
+not a little, and the love of ships&mdash;the untiring servants
+of our hopes and our self-esteem&mdash;for the best and most
+genuine part.&nbsp; For the hundreds who have reviled the sea,
+beginning with Shakespeare in the line&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;More fell than hunger, anguish, or the
+sea,&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>down to the last obscure sea-dog of the &ldquo;old
+model,&rdquo; having but few words and still fewer thoughts,
+there could not be found, I believe, one sailor who has ever
+coupled a curse with the good or bad name of a ship.&nbsp; If
+ever his profanity, provoked by the hardships of the sea, went so
+far as to touch his ship, it would be lightly, as a hand may,
+without sin, be laid in the way of kindness on a woman.</p>
+<h2>XXXVI.</h2>
+<p>The love that is given to ships is profoundly different from
+the love men feel for every other work of their hands&mdash;the
+love they bear to their houses, for instance&mdash;because it is
+untainted by the pride of possession.&nbsp; The pride of skill,
+the pride of responsibility, the pride of endurance there may be,
+but otherwise it is a disinterested sentiment.&nbsp; No seaman
+ever cherished a ship, even if she belonged to him, merely
+because of the profit she put in his pocket.&nbsp; No one, I
+think, ever did; for a ship-owner, even of the best, has always
+been outside the pale of that sentiment embracing in a feeling of
+intimate, equal fellowship the ship and the man, backing each
+other against the implacable, if sometimes dissembled, hostility
+of their world of waters.&nbsp; The sea&mdash;this truth must be
+confessed&mdash;has no generosity.&nbsp; No display of manly
+qualities&mdash;courage, hardihood, endurance,
+faithfulness&mdash;has ever been known to touch its irresponsible
+consciousness of power.&nbsp; The ocean has the conscienceless
+temper of a savage autocrat spoiled by much adulation.&nbsp; He
+cannot brook the slightest appearance of defiance, and has
+remained the irreconcilable enemy of ships and men ever since
+ships and men had the unheard of audacity to go afloat together
+in the face of his frown.&nbsp; From that day he has gone on
+swallowing up fleets and men without his resentment being glutted
+by the number of victims&mdash;by so many wrecked ships and
+wrecked lives.&nbsp; To-day, as ever, he is ready to beguile and
+betray, to smash and to drown the incorrigible optimism of men
+who, backed by the fidelity of ships, are trying to wrest from
+him the fortune of their house, the dominion of their world, or
+only a dole of food for their hunger.&nbsp; If not always in the
+hot mood to smash, he is always stealthily ready for a
+drowning.&nbsp; The most amazing wonder of the deep is its
+unfathomable cruelty.</p>
+<p>I felt its dread for the first time in mid-Atlantic one day,
+many years ago, when we took off the crew of a Danish brig
+homeward bound from the West Indies.&nbsp; A thin, silvery mist
+softened the calm and majestic splendour of light without
+shadows&mdash;seemed to render the sky less remote and the ocean
+less immense.&nbsp; It was one of the days, when the might of the
+sea appears indeed lovable, like the nature of a strong man in
+moments of quiet intimacy.&nbsp; At sunrise we had made out a
+black speck to the westward, apparently suspended high up in the
+void behind a stirring, shimmering veil of silvery blue gauze
+that seemed at times to stir and float in the breeze which fanned
+us slowly along.&nbsp; The peace of that enchanting forenoon was
+so profound, so untroubled, that it seemed that every word
+pronounced loudly on our deck would penetrate to the very heart
+of that infinite mystery born from the conjunction of water and
+sky.&nbsp; We did not raise our voices.&nbsp; &ldquo;A
+water-logged derelict, I think, sir,&rdquo; said the second
+officer quietly, coming down from aloft with the binoculars in
+their case slung across his shoulders; and our captain, without a
+word, signed to the helmsman to steer for the black speck.&nbsp;
+Presently we made out a low, jagged stump sticking up
+forward&mdash;all that remained of her departed masts.</p>
+<p>The captain was expatiating in a low conversational tone to
+the chief mate upon the danger of these derelicts, and upon his
+dread of coming upon them at night, when suddenly a man forward
+screamed out, &ldquo;There&rsquo;s people on board of her,
+sir!&nbsp; I see them!&rdquo; in a most extraordinary
+voice&mdash;a voice never heard before in our ship; the amazing
+voice of a stranger.&nbsp; It gave the signal for a sudden tumult
+of shouts.&nbsp; The watch below ran up the forecastle head in a
+body, the cook dashed out of the galley.&nbsp; Everybody saw the
+poor fellows now.&nbsp; They were there!&nbsp; And all at once
+our ship, which had the well-earned name of being without a rival
+for speed in light winds, seemed to us to have lost the power of
+motion, as if the sea, becoming viscous, had clung to her
+sides.&nbsp; And yet she moved.&nbsp; Immensity, the inseparable
+companion of a ship&rsquo;s life, chose that day to breathe upon
+her as gently as a sleeping child.&nbsp; The clamour of our
+excitement had died out, and our living ship, famous for never
+losing steerage way as long as there was air enough to float a
+feather, stole, without a ripple, silent and white as a ghost,
+towards her mutilated and wounded sister, come upon at the point
+of death in the sunlit haze of a calm day at sea.</p>
+<p>With the binoculars glued to his eyes, the captain said in a
+quavering tone: &ldquo;They are waving to us with something aft
+there.&rdquo;&nbsp; He put down the glasses on the skylight
+brusquely, and began to walk about the poop.&nbsp; &ldquo;A shirt
+or a flag,&rdquo; he ejaculated irritably.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t make it out. . . Some damn rag or
+other!&rdquo;&nbsp; He took a few more turns on the poop,
+glancing down over the rail now and then to see how fast we were
+moving.&nbsp; His nervous footsteps rang sharply in the quiet of
+the ship, where the other men, all looking the same way, had
+forgotten themselves in a staring immobility.&nbsp; &ldquo;This
+will never do!&rdquo; he cried out suddenly.&nbsp; &ldquo;Lower
+the boats at once!&nbsp; Down with them!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Before I jumped into mine he took me aside, as being an
+inexperienced junior, for a word of warning:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You look out as you come alongside that she
+doesn&rsquo;t take you down with her.&nbsp; You
+understand?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He murmured this confidentially, so that none of the men at
+the falls should overhear, and I was shocked.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Heavens! as if in such an emergency one stopped to think
+of danger!&rdquo; I exclaimed to myself mentally, in scorn of
+such cold-blooded caution.</p>
+<p>It takes many lessons to make a real seaman, and I got my
+rebuke at once.&nbsp; My experienced commander seemed in one
+searching glance to read my thoughts on my ingenuous face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What you&rsquo;re going for is to save life, not to
+drown your boat&rsquo;s crew for nothing,&rdquo; he growled
+severely in my ear.&nbsp; But as we shoved off he leaned over and
+cried out: &ldquo;It all rests on the power of your arms,
+men.&nbsp; Give way for life!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We made a race of it, and I would never have believed that a
+common boat&rsquo;s crew of a merchantman could keep up so much
+determined fierceness in the regular swing of their stroke.&nbsp;
+What our captain had clearly perceived before we left had become
+plain to all of us since.&nbsp; The issue of our enterprise hung
+on a hair above that abyss of waters which will not give up its
+dead till the Day of Judgment.&nbsp; It was a race of two
+ship&rsquo;s boats matched against Death for a prize of nine
+men&rsquo;s lives, and Death had a long start.&nbsp; We saw the
+crew of the brig from afar working at the pumps&mdash;still
+pumping on that wreck, which already had settled so far down that
+the gentle, low swell, over which our boats rose and fell easily
+without a check to their speed, welling up almost level with her
+head-rails, plucked at the ends of broken gear swinging
+desolately under her naked bowsprit.</p>
+<p>We could not, in all conscience, have picked out a better day
+for our regatta had we had the free choice of all the days that
+ever dawned upon the lonely struggles and solitary agonies of
+ships since the Norse rovers first steered to the westward
+against the run of Atlantic waves.&nbsp; It was a very good
+race.&nbsp; At the finish there was not an oar&rsquo;s length
+between the first and second boat, with Death coming in a good
+third on the top of the very next smooth swell, for all one knew
+to the contrary.&nbsp; The scuppers of the brig gurgled softly
+all together when the water rising against her sides subsided
+sleepily with a low wash, as if playing about an immovable
+rock.&nbsp; Her bulwarks were gone fore and aft, and one saw her
+bare deck low-lying like a raft and swept clean of boats, spars,
+houses&mdash;of everything except the ringbolts and the heads of
+the pumps.&nbsp; I had one dismal glimpse of it as I braced
+myself up to receive upon my breast the last man to leave her,
+the captain, who literally let himself fall into my arms.</p>
+<p>It had been a weirdly silent rescue&mdash;a rescue without a
+hail, without a single uttered word, without a gesture or a sign,
+without a conscious exchange of glances.&nbsp; Up to the very
+last moment those on board stuck to their pumps, which spouted
+two clear streams of water upon their bare feet.&nbsp; Their
+brown skin showed through the rents of their shirts; and the two
+small bunches of half-naked, tattered men went on bowing from the
+waist to each other in their back-breaking labour, up and down,
+absorbed, with no time for a glance over the shoulder at the help
+that was coming to them.&nbsp; As we dashed, unregarded,
+alongside a voice let out one, only one hoarse howl of command,
+and then, just as they stood, without caps, with the salt drying
+gray in the wrinkles and folds of their hairy, haggard faces,
+blinking stupidly at us their red eyelids, they made a bolt away
+from the handles, tottering and jostling against each other, and
+positively flung themselves over upon our very heads.&nbsp; The
+clatter they made tumbling into the boats had an extraordinarily
+destructive effect upon the illusion of tragic dignity our
+self-esteem had thrown over the contests of mankind with the
+sea.&nbsp; On that exquisite day of gently breathing peace and
+veiled sunshine perished my romantic love to what men&rsquo;s
+imagination had proclaimed the most august aspect of
+Nature.&nbsp; The cynical indifference of the sea to the merits
+of human suffering and courage, laid bare in this ridiculous,
+panic-tainted performance extorted from the dire extremity of
+nine good and honourable seamen, revolted me.&nbsp; I saw the
+duplicity of the sea&rsquo;s most tender mood.&nbsp; It was so
+because it could not help itself, but the awed respect of the
+early days was gone.&nbsp; I felt ready to smile bitterly at its
+enchanting charm and glare viciously at its furies.&nbsp; In a
+moment, before we shoved off, I had looked coolly at the life of
+my choice.&nbsp; Its illusions were gone, but its fascination
+remained.&nbsp; I had become a seaman at last.</p>
+<p>We pulled hard for a quarter of an hour, then laid on our oars
+waiting for our ship.&nbsp; She was coming down on us with
+swelling sails, looking delicately tall and exquisitely noble
+through the mist.&nbsp; The captain of the brig, who sat in the
+stern sheets by my side with his face in his hands, raised his
+head and began to speak with a sort of sombre volubility.&nbsp;
+They had lost their masts and sprung a leak in a hurricane;
+drifted for weeks, always at the pumps, met more bad weather; the
+ships they sighted failed to make them out, the leak gained upon
+them slowly, and the seas had left them nothing to make a raft
+of.&nbsp; It was very hard to see ship after ship pass by at a
+distance, &ldquo;as if everybody had agreed that we must be left
+to drown,&rdquo; he added.&nbsp; But they went on trying to keep
+the brig afloat as long as possible, and working the pumps
+constantly on insufficient food, mostly raw, till
+&ldquo;yesterday evening,&rdquo; he continued monotonously,
+&ldquo;just as the sun went down, the men&rsquo;s hearts
+broke.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He made an almost imperceptible pause here, and went on again
+with exactly the same intonation:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They told me the brig could not be saved, and they
+thought they had done enough for themselves.&nbsp; I said nothing
+to that.&nbsp; It was true.&nbsp; It was no mutiny.&nbsp; I had
+nothing to say to them.&nbsp; They lay about aft all night, as
+still as so many dead men.&nbsp; I did not lie down.&nbsp; I kept
+a look-out.&nbsp; When the first light came I saw your ship at
+once.&nbsp; I waited for more light; the breeze began to fail on
+my face.&nbsp; Then I shouted out as loud as I was able,
+&lsquo;Look at that ship!&rsquo; but only two men got up very
+slowly and came to me.&nbsp; At first only we three stood alone,
+for a long time, watching you coming down to us, and feeling the
+breeze drop to a calm almost; but afterwards others, too, rose,
+one after another, and by-and-by I had all my crew behind
+me.&nbsp; I turned round and said to them that they could see the
+ship was coming our way, but in this small breeze she might come
+too late after all, unless we turned to and tried to keep the
+brig afloat long enough to give you time to save us all.&nbsp; I
+spoke like that to them, and then I gave the command to man the
+pumps.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He gave the command, and gave the example, too, by going
+himself to the handles, but it seems that these men did actually
+hang back for a moment, looking at each other dubiously before
+they followed him.&nbsp; &ldquo;He! he! he!&rdquo;&nbsp; He broke
+out into a most unexpected, imbecile, pathetic, nervous little
+giggle.&nbsp; &ldquo;Their hearts were broken so!&nbsp; They had
+been played with too long,&rdquo; he explained apologetically,
+lowering his eyes, and became silent.</p>
+<p>Twenty-five years is a long time&mdash;a quarter of a century
+is a dim and distant past; but to this day I remember the
+dark-brown feet, hands, and faces of two of these men whose
+hearts had been broken by the sea.&nbsp; They were lying very
+still on their sides on the bottom boards between the thwarts,
+curled up like dogs.&nbsp; My boat&rsquo;s crew, leaning over the
+looms of their oars, stared and listened as if at the play.&nbsp;
+The master of the brig looked up suddenly to ask me what day it
+was.</p>
+<p>They had lost the date.&nbsp; When I told him it was Sunday,
+the 22nd, he frowned, making some mental calculation, then nodded
+twice sadly to himself, staring at nothing.</p>
+<p>His aspect was miserably unkempt and wildly sorrowful.&nbsp;
+Had it not been for the unquenchable candour of his blue eyes,
+whose unhappy, tired glance every moment sought his abandoned,
+sinking brig, as if it could find rest nowhere else, he would
+have appeared mad.&nbsp; But he was too simple to go mad, too
+simple with that manly simplicity which alone can bear men
+unscathed in mind and body through an encounter with the deadly
+playfulness of the sea or with its less abominable fury.</p>
+<p>Neither angry, nor playful, nor smiling, it enveloped our
+distant ship growing bigger as she neared us, our boats with the
+rescued men and the dismantled hull of the brig we were leaving
+behind, in the large and placid embrace of its quietness, half
+lost in the fair haze, as if in a dream of infinite and tender
+clemency.&nbsp; There was no frown, no wrinkle on its face, not a
+ripple.&nbsp; And the run of the slight swell was so smooth that
+it resembled the graceful undulation of a piece of shimmering
+gray silk shot with gleams of green.&nbsp; We pulled an easy
+stroke; but when the master of the brig, after a glance over his
+shoulder, stood up with a low exclamation, my men feathered their
+oars instinctively, without an order, and the boat lost her
+way.</p>
+<p>He was steadying himself on my shoulder with a strong grip,
+while his other arm, flung up rigidly, pointed a denunciatory
+finger at the immense tranquillity of the ocean.&nbsp; After his
+first exclamation, which stopped the swing of our oars, he made
+no sound, but his whole attitude seemed to cry out an indignant
+&ldquo;Behold!&rdquo; . . . I could not imagine what vision of
+evil had come to him.&nbsp; I was startled, and the amazing
+energy of his immobilized gesture made my heart beat faster with
+the anticipation of something monstrous and unsuspected.&nbsp;
+The stillness around us became crushing.</p>
+<p>For a moment the succession of silky undulations ran on
+innocently.&nbsp; I saw each of them swell up the misty line of
+the horizon, far, far away beyond the derelict brig, and the next
+moment, with a slight friendly toss of our boat, it had passed
+under us and was gone.&nbsp; The lulling cadence of the rise and
+fall, the invariable gentleness of this irresistible force, the
+great charm of the deep waters, warmed my breast deliciously,
+like the subtle poison of a love-potion.&nbsp; But all this
+lasted only a few soothing seconds before I jumped up too, making
+the boat roll like the veriest landlubber.</p>
+<p>Something startling, mysterious, hastily confused, was taking
+place.&nbsp; I watched it with incredulous and fascinated awe, as
+one watches the confused, swift movements of some deed of
+violence done in the dark.&nbsp; As if at a given signal, the run
+of the smooth undulations seemed checked suddenly around the
+brig.&nbsp; By a strange optical delusion the whole sea appeared
+to rise upon her in one overwhelming heave of its silky surface,
+where in one spot a smother of foam broke out ferociously.&nbsp;
+And then the effort subsided.&nbsp; It was all over, and the
+smooth swell ran on as before from the horizon in uninterrupted
+cadence of motion, passing under us with a slight friendly toss
+of our boat.&nbsp; Far away, where the brig had been, an angry
+white stain undulating on the surface of steely-gray waters, shot
+with gleams of green, diminished swiftly, without a hiss, like a
+patch of pure snow melting in the sun.&nbsp; And the great
+stillness after this initiation into the sea&rsquo;s implacable
+hate seemed full of dread thoughts and shadows of disaster.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Gone!&rdquo; ejaculated from the depths of his chest my
+bowman in a final tone.&nbsp; He spat in his hands, and took a
+better grip on his oar.&nbsp; The captain of the brig lowered his
+rigid arm slowly, and looked at our faces in a solemnly conscious
+silence, which called upon us to share in his simple-minded,
+marvelling awe.&nbsp; All at once he sat down by my side, and
+leaned forward earnestly at my boat&rsquo;s crew, who, swinging
+together in a long, easy stroke, kept their eyes fixed upon him
+faithfully.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No ship could have done so well,&rdquo; he addressed
+them firmly, after a moment of strained silence, during which he
+seemed with trembling lips to seek for words fit to bear such
+high testimony.&nbsp; &ldquo;She was small, but she was
+good.&nbsp; I had no anxiety.&nbsp; She was strong.&nbsp; Last
+voyage I had my wife and two children in her.&nbsp; No other ship
+could have stood so long the weather she had to live through for
+days and days before we got dismasted a fortnight ago.&nbsp; She
+was fairly worn out, and that&rsquo;s all.&nbsp; You may believe
+me.&nbsp; She lasted under us for days and days, but she could
+not last for ever.&nbsp; It was long enough.&nbsp; I am glad it
+is over.&nbsp; No better ship was ever left to sink at sea on
+such a day as this.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He was competent to pronounce the funereal oration of a ship,
+this son of ancient sea-folk, whose national existence, so little
+stained by the excesses of manly virtues, had demanded nothing
+but the merest foothold from the earth.&nbsp; By the merits of
+his sea-wise forefathers and by the artlessness of his heart, he
+was made fit to deliver this excellent discourse.&nbsp; There was
+nothing wanting in its orderly arrangement&mdash;neither piety
+nor faith, nor the tribute of praise due to the worthy dead, with
+the edifying recital of their achievement.&nbsp; She had lived,
+he had loved her; she had suffered, and he was glad she was at
+rest.&nbsp; It was an excellent discourse.&nbsp; And it was
+orthodox, too, in its fidelity to the cardinal article of a
+seaman&rsquo;s faith, of which it was a single-minded
+confession.&nbsp; &ldquo;Ships are all right.&rdquo;&nbsp; They
+are.&nbsp; They who live with the sea have got to hold by that
+creed first and last; and it came to me, as I glanced at him
+sideways, that some men were not altogether unworthy in honour
+and conscience to pronounce the funereal eulogium of a
+ship&rsquo;s constancy in life and death.</p>
+<p>After this, sitting by my side with his loosely-clasped hands
+hanging between his knees, he uttered no word, made no movement
+till the shadow of our ship&rsquo;s sails fell on the boat, when,
+at the loud cheer greeting the return of the victors with their
+prize, he lifted up his troubled face with a faint smile of
+pathetic indulgence.&nbsp; This smile of the worthy descendant of
+the most ancient sea-folk whose audacity and hardihood had left
+no trace of greatness and glory upon the waters, completed the
+cycle of my initiation.&nbsp; There was an infinite depth of
+hereditary wisdom in its pitying sadness.&nbsp; It made the
+hearty bursts of cheering sound like a childish noise of
+triumph.&nbsp; Our crew shouted with immense
+confidence&mdash;honest souls!&nbsp; As if anybody could ever
+make sure of having prevailed against the sea, which has betrayed
+so many ships of great &ldquo;name,&rdquo; so many proud men, so
+many towering ambitions of fame, power, wealth, greatness!</p>
+<p>As I brought the boat under the falls my captain, in high
+good-humour, leaned over, spreading his red and freckled elbows
+on the rail, and called down to me sarcastically, out of the
+depths of his cynic philosopher&rsquo;s beard:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So you have brought the boat back after all, have
+you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Sarcasm was &ldquo;his way,&rdquo; and the most that can be
+said for it is that it was natural.&nbsp; This did not make it
+lovable.&nbsp; But it is decorous and expedient to fall in with
+one&rsquo;s commander&rsquo;s way.&nbsp; &ldquo;Yes.&nbsp; I
+brought the boat back all right, sir,&rdquo; I answered.&nbsp;
+And the good man believed me.&nbsp; It was not for him to discern
+upon me the marks of my recent initiation.&nbsp; And yet I was
+not exactly the same youngster who had taken the boat
+away&mdash;all impatience for a race against death, with the
+prize of nine men&rsquo;s lives at the end.</p>
+<p>Already I looked with other eyes upon the sea.&nbsp; I knew it
+capable of betraying the generous ardour of youth as implacably
+as, indifferent to evil and good, it would have betrayed the
+basest greed or the noblest heroism.&nbsp; My conception of its
+magnanimous greatness was gone.&nbsp; And I looked upon the true
+sea&mdash;the sea that plays with men till their hearts are
+broken, and wears stout ships to death.&nbsp; Nothing can touch
+the brooding bitterness of its heart.&nbsp; Open to all and
+faithful to none, it exercises its fascination for the undoing of
+the best.&nbsp; To love it is not well.&nbsp; It knows no bond of
+plighted troth, no fidelity to misfortune, to long companionship,
+to long devotion.&nbsp; The promise it holds out perpetually is
+very great; but the only secret of its possession is strength,
+strength&mdash;the jealous, sleepless strength of a man guarding
+a coveted treasure within his gates.</p>
+<h2><a name="page233"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+233</span>XXXVII.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> cradle of oversea traffic and
+of the art of naval combats, the Mediterranean, apart from all
+the associations of adventure and glory, the common heritage of
+all mankind, makes a tender appeal to a seaman.&nbsp; It has
+sheltered the infancy of his craft.&nbsp; He looks upon it as a
+man may look at a vast nursery in an old, old mansion where
+innumerable generations of his own people have learned to
+walk.&nbsp; I say his own people because, in a sense, all sailors
+belong to one family: all are descended from that adventurous and
+shaggy ancestor who, bestriding a shapeless log and paddling with
+a crooked branch, accomplished the first coasting-trip in a
+sheltered bay ringing with the admiring howls of his tribe.&nbsp;
+It is a matter of regret that all those brothers in craft and
+feeling, whose generations have learned to walk a ship&rsquo;s
+deck in that nursery, have been also more than once fiercely
+engaged in cutting each other&rsquo;s throats there.&nbsp; But
+life, apparently, has such exigencies.&nbsp; Without human
+propensity to murder and other sorts of unrighteousness there
+would have been no historical heroism.&nbsp; It is a consoling
+reflection.&nbsp; And then, if one examines impartially the deeds
+of violence, they appear of but small consequence.&nbsp; From
+Salamis to Actium, through Lepanto and the Nile to the naval
+massacre of Navarino, not to mention other armed encounters of
+lesser interest, all the blood heroically spilt into the
+Mediterranean has not stained with a single trail of purple the
+deep azure of its classic waters.</p>
+<p>Of course, it may be argued that battles have shaped the
+destiny of mankind.&nbsp; The question whether they have shaped
+it well would remain open, however.&nbsp; But it would be hardly
+worth discussing.&nbsp; It is very probable that, had the Battle
+of Salamis never been fought, the face of the world would have
+been much as we behold it now, fashioned by the mediocre
+inspiration and the short-sighted labours of men.&nbsp; From a
+long and miserable experience of suffering, injustice, disgrace
+and aggression the nations of the earth are mostly swayed by
+fear&mdash;fear of the sort that a little cheap oratory turns
+easily to rage, hate, and violence.&nbsp; Innocent, guileless
+fear has been the cause of many wars.&nbsp; Not, of course, the
+fear of war itself, which, in the evolution of sentiments and
+ideas, has come to be regarded at last as a half-mystic and
+glorious ceremony with certain fashionable rites and preliminary
+incantations, wherein the conception of its true nature has been
+lost.&nbsp; To apprehend the true aspect, force, and morality of
+war as a natural function of mankind one requires a feather in
+the hair and a ring in the nose, or, better still, teeth filed to
+a point and a tattooed breast.&nbsp; Unfortunately, a return to
+such simple ornamentation is impossible.&nbsp; We are bound to
+the chariot of progress.&nbsp; There is no going back; and, as
+bad luck would have it, our civilization, which has done so much
+for the comfort and adornment of our bodies and the elevation of
+our minds, has made lawful killing frightfully and needlessly
+expensive.</p>
+<p>The whole question of improved armaments has been approached
+by the governments of the earth in a spirit of nervous and
+unreflecting haste, whereas the right way was lying plainly
+before them, and had only to be pursued with calm
+determination.&nbsp; The learned vigils and labours of a certain
+class of inventors should have been rewarded with honourable
+liberality as justice demanded; and the bodies of the inventors
+should have been blown to pieces by means of their own perfected
+explosives and improved weapons with extreme publicity as the
+commonest prudence dictated.&nbsp; By this method the ardour of
+research in that direction would have been restrained without
+infringing the sacred privileges of science.&nbsp; For the lack
+of a little cool thinking in our guides and masters this course
+has not been followed, and a beautiful simplicity has been
+sacrificed for no real advantage.&nbsp; A frugal mind cannot
+defend itself from considerable bitterness when reflecting that
+at the Battle of Actium (which was fought for no less a stake
+than the dominion of the world) the fleet of Octavianus
+C&aelig;sar and the fleet of Antonius, including the Egyptian
+division and Cleopatra&rsquo;s galley with purple sails, probably
+cost less than two modern battleships, or, as the modern naval
+book-jargon has it, two capital units.&nbsp; But no amount of
+lubberly book-jargon can disguise a fact well calculated to
+afflict the soul of every sound economist.&nbsp; It is not likely
+that the Mediterranean will ever behold a battle with a greater
+issue; but when the time comes for another historical fight its
+bottom will be enriched as never before by a quantity of jagged
+scrap-iron, paid for at pretty nearly its weight of gold by the
+deluded populations inhabiting the isles and continents of this
+planet.</p>
+<h2>XXXVIII.</h2>
+<p>Happy he who, like Ulysses, has made an adventurous voyage;
+and there is no such sea for adventurous voyages as the
+Mediterranean&mdash;the inland sea which the ancients looked upon
+as so vast and so full of wonders.&nbsp; And, indeed, it was
+terrible and wonderful; for it is we alone who, swayed by the
+audacity of our minds and the tremors of our hearts, are the sole
+artisans of all the wonder and romance of the world.</p>
+<p>It was for the Mediterranean sailors that fair-haired sirens
+sang among the black rocks seething in white foam and mysterious
+voices spoke in the darkness above the moving wave&mdash;voices
+menacing, seductive, or prophetic, like that voice heard at the
+beginning of the Christian era by the master of an African vessel
+in the Gulf of Syrta, whose calm nights are full of strange
+murmurs and flitting shadows.&nbsp; It called him by name,
+bidding him go and tell all men that the great god Pan was
+dead.&nbsp; But the great legend of the Mediterranean, the legend
+of traditional song and grave history, lives, fascinating and
+immortal, in our minds.</p>
+<p>The dark and fearful sea of the subtle Ulysses&rsquo;
+wanderings, agitated by the wrath of Olympian gods, harbouring on
+its isles the fury of strange monsters and the wiles of strange
+women; the highway of heroes and sages, of warriors, pirates, and
+saints; the workaday sea of Carthaginian merchants and the
+pleasure lake of the Roman C&aelig;sars, claims the veneration of
+every seaman as the historical home of that spirit of open
+defiance against the great waters of the earth which is the very
+soul of his calling.&nbsp; Issuing thence to the west and south,
+as a youth leaves the shelter of his parental house, this spirit
+found the way to the Indies, discovered the coasts of a new
+continent, and traversed at last the immensity of the great
+Pacific, rich in groups of islands remote and mysterious like the
+constellations of the sky.</p>
+<p>The first impulse of navigation took its visible form in that
+tideless basin freed from hidden shoals and treacherous currents,
+as if in tender regard for the infancy of the art.&nbsp; The
+steep shores of the Mediterranean favoured the beginners in one
+of humanity&rsquo;s most daring enterprises, and the enchanting
+inland sea of classic adventure has led mankind gently from
+headland to headland, from bay to bay, from island to island, out
+into the promise of world-wide oceans beyond the Pillars of
+Hercules.</p>
+<h2>XXXIX.</h2>
+<p>The charm of the Mediterranean dwells in the unforgettable
+flavour of my early days, and to this hour this sea, upon which
+the Romans alone ruled without dispute, has kept for me the
+fascination of youthful romance.&nbsp; The very first Christmas
+night I ever spent away from land was employed in running before
+a Gulf of Lions gale, which made the old ship groan in every
+timber as she skipped before it over the short seas until we
+brought her to, battered and out of breath, under the lee of
+Majorca, where the smooth water was torn by fierce
+cat&rsquo;s-paws under a very stormy sky.</p>
+<p>We&mdash;or, rather, they, for I had hardly had two glimpses
+of salt water in my life till then&mdash;kept her standing off
+and on all that day, while I listened for the first time with the
+curiosity of my tender years to the song of the wind in a
+ship&rsquo;s rigging.&nbsp; The monotonous and vibrating note was
+destined to grow into the intimacy of the heart, pass into blood
+and bone, accompany the thoughts and acts of two full decades,
+remain to haunt like a reproach the peace of the quiet fireside,
+and enter into the very texture of respectable dreams dreamed
+safely under a roof of rafters and tiles.&nbsp; The wind was
+fair, but that day we ran no more.</p>
+<p>The thing (I will not call her a ship twice in the same
+half-hour) leaked.&nbsp; She leaked fully, generously,
+overflowingly, all over&mdash;like a basket.&nbsp; I took an
+enthusiastic part in the excitement caused by that last infirmity
+of noble ships, without concerning myself much with the why or
+the wherefore.&nbsp; The surmise of my maturer years is that,
+bored by her interminable life, the venerable antiquity was
+simply yawning with ennui at every seam.&nbsp; But at the time I
+did not know; I knew generally very little, and least of all what
+I was doing in that <i>gal&egrave;re</i>.</p>
+<p>I remember that, exactly as in the comedy of Moli&egrave;re,
+my uncle asked the precise question in the very words&mdash;not
+of my confidential valet, however, but across great distances of
+land, in a letter whose mocking but indulgent turn ill concealed
+his almost paternal anxiety.&nbsp; I fancy I tried to convey to
+him my (utterly unfounded) impression that the West Indies
+awaited my coming.&nbsp; I had to go there.&nbsp; It was a sort
+of mystic conviction&mdash;something in the nature of a
+call.&nbsp; But it was difficult to state intelligibly the
+grounds of this belief to that man of rigorous logic, if of
+infinite charity.</p>
+<p>The truth must have been that, all unversed in the arts of the
+wily Greek, the deceiver of gods, the lover of strange women, the
+evoker of bloodthirsty shades, I yet longed for the beginning of
+my own obscure Odyssey, which, as was proper for a modern, should
+unroll its wonders and terrors beyond the Pillars of
+Hercules.&nbsp; The disdainful ocean did not open wide to swallow
+up my audacity, though the ship, the ridiculous and ancient
+<i>gal&egrave;re</i> of my folly, the old, weary, disenchanted
+sugar-waggon, seemed extremely disposed to open out and swallow
+up as much salt water as she could hold.&nbsp; This, if less
+grandiose, would have been as final a catastrophe.</p>
+<p>But no catastrophe occurred.&nbsp; I lived to watch on a
+strange shore a black and youthful Nausicaa, with a joyous train
+of attendant maidens, carrying baskets of linen to a clear stream
+overhung by the heads of slender palm-trees.&nbsp; The vivid
+colours of their draped raiment and the gold of their earrings
+invested with a barbaric and regal magnificence their figures,
+stepping out freely in a shower of broken sunshine.&nbsp; The
+whiteness of their teeth was still more dazzling than the
+splendour of jewels at their ears.&nbsp; The shaded side of the
+ravine gleamed with their smiles.&nbsp; They were as unabashed as
+so many princesses, but, alas! not one of them was the daughter
+of a jet-black sovereign.&nbsp; Such was my abominable luck in
+being born by the mere hair&rsquo;s breadth of twenty-five
+centuries too late into a world where kings have been growing
+scarce with scandalous rapidity, while the few who remain have
+adopted the uninteresting manners and customs of simple
+millionaires.&nbsp; Obviously it was a vain hope in 187&ndash; to
+see the ladies of a royal household walk in chequered sunshine,
+with baskets of linen on their heads, to the banks of a clear
+stream overhung by the starry fronds of palm-trees.&nbsp; It was
+a vain hope.&nbsp; If I did not ask myself whether, limited by
+such discouraging impossibilities, life were still worth living,
+it was only because I had then before me several other pressing
+questions, some of which have remained unanswered to this
+day.&nbsp; The resonant, laughing voices of these gorgeous
+maidens scared away the multitude of humming-birds, whose
+delicate wings wreathed with the mist of their vibration the tops
+of flowering bushes.</p>
+<p>No, they were not princesses.&nbsp; Their unrestrained
+laughter filling the hot, fern-clad ravine had a soulless
+limpidity, as of wild, inhuman dwellers in tropical
+woodlands.&nbsp; Following the example of certain prudent
+travellers, I withdrew unseen&mdash;and returned, not much wiser,
+to the Mediterranean, the sea of classic adventures.</p>
+<h2><a name="page244"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+244</span>XL.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was written that there, in the
+nursery of our navigating ancestors, I should learn to walk in
+the ways of my craft and grow in the love of the sea, blind as
+young love often is, but absorbing and disinterested as all true
+love must be.&nbsp; I demanded nothing from it&mdash;not even
+adventure.&nbsp; In this I showed, perhaps, more intuitive wisdom
+than high self-denial.&nbsp; No adventure ever came to one for
+the asking.&nbsp; He who starts on a deliberate quest of
+adventure goes forth but to gather dead-sea fruit, unless,
+indeed, he be beloved of the gods and great amongst heroes, like
+that most excellent cavalier Don Quixote de la Mancha.&nbsp; By
+us ordinary mortals of a mediocre animus that is only too anxious
+to pass by wicked giants for so many honest windmills, adventures
+are entertained like visiting angels.&nbsp; They come upon our
+complacency unawares.&nbsp; As unbidden guests are apt to do,
+they often come at inconvenient times.&nbsp; And we are glad to
+let them go unrecognised, without any acknowledgment of so high a
+favour.&nbsp; After many years, on looking back from the middle
+turn of life&rsquo;s way at the events of the past, which, like a
+friendly crowd, seem to gaze sadly after us hastening towards the
+Cimmerian shore, we may see here and there, in the gray throng,
+some figure glowing with a faint radiance, as though it had
+caught all the light of our already crepuscular sky.&nbsp; And by
+this glow we may recognise the faces of our true adventures, of
+the once unbidden guests entertained unawares in our young
+days.</p>
+<p>If the Mediterranean, the venerable (and sometimes atrociously
+ill-tempered) nurse of all navigators, was to rock my youth, the
+providing of the cradle necessary for that operation was
+entrusted by Fate to the most casual assemblage of irresponsible
+young men (all, however, older than myself) that, as if drunk
+with Proven&ccedil;al sunshine, frittered life away in joyous
+levity on the model of Balzac&rsquo;s &ldquo;Histoire des
+Treize&rdquo; qualified by a dash of romance <i>de cape et
+d&rsquo;&eacute;p&eacute;e</i>.</p>
+<p>She who was my cradle in those years had been built on the
+River of Savona by a famous builder of boats, was rigged in
+Corsica by another good man, and was described on her papers as a
+&lsquo;tartane&rsquo; of sixty tons.&nbsp; In reality, she was a
+true balancelle, with two short masts raking forward and two
+curved yards, each as long as her hull; a true child of the Latin
+lake, with a spread of two enormous sails resembling the pointed
+wings on a sea-bird&rsquo;s slender body, and herself, like a
+bird indeed, skimming rather than sailing the seas.</p>
+<p>Her name was the <i>Tremolino</i>.&nbsp; How is this to be
+translated?&nbsp; The <i>Quiverer</i>?&nbsp; What a name to give
+the pluckiest little craft that ever dipped her sides in angry
+foam!&nbsp; I had felt her, it is true, trembling for nights and
+days together under my feet, but it was with the high-strung
+tenseness of her faithful courage.&nbsp; In her short, but
+brilliant, career she has taught me nothing, but she has given me
+everything.&nbsp; I owe to her the awakened love for the sea
+that, with the quivering of her swift little body and the humming
+of the wind under the foot of her lateen sails, stole into my
+heart with a sort of gentle violence, and brought my imagination
+under its despotic sway.&nbsp; The <i>Tremolino</i>!&nbsp; To
+this day I cannot utter or even write that name without a strange
+tightening of the breast and the gasp of mingled delight and
+dread of one&rsquo;s first passionate experience.</p>
+<h2>XLI.</h2>
+<p>We four formed (to use a term well understood nowadays in
+every social sphere) a &ldquo;syndicate&rdquo; owning the
+<i>Tremolino</i>: an international and astonishing
+syndicate.&nbsp; And we were all ardent Royalists of the
+snow-white Legitimist complexion&mdash;Heaven only knows
+why!&nbsp; In all associations of men there is generally one who,
+by the authority of age and of a more experienced wisdom, imparts
+a collective character to the whole set.&nbsp; If I mention that
+the oldest of us was very old, extremely old&mdash;nearly thirty
+years old&mdash;and that he used to declare with gallant
+carelessness, &ldquo;I live by my sword,&rdquo; I think I have
+given enough information on the score of our collective
+wisdom.&nbsp; He was a North Carolinian gentleman, J. M. K. B.
+were the initials of his name, and he really did live by the
+sword, as far as I know.&nbsp; He died by it, too, later on, in a
+Balkanian squabble, in the cause of some Serbs or else
+Bulgarians, who were neither Catholics nor gentlemen&mdash;at
+least, not in the exalted but narrow sense he attached to that
+last word.</p>
+<p>Poor J. M. K. B., <i>Am&eacute;ricain</i>, <i>Catholique</i>,
+<i>et gentilhomme</i>, as he was disposed to describe himself in
+moments of lofty expansion!&nbsp; Are there still to be found in
+Europe gentlemen keen of face and elegantly slight of body, of
+distinguished aspect, with a fascinating drawing-room manner and
+with a dark, fatal glance, who live by their swords, I
+wonder?&nbsp; His family had been ruined in the Civil War, I
+fancy, and seems for a decade or so to have led a wandering life
+in the Old World.&nbsp; As to Henry C&mdash;, the next in age and
+wisdom of our band, he had broken loose from the unyielding
+rigidity of his family, solidly rooted, if I remember rightly, in
+a well-to-do London suburb.&nbsp; On their respectable authority
+he introduced himself meekly to strangers as a &ldquo;black
+sheep.&rdquo;&nbsp; I have never seen a more guileless specimen
+of an outcast.&nbsp; Never.</p>
+<p>However, his people had the grace to send him a little money
+now and then.&nbsp; Enamoured of the South, of Provence, of its
+people, its life, its sunshine and its poetry, narrow-chested,
+tall and short-sighted, he strode along the streets and the
+lanes, his long feet projecting far in advance of his body, and
+his white nose and gingery moustache buried in an open book: for
+he had the habit of reading as he walked.&nbsp; How he avoided
+falling into precipices, off the quays, or down staircases is a
+great mystery.&nbsp; The sides of his overcoat bulged out with
+pocket editions of various poets.&nbsp; When not engaged in
+reading Virgil, Homer, or Mistral, in parks, restaurants,
+streets, and suchlike public places, he indited sonnets (in
+French) to the eyes, ears, chin, hair, and other visible
+perfections of a nymph called Th&eacute;r&egrave;se, the
+daughter, honesty compels me to state, of a certain Madame
+Leonore who kept a small caf&eacute; for sailors in one of the
+narrowest streets of the old town.</p>
+<p>No more charming face, clear-cut like an antique gem, and
+delicate in colouring like the petal of a flower, had ever been
+set on, alas! a somewhat squat body.&nbsp; He read his verses
+aloud to her in the very caf&eacute; with the innocence of a
+little child and the vanity of a poet.&nbsp; We followed him
+there willingly enough, if only to watch the divine
+Th&eacute;r&egrave;se laugh, under the vigilant black eyes of
+Madame Leonore, her mother.&nbsp; She laughed very prettily, not
+so much at the sonnets, which she could not but esteem, as at
+poor Henry&rsquo;s French accent, which was unique, resembling
+the warbling of birds, if birds ever warbled with a stuttering,
+nasal intonation.</p>
+<p>Our third partner was Roger P. de la S&mdash;, the most
+Scandinavian-looking of Proven&ccedil;al squires, fair, and six
+feet high, as became a descendant of sea-roving Northmen,
+authoritative, incisive, wittily scornful, with a comedy in three
+acts in his pocket, and in his breast a heart blighted by a
+hopeless passion for his beautiful cousin, married to a wealthy
+hide and tallow merchant.&nbsp; He used to take us to lunch at
+their house without ceremony.&nbsp; I admired the good
+lady&rsquo;s sweet patience.&nbsp; The husband was a conciliatory
+soul, with a great fund of resignation, which he expended on
+&ldquo;Roger&rsquo;s friends.&rdquo;&nbsp; I suspect he was
+secretly horrified at these invasions.&nbsp; But it was a Carlist
+salon, and as such we were made welcome.&nbsp; The possibility of
+raising Catalonia in the interest of the <i>Rey netto</i>, who
+had just then crossed the Pyrenees, was much discussed there.</p>
+<p>Don Carlos, no doubt, must have had many queer friends (it is
+the common lot of all Pretenders), but amongst them none more
+extravagantly fantastic than the <i>Tremolino</i> Syndicate,
+which used to meet in a tavern on the quays of the old
+port.&nbsp; The antique city of Massilia had surely never, since
+the days of the earliest Phoenicians, known an odder set of
+ship-owners.&nbsp; We met to discuss and settle the plan of
+operations for each voyage of the <i>Tremolino</i>.&nbsp; In
+these operations a banking-house, too, was concerned&mdash;a very
+respectable banking-house.&nbsp; But I am afraid I shall end by
+saying too much.&nbsp; Ladies, too, were concerned (I am really
+afraid I am saying too much)&mdash;all sorts of ladies, some old
+enough to know better than to put their trust in princes, others
+young and full of illusions.</p>
+<p>One of these last was extremely amusing in the imitations, she
+gave us in confidence, of various highly-placed personages she
+was perpetually rushing off to Paris to interview in the
+interests of the cause&mdash;<i>Por el Rey</i>!&nbsp; For she was
+a Carlist, and of Basque blood at that, with something of a
+lioness in the expression of her courageous face (especially when
+she let her hair down), and with the volatile little soul of a
+sparrow dressed in fine Parisian feathers, which had the trick of
+coming off disconcertingly at unexpected moments.</p>
+<p>But her imitations of a Parisian personage, very highly placed
+indeed, as she represented him standing in the corner of a room
+with his face to the wall, rubbing the back of his head and
+moaning helplessly, &ldquo;Rita, you are the death of me!&rdquo;
+were enough to make one (if young and free from cares) split
+one&rsquo;s sides laughing.&nbsp; She had an uncle still living,
+a very effective Carlist, too, the priest of a little mountain
+parish in Guipuzcoa.&nbsp; As the sea-going member of the
+syndicate (whose plans depended greatly on Do&ntilde;a
+Rita&rsquo;s information), I used to be charged with humbly
+affectionate messages for the old man.&nbsp; These messages I was
+supposed to deliver to the Arragonese muleteers (who were sure to
+await at certain times the <i>Tremolino</i> in the neighbourhood
+of the Gulf of Rosas), for faithful transportation inland,
+together with the various unlawful goods landed secretly from
+under the <i>Tremolino&rsquo;s</i> hatches.</p>
+<p>Well, now, I have really let out too much (as I feared I
+should in the end) as to the usual contents of my
+sea-cradle.&nbsp; But let it stand.&nbsp; And if anybody remarks
+cynically that I must have been a promising infant in those days,
+let that stand, too.&nbsp; I am concerned but for the good name
+of the <i>Tremolino</i>, and I affirm that a ship is ever
+guiltless of the sins, transgressions, and follies of her
+men.</p>
+<h2>XLII.</h2>
+<p>It was not <i>Tremolino&rsquo;s</i> fault that the syndicate
+depended so much on the wit and wisdom and the information of
+Do&ntilde;a Rita.&nbsp; She had taken a little furnished house on
+the Prado for the good of the cause&mdash;<i>Por el
+Rey</i>!&nbsp; She was always taking little houses for
+somebody&rsquo;s good, for the sick or the sorry, for broken-down
+artists, cleaned-out gamblers, temporarily unlucky
+speculators&mdash;<i>vieux amis</i>&mdash;old friends, as she
+used to explain apologetically, with a shrug of her fine
+shoulders.</p>
+<p>Whether Don Carlos was one of the &ldquo;old friends,&rdquo;
+too, it&rsquo;s hard to say.&nbsp; More unlikely things have been
+heard of in smoking-rooms.&nbsp; All I know is that one evening,
+entering incautiously the salon of the little house just after
+the news of a considerable Carlist success had reached the
+faithful, I was seized round the neck and waist and whirled
+recklessly three times round the room, to the crash of upsetting
+furniture and the humming of a valse tune in a warm contralto
+voice.</p>
+<p>When released from the dizzy embrace, I sat down on the
+carpet&mdash;suddenly, without affectation.&nbsp; In this
+unpretentious attitude I became aware that J. M. K. B. had
+followed me into the room, elegant, fatal, correct and severe in
+a white tie and large shirt-front.&nbsp; In answer to his
+politely sinister, prolonged glance of inquiry, I overheard
+Do&ntilde;a Rita murmuring, with some confusion and annoyance,
+&ldquo;<i>Vous &ecirc;tes b&ecirc;te mon cher</i>.&nbsp;
+<i>Voyons</i>!&nbsp; <i>&Ccedil;a n&rsquo;a aucune
+cons&eacute;quence</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; Well content in this case to
+be of no particular consequence, I had already about me the
+elements of some worldly sense.</p>
+<p>Rearranging my collar, which, truth to say, ought to have been
+a round one above a short jacket, but was not, I observed
+felicitously that I had come to say good-bye, being ready to go
+off to sea that very night with the <i>Tremolino</i>.&nbsp; Our
+hostess, slightly panting yet, and just a shade dishevelled,
+turned tartly upon J. M. K. B., desiring to know when <i>he</i>
+would be ready to go off by the <i>Tremolino</i>, or in any other
+way, in order to join the royal headquarters.&nbsp; Did he
+intend, she asked ironically, to wait for the very eve of the
+entry into Madrid?&nbsp; Thus by a judicious exercise of tact and
+asperity we re-established the atmospheric equilibrium of the
+room long before I left them a little before midnight, now
+tenderly reconciled, to walk down to the harbour and hail the
+<i>Tremolino</i> by the usual soft whistle from the edge of the
+quay.&nbsp; It was our signal, invariably heard by the
+ever-watchful Dominic, the <i>padrone</i>.</p>
+<p>He would raise a lantern silently to light my steps along the
+narrow, springy plank of our primitive gangway.&nbsp; &ldquo;And
+so we are going off,&rdquo; he would murmur directly my foot
+touched the deck.&nbsp; I was the harbinger of sudden departures,
+but there was nothing in the world sudden enough to take Dominic
+unawares.&nbsp; His thick black moustaches, curled every morning
+with hot tongs by the barber at the corner of the quay, seemed to
+hide a perpetual smile.&nbsp; But nobody, I believe, had ever
+seen the true shape of his lips.&nbsp; From the slow,
+imperturbable gravity of that broad-chested man you would think
+he had never smiled in his life.&nbsp; In his eyes lurked a look
+of perfectly remorseless irony, as though he had been provided
+with an extremely experienced soul; and the slightest distension
+of his nostrils would give to his bronzed face a look of
+extraordinary boldness.&nbsp; This was the only play of feature
+of which he seemed capable, being a Southerner of a concentrated,
+deliberate type.&nbsp; His ebony hair curled slightly on the
+temples.&nbsp; He may have been forty years old, and he was a
+great voyager on the inland sea.</p>
+<p>Astute and ruthless, he could have rivalled in resource the
+unfortunate son of Laertes and Anticlea.&nbsp; If he did not pit
+his craft and audacity against the very gods, it is only because
+the Olympian gods are dead.&nbsp; Certainly no woman could
+frighten him.&nbsp; A one-eyed giant would not have had the ghost
+of a chance against Dominic Cervoni, of Corsica, not Ithaca; and
+no king, son of kings, but of very respectable
+family&mdash;authentic Caporali, he affirmed.&nbsp; But that is
+as it may be.&nbsp; The Caporali families date back to the
+twelfth century.</p>
+<p>For want of more exalted adversaries Dominic turned his
+audacity fertile in impious stratagems against the powers of the
+earth, as represented by the institution of Custom-houses and
+every mortal belonging thereto&mdash;scribes, officers, and
+guardacostas afloat and ashore.&nbsp; He was the very man for us,
+this modern and unlawful wanderer with his own legend of loves,
+dangers, and bloodshed.&nbsp; He told us bits of it sometimes in
+measured, ironic tones.&nbsp; He spoke Catalonian, the Italian of
+Corsica and the French of Proven&ccedil;e with the same easy
+naturalness.&nbsp; Dressed in shore-togs, a white starched shirt,
+black jacket, and round hat, as I took him once to see
+Do&ntilde;a Rita, he was extremely presentable.&nbsp; He could
+make himself interesting by a tactful and rugged reserve set off
+by a grim, almost imperceptible, playfulness of tone and
+manner.</p>
+<p>He had the physical assurance of strong-hearted men.&nbsp;
+After half an hour&rsquo;s interview in the dining-room, during
+which they got in touch with each other in an amazing way, Rita
+told us in her best <i>grande dame</i> manner: &ldquo;<i>Mais il
+esi parfait</i>, <i>cet homme</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; He was
+perfect.&nbsp; On board the <i>Tremolino</i>, wrapped up in a
+black <i>caban</i>, the picturesque cloak of Mediterranean
+seamen, with those massive moustaches and his remorseless eyes
+set off by the shadow of the deep hood, he looked piratical and
+monkish and darkly initiated into the most awful mysteries of the
+sea.</p>
+<h2>XLIII.</h2>
+<p>Anyway, he was perfect, as Do&ntilde;a Rita had
+declared.&nbsp; The only thing unsatisfactory (and even
+inexplicable) about our Dominic was his nephew, Cesar.&nbsp; It
+was startling to see a desolate expression of shame veil the
+remorseless audacity in the eyes of that man superior to all
+scruples and terrors.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I would never have dared to bring him on board your
+balancelle,&rdquo; he once apologized to me.&nbsp; &ldquo;But
+what am I to do?&nbsp; His mother is dead, and my brother has
+gone into the bush.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In this way I learned that our Dominic had a brother.&nbsp; As
+to &ldquo;going into the bush,&rdquo; this only means that a man
+has done his duty successfully in the pursuit of a hereditary
+vendetta.&nbsp; The feud which had existed for ages between the
+families of Cervoni and Brunaschi was so old that it seemed to
+have smouldered out at last.&nbsp; One evening Pietro Brunaschi,
+after a laborious day amongst his olive-trees, sat on a chair
+against the wall of his house with a bowl of broth on his knees
+and a piece of bread in his hand.&nbsp; Dominic&rsquo;s brother,
+going home with a gun on his shoulder, found a sudden offence in
+this picture of content and rest so obviously calculated to
+awaken the feelings of hatred and revenge.&nbsp; He and Pietro
+had never had any personal quarrel; but, as Dominic explained,
+&ldquo;all our dead cried out to him.&rdquo;&nbsp; He shouted
+from behind a wall of stones, &ldquo;O Pietro!&nbsp; Behold what
+is coming!&rdquo;&nbsp; And as the other looked up innocently he
+took aim at the forehead and squared the old vendetta account so
+neatly that, according to Dominic, the dead man continued to sit
+with the bowl of broth on his knees and the piece of bread in his
+hand.</p>
+<p>This is why&mdash;because in Corsica your dead will not leave
+you alone&mdash;Dominic&rsquo;s brother had to go into the
+<i>maquis</i>, into the bush on the wild mountain-side, to dodge
+the gendarmes for the insignificant remainder of his life, and
+Dominic had charge of his nephew with a mission to make a man of
+him.</p>
+<p>No more unpromising undertaking could be imagined.&nbsp; The
+very material for the task seemed wanting.&nbsp; The Cervonis, if
+not handsome men, were good sturdy flesh and blood.&nbsp; But
+this extraordinarily lean and livid youth seemed to have no more
+blood in him than a snail.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Some cursed witch must have stolen my brother&rsquo;s
+child from the cradle and put that spawn of a starved devil in
+its place,&rdquo; Dominic would say to me.&nbsp; &ldquo;Look at
+him!&nbsp; Just look at him!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To look at Cesar was not pleasant.&nbsp; His parchment skin,
+showing dead white on his cranium through the thin wisps of dirty
+brown hair, seemed to be glued directly and tightly upon his big
+bones, Without being in any way deformed, he was the nearest
+approach which I have ever seen or could imagine to what is
+commonly understood by the word &ldquo;monster.&rdquo;&nbsp; That
+the source of the effect produced was really moral I have no
+doubt.&nbsp; An utterly, hopelessly depraved nature was expressed
+in physical terms, that taken each separately had nothing
+positively startling.&nbsp; You imagined him clammily cold to the
+touch, like a snake.&nbsp; The slightest reproof, the most mild
+and justifiable remonstrance, would be met by a resentful glare
+and an evil shrinking of his thin dry upper lip, a snarl of hate
+to which he generally added the agreeable sound of grinding
+teeth.</p>
+<p>It was for this venomous performance rather than for his lies,
+impudence, and laziness that his uncle used to knock him
+down.&nbsp; It must not be imagined that it was anything in the
+nature of a brutal assault.&nbsp; Dominic&rsquo;s brawny arm
+would be seen describing deliberately an ample horizontal
+gesture, a dignified sweep, and Cesar would go over suddenly like
+a ninepin&mdash;which was funny to see.&nbsp; But, once down, he
+would writhe on the deck, gnashing his teeth in impotent
+rage&mdash;which was pretty horrible to behold.&nbsp; And it also
+happened more than once that he would disappear
+completely&mdash;which was startling to observe.&nbsp; This is
+the exact truth.&nbsp; Before some of these majestic cuffs Cesar
+would go down and vanish.&nbsp; He would vanish heels overhead
+into open hatchways, into scuttles, behind up-ended casks,
+according to the place where he happened to come into contact
+with his uncle&rsquo;s mighty arm.</p>
+<p>Once&mdash;it was in the old harbour, just before the
+<i>Tremolino&rsquo;s</i> last voyage&mdash;he vanished thus
+overboard to my infinite consternation.&nbsp; Dominic and I had
+been talking business together aft, and Cesar had sneaked up
+behind us to listen, for, amongst his other perfections, he was a
+consummate eavesdropper and spy.&nbsp; At the sound of the heavy
+plop alongside horror held me rooted to the spot; but Dominic
+stepped quietly to the rail and leaned over, waiting for his
+nephew&rsquo;s miserable head to bob up for the first time.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh&eacute;, Cesar!&rdquo; he yelled contemptuously to
+the spluttering wretch.&nbsp; &ldquo;Catch hold of that mooring
+hawser&mdash;<i>charogne</i>!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He approached me to resume the interrupted conversation.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What about Cesar?&rdquo; I asked anxiously.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Canallia!&nbsp; Let him hang there,&rdquo; was his
+answer.&nbsp; And he went on talking over the business in hand
+calmly, while I tried vainly to dismiss from my mind the picture
+of Cesar steeped to the chin in the water of the old harbour, a
+decoction of centuries of marine refuse.&nbsp; I tried to dismiss
+it, because the mere notion of that liquid made me feel very
+sick.&nbsp; Presently Dominic, hailing an idle boatman, directed
+him to go and fish his nephew out; and by-and-by Cesar appeared
+walking on board from the quay, shivering, streaming with filthy
+water, with bits of rotten straws in his hair and a piece of
+dirty orange-peel stranded on his shoulder.&nbsp; His teeth
+chattered; his yellow eyes squinted balefully at us as he passed
+forward.&nbsp; I thought it my duty to remonstrate.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why are you always knocking him about, Dominic?&rdquo;
+I asked.&nbsp; Indeed, I felt convinced it was no earthly
+good&mdash;a sheer waste of muscular force.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I must try to make a man of him,&rdquo; Dominic
+answered hopelessly.</p>
+<p>I restrained the obvious retort that in this way he ran the
+risk of making, in the words of the immortal Mr. Mantalini,
+&ldquo;a demnition damp, unpleasant corpse of him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He wants to be a locksmith!&rdquo; burst out
+Cervoni.&nbsp; &ldquo;To learn how to pick locks, I
+suppose,&rdquo; he added with sardonic bitterness.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why not let him be a locksmith?&rdquo; I ventured.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who would teach him?&rdquo; he cried.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Where could I leave him?&rdquo; he asked, with a drop in
+his voice; and I had my first glimpse of genuine despair.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;He steals, you know, alas!&nbsp; <i>Par ta
+Madonne</i>!&nbsp; I believe he would put poison in your food and
+mine&mdash;the viper!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He raised his face and both his clenched fists slowly to
+heaven.&nbsp; However, Cesar never dropped poison into our
+cups.&nbsp; One cannot be sure, but I fancy he went to work in
+another way.</p>
+<p>This voyage, of which the details need not be given, we had to
+range far afield for sufficient reasons.&nbsp; Coming up from the
+South to end it with the important and really dangerous part of
+the scheme in hand, we found it necessary to look into Barcelona
+for certain definite information.&nbsp; This appears like running
+one&rsquo;s head into the very jaws of the lion, but in reality
+it was not so.&nbsp; We had one or two high, influential friends
+there, and many others humble but valuable because bought for
+good hard cash.&nbsp; We were in no danger of being molested;
+indeed, the important information reached us promptly by the
+hands of a Custom-house officer, who came on board full of showy
+zeal to poke an iron rod into the layer of oranges which made the
+visible part of our cargo in the hatchway.</p>
+<p>I forgot to mention before that the <i>Tremolino</i> was
+officially known as a fruit and cork-wood trader.&nbsp; The
+zealous officer managed to slip a useful piece of paper into
+Dominic&rsquo;s hand as he went ashore, and a few hours
+afterwards, being off duty, he returned on board again athirst
+for drinks and gratitude.&nbsp; He got both as a matter of
+course.&nbsp; While he sat sipping his liqueur in the tiny cabin,
+Dominic plied him with questions as to the whereabouts of the
+guardacostas.&nbsp; The preventive service afloat was really the
+one for us to reckon with, and it was material for our success
+and safety to know the exact position of the patrol craft in the
+neighbourhood.&nbsp; The news could not have been more
+favourable.&nbsp; The officer mentioned a small place on the
+coast some twelve miles off, where, unsuspicious and unready, she
+was lying at anchor, with her sails unbent, painting yards and
+scraping spars.&nbsp; Then he left us after the usual
+compliments, smirking reassurringly over his shoulder.</p>
+<p>I had kept below pretty close all day from excess of
+prudence.&nbsp; The stake played on that trip was big.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We are ready to go at once, but for Cesar, who has been
+missing ever since breakfast,&rdquo; announced Dominic to me in
+his slow, grim way.</p>
+<p>Where the fellow had gone, and why, we could not
+imagine.&nbsp; The usual surmises in the case of a missing seaman
+did not apply to Cesar&rsquo;s absence.&nbsp; He was too odious
+for love, friendship, gambling, or even casual intercourse.&nbsp;
+But once or twice he had wandered away like this before.</p>
+<p>Dominic went ashore to look for him, but returned at the end
+of two hours alone and very angry, as I could see by the token of
+the invisible smile under his moustache being intensified.&nbsp;
+We wondered what had become of the wretch, and made a hurried
+investigation amongst our portable property.&nbsp; He had stolen
+nothing.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He will be back before long,&rdquo; I said
+confidently.</p>
+<p>Ten minutes afterwards one of the men on deck called out
+loudly:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I can see him coming.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Cesar had only his shirt and trousers on.&nbsp; He had sold
+his coat, apparently for pocket-money.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You knave!&rdquo; was all Dominic said, with a terrible
+softness of voice.&nbsp; He restrained his choler for a
+time.&nbsp; &ldquo;Where have you been, vagabond?&rdquo; he asked
+menacingly.</p>
+<p>Nothing would induce Cesar to answer that question.&nbsp; It
+was as if he even disdained to lie.&nbsp; He faced us, drawing
+back his lips and gnashing his teeth, and did not shrink an inch
+before the sweep of Dominic&rsquo;s arm.&nbsp; He went down as if
+shot, of course.&nbsp; But this time I noticed that, when picking
+himself up, he remained longer than usual on all fours, baring
+his big teeth over his shoulder and glaring upwards at his uncle
+with a new sort of hate in his round, yellow eyes.&nbsp; That
+permanent sentiment seemed pointed at that moment by especial
+malice and curiosity.&nbsp; I became quite interested.&nbsp; If
+he ever manages to put poison in the dishes, I thought to myself,
+this is how he will look at us as we sit at our meal.&nbsp; But I
+did not, of course, believe for a moment that he would ever put
+poison in our food.&nbsp; He ate the same things himself.&nbsp;
+Moreover, he had no poison.&nbsp; And I could not imagine a human
+being so blinded by cupidity as to sell poison to such an
+atrocious creature.</p>
+<h2>XLIV.</h2>
+<p>We slipped out to sea quietly at dusk, and all through the
+night everything went well.&nbsp; The breeze was gusty; a
+southerly blow was making up.&nbsp; It was fair wind for our
+course.&nbsp; Now and then Dominic slowly and rhythmically struck
+his hands together a few times, as if applauding the performance
+of the <i>Tremolino</i>.&nbsp; The balancelle hummed and quivered
+as she flew along, dancing lightly under our feet.</p>
+<p>At daybreak I pointed out to Dominic, amongst the several sail
+in view running before the gathering storm, one particular
+vessel.&nbsp; The press of canvas she carried made her loom up
+high, end-on, like a gray column standing motionless directly in
+our wake.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look at this fellow, Dominic,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;He seems to be in a hurry.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Padrone made no remark, but, wrapping his black cloak
+close about him, stood up to look.&nbsp; His weather-tanned face,
+framed in the hood, had an aspect of authority and challenging
+force, with the deep-set eyes gazing far away fixedly, without a
+wink, like the intent, merciless, steady eyes of a sea-bird.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Chi va piano va sano</i>,&rdquo; he remarked at
+last, with a derisive glance over the side, in ironic allusion to
+our own tremendous speed.</p>
+<p>The <i>Tremolino</i> was doing her best, and seemed to hardly
+touch the great burst of foam over which she darted.&nbsp; I
+crouched down again to get some shelter from the low
+bulwark.&nbsp; After more than half an hour of swaying immobility
+expressing a concentrated, breathless watchfulness, Dominic sank
+on the deck by my side.&nbsp; Within the monkish cowl his eyes
+gleamed with a fierce expression which surprised me.&nbsp; All he
+said was:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He has come out here to wash the new paint off his
+yards, I suppose.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What?&rdquo; I shouted, getting up on my knees.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Is she the guardacosta?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The perpetual suggestion of a smile under Dominic&rsquo;s
+piratical moustaches seemed to become more
+accentuated&mdash;quite real, grim, actually almost visible
+through the wet and uncurled hair.&nbsp; Judging by that symptom,
+he must have been in a towering rage.&nbsp; But I could also see
+that he was puzzled, and that discovery affected me
+disagreeably.&nbsp; Dominic puzzled!&nbsp; For a long time,
+leaning against the bulwark, I gazed over the stern at the gray
+column that seemed to stand swaying slightly in our wake always
+at the same distance.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile Dominic, black and cowled, sat cross-legged on the
+deck, with his back to the wind, recalling vaguely an Arab chief
+in his burnuss sitting on the sand.&nbsp; Above his motionless
+figure the little cord and tassel on the stiff point of the hood
+swung about inanely in the gale.&nbsp; At last I gave up facing
+the wind and rain, and crouched down by his side.&nbsp; I was
+satisfied that the sail was a patrol craft.&nbsp; Her presence
+was not a thing to talk about, but soon, between two clouds
+charged with hail-showers, a burst of sunshine fell upon her
+sails, and our men discovered her character for themselves.&nbsp;
+From that moment I noticed that they seemed to take no heed of
+each other or of anything else.&nbsp; They could spare no eyes
+and no thought but for the slight column-shape astern of
+us.&nbsp; Its swaying had become perceptible.&nbsp; For a moment
+she remained dazzlingly white, then faded away slowly to nothing
+in a squall, only to reappear again, nearly black, resembling a
+post stuck upright against the slaty background of solid
+cloud.&nbsp; Since first noticed she had not gained on us a
+foot.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She will never catch the <i>Tremolino</i>,&rdquo; I
+said exultingly.</p>
+<p>Dominic did not look at me.&nbsp; He remarked absently, but
+justly, that the heavy weather was in our pursuer&rsquo;s
+favour.&nbsp; She was three times our size.&nbsp; What we had to
+do was to keep our distance till dark, which we could manage
+easily, and then haul off to seaward and consider the
+situation.&nbsp; But his thoughts seemed to stumble in the
+darkness of some not-solved enigma, and soon he fell
+silent.&nbsp; We ran steadily, wing-and-wing.&nbsp; Cape San
+Sebastian nearly ahead seemed to recede from us in the squalls of
+rain, and come out again to meet our rush, every time more
+distinct between the showers.</p>
+<p>For my part I was by no means certain that this <i>gabelou</i>
+(as our men alluded to her opprobriously) was after us at
+all.&nbsp; There were nautical difficulties in such a view which
+made me express the sanguine opinion that she was in all
+innocence simply changing her station.&nbsp; At this Dominic
+condescended to turn his head.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I tell you she is in chase,&rdquo; he affirmed moodily,
+after one short glance astern.</p>
+<p>I never doubted his opinion.&nbsp; But with all the ardour of
+a neophyte and the pride of an apt learner I was at that time a
+great nautical casuist.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What I can&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; I insisted
+subtly, &ldquo;is how on earth, with this wind, she has managed
+to be just where she was when we first made her out.&nbsp; It is
+clear that she could not, and did not, gain twelve miles on us
+during the night.&nbsp; And there are other impossibilities. . .
+.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Dominic had been sitting motionless, like an inanimate black
+cone posed on the stern deck, near the rudder-head, with a small
+tassel fluttering on its sharp point, and for a time he preserved
+the immobility of his meditation.&nbsp; Then, bending over with a
+short laugh, he gave my ear the bitter fruit of it.&nbsp; He
+understood everything now perfectly.&nbsp; She was where we had
+seen her first, not because she had caught us up, but because we
+had passed her during the night while she was already waiting for
+us, hove-to, most likely, on our very track.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you understand&mdash;already?&rdquo; Dominic
+muttered in a fierce undertone.&nbsp; &ldquo;Already!&nbsp; You
+know we left a good eight hours before we were expected to leave,
+otherwise she would have been in time to lie in wait for us on
+the other side of the Cape, and&rdquo;&mdash;he snapped his teeth
+like a wolf close to my face&mdash;&ldquo;and she would have had
+us like&mdash;that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I saw it all plainly enough now.&nbsp; They had eyes in their
+heads and all their wits about them in that craft.&nbsp; We had
+passed them in the dark as they jogged on easily towards their
+ambush with the idea that we were yet far behind.&nbsp; At
+daylight, however, sighting a balancelle ahead under a press of
+canvas, they had made sail in chase.&nbsp; But if that was so,
+then&mdash;</p>
+<p>Dominic seized my arm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, yes!&nbsp; She came out on an information&mdash;do
+you see, it?&mdash;on information. . . . We have been
+sold&mdash;betrayed.&nbsp; Why?&nbsp; How?&nbsp; What for?&nbsp;
+We always paid them all so well on shore. . . . No!&nbsp; But it
+is my head that is going to burst.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He seemed to choke, tugged at the throat button of the cloak,
+jumped up open-mouthed as if to hurl curses and denunciation, but
+instantly mastered himself, and, wrapping up the cloak closer
+about him, sat down on the deck again as quiet as ever.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, it must be the work of some scoundrel
+ashore,&rdquo; I observed.</p>
+<p>He pulled the edge of the hood well forward over his brow
+before he muttered:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A scoundrel. . . . Yes. . . . It&rsquo;s
+evident.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;they can&rsquo;t get us,
+that&rsquo;s clear.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he assented quietly, &ldquo;they
+cannot.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We shaved the Cape very close to avoid an adverse
+current.&nbsp; On the other side, by the effect of the land, the
+wind failed us so completely for a moment that the
+<i>Tremolino&rsquo;s</i> two great lofty sails hung idle to the
+masts in the thundering uproar of the seas breaking upon the
+shore we had left behind.&nbsp; And when the returning gust
+filled them again, we saw with amazement half of the new
+mainsail, which we thought fit to drive the boat under before
+giving way, absolutely fly out of the bolt-ropes.&nbsp; We
+lowered the yard at once, and saved it all, but it was no longer
+a sail; it was only a heap of soaked strips of canvas cumbering
+the deck and weighting the craft.&nbsp; Dominic gave the order to
+throw the whole lot overboard.</p>
+<p>I would have had the yard thrown overboard, too, he said,
+leading me aft again, &ldquo;if it had not been for the
+trouble.&nbsp; Let no sign escape you,&rdquo; he continued,
+lowering his voice, &ldquo;but I am going to tell you something
+terrible.&nbsp; Listen: I have observed that the roping stitches
+on that sail have been cut!&nbsp; You hear?&nbsp; Cut with a
+knife in many places.&nbsp; And yet it stood all that time.&nbsp;
+Not enough cut.&nbsp; That flap did it at last.&nbsp; What
+matters it?&nbsp; But look! there&rsquo;s treachery seated on
+this very deck.&nbsp; By the horns of the devil! seated here at
+our very backs.&nbsp; Do not turn, signorine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We were facing aft then.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s to be done?&rdquo; I asked, appalled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing.&nbsp; Silence!&nbsp; Be a man,
+signorine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What else?&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>To show I could be a man, I resolved to utter no sound as long
+as Dominic himself had the force to keep his lips closed.&nbsp;
+Nothing but silence becomes certain situations.&nbsp; Moreover,
+the experience of treachery seemed to spread a hopeless
+drowsiness over my thoughts and senses.&nbsp; For an hour or more
+we watched our pursuer surging out nearer and nearer from amongst
+the squalls that sometimes hid her altogether.&nbsp; But even
+when not seen, we felt her there like a knife at our
+throats.&nbsp; She gained on us frightfully.&nbsp; And the
+<i>Tremolino</i>, in a fierce breeze and in much smoother water,
+swung on easily under her one sail, with something appallingly
+careless in the joyous freedom of her motion.&nbsp; Another
+half-hour went by.&nbsp; I could not stand it any longer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They will get the poor barky,&rdquo; I stammered out
+suddenly, almost on the verge of tears.</p>
+<p>Dominic stirred no more than a carving.&nbsp; A sense of
+catastrophic loneliness overcame my inexperienced soul.&nbsp; The
+vision of my companions passed before me.&nbsp; The whole
+Royalist gang was in Monte Carlo now, I reckoned.&nbsp; And they
+appeared to me clear-cut and very small, with affected voices and
+stiff gestures, like a procession of rigid marionettes upon a toy
+stage.&nbsp; I gave a start.&nbsp; What was this?&nbsp; A
+mysterious, remorseless whisper came from within the motionless
+black hood at my side.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Il faul la tuer</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I heard it very well.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What do you say, Dominic?&rdquo; I asked, moving
+nothing but my lips.</p>
+<p>And the whisper within the hood repeated mysteriously,
+&ldquo;She must be killed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>My heart began to beat violently.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s it,&rdquo; I faltered out.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;But how?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You love her well?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I do.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then you must find the heart for that work too.&nbsp;
+You must steer her yourself, and I shall see to it that she dies
+quickly, without leaving as much as a chip behind.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Can you?&rdquo; I murmured, fascinated by the black
+hood turned immovably over the stern, as if in unlawful communion
+with that old sea of magicians, slave-dealers, exiles and
+warriors, the sea of legends and terrors, where the mariners of
+remote antiquity used to hear the restless shade of an old
+wanderer weep aloud in the dark.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know a rock,&rdquo; whispered the initiated voice
+within the hood secretly.&nbsp; &ldquo;But&mdash;caution!&nbsp;
+It must be done before our men perceive what we are about.&nbsp;
+Whom can we trust now?&nbsp; A knife drawn across the fore
+halyards would bring the foresail down, and put an end to our
+liberty in twenty minutes.&nbsp; And the best of our men may be
+afraid of drowning.&nbsp; There is our little boat, but in an
+affair like this no one can be sure of being saved.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The voice ceased.&nbsp; We had started from Barcelona with our
+dinghy in tow; afterwards it was too risky to try to get her in,
+so we let her take her chance of the seas at the end of a
+comfortable scope of rope.&nbsp; Many times she had seemed to us
+completely overwhelmed, but soon we would see her bob up again on
+a wave, apparently as buoyant and whole as ever.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; I said softly.&nbsp; &ldquo;Very
+well, Dominic.&nbsp; When?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not yet.&nbsp; We must get a little more in
+first,&rdquo; answered the voice from the hood in a ghostly
+murmur.</p>
+<h2>XLV.</h2>
+<p>It was settled.&nbsp; I had now the courage to turn
+about.&nbsp; Our men crouched about the decks here and there with
+anxious, crestfallen faces, all turned one way to watch the
+chaser.&nbsp; For the first time that morning I perceived Cesar
+stretched out full length on the deck near the foremast and
+wondered where he had been skulking till then.&nbsp; But he might
+in truth have been at my elbow all the time for all I knew.&nbsp;
+We had been too absorbed in watching our fate to pay attention to
+each other.&nbsp; Nobody had eaten anything that morning, but the
+men had been coming constantly to drink at the water-butt.</p>
+<p>I ran down to the cabin.&nbsp; I had there, put away in a
+locker, ten thousand francs in gold of whose presence on board,
+so far as I was aware, not a soul, except Dominic had the
+slightest inkling.&nbsp; When I emerged on deck again Dominic had
+turned about and was peering from under his cowl at the
+coast.&nbsp; Cape Creux closed the view ahead.&nbsp; To the left
+a wide bay, its waters torn and swept by fierce squalls, seemed
+full of smoke.&nbsp; Astern the sky had a menacing look.</p>
+<p>Directly he saw me, Dominic, in a placid tone, wanted to know
+what was the matter.&nbsp; I came close to him and, looking as
+unconcerned as I could, told him in an undertone that I had found
+the locker broken open and the money-belt gone.&nbsp; Last
+evening it was still there.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What did you want to do with it?&rdquo; he asked me,
+trembling violently.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Put it round my waist, of course,&rdquo; I answered,
+amazed to hear his teeth chattering.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Cursed gold!&rdquo; he muttered.&nbsp; &ldquo;The
+weight of the money might have cost you your life,
+perhaps.&rdquo;&nbsp; He shuddered.&nbsp; &ldquo;There is no time
+to talk about that now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am ready.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not yet.&nbsp; I am waiting for that squall to come
+over,&rdquo; he muttered.&nbsp; And a few leaden minutes
+passed.</p>
+<p>The squall came over at last.&nbsp; Our pursuer, overtaken by
+a sort of murky whirlwind, disappeared from our sight.&nbsp; The
+<i>Tremolino</i> quivered and bounded forward.&nbsp; The land
+ahead vanished, too, and we seemed to be left alone in a world of
+water and wind.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Prenez la barre</i>, <i>monsieur</i>,&rdquo; Dominic
+broke the silence suddenly in an austere voice.&nbsp; &ldquo;Take
+hold of the tiller.&rdquo;&nbsp; He bent his hood to my
+ear.&nbsp; &ldquo;The balancelle is yours.&nbsp; Your own hands
+must deal the blow.&nbsp; I&mdash;I have yet another piece of
+work to do.&rdquo;&nbsp; He spoke up loudly to the man who
+steered.&nbsp; &ldquo;Let the signorino take the tiller, and you
+with the others stand by to haul the boat alongside quickly at
+the word.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The man obeyed, surprised, but silent.&nbsp; The others
+stirred, and pricked up their ears at this.&nbsp; I heard their
+murmurs.&nbsp; &ldquo;What now?&nbsp; Are we going to run in
+somewhere and take to our heels?&nbsp; The Padrone knows what he
+is doing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Dominic went forward.&nbsp; He paused to look down at Cesar,
+who, as I have said before, was lying full length face down by
+the foremast, then stepped over him, and dived out of my sight
+under the foresail.&nbsp; I saw nothing ahead.&nbsp; It was
+impossible for me to see anything except the foresail open and
+still, like a great shadowy wing.&nbsp; But Dominic had his
+bearings.&nbsp; His voice came to me from forward, in a just
+audible cry:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now, signorino!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I bore on the tiller, as instructed before.&nbsp; Again I
+heard him faintly, and then I had only to hold her
+straight.&nbsp; No ship ran so joyously to her death
+before.&nbsp; She rose and fell, as if floating in space, and
+darted forward, whizzing like an arrow.&nbsp; Dominic, stooping
+under the foot of the foresail, reappeared, and stood steadying
+himself against the mast, with a raised forefinger in an attitude
+of expectant attention.&nbsp; A second before the shock his arm
+fell down by his side.&nbsp; At that I set my teeth.&nbsp; And
+then&mdash;</p>
+<p>Talk of splintered planks and smashed timbers!&nbsp; This
+shipwreck lies upon my soul with the dread and horror of a
+homicide, with the unforgettable remorse of having crushed a
+living, faithful heart at a single blow.&nbsp; At one moment the
+rush and the soaring swing of speed; the next a crash, and death,
+stillness&mdash;a moment of horrible immobility, with the song of
+the wind changed to a strident wail, and the heavy waters boiling
+up menacing and sluggish around the corpse.&nbsp; I saw in a
+distracting minute the foreyard fly fore and aft with a brutal
+swing, the men all in a heap, cursing with fear, and hauling
+frantically at the line of the boat.&nbsp; With a strange
+welcoming of the familiar I saw also Cesar amongst them, and
+recognised Dominic&rsquo;s old, well-known, effective gesture,
+the horizontal sweep of his powerful arm.&nbsp; I recollect
+distinctly saying to myself, &ldquo;Cesar must go down, of
+course,&rdquo; and then, as I was scrambling on all fours, the
+swinging tiller I had let go caught me a crack under the ear, and
+knocked me over senseless.</p>
+<p>I don&rsquo;t think I was actually unconscious for more than a
+few minutes, but when I came to myself the dinghy was driving
+before the wind into a sheltered cove, two men just keeping her
+straight with their oars.&nbsp; Dominic, with his arm round my
+shoulders, supported me in the stern-sheets.</p>
+<p>We landed in a familiar part of the country.&nbsp; Dominic
+took one of the boat&rsquo;s oars with him.&nbsp; I suppose he
+was thinking of the stream we would have presently to cross, on
+which there was a miserable specimen of a punt, often robbed of
+its pole.&nbsp; But first of all we had to ascend the ridge of
+land at the back of the Cape.&nbsp; He helped me up.&nbsp; I was
+dizzy.&nbsp; My head felt very large and heavy.&nbsp; At the top
+of the ascent I clung to him, and we stopped to rest.</p>
+<p>To the right, below us, the wide, smoky bay was empty.&nbsp;
+Dominic had kept his word.&nbsp; There was not a chip to be seen
+around the black rock from which the <i>Tremolino</i>, with her
+plucky heart crushed at one blow, had slipped off into deep water
+to her eternal rest.&nbsp; The vastness of the open sea was
+smothered in driving mists, and in the centre of the thinning
+squall, phantom-like, under a frightful press of canvas, the
+unconscious guardacosta dashed on, still chasing to the
+northward.&nbsp; Our men were already descending the reverse
+slope to look for that punt which we knew from experience was not
+always to be found easily.&nbsp; I looked after them with dazed,
+misty eyes.&nbsp; One, two, three, four.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dominic, where&rsquo;s Cesar?&rdquo; I cried.</p>
+<p>As if repulsing the very sound of the name, the Padrone made
+that ample, sweeping, knocking-down gesture.&nbsp; I stepped back
+a pace and stared at him fearfully.&nbsp; His open shirt
+uncovered his muscular neck and the thick hair on his
+chest.&nbsp; He planted the oar upright in the soft soil, and
+rolling up slowly his right sleeve, extended the bare arm before
+my face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This,&rdquo; he began, with an extreme deliberation,
+whose superhuman restraint vibrated with the suppressed violence
+of his feelings, &ldquo;is the arm which delivered the
+blow.&nbsp; I am afraid it is your own gold that did the
+rest.&nbsp; I forgot all about your money.&rdquo;&nbsp; He
+clasped his hands together in sudden distress.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+forgot, I forgot,&rdquo; he repeated disconsolately.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Cesar stole the belt?&rdquo; I stammered out,
+bewildered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And who else?&nbsp; <i>Canallia</i>!&nbsp; He must have
+been spying on you for days.&nbsp; And he did the whole
+thing.&nbsp; Absent all day in Barcelona.&nbsp;
+<i>Traditore</i>!&nbsp; Sold his jacket&mdash;to hire a
+horse.&nbsp; Ha! ha!&nbsp; A good affair!&nbsp; I tell you it was
+he who set him at us. . . .&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Dominic pointed at the sea, where the guardacosta was a mere
+dark speck.&nbsp; His chin dropped on his breast.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;. . . On information,&rdquo; he murmured, in a gloomy
+voice.&nbsp; &ldquo;A Cervoni!&nbsp; Oh! my poor brother! . .
+.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you drowned him,&rdquo; I said feebly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I struck once, and the wretch went down like a
+stone&mdash;with the gold.&nbsp; Yes.&nbsp; But he had time to
+read in my eyes that nothing could save him while I was
+alive.&nbsp; And had I not the right&mdash;I, Dominic Cervoni,
+Padrone, who brought him aboard your fellucca&mdash;my nephew, a
+traitor?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He pulled the oar out of the ground and helped me carefully
+down the slope.&nbsp; All the time he never once looked me in the
+face.&nbsp; He punted us over, then shouldered the oar again and
+waited till our men were at some distance before he offered me
+his arm.&nbsp; After we had gone a little way, the fishing hamlet
+we were making for came into view.&nbsp; Dominic stopped.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you think you can make your way as far as the houses
+by yourself?&rdquo; he asked me quietly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I think so.&nbsp; But why?&nbsp; Where are you
+going, Dominic?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Anywhere.&nbsp; What a question!&nbsp; Signorino, you
+are but little more than a boy to ask such a question of a man
+having this tale in his family.&nbsp; <i>Ah</i>!&nbsp;
+<i>Traditore</i>!&nbsp; What made me ever own that spawn of a
+hungry devil for our own blood!&nbsp; Thief, cheat, coward,
+liar&mdash;other men can deal with that.&nbsp; But I was his
+uncle, and so . . . I wish he had poisoned
+me&mdash;<i>charogne</i>!&nbsp; But this: that I, a confidential
+man and a Corsican, should have to ask your pardon for bringing
+on board your vessel, of which I was Padrone, a Cervoni, who has
+betrayed you&mdash;a traitor!&mdash;that is too much.&nbsp; It is
+too much.&nbsp; Well, I beg your pardon; and you may spit in
+Dominic&rsquo;s face because a traitor of our blood taints us
+all.&nbsp; A theft may be made good between men, a lie may be set
+right, a death avenged, but what can one do to atone for a
+treachery like this? . . . Nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He turned and walked away from me along the bank of the
+stream, flourishing a vengeful arm and repeating to himself
+slowly, with savage emphasis: &ldquo;<i>Ah</i>!&nbsp;
+<i>Canaille</i>!&nbsp; <i>Canaille</i>!&nbsp; <i>Canaille</i>! .
+. .&rdquo;&nbsp; He left me there trembling with weakness and
+mute with awe.&nbsp; Unable to make a sound, I gazed after the
+strangely desolate figure of that seaman carrying an oar on his
+shoulder up a barren, rock-strewn ravine under the dreary leaden
+sky of <i>Tremolino&rsquo;s</i> last day.&nbsp; Thus, walking
+deliberately, with his back to the sea, Dominic vanished from my
+sight.</p>
+<p>With the quality of our desires, thoughts, and wonder
+proportioned to our infinite littleness, we measure even time
+itself by our own stature.&nbsp; Imprisoned in the house of
+personal illusions, thirty centuries in mankind&rsquo;s history
+seem less to look back upon than thirty years of our own
+life.&nbsp; And Dominic Cervoni takes his place in my memory by
+the side of the legendary wanderer on the sea of marvels and
+terrors, by the side of the fatal and impious adventurer, to whom
+the evoked shade of the soothsayer predicted a journey inland
+with an oar on his shoulder, till he met men who had never set
+eyes on ships and oars.&nbsp; It seems to me I can see them side
+by side in the twilight of an arid land, the unfortunate
+possessors of the secret lore of the sea, bearing the emblem of
+their hard calling on their shoulders, surrounded by silent and
+curious men: even as I, too, having turned my back upon the sea,
+am bearing those few pages in the twilight, with the hope of
+finding in an inland valley the silent welcome of some patient
+listener.</p>
+<h2><a name="page289"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+289</span>XLVI.</h2>
+<p>&ldquo;A <span class="smcap">fellow</span> has now no chance
+of promotion unless he jumps into the muzzle of a gun and crawls
+out of the touch-hole.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He who, a hundred years ago, more or less, pronounced the
+above words in the uneasiness of his heart, thirsting for
+professional distinction, was a young naval officer.&nbsp; Of his
+life, career, achievements, and end nothing is preserved for the
+edification of his young successors in the fleet of
+to-day&mdash;nothing but this phrase, which, sailor-like in the
+simplicity of personal sentiment and strength of graphic
+expression, embodies the spirit of the epoch.&nbsp; This obscure
+but vigorous testimony has its price, its significance, and its
+lesson.&nbsp; It comes to us from a worthy ancestor.&nbsp; We do
+not know whether he lived long enough for a chance of that
+promotion whose way was so arduous.&nbsp; He belongs to the great
+array of the unknown&mdash;who are great, indeed, by the sum
+total of the devoted effort put out, and the colossal scale of
+success attained by their insatiable and steadfast
+ambition.&nbsp; We do not know his name; we only know of him what
+is material for us to know&mdash;that he was never backward on
+occasions of desperate service.&nbsp; We have this on the
+authority of a distinguished seaman of Nelson&rsquo;s time.&nbsp;
+Departing this life as Admiral of the Fleet on the eve of the
+Crimean War, Sir Thomas Byam Martin has recorded for us amongst
+his all too short autobiographical notes these few characteristic
+words uttered by one young man of the many who must have felt
+that particular inconvenience of a heroic age.</p>
+<p>The distinguished Admiral had lived through it himself, and
+was a good judge of what was expected in those days from men and
+ships.&nbsp; A brilliant frigate captain, a man of sound
+judgment, of dashing bravery and of serene mind, scrupulously
+concerned for the welfare and honour of the navy, he missed a
+larger fame only by the chances of the service.&nbsp; We may well
+quote on this day the words written of Nelson, in the decline of
+a well-spent life, by Sir T. B. Martin, who died just fifty years
+ago on the very anniversary of Trafalgar.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nelson&rsquo;s nobleness of mind was a prominent and
+beautiful part of his character.&nbsp; His foibles&mdash;faults
+if you like&mdash;will never be dwelt upon in any memorandum of
+mine,&rdquo; he declares, and goes on&mdash;&ldquo;he whose
+splendid and matchless achievements will be remembered with
+admiration while there is gratitude in the hearts of Britons, or
+while a ship floats upon the ocean; he whose example on the
+breaking out of the war gave so chivalrous an impulse to the
+younger men of the service that all rushed into rivalry of daring
+which disdained every warning of prudence, and led to acts of
+heroic enterprise which tended greatly to exalt the glory of our
+nation.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>These are his words, and they are true.&nbsp; The dashing
+young frigate captain, the man who in middle age was nothing loth
+to give chase single-handed in his seventy-four to a whole fleet,
+the man of enterprise and consummate judgment, the old Admiral of
+the Fleet, the good and trusted servant of his country under two
+kings and a queen, had felt correctly Nelson&rsquo;s influence,
+and expressed himself with precision out of the fulness of his
+seaman&rsquo;s heart.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Exalted,&rdquo; he wrote, not
+&ldquo;augmented.&rdquo;&nbsp; And therein his feeling and his
+pen captured the very truth.&nbsp; Other men there were ready and
+able to add to the treasure of victories the British navy has
+given to the nation.&nbsp; It was the lot of Lord Nelson to exalt
+all this glory.&nbsp; Exalt! the word seems to be created for the
+man.</p>
+<h2>XLVII.</h2>
+<p>The British navy may well have ceased to count its
+victories.&nbsp; It is rich beyond the wildest dreams of success
+and fame.&nbsp; It may well, rather, on a culminating day of its
+history, cast about for the memory of some reverses to appease
+the jealous fates which attend the prosperity and triumphs of a
+nation.&nbsp; It holds, indeed, the heaviest inheritance that has
+ever been entrusted to the courage and fidelity of armed men.</p>
+<p>It is too great for mere pride.&nbsp; It should make the
+seamen of to-day humble in the secret of their hearts, and
+indomitable in their unspoken resolution.&nbsp; In all the
+records of history there has never been a time when a victorious
+fortune has been so faithful to men making war upon the
+sea.&nbsp; And it must be confessed that on their part they knew
+how to be faithful to their victorious fortune.&nbsp; They were
+exalted.&nbsp; They were always watching for her smile; night or
+day, fair weather or foul, they waited for her slightest sign
+with the offering of their stout hearts in their hands.&nbsp; And
+for the inspiration of this high constancy they were indebted to
+Lord Nelson alone.&nbsp; Whatever earthly affection he abandoned
+or grasped, the great Admiral was always, before all, beyond all,
+a lover of Fame.&nbsp; He loved her jealously, with an
+inextinguishable ardour and an insatiable desire&mdash;he loved
+her with a masterful devotion and an infinite trustfulness.&nbsp;
+In the plenitude of his passion he was an exacting lover.&nbsp;
+And she never betrayed the greatness of his trust!&nbsp; She
+attended him to the end of his life, and he died pressing her
+last gift (nineteen prizes) to his heart.&nbsp; &ldquo;Anchor,
+Hardy&mdash;anchor!&rdquo; was as much the cry of an ardent lover
+as of a consummate seaman.&nbsp; Thus he would hug to his breast
+the last gift of Fame.</p>
+<p>It was this ardour which made him great.&nbsp; He was a
+flaming example to the wooers of glorious fortune.&nbsp; There
+have been great officers before&mdash;Lord Hood, for instance,
+whom he himself regarded as the greatest sea officer England ever
+had.&nbsp; A long succession of great commanders opened the sea
+to the vast range of Nelson&rsquo;s genius.&nbsp; His time had
+come; and, after the great sea officers, the great naval
+tradition passed into the keeping of a great man.&nbsp; Not the
+least glory of the navy is that it understood Nelson.&nbsp; Lord
+Hood trusted him.&nbsp; Admiral Keith told him: &ldquo;We
+can&rsquo;t spare you either as Captain or Admiral.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Earl St. Vincent put into his hands, untrammelled by orders, a
+division of his fleet, and Sir Hyde Parker gave him two more
+ships at Copenhagen than he had asked for.&nbsp; So much for the
+chiefs; the rest of the navy surrendered to him their devoted
+affection, trust, and admiration.&nbsp; In return he gave them no
+less than his own exalted soul.&nbsp; He breathed into them his
+own ardour and his own ambition.&nbsp; In a few short years he
+revolutionized, not the strategy or tactics of sea-warfare, but
+the very conception of victory itself.&nbsp; And this is
+genius.&nbsp; In that alone, through the fidelity of his fortune
+and the power of his inspiration, he stands unique amongst the
+leaders of fleets and sailors.&nbsp; He brought heroism into the
+line of duty.&nbsp; Verily he is a terrible ancestor.</p>
+<p>And the men of his day loved him.&nbsp; They loved him not
+only as victorious armies have loved great commanders; they loved
+him with a more intimate feeling as one of themselves.&nbsp; In
+the words of a contemporary, he had &ldquo;a most happy way of
+gaining the affectionate respect of all who had the felicity to
+serve under his command.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To be so great and to remain so accessible to the affection of
+one&rsquo;s fellow-men is the mark of exceptional humanity.&nbsp;
+Lord Nelson&rsquo;s greatness was very human.&nbsp; It had a
+moral basis; it needed to feel itself surrounded by the warm
+devotion of a band of brothers.&nbsp; He was vain and
+tender.&nbsp; The love and admiration which the navy gave him so
+unreservedly soothed the restlessness of his professional
+pride.&nbsp; He trusted them as much as they trusted him.&nbsp;
+He was a seaman of seamen.&nbsp; Sir T. B. Martin states that he
+never conversed with any officer who had served under Nelson
+&ldquo;without hearing the heartiest expressions of attachment to
+his person and admiration of his frank and conciliatory manner to
+his subordinates.&rdquo;&nbsp; And Sir Robert Stopford, who
+commanded one of the ships with which Nelson chased to the West
+Indies a fleet nearly double in number, says in a letter:
+&ldquo;We are half-starved and otherwise inconvenienced by being
+so long out of port, but our reward is that we are with
+Nelson.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This heroic spirit of daring and endurance, in which all
+public and private differences were sunk throughout the whole
+fleet, is Lord Nelson&rsquo;s great legacy, triply sealed by the
+victorious impress of the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar.&nbsp;
+This is a legacy whose value the changes of time cannot
+affect.&nbsp; The men and the ships he knew how to lead lovingly
+to the work of courage and the reward of glory have passed away,
+but Nelson&rsquo;s uplifting touch remains in the standard of
+achievement he has set for all time.&nbsp; The principles of
+strategy may be immutable.&nbsp; It is certain they have been,
+and shall be again, disregarded from timidity, from blindness,
+through infirmity of purpose.&nbsp; The tactics of great captains
+on land and sea can be infinitely discussed.&nbsp; The first
+object of tactics is to close with the adversary on terms of the
+greatest possible advantage; yet no hard-and-fast rules can be
+drawn from experience, for this capital reason, amongst
+others&mdash;that the quality of the adversary is a variable
+element in the problem.&nbsp; The tactics of Lord Nelson have
+been amply discussed, with much pride and some profit.&nbsp; And
+yet, truly, they are already of but archaic interest.&nbsp; A
+very few years more and the hazardous difficulties of handling a
+fleet under canvas shall have passed beyond the conception of
+seamen who hold in trust for their country Lord Nelson&rsquo;s
+legacy of heroic spirit.&nbsp; The change in the character of the
+ships is too great and too radical.&nbsp; It is good and proper
+to study the acts of great men with thoughtful reverence, but
+already the precise intention of Lord Nelson&rsquo;s famous
+memorandum seems to lie under that veil which Time throws over
+the clearest conceptions of every great art.&nbsp; It must not be
+forgotten that this was the first time when Nelson, commanding in
+chief, had his opponents under way&mdash;the first time and the
+last.&nbsp; Had he lived, had there been other fleets left to
+oppose him, we would, perhaps, have learned something more of his
+greatness as a sea officer.&nbsp; Nothing could have been added
+to his greatness as a leader.&nbsp; All that can be affirmed is,
+that on no other day of his short and glorious career was Lord
+Nelson more splendidly true to his genius and to his
+country&rsquo;s fortune.</p>
+<h2>XLVIII.</h2>
+<p>And yet the fact remains that, had the wind failed and the
+fleet lost steerage way, or, worse still, had it been taken aback
+from the eastward, with its leaders within short range of the
+enemy&rsquo;s guns, nothing, it seems, could have saved the
+headmost ships from capture or destruction.&nbsp; No skill of a
+great sea officer would have availed in such a contingency.&nbsp;
+Lord Nelson was more than that, and his genius would have
+remained undiminished by defeat.&nbsp; But obviously tactics,
+which are so much at the mercy of irremediable accident, must
+seem to a modern seaman a poor matter of study.&nbsp; The
+Commander-in-Chief in the great fleet action that will take its
+place next to the Battle of Trafalgar in the history of the
+British navy will have no such anxiety, and will feel the weight
+of no such dependence.&nbsp; For a hundred years now no British
+fleet has engaged the enemy in line of battle.&nbsp; A hundred
+years is a long time, but the difference of modern conditions is
+enormous.&nbsp; The gulf is great.&nbsp; Had the last great fight
+of the English navy been that of the First of June, for instance,
+had there been no Nelson&rsquo;s victories, it would have been
+wellnigh impassable.&nbsp; The great Admiral&rsquo;s slight and
+passion-worn figure stands at the parting of the ways.&nbsp; He
+had the audacity of genius, and a prophetic inspiration.</p>
+<p>The modern naval man must feel that the time has come for the
+tactical practice of the great sea officers of the past to be
+laid by in the temple of august memories.&nbsp; The fleet tactics
+of the sailing days have been governed by two points: the deadly
+nature of a raking fire, and the dread, natural to a commander
+dependent upon the winds, to find at some crucial moment part of
+his fleet thrown hopelessly to leeward.&nbsp; These two points
+were of the very essence of sailing tactics, and these two points
+have been eliminated from the modern tactical problem by the
+changes of propulsion and armament.&nbsp; Lord Nelson was the
+first to disregard them with conviction and audacity sustained by
+an unbounded trust in the men he led.&nbsp; This conviction, this
+audacity and this trust stand out from amongst the lines of the
+celebrated memorandum, which is but a declaration of his faith in
+a crushing superiority of fire as the only means of victory and
+the only aim of sound tactics.&nbsp; Under the difficulties of
+the then existing conditions he strove for that, and for that
+alone, putting his faith into practice against every risk.&nbsp;
+And in that exclusive faith Lord Nelson appears to us as the
+first of the moderns.</p>
+<p>Against every risk, I have said; and the men of to-day, born
+and bred to the use of steam, can hardly realize how much of that
+risk was in the weather.&nbsp; Except at the Nile, where the
+conditions were ideal for engaging a fleet moored in shallow
+water, Lord Nelson was not lucky in his weather.&nbsp;
+Practically it was nothing but a quite unusual failure of the
+wind which cost him his arm during the Teneriffe
+expedition.&nbsp; On Trafalgar Day the weather was not so much
+unfavourable as extremely dangerous.</p>
+<p>It was one of these covered days of fitful sunshine, of light,
+unsteady winds, with a swell from the westward, and hazy in
+general, but with the land about the Cape at times distinctly
+visible.&nbsp; It has been my lot to look with reverence upon the
+very spot more than once, and for many hours together.&nbsp; All
+but thirty years ago, certain exceptional circumstances made me
+very familiar for a time with that bight in the Spanish coast
+which would be enclosed within a straight line drawn from Faro to
+Spartel.&nbsp; My well-remembered experience has convinced me
+that, in that corner of the ocean, once the wind has got to the
+northward of west (as it did on the 20th, taking the British
+fleet aback), appearances of westerly weather go for nothing, and
+that it is infinitely more likely to veer right round to the east
+than to shift back again.&nbsp; It was in those conditions that,
+at seven on the morning of the 21st, the signal for the fleet to
+bear up and steer east was made.&nbsp; Holding a clear
+recollection of these languid easterly sighs rippling
+unexpectedly against the run of the smooth swell, with no other
+warning than a ten-minutes&rsquo; calm and a queer darkening of
+the coast-line, I cannot think, without a gasp of professional
+awe, of that fateful moment.&nbsp; Perhaps personal experience,
+at a time of life when responsibility had a special freshness and
+importance, has induced me to exaggerate to myself the danger of
+the weather.&nbsp; The great Admiral and good seaman could read
+aright the signs of sea and sky, as his order to prepare to
+anchor at the end of the day sufficiently proves; but, all the
+same, the mere idea of these baffling easterly airs, coming on at
+any time within half an hour or so, after the firing of the first
+shot, is enough to take one&rsquo;s breath away, with the image
+of the rearmost ships of both divisions falling off,
+unmanageable, broadside on to the westerly swell, and of two
+British Admirals in desperate jeopardy.&nbsp; To this day I
+cannot free myself from the impression that, for some forty
+minutes, the fate of the great battle hung upon a breath of wind
+such as I have felt stealing from behind, as it were, upon my
+cheek while engaged in looking to the westward for the signs of
+the true weather.</p>
+<p>Never more shall British seamen going into action have to
+trust the success of their valour to a breath of wind.&nbsp; The
+God of gales and battles favouring her arms to the last, has let
+the sun of England&rsquo;s sailing-fleet and of its greatest
+master set in unclouded glory.&nbsp; And now the old ships and
+their men are gone; the new ships and the new men, many of them
+bearing the old, auspicious names, have taken up their watch on
+the stern and impartial sea, which offers no opportunities but to
+those who know how to grasp them with a ready hand and an
+undaunted heart.</p>
+<h2>XLIX.</h2>
+<p>This the navy of the Twenty Years&rsquo; War knew well how to
+do, and never better than when Lord Nelson had breathed into its
+soul his own passion of honour and fame.&nbsp; It was a fortunate
+navy.&nbsp; Its victories were no mere smashing of helpless ships
+and massacres of cowed men.&nbsp; It was spared that cruel
+favour, for which no brave heart had ever prayed.&nbsp; It was
+fortunate in its adversaries.&nbsp; I say adversaries, for on
+recalling such proud memories we should avoid the word
+&ldquo;enemies,&rdquo; whose hostile sound perpetuates the
+antagonisms and strife of nations, so irremediable perhaps, so
+fateful&mdash;and also so vain.&nbsp; War is one of the gifts of
+life; but, alas! no war appears so very necessary when time has
+laid its soothing hand upon the passionate misunderstandings and
+the passionate desires of great peoples.&nbsp; &ldquo;Le
+temps,&rdquo; as a distinguished Frenchman has said, &ldquo;est
+un galant homme.&rdquo;&nbsp; He fosters the spirit of concord
+and justice, in whose work there is as much glory to be reaped as
+in the deeds of arms.</p>
+<p>One of them disorganized by revolutionary changes, the other
+rusted in the neglect of a decayed monarchy, the two fleets
+opposed to us entered the contest with odds against them from the
+first.&nbsp; By the merit of our daring and our faithfulness, and
+the genius of a great leader, we have in the course of the war
+augmented our advantage and kept it to the last.&nbsp; But in the
+exulting illusion of irresistible might a long series of military
+successes brings to a nation the less obvious aspect of such a
+fortune may perchance be lost to view.&nbsp; The old navy in its
+last days earned a fame that no belittling malevolence dare cavil
+at.&nbsp; And this supreme favour they owe to their adversaries
+alone.</p>
+<p>Deprived by an ill-starred fortune of that self-confidence
+which strengthens the hands of an armed host, impaired in skill
+but not in courage, it may safely be said that our adversaries
+managed yet to make a better fight of it in 1797 than they did in
+1793.&nbsp; Later still, the resistance offered at the Nile was
+all, and more than all, that could be demanded from seamen, who,
+unless blind or without understanding, must have seen their doom
+sealed from the moment that the <i>Goliath</i>, bearing up under
+the bows of the <i>Guerrier</i>, took up an inshore berth.&nbsp;
+The combined fleets of 1805, just come out of port, and attended
+by nothing but the disturbing memories of reverses, presented to
+our approach a determined front, on which Captain Blackwood, in a
+knightly spirit, congratulated his Admiral.&nbsp; By the
+exertions of their valour our adversaries have but added a
+greater lustre to our arms.&nbsp; No friend could have done more,
+for even in war, which severs for a time all the sentiments of
+human fellowship, this subtle bond of association remains between
+brave men&mdash;that the final testimony to the value of victory
+must be received at the hands of the vanquished.</p>
+<p>Those who from the heat of that battle sank together to their
+repose in the cool depths of the ocean would not understand the
+watchwords of our day, would gaze with amazed eyes at the engines
+of our strife.&nbsp; All passes, all changes: the animosity of
+peoples, the handling of fleets, the forms of ships; and even the
+sea itself seems to wear a different and diminished aspect from
+the sea of Lord Nelson&rsquo;s day.&nbsp; In this ceaseless rush
+of shadows and shades, that, like the fantastic forms of clouds
+cast darkly upon the waters on a windy day, fly past us to fall
+headlong below the hard edge of an implacable horizon, we must
+turn to the national spirit, which, superior in its force and
+continuity to good and evil fortune, can alone give us the
+feeling of an enduring existence and of an invincible power
+against the fates.</p>
+<p>Like a subtle and mysterious elixir poured into the perishable
+clay of successive generations, it grows in truth, splendour, and
+potency with the march of ages.&nbsp; In its incorruptible flow
+all round the globe of the earth it preserves from the decay and
+forgetfulness of death the greatness of our great men, and
+amongst them the passionate and gentle greatness of Nelson, the
+nature of whose genius was, on the faith of a brave seaman and
+distinguished Admiral, such as to &ldquo;Exalt the glory of our
+nation.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MIRROR OF THE SEA***</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mirror of the Sea, by Joseph Conrad
+(#16 in our series by Joseph Conrad)
+
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+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
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+Title: The Mirror of the Sea
+
+Author: Joseph Conrad
+
+Release Date: October, 1997  [EBook #1058]
+[This file was first posted on October 10, 1997]
+[Most recently updated: June 26, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE MIRROR OF THE SEA ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+The Mirror of the Sea
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+
+I.       Landfalls and Departures
+IV.      Emblems of Hope
+VII.     The Fine Art
+X.       Cobwebs and Gossamer
+XIII.    The Weight of the Burden
+XVI.     Overdue and Missing
+XX.      The Grip of the Land
+XXII.    The Character of the Foe
+XXV.     Rules of East and West
+XXX.     The Faithful River
+XXXIII.  In Captivity
+XXXV.    Initiation
+XXXVII.  The Nursery of the Craft
+XL.      The Tremolino
+XLVI.    The Heroic Age
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+
+"And shippes by the brinke comen and gon,
+And in swich forme endure a day or two."
+The Frankeleyn's Tale.
+
+
+Landfall and Departure mark the rhythmical swing of a seaman's life
+and of a ship's career.  From land to land is the most concise
+definition of a ship's earthly fate.
+
+A "Departure" is not what a vain people of landsmen may think.  The
+term "Landfall" is more easily understood; you fall in with the
+land, and it is a matter of a quick eye and of a clear atmosphere.
+The Departure is not the ship's going away from her port any more
+than the Landfall can be looked upon as the synonym of arrival.
+But there is this difference in the Departure:  that the term does
+not imply so much a sea event as a definite act entailing a
+process--the precise observation of certain landmarks by means of
+the compass card.
+
+Your Landfall, be it a peculiarly-shaped mountain, a rocky
+headland, or a stretch of sand-dunes, you meet at first with a
+single glance.  Further recognition will follow in due course; but
+essentially a Landfall, good or bad, is made and done with at the
+first cry of "Land ho!"  The Departure is distinctly a ceremony of
+navigation.  A ship may have left her port some time before; she
+may have been at sea, in the fullest sense of the phrase, for days;
+but, for all that, as long as the coast she was about to leave
+remained in sight, a southern-going ship of yesterday had not in
+the sailor's sense begun the enterprise of a passage.
+
+The taking of Departure, if not the last sight of the land, is,
+perhaps, the last professional recognition of the land on the part
+of a sailor.  It is the technical, as distinguished from the
+sentimental, "good-bye."  Henceforth he has done with the coast
+astern of his ship.  It is a matter personal to the man.  It is not
+the ship that takes her departure; the seaman takes his Departure
+by means of cross-bearings which fix the place of the first tiny
+pencil-cross on the white expanse of the track-chart, where the
+ship's position at noon shall be marked by just such another tiny
+pencil cross for every day of her passage.  And there may be sixty,
+eighty, any number of these crosses on the ship's track from land
+to land.  The greatest number in my experience was a hundred and
+thirty of such crosses from the pilot station at the Sand Heads in
+the Bay of Bengal to the Scilly's light.  A bad passage. . .
+
+A Departure, the last professional sight of land, is always good,
+or at least good enough.  For, even if the weather be thick, it
+does not matter much to a ship having all the open sea before her
+bows.  A Landfall may be good or bad.  You encompass the earth with
+one particular spot of it in your eye.  In all the devious tracings
+the course of a sailing-ship leaves upon the white paper of a chart
+she is always aiming for that one little spot--maybe a small island
+in the ocean, a single headland upon the long coast of a continent,
+a lighthouse on a bluff, or simply the peaked form of a mountain
+like an ant-heap afloat upon the waters.  But if you have sighted
+it on the expected bearing, then that Landfall is good.  Fogs,
+snowstorms, gales thick with clouds and rain--those are the enemies
+of good Landfalls.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+
+Some commanders of ships take their Departure from the home coast
+sadly, in a spirit of grief and discontent.  They have a wife,
+children perhaps, some affection at any rate, or perhaps only some
+pet vice, that must be left behind for a year or more.  I remember
+only one man who walked his deck with a springy step, and gave the
+first course of the passage in an elated voice.  But he, as I
+learned afterwards, was leaving nothing behind him, except a welter
+of debts and threats of legal proceedings.
+
+On the other hand, I have known many captains who, directly their
+ship had left the narrow waters of the Channel, would disappear
+from the sight of their ship's company altogether for some three
+days or more.  They would take a long dive, as it were, into their
+state-room, only to emerge a few days afterwards with a more or
+less serene brow.  Those were the men easy to get on with.
+Besides, such a complete retirement seemed to imply a satisfactory
+amount of trust in their officers, and to be trusted displeases no
+seaman worthy of the name.
+
+On my first voyage as chief mate with good Captain MacW- I remember
+that I felt quite flattered, and went blithely about my duties,
+myself a commander for all practical purposes.  Still, whatever the
+greatness of my illusion, the fact remained that the real commander
+was there, backing up my self-confidence, though invisible to my
+eyes behind a maple-wood veneered cabin-door with a white china
+handle.
+
+That is the time, after your Departure is taken, when the spirit of
+your commander communes with you in a muffled voice, as if from the
+sanctum sanctorum of a temple; because, call her a temple or a
+"hell afloat"--as some ships have been called--the captain's state-
+room is surely the august place in every vessel.
+
+The good MacW- would not even come out to his meals, and fed
+solitarily in his holy of holies from a tray covered with a white
+napkin.  Our steward used to bend an ironic glance at the perfectly
+empty plates he was bringing out from there.  This grief for his
+home, which overcomes so many married seamen, did not deprive
+Captain MacW- of his legitimate appetite.  In fact, the steward
+would almost invariably come up to me, sitting in the captain's
+chair at the head of the table, to say in a grave murmur, "The
+captain asks for one more slice of meat and two potatoes."  We, his
+officers, could hear him moving about in his berth, or lightly
+snoring, or fetching deep sighs, or splashing and blowing in his
+bath-room; and we made our reports to him through the keyhole, as
+it were.  It was the crowning achievement of his amiable character
+that the answers we got were given in a quite mild and friendly
+tone.  Some commanders in their periods of seclusion are constantly
+grumpy, and seem to resent the mere sound of your voice as an
+injury and an insult.
+
+But a grumpy recluse cannot worry his subordinates:  whereas the
+man in whom the sense of duty is strong (or, perhaps, only the
+sense of self-importance), and who persists in airing on deck his
+moroseness all day--and perhaps half the night--becomes a grievous
+infliction.  He walks the poop darting gloomy glances, as though he
+wished to poison the sea, and snaps your head off savagely whenever
+you happen to blunder within earshot.  And these vagaries are the
+harder to bear patiently, as becomes a man and an officer, because
+no sailor is really good-tempered during the first few days of a
+voyage.  There are regrets, memories, the instinctive longing for
+the departed idleness, the instinctive hate of all work.  Besides,
+things have a knack of going wrong at the start, especially in the
+matter of irritating trifles.  And there is the abiding thought of
+a whole year of more or less hard life before one, because there
+was hardly a southern-going voyage in the yesterday of the sea
+which meant anything less than a twelvemonth.  Yes; it needed a few
+days after the taking of your departure for a ship's company to
+shake down into their places, and for the soothing deep-water ship
+routine to establish its beneficent sway.
+
+It is a great doctor for sore hearts and sore heads, too, your
+ship's routine, which I have seen soothe--at least for a time--the
+most turbulent of spirits.  There is health in it, and peace, and
+satisfaction of the accomplished round; for each day of the ship's
+life seems to close a circle within the wide ring of the sea
+horizon.  It borrows a certain dignity of sameness from the
+majestic monotony of the sea.  He who loves the sea loves also the
+ship's routine.
+
+Nowhere else than upon the sea do the days, weeks and months fall
+away quicker into the past.  They seem to be left astern as easily
+as the light air-bubbles in the swirls of the ship's wake, and
+vanish into a great silence in which your ship moves on with a sort
+of magical effect.  They pass away, the days, the weeks, the
+months.  Nothing but a gale can disturb the orderly life of the
+ship; and the spell of unshaken monotony that seems to have fallen
+upon the very voices of her men is broken only by the near prospect
+of a Landfall.
+
+Then is the spirit of the ship's commander stirred strongly again.
+But it is not moved to seek seclusion, and to remain, hidden and
+inert, shut up in a small cabin with the solace of a good bodily
+appetite.  When about to make the land, the spirit of the ship's
+commander is tormented by an unconquerable restlessness.  It seems
+unable to abide for many seconds together in the holy of holies of
+the captain's state-room; it will out on deck and gaze ahead,
+through straining eyes, as the appointed moment comes nearer.  It
+is kept vigorously upon the stretch of excessive vigilance.
+Meantime the body of the ship's commander is being enfeebled by
+want of appetite; at least, such is my experience, though
+"enfeebled" is perhaps not exactly the word.  I might say, rather,
+that it is spiritualized by a disregard for food, sleep, and all
+the ordinary comforts, such as they are, of sea life.  In one or
+two cases I have known that detachment from the grosser needs of
+existence remain regrettably incomplete in the matter of drink.
+
+But these two cases were, properly speaking, pathological cases,
+and the only two in all my sea experience.  In one of these two
+instances of a craving for stimulants, developed from sheer
+anxiety, I cannot assert that the man's seaman-like qualities were
+impaired in the least.  It was a very anxious case, too, the land
+being made suddenly, close-to, on a wrong bearing, in thick
+weather, and during a fresh onshore gale.  Going below to speak to
+him soon after, I was unlucky enough to catch my captain in the
+very act of hasty cork-drawing.  The sight, I may say, gave me an
+awful scare.  I was well aware of the morbidly sensitive nature of
+the man.  Fortunately, I managed to draw back unseen, and, taking
+care to stamp heavily with my sea-boots at the foot of the cabin
+stairs, I made my second entry.  But for this unexpected glimpse,
+no act of his during the next twenty-four hours could have given me
+the slightest suspicion that all was not well with his nerve.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+
+Quite another case, and having nothing to do with drink, was that
+of poor Captain B-.  He used to suffer from sick headaches, in his
+young days, every time he was approaching a coast.  Well over fifty
+years of age when I knew him, short, stout, dignified, perhaps a
+little pompous, he was a man of a singularly well-informed mind,
+the least sailor-like in outward aspect, but certainly one of the
+best seamen whom it has been my good luck to serve under.  He was a
+Plymouth man, I think, the son of a country doctor, and both his
+elder boys were studying medicine.  He commanded a big London ship,
+fairly well known in her day.  I thought no end of him, and that is
+why I remember with a peculiar satisfaction the last words he spoke
+to me on board his ship after an eighteen months' voyage.  It was
+in the dock in Dundee, where we had brought a full cargo of jute
+from Calcutta.  We had been paid off that morning, and I had come
+on board to take my sea-chest away and to say good-bye.  In his
+slightly lofty but courteous way he inquired what were my plans.  I
+replied that I intended leaving for London by the afternoon train,
+and thought of going up for examination to get my master's
+certificate.  I had just enough service for that.  He commended me
+for not wasting my time, with such an evident interest in my case
+that I was quite surprised; then, rising from his chair, he said:
+
+"Have you a ship in view after you have passed?"
+
+I answered that I had nothing whatever in view.
+
+He shook hands with me, and pronounced the memorable words:
+
+"If you happen to be in want of employment, remember that as long
+as I have a ship you have a ship, too."
+
+In the way of compliment there is nothing to beat this from a
+ship's captain to his second mate at the end of a voyage, when the
+work is over and the subordinate is done with.  And there is a
+pathos in that memory, for the poor fellow never went to sea again
+after all.  He was already ailing when we passed St. Helena; was
+laid up for a time when we were off the Western Islands, but got
+out of bed to make his Landfall.  He managed to keep up on deck as
+far as the Downs, where, giving his orders in an exhausted voice,
+he anchored for a few hours to send a wire to his wife and take
+aboard a North Sea pilot to help him sail the ship up the east
+coast.  He had not felt equal to the task by himself, for it is the
+sort of thing that keeps a deep-water man on his feet pretty well
+night and day.
+
+When we arrived in Dundee, Mrs. B- was already there, waiting to
+take him home.  We travelled up to London by the same train; but by
+the time I had managed to get through with my examination the ship
+had sailed on her next voyage without him, and, instead of joining
+her again, I went by request to see my old commander in his home.
+This is the only one of my captains I have ever visited in that
+way.  He was out of bed by then, "quite convalescent," as he
+declared, making a few tottering steps to meet me at the sitting-
+room door.  Evidently he was reluctant to take his final cross-
+bearings of this earth for a Departure on the only voyage to an
+unknown destination a sailor ever undertakes.  And it was all very
+nice--the large, sunny room; his deep, easy-chair in a bow window,
+with pillows and a footstool; the quiet, watchful care of the
+elderly, gentle woman who had borne him five children, and had not,
+perhaps, lived with him more than five full years out of the thirty
+or so of their married life.  There was also another woman there in
+a plain black dress, quite gray-haired, sitting very erect on her
+chair with some sewing, from which she snatched side-glances in his
+direction, and uttering not a single word during all the time of my
+call.  Even when, in due course, I carried over to her a cup of
+tea, she only nodded at me silently, with the faintest ghost of a
+smile on her tight-set lips.  I imagine she must have been a maiden
+sister of Mrs. B- come to help nurse her brother-in-law.  His
+youngest boy, a late-comer, a great cricketer it seemed, twelve
+years old or thereabouts, chattered enthusiastically of the
+exploits of W. G. Grace.  And I remember his eldest son, too, a
+newly-fledged doctor, who took me out to smoke in the garden, and,
+shaking his head with professional gravity, but with genuine
+concern, muttered:  "Yes, but he doesn't get back his appetite.  I
+don't like that--I don't like that at all."  The last sight of
+Captain B- I had was as he nodded his head to me out of the bow
+window when I turned round to close the front gate.
+
+It was a distinct and complete impression, something that I don't
+know whether to call a Landfall or a Departure.  Certainly he had
+gazed at times very fixedly before him with the Landfall's vigilant
+look, this sea-captain seated incongruously in a deep-backed chair.
+He had not then talked to me of employment, of ships, of being
+ready to take another command; but he had discoursed of his early
+days, in the abundant but thin flow of a wilful invalid's talk.
+The women looked worried, but sat still, and I learned more of him
+in that interview than in the whole eighteen months we had sailed
+together.  It appeared he had "served his time" in the copper-ore
+trade, the famous copper-ore trade of old days between Swansea and
+the Chilian coast, coal out and ore in, deep-loaded both ways, as
+if in wanton defiance of the great Cape Horn seas--a work, this,
+for staunch ships, and a great school of staunchness for West-
+Country seamen.  A whole fleet of copper-bottomed barques, as
+strong in rib and planking, as well-found in gear, as ever was sent
+upon the seas, manned by hardy crews and commanded by young
+masters, was engaged in that now long defunct trade.  "That was the
+school I was trained in," he said to me almost boastfully, lying
+back amongst his pillows with a rug over his legs.  And it was in
+that trade that he obtained his first command at a very early age.
+It was then that he mentioned to me how, as a young commander, he
+was always ill for a few days before making land after a long
+passage.  But this sort of sickness used to pass off with the first
+sight of a familiar landmark.  Afterwards, he added, as he grew
+older, all that nervousness wore off completely; and I observed his
+weary eyes gaze steadily ahead, as if there had been nothing
+between him and the straight line of sea and sky, where whatever a
+seaman is looking for is first bound to appear.  But I have also
+seen his eyes rest fondly upon the faces in the room, upon the
+pictures on the wall, upon all the familiar objects of that home,
+whose abiding and clear image must have flashed often on his memory
+in times of stress and anxiety at sea.  Was he looking out for a
+strange Landfall, or taking with an untroubled mind the bearings
+for his last Departure?
+
+It is hard to say; for in that voyage from which no man returns
+Landfall and Departure are instantaneous, merging together into one
+moment of supreme and final attention.  Certainly I do not remember
+observing any sign of faltering in the set expression of his wasted
+face, no hint of the nervous anxiety of a young commander about to
+make land on an uncharted shore.  He had had too much experience of
+Departures and Landfalls!  And had he not "served his time" in the
+famous copper-ore trade out of the Bristol Channel, the work of the
+staunchest ships afloat, and the school of staunch seamen?
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+
+Before an anchor can ever be raised, it must be let go; and this
+perfectly obvious truism brings me at once to the subject of the
+degradation of the sea language in the daily press of this country.
+
+Your journalist, whether he takes charge of a ship or a fleet,
+almost invariably "casts" his anchor.  Now, an anchor is never
+cast, and to take a liberty with technical language is a crime
+against the clearness, precision, and beauty of perfected speech.
+
+An anchor is a forged piece of iron, admirably adapted to its end,
+and technical language is an instrument wrought into perfection by
+ages of experience, a flawless thing for its purpose.  An anchor of
+yesterday (because nowadays there are contrivances like mushrooms
+and things like claws, of no particular expression or shape--just
+hooks)--an anchor of yesterday is in its way a most efficient
+instrument.  To its perfection its size bears witness, for there is
+no other appliance so small for the great work it has to do.  Look
+at the anchors hanging from the cat-heads of a big ship!  How tiny
+they are in proportion to the great size of the hull!  Were they
+made of gold they would look like trinkets, like ornamental toys,
+no bigger in proportion than a jewelled drop in a woman's ear.  And
+yet upon them will depend, more than once, the very life of the
+ship.
+
+An anchor is forged and fashioned for faithfulness; give it ground
+that it can bite, and it will hold till the cable parts, and then,
+whatever may afterwards befall its ship, that anchor is "lost."
+The honest, rough piece of iron, so simple in appearance, has more
+parts than the human body has limbs:  the ring, the stock, the
+crown, the flukes, the palms, the shank.  All this, according to
+the journalist, is "cast" when a ship arriving at an anchorage is
+brought up.
+
+This insistence in using the odious word arises from the fact that
+a particularly benighted landsman must imagine the act of anchoring
+as a process of throwing something overboard, whereas the anchor
+ready for its work is already overboard, and is not thrown over,
+but simply allowed to fall.  It hangs from the ship's side at the
+end of a heavy, projecting timber called the cat-head, in the bight
+of a short, thick chain whose end link is suddenly released by a
+blow from a top-maul or the pull of a lever when the order is
+given.  And the order is not "Heave over!" as the paragraphist
+seems to imagine, but "Let go!"
+
+As a matter of fact, nothing is ever cast in that sense on board
+ship but the lead, of which a cast is taken to search the depth of
+water on which she floats.  A lashed boat, a spare spar, a cask or
+what not secured about the decks, is "cast adrift" when it is
+untied.  Also the ship herself is "cast to port or starboard" when
+getting under way.  She, however, never "casts" her anchor.
+
+To speak with severe technicality, a ship or a fleet is "brought
+up"--the complementary words unpronounced and unwritten being, of
+course, "to an anchor."  Less technically, but not less correctly,
+the word "anchored," with its characteristic appearance and
+resolute sound, ought to be good enough for the newspapers of the
+greatest maritime country in the world.  "The fleet anchored at
+Spithead":  can anyone want a better sentence for brevity and
+seamanlike ring?  But the "cast-anchor" trick, with its affectation
+of being a sea-phrase--for why not write just as well "threw
+anchor," "flung anchor," or "shied anchor"?--is intolerably odious
+to a sailor's ear.  I remember a coasting pilot of my early
+acquaintance (he used to read the papers assiduously) who, to
+define the utmost degree of lubberliness in a landsman, used to
+say, "He's one of them poor, miserable 'cast-anchor' devils."
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+
+From first to last the seaman's thoughts are very much concerned
+with his anchors.  It is not so much that the anchor is a symbol of
+hope as that it is the heaviest object that he has to handle on
+board his ship at sea in the usual routine of his duties.  The
+beginning and the end of every passage are marked distinctly by
+work about the ship's anchors.  A vessel in the Channel has her
+anchors always ready, her cables shackled on, and the land almost
+always in sight.  The anchor and the land are indissolubly
+connected in a sailor's thoughts.  But directly she is clear of the
+narrow seas, heading out into the world with nothing solid to speak
+of between her and the South Pole, the anchors are got in and the
+cables disappear from the deck.  But the anchors do not disappear.
+Technically speaking, they are "secured in-board"; and, on the
+forecastle head, lashed down to ring-bolts with ropes and chains,
+under the straining sheets of the head-sails, they look very idle
+and as if asleep.  Thus bound, but carefully looked after, inert
+and powerful, those emblems of hope make company for the look-out
+man in the night watches; and so the days glide by, with a long
+rest for those characteristically shaped pieces of iron, reposing
+forward, visible from almost every part of the ship's deck, waiting
+for their work on the other side of the world somewhere, while the
+ship carries them on with a great rush and splutter of foam
+underneath, and the sprays of the open sea rust their heavy limbs.
+
+The first approach to the land, as yet invisible to the crew's
+eyes, is announced by the brisk order of the chief mate to the
+boatswain:  "We will get the anchors over this afternoon" or "first
+thing to-morrow morning," as the case may be.  For the chief mate
+is the keeper of the ship's anchors and the guardian of her cable.
+There are good ships and bad ships, comfortable ships and ships
+where, from first day to last of the voyage, there is no rest for a
+chief mate's body and soul.  And ships are what men make them:
+this is a pronouncement of sailor wisdom, and, no doubt, in the
+main it is true.
+
+However, there are ships where, as an old grizzled mate once told
+me, "nothing ever seems to go right!"  And, looking from the poop
+where we both stood (I had paid him a neighbourly call in dock), he
+added:  "She's one of them."  He glanced up at my face, which
+expressed a proper professional sympathy, and set me right in my
+natural surmise:  "Oh no; the old man's right enough.  He never
+interferes.  Anything that's done in a seamanlike way is good
+enough for him.  And yet, somehow, nothing ever seems to go right
+in this ship.  I tell you what:  she is naturally unhandy."
+
+The "old man," of course, was his captain, who just then came on
+deck in a silk hat and brown overcoat, and, with a civil nod to us,
+went ashore.  He was certainly not more than thirty, and the
+elderly mate, with a murmur to me of "That's my old man," proceeded
+to give instances of the natural unhandiness of the ship in a sort
+of deprecatory tone, as if to say, "You mustn't think I bear a
+grudge against her for that."
+
+The instances do not matter.  The point is that there are ships
+where things DO go wrong; but whatever the ship--good or bad, lucky
+or unlucky--it is in the forepart of her that her chief mate feels
+most at home.  It is emphatically HIS end of the ship, though, of
+course, he is the executive supervisor of the whole.  There are HIS
+anchors, HIS headgear, his foremast, his station for manoeuvring
+when the captain is in charge.  And there, too, live the men, the
+ship's hands, whom it is his duty to keep employed, fair weather or
+foul, for the ship's welfare.  It is the chief mate, the only
+figure of the ship's afterguard, who comes bustling forward at the
+cry of "All hands on deck!"  He is the satrap of that province in
+the autocratic realm of the ship, and more personally responsible
+for anything that may happen there.
+
+There, too, on the approach to the land, assisted by the boatswain
+and the carpenter, he "gets the anchors over" with the men of his
+own watch, whom he knows better than the others.  There he sees the
+cable ranged, the windlass disconnected, the compressors opened;
+and there, after giving his own last order, "Stand clear of the
+cable!" he waits attentive, in a silent ship that forges slowly
+ahead towards her picked-out berth, for the sharp shout from aft,
+"Let go!"  Instantly bending over, he sees the trusty iron fall
+with a heavy plunge under his eyes, which watch and note whether it
+has gone clear.
+
+For the anchor "to go clear" means to go clear of its own chain.
+Your anchor must drop from the bow of your ship with no turn of
+cable on any of its limbs, else you would be riding to a foul
+anchor.  Unless the pull of the cable is fair on the ring, no
+anchor can be trusted even on the best of holding ground.  In time
+of stress it is bound to drag, for implements and men must be
+treated fairly to give you the "virtue" which is in them.  The
+anchor is an emblem of hope, but a foul anchor is worse than the
+most fallacious of false hopes that ever lured men or nations into
+a sense of security.  And the sense of security, even the most
+warranted, is a bad councillor.  It is the sense which, like that
+exaggerated feeling of well-being ominous of the coming on of
+madness, precedes the swift fall of disaster.  A seaman labouring
+under an undue sense of security becomes at once worth hardly half
+his salt.  Therefore, of all my chief officers, the one I trusted
+most was a man called B-.  He had a red moustache, a lean face,
+also red, and an uneasy eye.  He was worth all his salt.
+
+On examining now, after many years, the residue of the feeling
+which was the outcome of the contact of our personalities, I
+discover, without much surprise, a certain flavour of dislike.
+Upon the whole, I think he was one of the most uncomfortable
+shipmates possible for a young commander.  If it is permissible to
+criticise the absent, I should say he had a little too much of the
+sense of insecurity which is so invaluable in a seaman.  He had an
+extremely disturbing air of being everlastingly ready (even when
+seated at table at my right hand before a plate of salt beef) to
+grapple with some impending calamity.  I must hasten to add that he
+had also the other qualification necessary to make a trustworthy
+seaman--that of an absolute confidence in himself.  What was really
+wrong with him was that he had these qualities in an unrestful
+degree.  His eternally watchful demeanour, his jerky, nervous talk,
+even his, as it were, determined silences, seemed to imply--and, I
+believe, they did imply--that to his mind the ship was never safe
+in my hands.  Such was the man who looked after the anchors of a
+less than five-hundred-ton barque, my first command, now gone from
+the face of the earth, but sure of a tenderly remembered existence
+as long as I live.  No anchor could have gone down foul under Mr.
+B-'s piercing eye.  It was good for one to be sure of that when, in
+an open roadstead, one heard in the cabin the wind pipe up; but
+still, there were moments when I detested Mr. B- exceedingly.  From
+the way he used to glare sometimes, I fancy that more than once he
+paid me back with interest.  It so happened that we both loved the
+little barque very much.  And it was just the defect of Mr. B-'s
+inestimable qualities that he would never persuade himself to
+believe that the ship was safe in my hands.  To begin with, he was
+more than five years older than myself at a time of life when five
+years really do count, I being twenty-nine and he thirty-four;
+then, on our first leaving port (I don't see why I should make a
+secret of the fact that it was Bangkok), a bit of manoeuvring of
+mine amongst the islands of the Gulf of Siam had given him an
+unforgettable scare.  Ever since then he had nursed in secret a
+bitter idea of my utter recklessness.  But upon the whole, and
+unless the grip of a man's hand at parting means nothing whatever,
+I conclude that we did like each other at the end of two years and
+three months well enough.
+
+The bond between us was the ship; and therein a ship, though she
+has female attributes and is loved very unreasonably, is different
+from a woman.  That I should have been tremendously smitten with my
+first command is nothing to wonder at, but I suppose I must admit
+that Mr. B-'s sentiment was of a higher order.  Each of us, of
+course, was extremely anxious about the good appearance of the
+beloved object; and, though I was the one to glean compliments
+ashore, B- had the more intimate pride of feeling, resembling that
+of a devoted handmaiden.  And that sort of faithful and proud
+devotion went so far as to make him go about flicking the dust off
+the varnished teak-wood rail of the little craft with a silk
+pocket-handkerchief--a present from Mrs. B-, I believe.
+
+That was the effect of his love for the barque.  The effect of his
+admirable lack of the sense of security once went so far as to make
+him remark to me:  "Well, sir, you ARE a lucky man!"
+
+It was said in a tone full of significance, but not exactly
+offensive, and it was, I suppose, my innate tact that prevented my
+asking, "What on earth do you mean by that?"
+
+Later on his meaning was illustrated more fully on a dark night in
+a tight corner during a dead on-shore gale.  I had called him up on
+deck to help me consider our extremely unpleasant situation.  There
+was not much time for deep thinking, and his summing-up was:  "It
+looks pretty bad, whichever we try; but, then, sir, you always do
+get out of a mess somehow."
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+
+It is difficult to disconnect the idea of ships' anchors from the
+idea of the ship's chief mate--the man who sees them go down clear
+and come up sometimes foul; because not even the most unremitting
+care can always prevent a ship, swinging to winds and tide, from
+taking an awkward turn of the cable round stock or fluke.  Then the
+business of "getting the anchor" and securing it afterwards is
+unduly prolonged, and made a weariness to the chief mate.  He is
+the man who watches the growth of the cable--a sailor's phrase
+which has all the force, precision, and imagery of technical
+language that, created by simple men with keen eyes for the real
+aspect of the things they see in their trade, achieves the just
+expression seizing upon the essential, which is the ambition of the
+artist in words.  Therefore the sailor will never say, "cast
+anchor," and the ship-master aft will hail his chief mate on the
+forecastle in impressionistic phrase:  "How does the cable grow?"
+Because "grow" is the right word for the long drift of a cable
+emerging aslant under the strain, taut as a bow-string above the
+water.  And it is the voice of the keeper of the ship's anchors
+that will answer:  "Grows right ahead, sir," or "Broad on the bow,"
+or whatever concise and deferential shout will fit the case.
+
+There is no order more noisily given or taken up with lustier
+shouts on board a homeward-bound merchant ship than the command,
+"Man the windlass!"  The rush of expectant men out of the
+forecastle, the snatching of hand-spikes, the tramp of feet, the
+clink of the pawls, make a stirring accompaniment to a plaintive
+up-anchor song with a roaring chorus; and this burst of noisy
+activity from a whole ship's crew seems like a voiceful awakening
+of the ship herself, till then, in the picturesque phrase of Dutch
+seamen, "lying asleep upon her iron."
+
+For a ship with her sails furled on her squared yards, and
+reflected from truck to water-line in the smooth gleaming sheet of
+a landlocked harbour, seems, indeed, to a seaman's eye the most
+perfect picture of slumbering repose.  The getting of your anchor
+was a noisy operation on board a merchant ship of yesterday--an
+inspiring, joyous noise, as if, with the emblem of hope, the ship's
+company expected to drag up out of the depths, each man all his
+personal hopes into the reach of a securing hand--the hope of home,
+the hope of rest, of liberty, of dissipation, of hard pleasure,
+following the hard endurance of many days between sky and water.
+And this noisiness, this exultation at the moment of the ship's
+departure, make a tremendous contrast to the silent moments of her
+arrival in a foreign roadstead--the silent moments when, stripped
+of her sails, she forges ahead to her chosen berth, the loose
+canvas fluttering softly in the gear above the heads of the men
+standing still upon her decks, the master gazing intently forward
+from the break of the poop.  Gradually she loses her way, hardly
+moving, with the three figures on her forecastle waiting
+attentively about the cat-head for the last order of, perhaps, full
+ninety days at sea:  "Let go!"
+
+This is the final word of a ship's ended journey, the closing word
+of her toil and of her achievement.  In a life whose worth is told
+out in passages from port to port, the splash of the anchor's fall
+and the thunderous rumbling of the chain are like the closing of a
+distinct period, of which she seems conscious with a slight deep
+shudder of all her frame.  By so much is she nearer to her
+appointed death, for neither years nor voyages can go on for ever.
+It is to her like the striking of a clock, and in the pause which
+follows she seems to take count of the passing time.
+
+This is the last important order; the others are mere routine
+directions.  Once more the master is heard:  "Give her forty-five
+fathom to the water's edge," and then he, too, is done for a time.
+For days he leaves all the harbour work to his chief mate, the
+keeper of the ship's anchor and of the ship's routine.  For days
+his voice will not be heard raised about the decks, with that curt,
+austere accent of the man in charge, till, again, when the hatches
+are on, and in a silent and expectant ship, he shall speak up from
+aft in commanding tones:  "Man the windlass!"
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+
+The other year, looking through a newspaper of sound principles,
+but whose staff WILL persist in "casting" anchors and going to sea
+"on" a ship (ough!), I came across an article upon the season's
+yachting.  And, behold! it was a good article.  To a man who had
+but little to do with pleasure sailing (though all sailing is a
+pleasure), and certainly nothing whatever with racing in open
+waters, the writer's strictures upon the handicapping of yachts
+were just intelligible and no more.  And I do not pretend to any
+interest in the enumeration of the great races of that year.  As to
+the 52-foot linear raters, praised so much by the writer, I am
+warmed up by his approval of their performances; but, as far as any
+clear conception goes, the descriptive phrase, so precise to the
+comprehension of a yachtsman, evokes no definite image in my mind.
+
+The writer praises that class of pleasure vessels, and I am willing
+to endorse his words, as any man who loves every craft afloat would
+be ready to do.  I am disposed to admire and respect the 52-foot
+linear raters on the word of a man who regrets in such a
+sympathetic and understanding spirit the threatened decay of
+yachting seamanship.
+
+Of course, yacht racing is an organized pastime, a function of
+social idleness ministering to the vanity of certain wealthy
+inhabitants of these isles nearly as much as to their inborn love
+of the sea.  But the writer of the article in question goes on to
+point out, with insight and justice, that for a great number of
+people (20,000, I think he says) it is a means of livelihood--that
+it is, in his own words, an industry.  Now, the moral side of an
+industry, productive or unproductive, the redeeming and ideal
+aspect of this bread-winning, is the attainment and preservation of
+the highest possible skill on the part of the craftsmen.  Such
+skill, the skill of technique, is more than honesty; it is
+something wider, embracing honesty and grace and rule in an
+elevated and clear sentiment, not altogether utilitarian, which may
+be called the honour of labour.  It is made up of accumulated
+tradition, kept alive by individual pride, rendered exact by
+professional opinion, and, like the higher arts, it spurred on and
+sustained by discriminating praise.
+
+This is why the attainment of proficiency, the pushing of your
+skill with attention to the most delicate shades of excellence, is
+a matter of vital concern.  Efficiency of a practically flawless
+kind may be reached naturally in the struggle for bread.  But there
+is something beyond--a higher point, a subtle and unmistakable
+touch of love and pride beyond mere skill; almost an inspiration
+which gives to all work that finish which is almost art--which IS
+art.
+
+As men of scrupulous honour set up a high standard of public
+conscience above the dead-level of an honest community, so men of
+that skill which passes into art by ceaseless striving raise the
+dead-level of correct practice in the crafts of land and sea.  The
+conditions fostering the growth of that supreme, alive excellence,
+as well in work as in play, ought to be preserved with a most
+careful regard lest the industry or the game should perish of an
+insidious and inward decay.  Therefore I have read with profound
+regret, in that article upon the yachting season of a certain year,
+that the seamanship on board racing yachts is not now what it used
+to be only a few, very few, years ago.
+
+For that was the gist of that article, written evidently by a man
+who not only knows but UNDERSTANDS--a thing (let me remark in
+passing) much rarer than one would expect, because the sort of
+understanding I mean is inspired by love; and love, though in a
+sense it may be admitted to be stronger than death, is by no means
+so universal and so sure.  In fact, love is rare--the love of men,
+of things, of ideas, the love of perfected skill.  For love is the
+enemy of haste; it takes count of passing days, of men who pass
+away, of a fine art matured slowly in the course of years and
+doomed in a short time to pass away too, and be no more.  Love and
+regret go hand in hand in this world of changes swifter than the
+shifting of the clouds reflected in the mirror of the sea.
+
+To penalize a yacht in proportion to the fineness of her
+performance is unfair to the craft and to her men.  It is unfair to
+the perfection of her form and to the skill of her servants.  For
+we men are, in fact, the servants of our creations.  We remain in
+everlasting bondage to the productions of our brain and to the work
+of our hands.  A man is born to serve his time on this earth, and
+there is something fine in the service being given on other grounds
+than that of utility.  The bondage of art is very exacting.  And,
+as the writer of the article which started this train of thought
+says with lovable warmth, the sailing of yachts is a fine art.
+
+His contention is that racing, without time allowances for anything
+else but tonnage--that is, for size--has fostered the fine art of
+sailing to the pitch of perfection.  Every sort of demand is made
+upon the master of a sailing-yacht, and to be penalized in
+proportion to your success may be of advantage to the sport itself,
+but it has an obviously deteriorating effect upon the seamanship.
+The fine art is being lost.
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+
+
+The sailing and racing of yachts has developed a class of fore-and-
+aft sailors, men born and bred to the sea, fishing in winter and
+yachting in summer; men to whom the handling of that particular rig
+presents no mystery.  It is their striving for victory that has
+elevated the sailing of pleasure craft to the dignity of a fine art
+in that special sense.  As I have said, I know nothing of racing
+and but little of fore-and-aft rig; but the advantages of such a
+rig are obvious, especially for purposes of pleasure, whether in
+cruising or racing.  It requires less effort in handling; the
+trimming of the sail-planes to the wind can be done with speed and
+accuracy; the unbroken spread of the sail-area is of infinite
+advantage; and the greatest possible amount of canvas can be
+displayed upon the least possible quantity of spars.  Lightness and
+concentrated power are the great qualities of fore-and-aft rig.
+
+A fleet of fore-and-afters at anchor has its own slender
+graciousness.  The setting of their sails resembles more than
+anything else the unfolding of a bird's wings; the facility of
+their evolutions is a pleasure to the eye.  They are birds of the
+sea, whose swimming is like flying, and resembles more a natural
+function than the handling of man-invented appliances.  The fore-
+and-aft rig in its simplicity and the beauty of its aspect under
+every angle of vision is, I believe, unapproachable.  A schooner,
+yawl, or cutter in charge of a capable man seems to handle herself
+as if endowed with the power of reasoning and the gift of swift
+execution.  One laughs with sheer pleasure at a smart piece of
+manoeuvring, as at a manifestation of a living creature's quick wit
+and graceful precision.
+
+Of those three varieties of fore-and-aft rig, the cutter--the
+racing rig par excellence--is of an appearance the most imposing,
+from the fact that practically all her canvas is in one piece.  The
+enormous mainsail of a cutter, as she draws slowly past a point of
+land or the end of a jetty under your admiring gaze, invests her
+with an air of lofty and silent majesty.  At anchor a schooner
+looks better; she has an aspect of greater efficiency and a better
+balance to the eye, with her two masts distributed over the hull
+with a swaggering rake aft.  The yawl rig one comes in time to
+love.  It is, I should think, the easiest of all to manage.
+
+For racing, a cutter; for a long pleasure voyage, a schooner; for
+cruising in home waters, the yawl; and the handling of them all is
+indeed a fine art.  It requires not only the knowledge of the
+general principles of sailing, but a particular acquaintance with
+the character of the craft.  All vessels are handled in the same
+way as far as theory goes, just as you may deal with all men on
+broad and rigid principles.  But if you want that success in life
+which comes from the affection and confidence of your fellows, then
+with no two men, however similar they may appear in their nature,
+will you deal in the same way.  There may be a rule of conduct;
+there is no rule of human fellowship.  To deal with men is as fine
+an art as it is to deal with ships.  Both men and ships live in an
+unstable element, are subject to subtle and powerful influences,
+and want to have their merits understood rather than their faults
+found out.
+
+It is not what your ship will NOT do that you want to know to get
+on terms of successful partnership with her; it is, rather, that
+you ought to have a precise knowledge of what she will do for you
+when called upon to put forth what is in her by a sympathetic
+touch.  At first sight the difference does not seem great in either
+line of dealing with the difficult problem of limitations.  But the
+difference is great.  The difference lies in the spirit in which
+the problem is approached.  After all, the art of handling ships is
+finer, perhaps, than the art of handling men.
+
+And, like all fine arts, it must be based upon a broad, solid
+sincerity, which, like a law of Nature, rules an infinity of
+different phenomena.  Your endeavour must be single-minded.  You
+would talk differently to a coal-heaver and to a professor.  But is
+this duplicity?  I deny it.  The truth consists in the genuineness
+of the feeling, in the genuine recognition of the two men, so
+similar and so different, as your two partners in the hazard of
+life.  Obviously, a humbug, thinking only of winning his little
+race, would stand a chance of profiting by his artifices.  Men,
+professors or coal-heavers, are easily deceived; they even have an
+extraordinary knack of lending themselves to deception, a sort of
+curious and inexplicable propensity to allow themselves to be led
+by the nose with their eyes open.  But a ship is a creature which
+we have brought into the world, as it were on purpose to keep us up
+to the mark.  In her handling a ship will not put up with a mere
+pretender, as, for instance, the public will do with Mr. X, the
+popular statesman, Mr. Y, the popular scientist, or Mr. Z, the
+popular--what shall we say?--anything from a teacher of high
+morality to a bagman--who have won their little race.  But I would
+like (though not accustomed to betting) to wager a large sum that
+not one of the few first-rate skippers of racing yachts has ever
+been a humbug.  It would have been too difficult.  The difficulty
+arises from the fact that one does not deal with ships in a mob,
+but with a ship as an individual.  So we may have to do with men.
+But in each of us there lurks some particle of the mob spirit, of
+the mob temperament.  No matter how earnestly we strive against
+each other, we remain brothers on the lowest side of our intellect
+and in the instability of our feelings.  With ships it is not so.
+Much as they are to us, they are nothing to each other.  Those
+sensitive creatures have no ears for our blandishments.  It takes
+something more than words to cajole them to do our will, to cover
+us with glory.  Luckily, too, or else there would have been more
+shoddy reputations for first-rate seamanship.  Ships have no ears,
+I repeat, though, indeed, I think I have known ships who really
+seemed to have had eyes, or else I cannot understand on what ground
+a certain 1,000-ton barque of my acquaintance on one particular
+occasion refused to answer her helm, thereby saving a frightful
+smash to two ships and to a very good man's reputation.  I knew her
+intimately for two years, and in no other instance either before or
+since have I known her to do that thing.  The man she had served so
+well (guessing, perhaps, at the depths of his affection for her) I
+have known much longer, and in bare justice to him I must say that
+this confidence-shattering experience (though so fortunate) only
+augmented his trust in her.  Yes, our ships have no ears, and thus
+they cannot be deceived.  I would illustrate my idea of fidelity as
+between man and ship, between the master and his art, by a
+statement which, though it might appear shockingly sophisticated,
+is really very simple.  I would say that a racing-yacht skipper who
+thought of nothing else but the glory of winning the race would
+never attain to any eminence of reputation.  The genuine masters of
+their craft--I say this confidently from my experience of ships--
+have thought of nothing but of doing their very best by the vessel
+under their charge.  To forget one's self, to surrender all
+personal feeling in the service of that fine art, is the only way
+for a seaman to the faithful discharge of his trust.
+
+Such is the service of a fine art and of ships that sail the sea.
+And therein I think I can lay my finger upon the difference between
+the seamen of yesterday, who are still with us, and the seamen of
+to-morrow, already entered upon the possession of their
+inheritance.  History repeats itself, but the special call of an
+art which has passed away is never reproduced.  It is as utterly
+gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.
+Nothing will awaken the same response of pleasurable emotion or
+conscientious endeavour.  And the sailing of any vessel afloat is
+an art whose fine form seems already receding from us on its way to
+the overshadowed Valley of Oblivion.  The taking of a modern
+steamship about the world (though one would not minimize its
+responsibilities) has not the same quality of intimacy with nature,
+which, after all, is an indispensable condition to the building up
+of an art.  It is less personal and a more exact calling; less
+arduous, but also less gratifying in the lack of close communion
+between the artist and the medium of his art.  It is, in short,
+less a matter of love.  Its effects are measured exactly in time
+and space as no effect of an art can be.  It is an occupation which
+a man not desperately subject to sea-sickness can be imagined to
+follow with content, without enthusiasm, with industry, without
+affection.  Punctuality is its watchword.  The incertitude which
+attends closely every artistic endeavour is absent from its
+regulated enterprise.  It has no great moments of self-confidence,
+or moments not less great of doubt and heart-searching.  It is an
+industry which, like other industries, has its romance, its honour
+and its rewards, its bitter anxieties and its hours of ease.  But
+such sea-going has not the artistic quality of a single-handed
+struggle with something much greater than yourself; it is not the
+laborious absorbing practice of an art whose ultimate result
+remains on the knees of the gods.  It is not an individual,
+temperamental achievement, but simply the skilled use of a captured
+force, merely another step forward upon the way of universal
+conquest.
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+
+
+Every passage of a ship of yesterday, whose yards were braced round
+eagerly the very moment the pilot, with his pockets full of
+letters, had got over the side, was like a race--a race against
+time, against an ideal standard of achievement outstripping the
+expectations of common men.  Like all true art, the general conduct
+of a ship and her handling in particular cases had a technique
+which could be discussed with delight and pleasure by men who found
+in their work, not bread alone, but an outlet for the peculiarities
+of their temperament.  To get the best and truest effect from the
+infinitely varying moods of sky and sea, not pictorially, but in
+the spirit of their calling, was their vocation, one and all; and
+they recognised this with as much sincerity, and drew as much
+inspiration from this reality, as any man who ever put brush to
+canvas.  The diversity of temperaments was immense amongst those
+masters of the fine art.
+
+Some of them were like Royal Academicians of a certain kind.  They
+never startled you by a touch of originality, by a fresh audacity
+of inspiration.  They were safe, very safe.  They went about
+solemnly in the assurance of their consecrated and empty
+reputation.  Names are odious, but I remember one of them who might
+have been their very president, the P.R.A. of the sea-craft.  His
+weather-beaten and handsome face, his portly presence, his shirt-
+fronts and broad cuffs and gold links, his air of bluff
+distinction, impressed the humble beholders (stevedores, tally
+clerks, tide-waiters) as he walked ashore over the gangway of his
+ship lying at the Circular Quay in Sydney.  His voice was deep,
+hearty, and authoritative--the voice of a very prince amongst
+sailors.  He did everything with an air which put your attention on
+the alert and raised your expectations, but the result somehow was
+always on stereotyped lines, unsuggestive, empty of any lesson that
+one could lay to heart.  He kept his ship in apple-pie order, which
+would have been seamanlike enough but for a finicking touch in its
+details.  His officers affected a superiority over the rest of us,
+but the boredom of their souls appeared in their manner of dreary
+submission to the fads of their commander.  It was only his
+apprenticed boys whose irrepressible spirits were not affected by
+the solemn and respectable mediocrity of that artist.  There were
+four of these youngsters:  one the son of a doctor, another of a
+colonel, the third of a jeweller; the name of the fourth was
+Twentyman, and this is all I remember of his parentage.  But not
+one of them seemed to possess the smallest spark of gratitude in
+his composition.  Though their commander was a kind man in his way,
+and had made a point of introducing them to the best people in the
+town in order that they should not fall into the bad company of
+boys belonging to other ships, I regret to say that they made faces
+at him behind his back, and imitated the dignified carriage of his
+head without any concealment whatever.
+
+This master of the fine art was a personage and nothing more; but,
+as I have said, there was an infinite diversity of temperament
+amongst the masters of the fine art I have known.  Some were great
+impressionists.  They impressed upon you the fear of God and
+Immensity--or, in other words, the fear of being drowned with every
+circumstance of terrific grandeur.  One may think that the locality
+of your passing away by means of suffocation in water does not
+really matter very much.  I am not so sure of that.  I am, perhaps,
+unduly sensitive, but I confess that the idea of being suddenly
+spilt into an infuriated ocean in the midst of darkness and uproar
+affected me always with a sensation of shrinking distaste.  To be
+drowned in a pond, though it might be called an ignominious fate by
+the ignorant, is yet a bright and peaceful ending in comparison
+with some other endings to one's earthly career which I have
+mentally quaked at in the intervals or even in the midst of violent
+exertions.
+
+But let that pass.  Some of the masters whose influence left a
+trace upon my character to this very day, combined a fierceness of
+conception with a certitude of execution upon the basis of just
+appreciation of means and ends which is the highest quality of the
+man of action.  And an artist is a man of action, whether he
+creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of
+a complicated situation.
+
+There were masters, too, I have known, whose very art consisted in
+avoiding every conceivable situation.  It is needless to say that
+they never did great things in their craft; but they were not to be
+despised for that.  They were modest; they understood their
+limitations.  Their own masters had not handed the sacred fire into
+the keeping of their cold and skilful hands.  One of those last I
+remember specially, now gone to his rest from that sea which his
+temperament must have made a scene of little more than a peaceful
+pursuit.  Once only did he attempt a stroke of audacity, one early
+morning, with a steady breeze, entering a crowded roadstead.  But
+he was not genuine in this display which might have been art.  He
+was thinking of his own self; he hankered after the meretricious
+glory of a showy performance.
+
+As, rounding a dark, wooded point, bathed in fresh air and
+sunshine, we opened to view a crowd of shipping at anchor lying
+half a mile ahead of us perhaps, he called me aft from my station
+on the forecastle head, and, turning over and over his binoculars
+in his brown hands, said:  "Do you see that big, heavy ship with
+white lower masts?  I am going to take up a berth between her and
+the shore.  Now do you see to it that the men jump smartly at the
+first order."
+
+I answered, "Ay, ay, sir," and verily believed that this would be a
+fine performance.  We dashed on through the fleet in magnificent
+style.  There must have been many open mouths and following eyes on
+board those ships--Dutch, English, with a sprinkling of Americans
+and a German or two--who had all hoisted their flags at eight
+o'clock as if in honour of our arrival.  It would have been a fine
+performance if it had come off, but it did not.  Through a touch of
+self-seeking that modest artist of solid merit became untrue to his
+temperament.  It was not with him art for art's sake:  it was art
+for his own sake; and a dismal failure was the penalty he paid for
+that greatest of sins.  It might have been even heavier, but, as it
+happened, we did not run our ship ashore, nor did we knock a large
+hole in the big ship whose lower masts were painted white.  But it
+is a wonder that we did not carry away the cables of both our
+anchors, for, as may be imagined, I did not stand upon the order to
+"Let go!" that came to me in a quavering, quite unknown voice from
+his trembling lips.  I let them both go with a celerity which to
+this day astonishes my memory.  No average merchantman's anchors
+have ever been let go with such miraculous smartness.  And they
+both held.  I could have kissed their rough, cold iron palms in
+gratitude if they had not been buried in slimy mud under ten
+fathoms of water.  Ultimately they brought us up with the jibboom
+of a Dutch brig poking through our spanker--nothing worse.  And a
+miss is as good as a mile.
+
+But not in art.  Afterwards the master said to me in a shy mumble,
+"She wouldn't luff up in time, somehow.  What's the matter with
+her?"  And I made no answer.
+
+Yet the answer was clear.  The ship had found out the momentary
+weakness of her man.  Of all the living creatures upon land and
+sea, it is ships alone that cannot be taken in by barren pretences,
+that will not put up with bad art from their masters.
+
+
+
+X.
+
+
+
+From the main truck of the average tall ship the horizon describes
+a circle of many miles, in which you can see another ship right
+down to her water-line; and these very eyes which follow this
+writing have counted in their time over a hundred sail becalmed, as
+if within a magic ring, not very far from the Azores--ships more or
+less tall.  There were hardly two of them heading exactly the same
+way, as if each had meditated breaking out of the enchanted circle
+at a different point of the compass.  But the spell of the calm is
+a strong magic.  The following day still saw them scattered within
+sight of each other and heading different ways; but when, at last,
+the breeze came with the darkling ripple that ran very blue on a
+pale sea, they all went in the same direction together.  For this
+was the homeward-bound fleet from the far-off ends of the earth,
+and a Falmouth fruit-schooner, the smallest of them all, was
+heading the flight.  One could have imagined her very fair, if not
+divinely tall, leaving a scent of lemons and oranges in her wake.
+
+The next day there were very few ships in sight from our mast-
+heads--seven at most, perhaps, with a few more distant specks, hull
+down, beyond the magic ring of the horizon.  The spell of the fair
+wind has a subtle power to scatter a white-winged company of ships
+looking all the same way, each with its white fillet of tumbling
+foam under the bow.  It is the calm that brings ships mysteriously
+together; it is your wind that is the great separator.
+
+The taller the ship, the further she can be seen; and her white
+tallness breathed upon by the wind first proclaims her size.  The
+tall masts holding aloft the white canvas, spread out like a snare
+for catching the invisible power of the air, emerge gradually from
+the water, sail after sail, yard after yard, growing big, till,
+under the towering structure of her machinery, you perceive the
+insignificant, tiny speck of her hull.
+
+The tall masts are the pillars supporting the balanced planes that,
+motionless and silent, catch from the air the ship's motive-power,
+as it were a gift from Heaven vouchsafed to the audacity of man;
+and it is the ship's tall spars, stripped and shorn of their white
+glory, that incline themselves before the anger of the clouded
+heaven.
+
+When they yield to a squall in a gaunt and naked submission, their
+tallness is brought best home even to the mind of a seaman.  The
+man who has looked upon his ship going over too far is made aware
+of the preposterous tallness of a ship's spars.  It seems
+impossible but that those gilt trucks which one had to tilt one's
+head back to see, now falling into the lower plane of vision, must
+perforce hit the very edge of the horizon.  Such an experience
+gives you a better impression of the loftiness of your spars than
+any amount of running aloft could do.  And yet in my time the royal
+yards of an average profitable ship were a good way up above her
+decks.
+
+No doubt a fair amount of climbing up iron ladders can be achieved
+by an active man in a ship's engine-room, but I remember moments
+when even to my supple limbs and pride of nimbleness the sailing-
+ship's machinery seemed to reach up to the very stars.
+
+For machinery it is, doing its work in perfect silence and with a
+motionless grace, that seems to hide a capricious and not always
+governable power, taking nothing away from the material stores of
+the earth.  Not for it the unerring precision of steel moved by
+white steam and living by red fire and fed with black coal.  The
+other seems to draw its strength from the very soul of the world,
+its formidable ally, held to obedience by the frailest bonds, like
+a fierce ghost captured in a snare of something even finer than
+spun silk.  For what is the array of the strongest ropes, the
+tallest spars and the stoutest canvas against the mighty breath of
+the infinite, but thistle stalks, cobwebs and gossamer?
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+
+
+Indeed, it is less than nothing, and I have seen, when the great
+soul of the world turned over with a heavy sigh, a perfectly new,
+extra-stout foresail vanish like a bit of some airy stuff much
+lighter than gossamer.  Then was the time for the tall spars to
+stand fast in the great uproar.  The machinery must do its work
+even if the soul of the world has gone mad.
+
+The modern steamship advances upon a still and overshadowed sea
+with a pulsating tremor of her frame, an occasional clang in her
+depths, as if she had an iron heart in her iron body; with a
+thudding rhythm in her progress and the regular beat of her
+propeller, heard afar in the night with an august and plodding
+sound as of the march of an inevitable future.  But in a gale, the
+silent machinery of a sailing-ship would catch not only the power,
+but the wild and exulting voice of the world's soul.  Whether she
+ran with her tall spars swinging, or breasted it with her tall
+spars lying over, there was always that wild song, deep like a
+chant, for a bass to the shrill pipe of the wind played on the sea-
+tops, with a punctuating crash, now and then, of a breaking wave.
+At times the weird effects of that invisible orchestra would get
+upon a man's nerves till he wished himself deaf.
+
+And this recollection of a personal wish, experienced upon several
+oceans, where the soul of the world has plenty of room to turn over
+with a mighty sigh, brings me to the remark that in order to take a
+proper care of a ship's spars it is just as well for a seaman to
+have nothing the matter with his ears.  Such is the intimacy with
+which a seaman had to live with his ship of yesterday that his
+senses were like her senses, that the stress upon his body made him
+judge of the strain upon the ship's masts.
+
+I had been some time at sea before I became aware of the fact that
+hearing plays a perceptible part in gauging the force of the wind.
+It was at night.  The ship was one of those iron wool-clippers that
+the Clyde had floated out in swarms upon the world during the
+seventh decade of the last century.  It was a fine period in ship-
+building, and also, I might say, a period of over-masting.  The
+spars rigged up on the narrow hulls were indeed tall then, and the
+ship of which I think, with her coloured-glass skylight ends
+bearing the motto, "Let Glasgow Flourish," was certainly one of the
+most heavily-sparred specimens.  She was built for hard driving,
+and unquestionably she got all the driving she could stand.  Our
+captain was a man famous for the quick passages he had been used to
+make in the old Tweed, a ship famous the world over for her speed.
+The Tweed had been a wooden vessel, and he brought the tradition of
+quick passages with him into the iron clipper.  I was the junior in
+her, a third mate, keeping watch with the chief officer; and it was
+just during one of the night watches in a strong, freshening breeze
+that I overheard two men in a sheltered nook of the main deck
+exchanging these informing remarks.  Said one:
+
+"Should think 'twas time some of them light sails were coming off
+her."
+
+And the other, an older man, uttered grumpily:  "No fear! not while
+the chief mate's on deck.  He's that deaf he can't tell how much
+wind there is."
+
+And, indeed, poor P-, quite young, and a smart seaman, was very
+hard of hearing.  At the same time, he had the name of being the
+very devil of a fellow for carrying on sail on a ship.  He was
+wonderfully clever at concealing his deafness, and, as to carrying
+on heavily, though he was a fearless man, I don't think that he
+ever meant to take undue risks.  I can never forget his naive sort
+of astonishment when remonstrated with for what appeared a most
+dare-devil performance.  The only person, of course, that could
+remonstrate with telling effect was our captain, himself a man of
+dare-devil tradition; and really, for me, who knew under whom I was
+serving, those were impressive scenes.  Captain S- had a great name
+for sailor-like qualities--the sort of name that compelled my
+youthful admiration.  To this day I preserve his memory, for,
+indeed, it was he in a sense who completed my training.  It was
+often a stormy process, but let that pass.  I am sure he meant
+well, and I am certain that never, not even at the time, could I
+bear him malice for his extraordinary gift of incisive criticism.
+And to hear HIM make a fuss about too much sail on the ship seemed
+one of those incredible experiences that take place only in one's
+dreams.
+
+It generally happened in this way:  Night, clouds racing overhead,
+wind howling, royals set, and the ship rushing on in the dark, an
+immense white sheet of foam level with the lee rail.  Mr. P-, in
+charge of the deck, hooked on to the windward mizzen rigging in a
+state of perfect serenity; myself, the third mate, also hooked on
+somewhere to windward of the slanting poop, in a state of the
+utmost preparedness to jump at the very first hint of some sort of
+order, but otherwise in a perfectly acquiescent state of mind.
+Suddenly, out of the companion would appear a tall, dark figure,
+bareheaded, with a short white beard of a perpendicular cut, very
+visible in the dark--Captain S-, disturbed in his reading down
+below by the frightful bounding and lurching of the ship.  Leaning
+very much against the precipitous incline of the deck, he would
+take a turn or two, perfectly silent, hang on by the compass for a
+while, take another couple of turns, and suddenly burst out:
+
+"What are you trying to do with the ship?"
+
+And Mr. P-, who was not good at catching what was shouted in the
+wind, would say interrogatively:
+
+"Yes, sir?"
+
+Then in the increasing gale of the sea there would be a little
+private ship's storm going on in which you could detect strong
+language, pronounced in a tone of passion and exculpatory
+protestations uttered with every possible inflection of injured
+innocence.
+
+"By Heavens, Mr. P-!  I used to carry on sail in my time, but--"
+
+And the rest would be lost to me in a stormy gust of wind.
+
+Then, in a lull, P-'s protesting innocence would become audible:
+
+"She seems to stand it very well."
+
+And then another burst of an indignant voice:
+
+"Any fool can carry sail on a ship--"
+
+And so on and so on, the ship meanwhile rushing on her way with a
+heavier list, a noisier splutter, a more threatening hiss of the
+white, almost blinding, sheet of foam to leeward.  For the best of
+it was that Captain S- seemed constitutionally incapable of giving
+his officers a definite order to shorten sail; and so that
+extraordinarily vague row would go on till at last it dawned upon
+them both, in some particularly alarming gust, that it was time to
+do something.  There is nothing like the fearful inclination of
+your tall spars overloaded with canvas to bring a deaf man and an
+angry one to their senses.
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+
+
+So sail did get shortened more or less in time even in that ship,
+and her tall spars never went overboard while I served in her.
+However, all the time I was with them, Captain S- and Mr. P- did
+not get on very well together.  If P- carried on "like the very
+devil" because he was too deaf to know how much wind there was,
+Captain S- (who, as I have said, seemed constitutionally incapable
+of ordering one of his officers to shorten sail) resented the
+necessity forced upon him by Mr. P-'s desperate goings on.  It was
+in Captain S-'s tradition rather to reprove his officers for not
+carrying on quite enough--in his phrase "for not taking every ounce
+of advantage of a fair wind."  But there was also a psychological
+motive that made him extremely difficult to deal with on board that
+iron clipper.  He had just come out of the marvellous Tweed, a
+ship, I have heard, heavy to look at but of phenomenal speed.  In
+the middle sixties she had beaten by a day and a half the steam
+mail-boat from Hong Kong to Singapore.  There was something
+peculiarly lucky, perhaps, in the placing of her masts--who knows?
+Officers of men-of-war used to come on board to take the exact
+dimensions of her sail-plan.  Perhaps there had been a touch of
+genius or the finger of good fortune in the fashioning of her lines
+at bow and stern.  It is impossible to say.  She was built in the
+East Indies somewhere, of teak-wood throughout, except the deck.
+She had a great sheer, high bows, and a clumsy stern.  The men who
+had seen her described her to me as "nothing much to look at."  But
+in the great Indian famine of the seventies that ship, already old
+then, made some wonderful dashes across the Gulf of Bengal with
+cargoes of rice from Rangoon to Madras.
+
+She took the secret of her speed with her, and, unsightly as she
+was, her image surely has its glorious place in the mirror of the
+old sea.
+
+The point, however, is that Captain S-, who used to say frequently,
+"She never made a decent passage after I left her," seemed to think
+that the secret of her speed lay in her famous commander.  No doubt
+the secret of many a ship's excellence does lie with the man on
+board, but it was hopeless for Captain S- to try to make his new
+iron clipper equal the feats which made the old Tweed a name of
+praise upon the lips of English-speaking seamen.  There was
+something pathetic in it, as in the endeavour of an artist in his
+old age to equal the masterpieces of his youth--for the Tweed's
+famous passages were Captain S-'s masterpieces.  It was pathetic,
+and perhaps just the least bit dangerous.  At any rate, I am glad
+that, what between Captain S-'s yearning for old triumphs and Mr.
+P-'s deafness, I have seen some memorable carrying on to make a
+passage.  And I have carried on myself upon the tall spars of that
+Clyde shipbuilder's masterpiece as I have never carried on in a
+ship before or since.
+
+The second mate falling ill during the passage, I was promoted to
+officer of the watch, alone in charge of the deck.  Thus the
+immense leverage of the ship's tall masts became a matter very near
+my own heart.  I suppose it was something of a compliment for a
+young fellow to be trusted, apparently without any supervision, by
+such a commander as Captain S-; though, as far as I can remember,
+neither the tone, nor the manner, nor yet the drift of Captain S-'s
+remarks addressed to myself did ever, by the most strained
+interpretation, imply a favourable opinion of my abilities.  And he
+was, I must say, a most uncomfortable commander to get your orders
+from at night.  If I had the watch from eight till midnight, he
+would leave the deck about nine with the words, "Don't take any
+sail off her."  Then, on the point of disappearing down the
+companion-way, he would add curtly:  "Don't carry anything away."
+I am glad to say that I never did; one night, however, I was
+caught, not quite prepared, by a sudden shift of wind.
+
+There was, of course, a good deal of noise--running about, the,
+shouts of the sailors, the thrashing of the sails--enough, in fact,
+to wake the dead.  But S- never came on deck.  When I was relieved
+by the chief mate an hour afterwards, he sent for me.  I went into
+his stateroom; he was lying on his couch wrapped up in a rug, with
+a pillow under his head.
+
+"What was the matter with you up there just now?" he asked.
+
+"Wind flew round on the lee quarter, sir," I said.
+
+"Couldn't you see the shift coming?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I thought it wasn't very far off."
+
+"Why didn't you have your courses hauled up at once, then?" he
+asked in a tone that ought to have made my blood run cold.
+
+But this was my chance, and I did not let it slip.
+
+"Well, sir," I said in an apologetic tone, "she was going eleven
+knots very nicely, and I thought she would do for another half-hour
+or so."
+
+He gazed at me darkly out of his head, lying very still on the
+white pillow, for a time.
+
+"Ah, yes, another half-hour.  That's the way ships get dismasted."
+
+And that was all I got in the way of a wigging.  I waited a little
+while and then went out, shutting carefully the door of the state-
+room after me.
+
+Well, I have loved, lived with, and left the sea without ever
+seeing a ship's tall fabric of sticks, cobwebs and gossamer go by
+the board.  Sheer good luck, no doubt.  But as to poor P-, I am
+sure that he would not have got off scot-free like this but for the
+god of gales, who called him away early from this earth, which is
+three parts ocean, and therefore a fit abode for sailors.  A few
+years afterwards I met in an Indian port a man who had served in
+the ships of the same company.  Names came up in our talk, names of
+our colleagues in the same employ, and, naturally enough, I asked
+after P-.  Had he got a command yet?  And the other man answered
+carelessly:
+
+"No; but he's provided for, anyhow.  A heavy sea took him off the
+poop in the run between New Zealand and the Horn."
+
+Thus P- passed away from amongst the tall spars of ships that he
+had tried to their utmost in many a spell of boisterous weather.
+He had shown me what carrying on meant, but he was not a man to
+learn discretion from.  He could not help his deafness.  One can
+only remember his cheery temper, his admiration for the jokes in
+Punch, his little oddities--like his strange passion for borrowing
+looking-glasses, for instance.  Each of our cabins had its own
+looking-glass screwed to the bulkhead, and what he wanted with more
+of them we never could fathom.  He asked for the loan in
+confidential tones.  Why?  Mystery.  We made various surmises.  No
+one will ever know now.  At any rate, it was a harmless
+eccentricity, and may the god of gales, who took him away so
+abruptly between New Zealand and the Horn, let his soul rest in
+some Paradise of true seamen, where no amount of carrying on will
+ever dismast a ship!
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+
+
+There has been a time when a ship's chief mate, pocket-book in hand
+and pencil behind his ear, kept one eye aloft upon his riggers and
+the other down the hatchway on the stevedores, and watched the
+disposition of his ship's cargo, knowing that even before she
+started he was already doing his best to secure for her an easy and
+quick passage.
+
+The hurry of the times, the loading and discharging organization of
+the docks, the use of hoisting machinery which works quickly and
+will not wait, the cry for prompt despatch, the very size of his
+ship, stand nowadays between the modern seaman and the thorough
+knowledge of his craft.
+
+There are profitable ships and unprofitable ships.  The profitable
+ship will carry a large load through all the hazards of the
+weather, and, when at rest, will stand up in dock and shift from
+berth to berth without ballast.  There is a point of perfection in
+a ship as a worker when she is spoken of as being able to SAIL
+without ballast.  I have never met that sort of paragon myself, but
+I have seen these paragons advertised amongst ships for sale.  Such
+excess of virtue and good-nature on the part of a ship always
+provoked my mistrust.  It is open to any man to say that his ship
+will sail without ballast; and he will say it, too, with every mark
+of profound conviction, especially if he is not going to sail in
+her himself.  The risk of advertising her as able to sail without
+ballast is not great, since the statement does not imply a warranty
+of her arriving anywhere.  Moreover, it is strictly true that most
+ships will sail without ballast for some little time before they
+turn turtle upon the crew.
+
+A shipowner loves a profitable ship; the seaman is proud of her; a
+doubt of her good looks seldom exists in his mind; but if he can
+boast of her more useful qualities it is an added satisfaction for
+his self-love.
+
+The loading of ships was once a matter of skill, judgment, and
+knowledge.  Thick books have been written about it.  "Stevens on
+Stowage" is a portly volume with the renown and weight (in its own
+world) of Coke on Littleton.  Stevens is an agreeable writer, and,
+as is the case with men of talent, his gifts adorn his sterling
+soundness.  He gives you the official teaching on the whole
+subject, is precise as to rules, mentions illustrative events,
+quotes law cases where verdicts turned upon a point of stowage.  He
+is never pedantic, and, for all his close adherence to broad
+principles, he is ready to admit that no two ships can be treated
+exactly alike.
+
+Stevedoring, which had been a skilled labour, is fast becoming a
+labour without the skill.  The modern steamship with her many holds
+is not loaded within the sailor-like meaning of the word.  She is
+filled up.  Her cargo is not stowed in any sense; it is simply
+dumped into her through six hatchways, more or less, by twelve
+winches or so, with clatter and hurry and racket and heat, in a
+cloud of steam and a mess of coal-dust.  As long as you keep her
+propeller under water and take care, say, not to fling down barrels
+of oil on top of bales of silk, or deposit an iron bridge-girder of
+five ton or so upon a bed of coffee-bags, you have done about all
+in the way of duty that the cry for prompt despatch will allow you
+to do.
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+
+
+The sailing-ship, when I knew her in her days of perfection, was a
+sensible creature.  When I say her days of perfection, I mean
+perfection of build, gear, seaworthy qualities and case of
+handling, not the perfection of speed.  That quality has departed
+with the change of building material.  No iron ship of yesterday
+ever attained the marvels of speed which the seamanship of men
+famous in their time had obtained from their wooden, copper-sheeted
+predecessors.  Everything had been done to make the iron ship
+perfect, but no wit of man had managed to devise an efficient
+coating composition to keep her bottom clean with the smooth
+cleanness of yellow metal sheeting.  After a spell of a few weeks
+at sea, an iron ship begins to lag as if she had grown tired too
+soon.  It is only her bottom that is getting foul.  A very little
+affects the speed of an iron ship which is not driven on by a
+merciless propeller.  Often it is impossible to tell what
+inconsiderate trifle puts her off her stride.  A certain
+mysteriousness hangs around the quality of speed as it was
+displayed by the old sailing-ships commanded by a competent seaman.
+In those days the speed depended upon the seaman; therefore, apart
+from the laws, rules, and regulations for the good preservation of
+his cargo, he was careful of his loading,--or what is technically
+called the trim of his ship.  Some ships sailed fast on an even
+keel, others had to be trimmed quite one foot by the stern, and I
+have heard of a ship that gave her best speed on a wind when so
+loaded as to float a couple of inches by the head.
+
+I call to mind a winter landscape in Amsterdam--a flat foreground
+of waste land, with here and there stacks of timber, like the huts
+of a camp of some very miserable tribe; the long stretch of the
+Handelskade; cold, stone-faced quays, with the snow-sprinkled
+ground and the hard, frozen water of the canal, in which were set
+ships one behind another with their frosty mooring-ropes hanging
+slack and their decks idle and deserted, because, as the master
+stevedore (a gentle, pale person, with a few golden hairs on his
+chin and a reddened nose) informed me, their cargoes were frozen-in
+up-country on barges and schuyts.  In the distance, beyond the
+waste ground, and running parallel with the line of ships, a line
+of brown, warm-toned houses seemed bowed under snow-laden roofs.
+From afar at the end of Tsar Peter Straat, issued in the frosty air
+the tinkle of bells of the horse tramcars, appearing and
+disappearing in the opening between the buildings, like little toy
+carriages harnessed with toy horses and played with by people that
+appeared no bigger than children.
+
+I was, as the French say, biting my fists with impatience for that
+cargo frozen up-country; with rage at that canal set fast, at the
+wintry and deserted aspect of all those ships that seemed to decay
+in grim depression for want of the open water.  I was chief mate,
+and very much alone.  Directly I had joined I received from my
+owners instructions to send all the ship's apprentices away on
+leave together, because in such weather there was nothing for
+anybody to do, unless to keep up a fire in the cabin stove.  That
+was attended to by a snuffy and mop-headed, inconceivably dirty,
+and weirdly toothless Dutch ship-keeper, who could hardly speak
+three words of English, but who must have had some considerable
+knowledge of the language, since he managed invariably to interpret
+in the contrary sense everything that was said to him.
+
+Notwithstanding the little iron stove, the ink froze on the swing-
+table in the cabin, and I found it more convenient to go ashore
+stumbling over the arctic waste-land and shivering in glazed
+tramcars in order to write my evening letter to my owners in a
+gorgeous cafe in the centre of the town.  It was an immense place,
+lofty and gilt, upholstered in red plush, full of electric lights
+and so thoroughly warmed that even the marble tables felt tepid to
+the touch.  The waiter who brought me my cup of coffee bore, by
+comparison with my utter isolation, the dear aspect of an intimate
+friend.  There, alone in a noisy crowd, I would write slowly a
+letter addressed to Glasgow, of which the gist would be:  There is
+no cargo, and no prospect of any coming till late spring
+apparently.  And all the time I sat there the necessity of getting
+back to the ship bore heavily on my already half-congealed spirits-
+-the shivering in glazed tramcars, the stumbling over the snow-
+sprinkled waste ground, the vision of ships frozen in a row,
+appearing vaguely like corpses of black vessels in a white world,
+so silent, so lifeless, so soulless they seemed to be.
+
+With precaution I would go up the side of my own particular corpse,
+and would feel her as cold as ice itself and as slippery under my
+feet.  My cold berth would swallow up like a chilly burial niche my
+bodily shivers and my mental excitement.  It was a cruel winter.
+The very air seemed as hard and trenchant as steel; but it would
+have taken much more than this to extinguish my sacred fire for the
+exercise of my craft.  No young man of twenty-four appointed chief
+mate for the first time in his life would have let that Dutch
+tenacious winter penetrate into his heart.  I think that in those
+days I never forgot the fact of my elevation for five consecutive
+minutes.  I fancy it kept me warm, even in my slumbers, better than
+the high pile of blankets, which positively crackled with frost as
+I threw them off in the morning.  And I would get up early for no
+reason whatever except that I was in sole charge.  The new captain
+had not been appointed yet.
+
+Almost each morning a letter from my owners would arrive, directing
+me to go to the charterers and clamour for the ship's cargo; to
+threaten them with the heaviest penalties of demurrage; to demand
+that this assortment of varied merchandise, set fast in a landscape
+of ice and windmills somewhere up-country, should be put on rail
+instantly, and fed up to the ship in regular quantities every day.
+After drinking some hot coffee, like an Arctic explorer setting off
+on a sledge journey towards the North Pole, I would go ashore and
+roll shivering in a tramcar into the very heart of the town, past
+clean-faced houses, past thousands of brass knockers upon a
+thousand painted doors glimmering behind rows of trees of the
+pavement species, leafless, gaunt, seemingly dead for ever.
+
+That part of the expedition was easy enough, though the horses were
+painfully glistening with icicles, and the aspect of the tram-
+conductors' faces presented a repulsive blending of crimson and
+purple.  But as to frightening or bullying, or even wheedling some
+sort of answer out of Mr. Hudig, that was another matter
+altogether.  He was a big, swarthy Netherlander, with black
+moustaches and a bold glance.  He always began by shoving me into a
+chair before I had time to open my mouth, gave me cordially a large
+cigar, and in excellent English would start to talk everlastingly
+about the phenomenal severity of the weather.  It was impossible to
+threaten a man who, though he possessed the language perfectly,
+seemed incapable of understanding any phrase pronounced in a tone
+of remonstrance or discontent.  As to quarrelling with him, it
+would have been stupid.  The weather was too bitter for that.  His
+office was so warm, his fire so bright, his sides shook so heartily
+with laughter, that I experienced always a great difficulty in
+making up my mind to reach for my hat.
+
+At last the cargo did come.  At first it came dribbling in by rail
+in trucks, till the thaw set in; and then fast, in a multitude of
+barges, with a great rush of unbound waters.  The gentle master
+stevedore had his hands very full at last; and the chief mate
+became worried in his mind as to the proper distribution of the
+weight of his first cargo in a ship he did not personally know
+before.
+
+Ships do want humouring.  They want humouring in handling; and if
+you mean to handle them well, they must have been humoured in the
+distribution of the weight which you ask them to carry through the
+good and evil fortune of a passage.  Your ship is a tender
+creature, whose idiosyncrasies must be attended to if you mean her
+to come with credit to herself and you through the rough-and-tumble
+of her life.
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+
+
+So seemed to think the new captain, who arrived the day after we
+had finished loading, on the very eve of the day of sailing.  I
+first beheld him on the quay, a complete stranger to me, obviously
+not a Hollander, in a black bowler and a short drab overcoat,
+ridiculously out of tone with the winter aspect of the waste-lands,
+bordered by the brown fronts of houses with their roofs dripping
+with melting snow.
+
+This stranger was walking up and down absorbed in the marked
+contemplation of the ship's fore and aft trim; but when I saw him
+squat on his heels in the slush at the very edge of the quay to
+peer at the draught of water under her counter, I said to myself,
+"This is the captain."  And presently I descried his luggage coming
+along--a real sailor's chest, carried by means of rope-beckets
+between two men, with a couple of leather portmanteaus and a roll
+of charts sheeted in canvas piled upon the lid.  The sudden,
+spontaneous agility with which he bounded aboard right off the rail
+afforded me the first glimpse of his real character.  Without
+further preliminaries than a friendly nod, he addressed me:  "You
+have got her pretty well in her fore and aft trim.  Now, what about
+your weights?"
+
+I told him I had managed to keep the weight sufficiently well up,
+as I thought, one-third of the whole being in the upper part "above
+the beams," as the technical expression has it.  He whistled
+"Phew!" scrutinizing me from head to foot.  A sort of smiling
+vexation was visible on his ruddy face.
+
+"Well, we shall have a lively time of it this passage, I bet," he
+said.
+
+He knew.  It turned out he had been chief mate of her for the two
+preceding voyages; and I was already familiar with his handwriting
+in the old log-books I had been perusing in my cabin with a natural
+curiosity, looking up the records of my new ship's luck, of her
+behaviour, of the good times she had had, and of the troubles she
+had escaped.
+
+He was right in his prophecy.  On our passage from Amsterdam to
+Samarang with a general cargo, of which, alas! only one-third in
+weight was stowed "above the beams," we had a lively time of it.
+It was lively, but not joyful.  There was not even a single moment
+of comfort in it, because no seaman can feel comfortable in body or
+mind when he has made his ship uneasy.
+
+To travel along with a cranky ship for ninety days or so is no
+doubt a nerve-trying experience; but in this case what was wrong
+with our craft was this:  that by my system of loading she had been
+made much too stable.
+
+Neither before nor since have I felt a ship roll so abruptly, so
+violently, so heavily.  Once she began, you felt that she would
+never stop, and this hopeless sensation, characterizing the motion
+of ships whose centre of gravity is brought down too low in
+loading, made everyone on board weary of keeping on his feet.  I
+remember once over-hearing one of the hands say:  "By Heavens,
+Jack!  I feel as if I didn't mind how soon I let myself go, and let
+the blamed hooker knock my brains out if she likes."  The captain
+used to remark frequently:  "Ah, yes; I dare say one-third weight
+above beams would have been quite enough for most ships.  But then,
+you see, there's no two of them alike on the seas, and she's an
+uncommonly ticklish jade to load."
+
+Down south, running before the gales of high latitudes, she made
+our life a burden to us.  There were days when nothing would keep
+even on the swing-tables, when there was no position where you
+could fix yourself so as not to feel a constant strain upon all the
+muscles of your body.  She rolled and rolled with an awful
+dislodging jerk and that dizzily fast sweep of her masts on every
+swing.  It was a wonder that the men sent aloft were not flung off
+the yards, the yards not flung off the masts, the masts not flung
+overboard.  The captain in his armchair, holding on grimly at the
+head of the table, with the soup-tureen rolling on one side of the
+cabin and the steward sprawling on the other, would observe,
+looking at me:  "That's your one-third above the beams.  The only
+thing that surprises me is that the sticks have stuck to her all
+this time."
+
+Ultimately some of the minor spars did go--nothing important:
+spanker-booms and such-like--because at times the frightful impetus
+of her rolling would part a fourfold tackle of new three-inch
+Manilla line as if it were weaker than pack-thread.
+
+It was only poetic justice that the chief mate who had made a
+mistake--perhaps a half-excusable one--about the distribution of
+his ship's cargo should pay the penalty.  A piece of one of the
+minor spars that did carry away flew against the chief mate's back,
+and sent him sliding on his face for quite a considerable distance
+along the main deck.  Thereupon followed various and unpleasant
+consequences of a physical order--"queer symptoms," as the captain,
+who treated them, used to say; inexplicable periods of
+powerlessness, sudden accesses of mysterious pain; and the patient
+agreed fully with the regretful mutters of his very attentive
+captain wishing that it had been a straightforward broken leg.
+Even the Dutch doctor who took the case up in Samarang offered no
+scientific explanation.  All he said was:  "Ah, friend, you are
+young yet; it may be very serious for your whole life.  You must
+leave your ship; you must quite silent be for three months--quite
+silent."
+
+Of course, he meant the chief mate to keep quiet--to lay up, as a
+matter of fact.  His manner was impressive enough, if his English
+was childishly imperfect when compared with the fluency of Mr.
+Hudig, the figure at the other end of that passage, and memorable
+enough in its way.  In a great airy ward of a Far Eastern hospital,
+lying on my back, I had plenty of leisure to remember the dreadful
+cold and snow of Amsterdam, while looking at the fronds of the
+palm-trees tossing and rustling at the height of the window.  I
+could remember the elated feeling and the soul-gripping cold of
+those tramway journeys taken into town to put what in diplomatic
+language is called pressure upon the good Hudig, with his warm
+fire, his armchair, his big cigar, and the never-failing suggestion
+in his good-natured voice:  "I suppose in the end it is you they
+will appoint captain before the ship sails?"  It may have been his
+extreme good-nature, the serious, unsmiling good-nature of a fat,
+swarthy man with coal-black moustache and steady eyes; but he might
+have been a bit of a diplomatist, too.  His enticing suggestions I
+used to repel modestly by the assurance that it was extremely
+unlikely, as I had not enough experience.  "You know very well how
+to go about business matters," he used to say, with a sort of
+affected moodiness clouding his serene round face.  I wonder
+whether he ever laughed to himself after I had left the office.  I
+dare say he never did, because I understand that diplomatists, in
+and out of the career, take themselves and their tricks with an
+exemplary seriousness.
+
+But he had nearly persuaded me that I was fit in every way to be
+trusted with a command.  There came three months of mental worry,
+hard rolling, remorse, and physical pain to drive home the lesson
+of insufficient experience.
+
+Yes, your ship wants to be humoured with knowledge.  You must treat
+with an understanding consideration the mysteries of her feminine
+nature, and then she will stand by you faithfully in the unceasing
+struggle with forces wherein defeat is no shame.  It is a serious
+relation, that in which a man stands to his ship.  She has her
+rights as though she could breathe and speak; and, indeed, there
+are ships that, for the right man, will do anything but speak, as
+the saying goes.
+
+A ship is not a slave.  You must make her easy in a seaway, you
+must never forget that you owe her the fullest share of your
+thought, of your skill, of your self-love.  If you remember that
+obligation, naturally and without effort, as if it were an
+instinctive feeling of your inner life, she will sail, stay, run
+for you as long as she is able, or, like a sea-bird going to rest
+upon the angry waves, she will lay out the heaviest gale that ever
+made you doubt living long enough to see another sunrise.
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+
+
+Often I turn with melancholy eagerness to the space reserved in the
+newspapers under the general heading of "Shipping Intelligence."  I
+meet there the names of ships I have known.  Every year some of
+these names disappear--the names of old friends.  "Tempi passati!"
+
+The different divisions of that kind of news are set down in their
+order, which varies but slightly in its arrangement of concise
+headlines.  And first comes "Speakings"--reports of ships met and
+signalled at sea, name, port, where from, where bound for, so many
+days out, ending frequently with the words "All well."  Then come
+"Wrecks and Casualties"--a longish array of paragraphs, unless the
+weather has been fair and clear, and friendly to ships all over the
+world.
+
+On some days there appears the heading "Overdue"--an ominous threat
+of loss and sorrow trembling yet in the balance of fate.  There is
+something sinister to a seaman in the very grouping of the letters
+which form this word, clear in its meaning, and seldom threatening
+in vain.
+
+Only a very few days more--appallingly few to the hearts which had
+set themselves bravely to hope against hope--three weeks, a month
+later, perhaps, the name of ships under the blight of the "Overdue"
+heading shall appear again in the column of "Shipping
+Intelligence," but under the final declaration of "Missing."
+
+"The ship, or barque, or brig So-and-so, bound from such a port,
+with such and such cargo, for such another port, having left at
+such and such a date, last spoken at sea on such a day, and never
+having been heard of since, was posted to-day as missing."  Such in
+its strictly official eloquence is the form of funeral orations on
+ships that, perhaps wearied with a long struggle, or in some
+unguarded moment that may come to the readiest of us, had let
+themselves be overwhelmed by a sudden blow from the enemy.
+
+Who can say?  Perhaps the men she carried had asked her to do too
+much, had stretched beyond breaking-point the enduring faithfulness
+which seems wrought and hammered into that assemblage of iron ribs
+and plating, of wood and steel and canvas and wire, which goes to
+the making of a ship--a complete creation endowed with character,
+individuality, qualities and defects, by men whose hands launch her
+upon the water, and that other men shall learn to know with an
+intimacy surpassing the intimacy of man with man, to love with a
+love nearly as great as that of man for woman, and often as blind
+in its infatuated disregard of defects.
+
+There are ships which bear a bad name, but I have yet to meet one
+whose crew for the time being failed to stand up angrily for her
+against every criticism.  One ship which I call to mind now had the
+reputation of killing somebody every voyage she made.  This was no
+calumny, and yet I remember well, somewhere far back in the late
+seventies, that the crew of that ship were, if anything, rather
+proud of her evil fame, as if they had been an utterly corrupt lot
+of desperadoes glorying in their association with an atrocious
+creature.  We, belonging to other vessels moored all about the
+Circular Quay in Sydney, used to shake our heads at her with a
+great sense of the unblemished virtue of our own well-loved ships.
+
+I shall not pronounce her name.  She is "missing" now, after a
+sinister but, from the point of view of her owners, a useful career
+extending over many years, and, I should say, across every ocean of
+our globe.  Having killed a man for every voyage, and perhaps
+rendered more misanthropic by the infirmities that come with years
+upon a ship, she had made up her mind to kill all hands at once
+before leaving the scene of her exploits.  A fitting end, this, to
+a life of usefulness and crime--in a last outburst of an evil
+passion supremely satisfied on some wild night, perhaps, to the
+applauding clamour of wind and wave.
+
+How did she do it?  In the word "missing" there is a horrible depth
+of doubt and speculation.  Did she go quickly from under the men's
+feet, or did she resist to the end, letting the sea batter her to
+pieces, start her butts, wrench her frame, load her with an
+increasing weight of salt water, and, dismasted, unmanageable,
+rolling heavily, her boats gone, her decks swept, had she wearied
+her men half to death with the unceasing labour at the pumps before
+she sank with them like a stone?
+
+However, such a case must be rare.  I imagine a raft of some sort
+could always be contrived; and, even if it saved no one, it would
+float on and be picked up, perhaps conveying some hint of the
+vanished name.  Then that ship would not be, properly speaking,
+missing.  She would be "lost with all hands," and in that
+distinction there is a subtle difference--less horror and a less
+appalling darkness.
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+
+
+The unholy fascination of dread dwells in the thought of the last
+moments of a ship reported as "missing" in the columns of the
+Shipping Gazette.  Nothing of her ever comes to light--no grating,
+no lifebuoy, no piece of boat or branded oar--to give a hint of the
+place and date of her sudden end.  The Shipping Gazette does not
+even call her "lost with all hands."  She remains simply "missing";
+she has disappeared enigmatically into a mystery of fate as big as
+the world, where your imagination of a brother-sailor, of a fellow-
+servant and lover of ships, may range unchecked.
+
+And yet sometimes one gets a hint of what the last scene may be
+like in the life of a ship and her crew, which resembles a drama in
+its struggle against a great force bearing it up, formless,
+ungraspable, chaotic and mysterious, as fate.
+
+It was on a gray afternoon in the lull of a three days' gale that
+had left the Southern Ocean tumbling heavily upon our ship, under a
+sky hung with rags of clouds that seemed to have been cut and
+hacked by the keen edge of a sou'-west gale.
+
+Our craft, a Clyde-built barque of 1,000 tons, rolled so heavily
+that something aloft had carried away.  No matter what the damage
+was, but it was serious enough to induce me to go aloft myself with
+a couple of hands and the carpenter to see the temporary repairs
+properly done.
+
+Sometimes we had to drop everything and cling with both hands to
+the swaying spars, holding our breath in fear of a terribly heavy
+roll.  And, wallowing as if she meant to turn over with us, the
+barque, her decks full of water, her gear flying in bights, ran at
+some ten knots an hour.  We had been driven far south--much farther
+that way than we had meant to go; and suddenly, up there in the
+slings of the foreyard, in the midst of our work, I felt my
+shoulder gripped with such force in the carpenter's powerful paw
+that I positively yelled with unexpected pain.  The man's eyes
+stared close in my face, and he shouted, "Look, sir! look!  What's
+this?" pointing ahead with his other hand.
+
+At first I saw nothing.  The sea was one empty wilderness of black
+and white hills.  Suddenly, half-concealed in the tumult of the
+foaming rollers I made out awash, something enormous, rising and
+falling--something spread out like a burst of foam, but with a more
+bluish, more solid look.
+
+It was a piece of an ice-floe melted down to a fragment, but still
+big enough to sink a ship, and floating lower than any raft, right
+in our way, as if ambushed among the waves with murderous intent.
+There was no time to get down on deck.  I shouted from aloft till
+my head was ready to split.  I was heard aft, and we managed to
+clear the sunken floe which had come all the way from the Southern
+ice-cap to have a try at our unsuspecting lives.  Had it been an
+hour later, nothing could have saved the ship, for no eye could
+have made out in the dusk that pale piece of ice swept over by the
+white-crested waves.
+
+And as we stood near the taffrail side by side, my captain and I,
+looking at it, hardly discernible already, but still quite close-to
+on our quarter, he remarked in a meditative tone:
+
+"But for the turn of that wheel just in time, there would have been
+another case of a 'missing' ship."
+
+Nobody ever comes back from a "missing" ship to tell how hard was
+the death of the craft, and how sudden and overwhelming the last
+anguish of her men.  Nobody can say with what thoughts, with what
+regrets, with what words on their lips they died.  But there is
+something fine in the sudden passing away of these hearts from the
+extremity of struggle and stress and tremendous uproar--from the
+vast, unrestful rage of the surface to the profound peace of the
+depths, sleeping untroubled since the beginning of ages.
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+
+
+But if the word "missing" brings all hope to an end and settles the
+loss of the underwriters, the word "overdue" confirms the fears
+already born in many homes ashore, and opens the door of
+speculation in the market of risks.
+
+Maritime risks, be it understood.  There is a class of optimists
+ready to reinsure an "overdue" ship at a heavy premium.  But
+nothing can insure the hearts on shore against the bitterness of
+waiting for the worst.
+
+For if a "missing" ship has never turned up within the memory of
+seamen of my generation, the name of an "overdue" ship, trembling
+as it were on the edge of the fatal heading, has been known to
+appear as "arrived."
+
+It must blaze up, indeed, with a great brilliance the dull
+printer's ink expended on the assemblage of the few letters that
+form the ship's name to the anxious eyes scanning the page in fear
+and trembling.  It is like the message of reprieve from the
+sentence of sorrow suspended over many a home, even if some of the
+men in her have been the most homeless mortals that you may find
+among the wanderers of the sea.
+
+The reinsurer, the optimist of ill-luck and disaster, slaps his
+pocket with satisfaction.  The underwriter, who had been trying to
+minimize the amount of impending loss, regrets his premature
+pessimism.  The ship has been stauncher, the skies more merciful,
+the seas less angry, or perhaps the men on board of a finer temper
+than he has been willing to take for granted.
+
+"The ship So-and-so, bound to such a port, and posted as 'overdue,'
+has been reported yesterday as having arrived safely at her
+destination."
+
+Thus run the official words of the reprieve addressed to the hearts
+ashore lying under a heavy sentence.  And they come swiftly from
+the other side of the earth, over wires and cables, for your
+electric telegraph is a great alleviator of anxiety.  Details, of
+course, shall follow.  And they may unfold a tale of narrow escape,
+of steady ill-luck, of high winds and heavy weather, of ice, of
+interminable calms or endless head-gales; a tale of difficulties
+overcome, of adversity defied by a small knot of men upon the great
+loneliness of the sea; a tale of resource, of courage--of
+helplessness, perhaps.
+
+Of all ships disabled at sea, a steamer who has lost her propeller
+is the most helpless.  And if she drifts into an unpopulated part
+of the ocean she may soon become overdue.  The menace of the
+"overdue" and the finality of "missing" come very quickly to
+steamers whose life, fed on coals and breathing the black breath of
+smoke into the air, goes on in disregard of wind and wave.  Such a
+one, a big steamship, too, whose working life had been a record of
+faithful keeping time from land to land, in disregard of wind and
+sea, once lost her propeller down south, on her passage out to New
+Zealand.
+
+It was the wintry, murky time of cold gales and heavy seas.  With
+the snapping of her tail-shaft her life seemed suddenly to depart
+from her big body, and from a stubborn, arrogant existence she
+passed all at once into the passive state of a drifting log.  A
+ship sick with her own weakness has not the pathos of a ship
+vanquished in a battle with the elements, wherein consists the
+inner drama of her life.  No seaman can look without compassion
+upon a disabled ship, but to look at a sailing-vessel with her
+lofty spars gone is to look upon a defeated but indomitable
+warrior.  There is defiance in the remaining stumps of her masts,
+raised up like maimed limbs against the menacing scowl of a stormy
+sky; there is high courage in the upward sweep of her lines towards
+the bow; and as soon as, on a hastily-rigged spar, a strip of
+canvas is shown to the wind to keep her head to sea, she faces the
+waves again with an unsubdued courage.
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+
+
+The efficiency of a steamship consists not so much in her courage
+as in the power she carries within herself.  It beats and throbs
+like a pulsating heart within her iron ribs, and when it stops, the
+steamer, whose life is not so much a contest as the disdainful
+ignoring of the sea, sickens and dies upon the waves.  The sailing-
+ship, with her unthrobbing body, seemed to lead mysteriously a sort
+of unearthly existence, bordering upon the magic of the invisible
+forces, sustained by the inspiration of life-giving and death-
+dealing winds.
+
+So that big steamer, dying by a sudden stroke, drifted, an unwieldy
+corpse, away from the track of other ships.  And she would have
+been posted really as "overdue," or maybe as "missing," had she not
+been sighted in a snowstorm, vaguely, like a strange rolling
+island, by a whaler going north from her Polar cruising ground.
+There was plenty of food on board, and I don't know whether the
+nerves of her passengers were at all affected by anything else than
+the sense of interminable boredom or the vague fear of that unusual
+situation.  Does a passenger ever feel the life of the ship in
+which he is being carried like a sort of honoured bale of highly
+sensitive goods?  For a man who has never been a passenger it is
+impossible to say.  But I know that there is no harder trial for a
+seaman than to feel a dead ship under his feet.
+
+There is no mistaking that sensation, so dismal, so tormenting and
+so subtle, so full of unhappiness and unrest.  I could imagine no
+worse eternal punishment for evil seamen who die unrepentant upon
+the earthly sea than that their souls should be condemned to man
+the ghosts of disabled ships, drifting for ever across a ghostly
+and tempestuous ocean.
+
+She must have looked ghostly enough, that broken-down steamer,
+rolling in that snowstorm--a dark apparition in a world of white
+snowflakes to the staring eyes of that whaler's crew.  Evidently
+they didn't believe in ghosts, for on arrival into port her captain
+unromantically reported having sighted a disabled steamer in
+latitude somewhere about 50 degrees S. and a longitude still more
+uncertain.  Other steamers came out to look for her, and ultimately
+towed her away from the cold edge of the world into a harbour with
+docks and workshops, where, with many blows of hammers, her
+pulsating heart of steel was set going again to go forth presently
+in the renewed pride of its strength, fed on fire and water,
+breathing black smoke into the air, pulsating, throbbing,
+shouldering its arrogant way against the great rollers in blind
+disdain of winds and sea.
+
+The track she had made when drifting while her heart stood still
+within her iron ribs looked like a tangled thread on the white
+paper of the chart.  It was shown to me by a friend, her second
+officer.  In that surprising tangle there were words in minute
+letters--"gales," "thick fog," "ice"--written by him here and there
+as memoranda of the weather.  She had interminably turned upon her
+tracks, she had crossed and recrossed her haphazard path till it
+resembled nothing so much as a puzzling maze of pencilled lines
+without a meaning.  But in that maze there lurked all the romance
+of the "overdue" and a menacing hint of "missing."
+
+"We had three weeks of it," said my friend, "just think of that!"
+
+"How did you feel about it?" I asked.
+
+He waved his hand as much as to say:  It's all in the day's work.
+But then, abruptly, as if making up his mind:
+
+"I'll tell you.  Towards the last I used to shut myself up in my
+berth and cry."
+
+"Cry?"
+
+"Shed tears," he explained briefly, and rolled up the chart.
+
+I can answer for it, he was a good man--as good as ever stepped
+upon a ship's deck--but he could not bear the feeling of a dead
+ship under his feet:  the sickly, disheartening feeling which the
+men of some "overdue" ships that come into harbour at last under a
+jury-rig must have felt, combated, and overcome in the faithful
+discharge of their duty.
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+
+
+It is difficult for a seaman to believe that his stranded ship does
+not feel as unhappy at the unnatural predicament of having no water
+under her keel as he is himself at feeling her stranded.
+
+Stranding is, indeed, the reverse of sinking.  The sea does not
+close upon the water-logged hull with a sunny ripple, or maybe with
+the angry rush of a curling wave, erasing her name from the roll of
+living ships.  No.  It is as if an invisible hand had been
+stealthily uplifted from the bottom to catch hold of her keel as it
+glides through the water.
+
+More than any other event does stranding bring to the sailor a
+sense of utter and dismal failure.  There are strandings and
+strandings, but I am safe to say that 90 per cent. of them are
+occasions in which a sailor, without dishonour, may well wish
+himself dead; and I have no doubt that of those who had the
+experience of their ship taking the ground, 90 per cent. did
+actually for five seconds or so wish themselves dead.
+
+"Taking the ground" is the professional expression for a ship that
+is stranded in gentle circumstances.  But the feeling is more as if
+the ground had taken hold of her.  It is for those on her deck a
+surprising sensation.  It is as if your feet had been caught in an
+imponderable snare; you feel the balance of your body threatened,
+and the steady poise of your mind is destroyed at once.  This
+sensation lasts only a second, for even while you stagger something
+seems to turn over in your head, bringing uppermost the mental
+exclamation, full of astonishment and dismay, "By Jove! she's on
+the ground!"
+
+And that is very terrible.  After all, the only mission of a
+seaman's calling is to keep ships' keels off the ground.  Thus the
+moment of her stranding takes away from him every excuse for his
+continued existence.  To keep ships afloat is his business; it is
+his trust; it is the effective formula of the bottom of all these
+vague impulses, dreams, and illusions that go to the making up of a
+boy's vocation.  The grip of the land upon the keel of your ship,
+even if nothing worse comes of it than the wear and tear of tackle
+and the loss of time, remains in a seaman's memory an indelibly
+fixed taste of disaster.
+
+"Stranded" within the meaning of this paper stands for a more or
+less excusable mistake.  A ship may be "driven ashore" by stress of
+weather.  It is a catastrophe, a defeat.  To be "run ashore" has
+the littleness, poignancy, and bitterness of human error.
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+
+
+That is why your "strandings" are for the most part so unexpected.
+In fact, they are all unexpected, except those heralded by some
+short glimpse of the danger, full of agitation and excitement, like
+an awakening from a dream of incredible folly.
+
+The land suddenly at night looms up right over your bows, or
+perhaps the cry of "Broken water ahead!" is raised, and some long
+mistake, some complicated edifice of self-delusion, over-
+confidence, and wrong reasoning is brought down in a fatal shock,
+and the heart-searing experience of your ship's keel scraping and
+scrunching over, say, a coral reef.  It is a sound, for its size,
+far more terrific to your soul than that of a world coming
+violently to an end.  But out of that chaos your belief in your own
+prudence and sagacity reasserts itself.  You ask yourself, Where on
+earth did I get to?  How on earth did I get there? with a
+conviction that it could not be your own act, that there has been
+at work some mysterious conspiracy of accident; that the charts are
+all wrong, and if the charts are not wrong, that land and sea have
+changed their places; that your misfortune shall for ever remain
+inexplicable, since you have lived always with the sense of your
+trust, the last thing on closing your eyes, the first on opening
+them, as if your mind had kept firm hold of your responsibility
+during the hours of sleep.
+
+You contemplate mentally your mischance, till little by little your
+mood changes, cold doubt steals into the very marrow of your bones,
+you see the inexplicable fact in another light.  That is the time
+when you ask yourself, How on earth could I have been fool enough
+to get there?  And you are ready to renounce all belief in your
+good sense, in your knowledge, in your fidelity, in what you
+thought till then was the best in you, giving you the daily bread
+of life and the moral support of other men's confidence.
+
+The ship is lost or not lost.  Once stranded, you have to do your
+best by her.  She may be saved by your efforts, by your resource
+and fortitude bearing up against the heavy weight of guilt and
+failure.  And there are justifiable strandings in fogs, on
+uncharted seas, on dangerous shores, through treacherous tides.
+But, saved or not saved, there remains with her commander a
+distinct sense of loss, a flavour in the mouth of the real, abiding
+danger that lurks in all the forms of human existence.  It is an
+acquisition, too, that feeling.  A man may be the better for it,
+but he will not be the same.  Damocles has seen the sword suspended
+by a hair over his head, and though a good man need not be made
+less valuable by such a knowledge, the feast shall not henceforth
+have the same flavour.
+
+Years ago I was concerned as chief mate in a case of stranding
+which was not fatal to the ship.  We went to work for ten hours on
+end, laying out anchors in readiness to heave off at high water.
+While I was still busy about the decks forward I heard the steward
+at my elbow saying:  "The captain asks whether you mean to come in,
+sir, and have something to eat to-day."
+
+I went into the cuddy.  My captain sat at the head of the table
+like a statue.  There was a strange motionlessness of everything in
+that pretty little cabin.  The swing-table which for seventy odd
+days had been always on the move, if ever so little, hung quite
+still above the soup-tureen.  Nothing could have altered the rich
+colour of my commander's complexion, laid on generously by wind and
+sea; but between the two tufts of fair hair above his ears, his
+skull, generally suffused with the hue of blood, shone dead white,
+like a dome of ivory.  And he looked strangely untidy.  I perceived
+he had not shaved himself that day; and yet the wildest motion of
+the ship in the most stormy latitudes we had passed through, never
+made him miss one single morning ever since we left the Channel.
+The fact must be that a commander cannot possibly shave himself
+when his ship is aground.  I have commanded ships myself, but I
+don't know; I have never tried to shave in my life.
+
+He did not offer to help me or himself till I had coughed markedly
+several times.  I talked to him professionally in a cheery tone,
+and ended with the confident assertion:
+
+"We shall get her off before midnight, sir."
+
+He smiled faintly without looking up, and muttered as if to
+himself:
+
+"Yes, yes; the captain put the ship ashore and we got her off."
+
+Then, raising his head, he attacked grumpily the steward, a lanky,
+anxious youth with a long, pale face and two big front teeth.
+
+"What makes this soup so bitter?  I am surprised the mate can
+swallow the beastly stuff.  I'm sure the cook's ladled some salt
+water into it by mistake."
+
+The charge was so outrageous that the steward for all answer only
+dropped his eyelids bashfully.
+
+There was nothing the matter with the soup.  I had a second
+helping.  My heart was warm with hours of hard work at the head of
+a willing crew.  I was elated with having handled heavy anchors,
+cables, boats without the slightest hitch; pleased with having laid
+out scientifically bower, stream, and kedge exactly where I
+believed they would do most good.  On that occasion the bitter
+taste of a stranding was not for my mouth.  That experience came
+later, and it was only then that I understood the loneliness of the
+man in charge.
+
+It's the captain who puts the ship ashore; it's we who get her off.
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+
+
+It seems to me that no man born and truthful to himself could
+declare that he ever saw the sea looking young as the earth looks
+young in spring.  But some of us, regarding the ocean with
+understanding and affection, have seen it looking old, as if the
+immemorial ages had been stirred up from the undisturbed bottom of
+ooze.  For it is a gale of wind that makes the sea look old.
+
+From a distance of years, looking at the remembered aspects of the
+storms lived through, it is that impression which disengages itself
+clearly from the great body of impressions left by many years of
+intimate contact.
+
+If you would know the age of the earth, look upon the sea in a
+storm.  The grayness of the whole immense surface, the wind furrows
+upon the faces of the waves, the great masses of foam, tossed about
+and waving, like matted white locks, give to the sea in a gale an
+appearance of hoary age, lustreless, dull, without gleams, as
+though it had been created before light itself.
+
+Looking back after much love and much trouble, the instinct of
+primitive man, who seeks to personify the forces of Nature for his
+affection and for his fear, is awakened again in the breast of one
+civilized beyond that stage even in his infancy.  One seems to have
+known gales as enemies, and even as enemies one embraces them in
+that affectionate regret which clings to the past.
+
+Gales have their personalities, and, after all, perhaps it is not
+strange; for, when all is said and done, they are adversaries whose
+wiles you must defeat, whose violence you must resist, and yet with
+whom you must live in the intimacies of nights and days.
+
+Here speaks the man of masts and sails, to whom the sea is not a
+navigable element, but an intimate companion.  The length of
+passages, the growing sense of solitude, the close dependence upon
+the very forces that, friendly to-day, without changing their
+nature, by the mere putting forth of their might, become dangerous
+to-morrow, make for that sense of fellowship which modern seamen,
+good men as they are, cannot hope to know.  And, besides, your
+modern ship which is a steamship makes her passages on other
+principles than yielding to the weather and humouring the sea.  She
+receives smashing blows, but she advances; it is a slogging fight,
+and not a scientific campaign.  The machinery, the steel, the fire,
+the steam, have stepped in between the man and the sea.  A modern
+fleet of ships does not so much make use of the sea as exploit a
+highway.  The modern ship is not the sport of the waves.  Let us
+say that each of her voyages is a triumphant progress; and yet it
+is a question whether it is not a more subtle and more human
+triumph to be the sport of the waves and yet survive, achieving
+your end.
+
+In his own time a man is always very modern.  Whether the seamen of
+three hundred years hence will have the faculty of sympathy it is
+impossible to say.  An incorrigible mankind hardens its heart in
+the progress of its own perfectability.  How will they feel on
+seeing the illustrations to the sea novels of our day, or of our
+yesterday?  It is impossible to guess.  But the seaman of the last
+generation, brought into sympathy with the caravels of ancient time
+by his sailing-ship, their lineal descendant, cannot look upon
+those lumbering forms navigating the naive seas of ancient woodcuts
+without a feeling of surprise, of affectionate derision, envy, and
+admiration.  For those things, whose unmanageableness, even when
+represented on paper, makes one gasp with a sort of amused horror,
+were manned by men who are his direct professional ancestors.
+
+No; the seamen of three hundred years hence will probably be
+neither touched nor moved to derision, affection, or admiration.
+They will glance at the photogravures of our nearly defunct
+sailing-ships with a cold, inquisitive and indifferent eye.  Our
+ships of yesterday will stand to their ships as no lineal
+ancestors, but as mere predecessors whose course will have been run
+and the race extinct.  Whatever craft he handles with skill, the
+seaman of the future shall be, not our descendant, but only our
+successor.
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+
+
+And so much depends upon the craft which, made by man, is one with
+man, that the sea shall wear for him another aspect.  I remember
+once seeing the commander--officially the master, by courtesy the
+captain--of a fine iron ship of the old wool fleet shaking his head
+at a very pretty brigantine.  She was bound the other way.  She was
+a taut, trim, neat little craft, extremely well kept; and on that
+serene evening when we passed her close she looked the embodiment
+of coquettish comfort on the sea.  It was somewhere near the Cape--
+THE Cape being, of course, the Cape of Good Hope, the Cape of
+Storms of its Portuguese discoverer.  And whether it is that the
+word "storm" should not be pronounced upon the sea where the storms
+dwell thickly, or because men are shy of confessing their good
+hopes, it has become the nameless cape--the Cape tout court.  The
+other great cape of the world, strangely enough, is seldom if ever
+called a cape.  We say, "a voyage round the Horn"; "we rounded the
+Horn"; "we got a frightful battering off the Horn"; but rarely
+"Cape Horn," and, indeed, with some reason, for Cape Horn is as
+much an island as a cape.  The third stormy cape of the world,
+which is the Leeuwin, receives generally its full name, as if to
+console its second-rate dignity.  These are the capes that look
+upon the gales.
+
+The little brigantine, then, had doubled the Cape.  Perhaps she was
+coming from Port Elizabeth, from East London--who knows?  It was
+many years ago, but I remember well the captain of the wool-clipper
+nodding at her with the words, "Fancy having to go about the sea in
+a thing like that!"
+
+He was a man brought up in big deep-water ships, and the size of
+the craft under his feet was a part of his conception of the sea.
+His own ship was certainly big as ships went then.  He may have
+thought of the size of his cabin, or--unconsciously, perhaps--have
+conjured up a vision of a vessel so small tossing amongst the great
+seas.  I didn't inquire, and to a young second mate the captain of
+the little pretty brigantine, sitting astride a camp stool with his
+chin resting on his hands that were crossed upon the rail, might
+have appeared a minor king amongst men.  We passed her within
+earshot, without a hail, reading each other's names with the naked
+eye.
+
+Some years later, the second mate, the recipient of that almost
+involuntary mutter, could have told his captain that a man brought
+up in big ships may yet take a peculiar delight in what we should
+both then have called a small craft.  Probably the captain of the
+big ship would not have understood very well.  His answer would
+have been a gruff, "Give me size," as I heard another man reply to
+a remark praising the handiness of a small vessel.  It was not a
+love of the grandiose or the prestige attached to the command of
+great tonnage, for he continued, with an air of disgust and
+contempt, "Why, you get flung out of your bunk as likely as not in
+any sort of heavy weather."
+
+I don't know.  I remember a few nights in my lifetime, and in a big
+ship, too (as big as they made them then), when one did not get
+flung out of one's bed simply because one never even attempted to
+get in; one had been made too weary, too hopeless, to try.  The
+expedient of turning your bedding out on to a damp floor and lying
+on it there was no earthly good, since you could not keep your
+place or get a second's rest in that or any other position.  But of
+the delight of seeing a small craft run bravely amongst the great
+seas there can be no question to him whose soul does not dwell
+ashore.  Thus I well remember a three days' run got out of a little
+barque of 400 tons somewhere between the islands of St. Paul and
+Amsterdam and Cape Otway on the Australian coast.  It was a hard,
+long gale, gray clouds and green sea, heavy weather undoubtedly,
+but still what a sailor would call manageable.  Under two lower
+topsails and a reefed foresail the barque seemed to race with a
+long, steady sea that did not becalm her in the troughs.  The
+solemn thundering combers caught her up from astern, passed her
+with a fierce boiling up of foam level with the bulwarks, swept on
+ahead with a swish and a roar:  and the little vessel, dipping her
+jib-boom into the tumbling froth, would go on running in a smooth,
+glassy hollow, a deep valley between two ridges of the sea, hiding
+the horizon ahead and astern.  There was such fascination in her
+pluck, nimbleness, the continual exhibition of unfailing
+seaworthiness, in the semblance of courage and endurance, that I
+could not give up the delight of watching her run through the three
+unforgettable days of that gale which my mate also delighted to
+extol as "a famous shove."
+
+And this is one of those gales whose memory in after-years returns,
+welcome in dignified austerity, as you would remember with pleasure
+the noble features of a stranger with whom you crossed swords once
+in knightly encounter and are never to see again.  In this way
+gales have their physiognomy.  You remember them by your own
+feelings, and no two gales stamp themselves in the same way upon
+your emotions.  Some cling to you in woebegone misery; others come
+back fiercely and weirdly, like ghouls bent upon sucking your
+strength away; others, again, have a catastrophic splendour; some
+are unvenerated recollections, as of spiteful wild-cats clawing at
+your agonized vitals; others are severe, like a visitation; and one
+or two rise up draped and mysterious, with an aspect of ominous
+menace.  In each of them there is a characteristic point at which
+the whole feeling seems contained in one single moment.  Thus there
+is a certain four o'clock in the morning in the confused roar of a
+black and white world when coming on deck to take charge of my
+watch I received the instantaneous impression that the ship could
+not live for another hour in such a raging sea.
+
+I wonder what became of the men who silently (you couldn't hear
+yourself speak) must have shared that conviction with me.  To be
+left to write about it is not, perhaps, the most enviable fate; but
+the point is that this impression resumes in its intensity the
+whole recollection of days and days of desperately dangerous
+weather.  We were then, for reasons which it is not worth while to
+specify, in the close neighbourhood of Kerguelen Land; and now,
+when I open an atlas and look at the tiny dots on the map of the
+Southern Ocean, I see as if engraved upon the paper the enraged
+physiognomy of that gale.
+
+Another, strangely, recalls a silent man.  And yet it was not din
+that was wanting; in fact, it was terrific.  That one was a gale
+that came upon the ship swiftly, like a parnpero, which last is a
+very sudden wind indeed.  Before we knew very well what was coming
+all the sails we had set had burst; the furled ones were blowing
+loose, ropes flying, sea hissing--it hissed tremendously--wind
+howling, and the ship lying on her side, so that half of the crew
+were swimming and the other half clawing desperately at whatever
+came to hand, according to the side of the deck each man had been
+caught on by the catastrophe, either to leeward or to windward.
+The shouting I need not mention--it was the merest drop in an ocean
+of noise--and yet the character of the gale seems contained in the
+recollection of one small, not particularly impressive, sallow man
+without a cap and with a very still face.  Captain Jones--let us
+call him Jones--had been caught unawares.  Two orders he had given
+at the first sign of an utterly unforeseen onset; after that the
+magnitude of his mistake seemed to have overwhelmed him.  We were
+doing what was needed and feasible.  The ship behaved well.  Of
+course, it was some time before we could pause in our fierce and
+laborious exertions; but all through the work, the excitement, the
+uproar, and some dismay, we were aware of this silent little man at
+the break of the poop, perfectly motionless, soundless, and often
+hidden from us by the drift of sprays.
+
+When we officers clambered at last upon the poop, he seemed to come
+out of that numbed composure, and shouted to us down wind:  "Try
+the pumps."  Afterwards he disappeared.  As to the ship, I need not
+say that, although she was presently swallowed up in one of the
+blackest nights I can remember, she did not disappear.  In truth, I
+don't fancy that there had ever been much danger of that, but
+certainly the experience was noisy and particularly distracting--
+and yet it is the memory of a very quiet silence that survives.
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+
+
+For, after all, a gale of wind, the thing of mighty sound, is
+inarticulate.  It is man who, in a chance phrase, interprets the
+elemental passion of his enemy.  Thus there is another gale in my
+memory, a thing of endless, deep, humming roar, moonlight, and a
+spoken sentence.
+
+It was off that other cape which is always deprived of its title as
+the Cape of Good Hope is robbed of its name.  It was off the Horn.
+For a true expression of dishevelled wildness there is nothing like
+a gale in the bright moonlight of a high latitude.
+
+The ship, brought-to and bowing to enormous flashing seas,
+glistened wet from deck to trucks; her one set sail stood out a
+coal-black shape upon the gloomy blueness of the air.  I was a
+youngster then, and suffering from weariness, cold, and imperfect
+oilskins which let water in at every seam.  I craved human
+companionship, and, coming off the poop, took my place by the side
+of the boatswain (a man whom I did not like) in a comparatively dry
+spot where at worst we had water only up to our knees.  Above our
+heads the explosive booming gusts of wind passed continuously,
+justifying the sailor's saying "It blows great guns."  And just
+from that need of human companionship, being very close to the man,
+I said, or rather shouted:
+
+"Blows very hard, boatswain."
+
+His answer was:
+
+"Ay, and if it blows only a little harder things will begin to go.
+I don't mind as long as everything holds, but when things begin to
+go it's bad."
+
+The note of dread in the shouting voice, the practical truth of
+these words, heard years ago from a man I did not like, have
+stamped its peculiar character on that gale.
+
+A look in the eyes of a shipmate, a low murmur in the most
+sheltered spot where the watch on duty are huddled together, a
+meaning moan from one to the other with a glance at the windward
+sky, a sigh of weariness, a gesture of disgust passing into the
+keeping of the great wind, become part and parcel of the gale.  The
+olive hue of hurricane clouds presents an aspect peculiarly
+appalling.  The inky ragged wrack, flying before a nor'-west wind,
+makes you dizzy with its headlong speed that depicts the rush of
+the invisible air.  A hard sou'-wester startles you with its close
+horizon and its low gray sky, as if the world were a dungeon
+wherein there is no rest for body or soul.  And there are black
+squalls, white squalls, thunder squalls, and unexpected gusts that
+come without a single sign in the sky; and of each kind no one of
+them resembles another.
+
+There is infinite variety in the gales of wind at sea, and except
+for the peculiar, terrible, and mysterious moaning that may be
+heard sometimes passing through the roar of a hurricane--except for
+that unforgettable sound, as if the soul of the universe had been
+goaded into a mournful groan--it is, after all, the human voice
+that stamps the mark of human consciousness upon the character of a
+gale.
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+
+
+There is no part of the world of coasts, continents, oceans, seas,
+straits, capes, and islands which is not under the sway of a
+reigning wind, the sovereign of its typical weather.  The wind
+rules the aspects of the sky and the action of the sea.  But no
+wind rules unchallenged his realm of land and water.  As with the
+kingdoms of the earth, there are regions more turbulent than
+others.  In the middle belt of the earth the Trade Winds reign
+supreme, undisputed, like monarchs of long-settled kingdoms, whose
+traditional power, checking all undue ambitions, is not so much an
+exercise of personal might as the working of long-established
+institutions.  The intertropical kingdoms of the Trade Winds are
+favourable to the ordinary life of a merchantman.  The trumpet-call
+of strife is seldom borne on their wings to the watchful ears of
+men on the decks of ships.  The regions ruled by the north-east and
+south-east Trade Winds are serene.  In a southern-going ship, bound
+out for a long voyage, the passage through their dominions is
+characterized by a relaxation of strain and vigilance on the part
+of the seamen.  Those citizens of the ocean feel sheltered under
+the aegis of an uncontested law, of an undisputed dynasty.  There,
+indeed, if anywhere on earth, the weather may be trusted.
+
+Yet not too implicitly.  Even in the constitutional realm of Trade
+Winds, north and south of the equator, ships are overtaken by
+strange disturbances.  Still, the easterly winds, and, generally
+speaking, the easterly weather all the world over, is characterized
+by regularity and persistence.
+
+As a ruler, the East Wind has a remarkable stability; as an invader
+of the high latitudes lying under the tumultuous sway of his great
+brother, the Wind of the West, he is extremely difficult to
+dislodge, by the reason of his cold craftiness and profound
+duplicity.
+
+The narrow seas around these isles, where British admirals keep
+watch and ward upon the marches of the Atlantic Ocean, are subject
+to the turbulent sway of the West Wind.  Call it north-west or
+south-west, it is all one--a different phase of the same character,
+a changed expression on the same face.  In the orientation of the
+winds that rule the seas, the north and south directions are of no
+importance.  There are no North and South Winds of any account upon
+this earth.  The North and South Winds are but small princes in the
+dynasties that make peace and war upon the sea.  They never assert
+themselves upon a vast stage.  They depend upon local causes--the
+configuration of coasts, the shapes of straits, the accidents of
+bold promontories round which they play their little part.  In the
+polity of winds, as amongst the tribes of the earth, the real
+struggle lies between East and West.
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+
+
+The West Wind reigns over the seas surrounding the coasts of these
+kingdoms; and from the gateways of the channels, from promontories
+as if from watch-towers, from estuaries of rivers as if from
+postern gates, from passage-ways, inlets, straits, firths, the
+garrison of the Isle and the crews of the ships going and returning
+look to the westward to judge by the varied splendours of his
+sunset mantle the mood of that arbitrary ruler.  The end of the day
+is the time to gaze at the kingly face of the Westerly Weather, who
+is the arbiter of ships' destinies.  Benignant and splendid, or
+splendid and sinister, the western sky reflects the hidden purposes
+of the royal mind.  Clothed in a mantle of dazzling gold or draped
+in rags of black clouds like a beggar, the might of the Westerly
+Wind sits enthroned upon the western horizon with the whole North
+Atlantic as a footstool for his feet and the first twinkling stars
+making a diadem for his brow.  Then the seamen, attentive courtiers
+of the weather, think of regulating the conduct of their ships by
+the mood of the master.  The West Wind is too great a king to be a
+dissembler:  he is no calculator plotting deep schemes in a sombre
+heart; he is too strong for small artifices; there is passion in
+all his moods, even in the soft mood of his serene days, in the
+grace of his blue sky whose immense and unfathomable tenderness
+reflected in the mirror of the sea embraces, possesses, lulls to
+sleep the ships with white sails.  He is all things to all oceans;
+he is like a poet seated upon a throne--magnificent, simple,
+barbarous, pensive, generous, impulsive, changeable, unfathomable--
+but when you understand him, always the same.  Some of his sunsets
+are like pageants devised for the delight of the multitude, when
+all the gems of the royal treasure-house are displayed above the
+sea.  Others are like the opening of his royal confidence, tinged
+with thoughts of sadness and compassion in a melancholy splendour
+meditating upon the short-lived peace of the waters.  And I have
+seen him put the pent-up anger of his heart into the aspect of the
+inaccessible sun, and cause it to glare fiercely like the eye of an
+implacable autocrat out of a pale and frightened sky.
+
+He is the war-lord who sends his battalions of Atlantic rollers to
+the assault of our seaboard.  The compelling voice of the West Wind
+musters up to his service all the might of the ocean.  At the
+bidding of the West Wind there arises a great commotion in the sky
+above these Islands, and a great rush of waters falls upon our
+shores.  The sky of the westerly weather is full of flying clouds,
+of great big white clouds coming thicker and thicker till they seem
+to stand welded into a solid canopy, upon whose gray face the lower
+wrack of the gale, thin, black and angry-looking, flies past with
+vertiginous speed.  Denser and denser grows this dome of vapours,
+descending lower and lower upon the sea, narrowing the horizon
+around the ship.  And the characteristic aspect of westerly
+weather, the thick, gray, smoky and sinister tone sets in,
+circumscribing the view of the men, drenching their bodies,
+oppressing their souls, taking their breath away with booming
+gusts, deafening, blinding, driving, rushing them onwards in a
+swaying ship towards our coasts lost in mists and rain.
+
+The caprice of the winds, like the wilfulness of men, is fraught
+with the disastrous consequences of self-indulgence.  Long anger,
+the sense of his uncontrolled power, spoils the frank and generous
+nature of the West Wind.  It is as if his heart were corrupted by a
+malevolent and brooding rancour.  He devastates his own kingdom in
+the wantonness of his force.  South-west is the quarter of the
+heavens where he presents his darkened brow.  He breathes his rage
+in terrific squalls, and overwhelms his realm with an inexhaustible
+welter of clouds.  He strews the seeds of anxiety upon the decks of
+scudding ships, makes the foam-stripped ocean look old, and
+sprinkles with gray hairs the heads of ship-masters in the
+homeward-bound ships running for the Channel.  The Westerly Wind
+asserting his sway from the south-west quarter is often like a
+monarch gone mad, driving forth with wild imprecations the most
+faithful of his courtiers to shipwreck, disaster, and death.
+
+The south-westerly weather is the thick weather par excellence.  It
+is not the thickness of the fog; it is rather a contraction of the
+horizon, a mysterious veiling of the shores with clouds that seem
+to make a low-vaulted dungeon around the running ship.  It is not
+blindness; it is a shortening of the sight.  The West Wind does not
+say to the seaman, "You shall be blind"; it restricts merely the
+range of his vision and raises the dread of land within his breast.
+It makes of him a man robbed of half his force, of half his
+efficiency.  Many times in my life, standing in long sea-boots and
+streaming oilskins at the elbow of my commander on the poop of a
+homeward-bound ship making for the Channel, and gazing ahead into
+the gray and tormented waste, I have heard a weary sigh shape
+itself into a studiously casual comment:
+
+"Can't see very far in this weather."
+
+And have made answer in the same low, perfunctory tone
+
+"No, sir."
+
+It would be merely the instinctive voicing of an ever-present
+thought associated closely with the consciousness of the land
+somewhere ahead and of the great speed of the ship.  Fair wind,
+fair wind!  Who would dare to grumble at a fair wind?  It was a
+favour of the Western King, who rules masterfully the North
+Atlantic from the latitude of the Azores to the latitude of Cape
+Farewell.  A famous shove this to end a good passage with; and yet,
+somehow, one could not muster upon one's lips the smile of a
+courtier's gratitude.  This favour was dispensed to you from under
+an overbearing scowl, which is the true expression of the great
+autocrat when he has made up his mind to give a battering to some
+ships and to hunt certain others home in one breath of cruelty and
+benevolence, equally distracting.
+
+"No, sir.  Can't see very far."
+
+Thus would the mate's voice repeat the thought of the master, both
+gazing ahead, while under their feet the ship rushes at some twelve
+knots in the direction of the lee shore; and only a couple of miles
+in front of her swinging and dripping jib-boom, carried naked with
+an upward slant like a spear, a gray horizon closes the view with a
+multitude of waves surging upwards violently as if to strike at the
+stooping clouds.
+
+Awful and threatening scowls darken the face of the West Wind in
+his clouded, south-west mood; and from the King's throne-hall in
+the western board stronger gusts reach you, like the fierce shouts
+of raving fury to which only the gloomy grandeur of the scene
+imparts a saving dignity.  A shower pelts the deck and the sails of
+the ship as if flung with a scream by an angry hand; and when the
+night closes in, the night of a south-westerly gale, it seems more
+hopeless than the shade of Hades.  The south-westerly mood of the
+great West Wind is a lightless mood, without sun, moon, or stars,
+with no gleam of light but the phosphorescent flashes of the great
+sheets of foam that, boiling up on each side of the ship, fling
+bluish gleams upon her dark and narrow hull, rolling as she runs,
+chased by enormous seas, distracted in the tumult.
+
+There are some bad nights in the kingdom of the West Wind for
+homeward-bound ships making for the Channel; and the days of wrath
+dawn upon them colourless and vague like the timid turning up of
+invisible lights upon the scene of a tyrannical and passionate
+outbreak, awful in the monotony of its method and the increasing
+strength of its violence.  It is the same wind, the same clouds,
+the same wildly racing seas, the same thick horizon around the
+ship.  Only the wind is stronger, the clouds seem denser and more
+overwhelming, the waves appear to have grown bigger and more
+threatening during the night.  The hours, whose minutes are marked
+by the crash of the breaking seas, slip by with the screaming,
+pelting squalls overtaking the ship as she runs on and on with
+darkened canvas, with streaming spars and dripping ropes.  The
+down-pours thicken.  Preceding each shower a mysterious gloom, like
+the passage of a shadow above the firmament of gray clouds, filters
+down upon the ship.  Now and then the rain pours upon your head in
+streams as if from spouts.  It seems as if your ship were going to
+be drowned before she sank, as if all atmosphere had turned to
+water.  You gasp, you splutter, you are blinded and deafened, you
+are submerged, obliterated, dissolved, annihilated, streaming all
+over as if your limbs, too, had turned to water.  And every nerve
+on the alert you watch for the clearing-up mood of the Western
+King, that shall come with a shift of wind as likely as not to whip
+all the three masts out of your ship in the twinkling of an eye.
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+
+
+Heralded by the increasing fierceness of the squalls, sometimes by
+a faint flash of lightning like the signal of a lighted torch waved
+far away behind the clouds, the shift of wind comes at last, the
+crucial moment of the change from the brooding and veiled violence
+of the south-west gale to the sparkling, flashing, cutting, clear-
+eyed anger of the King's north-westerly mood.  You behold another
+phase of his passion, a fury bejewelled with stars, mayhap bearing
+the crescent of the moon on its brow, shaking the last vestiges of
+its torn cloud-mantle in inky-black squalls, with hail and sleet
+descending like showers of crystals and pearls, bounding off the
+spars, drumming on the sails, pattering on the oilskin coats,
+whitening the decks of homeward-bound ships.  Faint, ruddy flashes
+of lightning flicker in the starlight upon her mastheads.  A chilly
+blast hums in the taut rigging, causing the ship to tremble to her
+very keel, and the soaked men on her decks to shiver in their wet
+clothes to the very marrow of their bones.  Before one squall has
+flown over to sink in the eastern board, the edge of another peeps
+up already above the western horizon, racing up swift, shapeless,
+like a black bag full of frozen water ready to burst over your
+devoted head.  The temper of the ruler of the ocean has changed.
+Each gust of the clouded mood that seemed warmed by the heat of a
+heart flaming with anger has its counterpart in the chilly blasts
+that seem blown from a breast turned to ice with a sudden revulsion
+of feeling.  Instead of blinding your eyes and crushing your soul
+with a terrible apparatus of cloud and mists and seas and rain, the
+King of the West turns his power to contemptuous pelting of your
+back with icicles, to making your weary eyes water as if in grief,
+and your worn-out carcass quake pitifully.  But each mood of the
+great autocrat has its own greatness, and each is hard to bear.
+Only the north-west phase of that mighty display is not
+demoralizing to the same extent, because between the hail and sleet
+squalls of a north-westerly gale one can see a long way ahead.
+
+To see! to see!--this is the craving of the sailor, as of the rest
+of blind humanity.  To have his path made clear for him is the
+aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous
+existence.  I have heard a reserved, silent man, with no nerves to
+speak of, after three days of hard running in thick south-westerly
+weather, burst out passionately:  "I wish to God we could get sight
+of something!"
+
+We had just gone down below for a moment to commune in a battened-
+down cabin, with a large white chart lying limp and damp upon a
+cold and clammy table under the light of a smoky lamp.  Sprawling
+over that seaman's silent and trusted adviser, with one elbow upon
+the coast of Africa and the other planted in the neighbourhood of
+Cape Hatteras (it was a general track-chart of the North Atlantic),
+my skipper lifted his rugged, hairy face, and glared at me in a
+half-exasperated, half-appealing way.  We have seen no sun, moon,
+or stars for something like seven days.  By the effect of the West
+Wind's wrath the celestial bodies had gone into hiding for a week
+or more, and the last three days had seen the force of a south-west
+gale grow from fresh, through strong, to heavy, as the entries in
+my log-book could testify.  Then we separated, he to go on deck
+again, in obedience to that mysterious call that seems to sound for
+ever in a shipmaster's ears, I to stagger into my cabin with some
+vague notion of putting down the words "Very heavy weather" in a
+log-book not quite written up-to-date.  But I gave it up, and
+crawled into my bunk instead, boots and hat on, all standing (it
+did not matter; everything was soaking wet, a heavy sea having
+burst the poop skylights the night before), to remain in a
+nightmarish state between waking and sleeping for a couple of hours
+of so-called rest.
+
+The south-westerly mood of the West Wind is an enemy of sleep, and
+even of a recumbent position, in the responsible officers of a
+ship.  After two hours of futile, light-headed, inconsequent
+thinking upon all things under heaven in that dark, dank, wet and
+devastated cabin, I arose suddenly and staggered up on deck.  The
+autocrat of the North Atlantic was still oppressing his kingdom and
+its outlying dependencies, even as far as the Bay of Biscay, in the
+dismal secrecy of thick, very thick, weather.  The force of the
+wind, though we were running before it at the rate of some ten
+knots an hour, was so great that it drove me with a steady push to
+the front of the poop, where my commander was holding on.
+
+"What do you think of it?" he addressed me in an interrogative
+yell.
+
+What I really thought was that we both had had just about enough of
+it.  The manner in which the great West Wind chooses at times to
+administer his possessions does not commend itself to a person of
+peaceful and law-abiding disposition, inclined to draw distinctions
+between right and wrong in the face of natural forces, whose
+standard, naturally, is that of might alone.  But, of course, I
+said nothing.  For a man caught, as it were, between his skipper
+and the great West Wind silence is the safest sort of diplomacy.
+Moreover, I knew my skipper.  He did not want to know what I
+thought.  Shipmasters hanging on a breath before the thrones of the
+winds ruling the seas have their psychology, whose workings are as
+important to the ship and those on board of her as the changing
+moods of the weather.  The man, as a matter of fact, under no
+circumstances, ever cared a brass farthing for what I or anybody
+else in his ship thought.  He had had just about enough of it, I
+guessed, and what he was at really was a process of fishing for a
+suggestion.  It was the pride of his life that he had never wasted
+a chance, no matter how boisterous, threatening, and dangerous, of
+a fair wind.  Like men racing blindfold for a gap in a hedge, we
+were finishing a splendidly quick passage from the Antipodes, with
+a tremendous rush for the Channel in as thick a weather as any I
+can remember, but his psychology did not permit him to bring the
+ship to with a fair wind blowing--at least not on his own
+initiative.  And yet he felt that very soon indeed something would
+have to be done.  He wanted the suggestion to come from me, so that
+later on, when the trouble was over, he could argue this point with
+his own uncompromising spirit, laying the blame upon my shoulders.
+I must render him the justice that this sort of pride was his only
+weakness.
+
+But he got no suggestion from me.  I understood his psychology.
+Besides, I had my own stock of weaknesses at the time (it is a
+different one now), and amongst them was the conceit of being
+remarkably well up in the psychology of the Westerly weather.  I
+believed--not to mince matters--that I had a genius for reading the
+mind of the great ruler of high latitudes.  I fancied I could
+discern already the coming of a change in his royal mood.  And all
+I said was:
+
+"The weather's bound to clear up with the shift of wind."
+
+"Anybody knows that much!" he snapped at me, at the highest pitch
+of his voice.
+
+"I mean before dark!" I cried.
+
+This was all the opening he ever got from me.  The eagerness with
+which he seized upon it gave me the measure of the anxiety he had
+been labouring under.
+
+"Very well," he shouted, with an affectation of impatience, as if
+giving way to long entreaties.  "All right.  If we don't get a
+shift by then we'll take that foresail off her and put her head
+under her wing for the night."
+
+I was struck by the picturesque character of the phrase as applied
+to a ship brought-to in order to ride out a gale with wave after
+wave passing under her breast.  I could see her resting in the
+tumult of the elements like a sea-bird sleeping in wild weather
+upon the raging waters with its head tucked under its wing.  In
+imaginative precision, in true feeling, this is one of the most
+expressive sentences I have ever heard on human lips.  But as to
+taking the foresail off that ship before we put her head under her
+wing, I had my grave doubts.  They were justified.  That long
+enduring piece of canvas was confiscated by the arbitrary decree of
+the West Wind, to whom belong the lives of men and the contrivances
+of their hands within the limits of his kingdom.  With the sound of
+a faint explosion it vanished into the thick weather bodily,
+leaving behind of its stout substance not so much as one solitary
+strip big enough to be picked into a handful of lint for, say, a
+wounded elephant.  Torn out of its bolt-ropes, it faded like a
+whiff of smoke in the smoky drift of clouds shattered and torn by
+the shift of wind.  For the shift of wind had come.  The unveiled,
+low sun glared angrily from a chaotic sky upon a confused and
+tremendous sea dashing itself upon a coast.  We recognised the
+headland, and looked at each other in the silence of dumb wonder.
+Without knowing it in the least, we had run up alongside the Isle
+of Wight, and that tower, tinged a faint evening red in the salt
+wind-haze, was the lighthouse on St. Catherine's Point.
+
+My skipper recovered first from his astonishment.  His bulging eyes
+sank back gradually into their orbits.  His psychology, taking it
+all round, was really very creditable for an average sailor.  He
+had been spared the humiliation of laying his ship to with a fair
+wind; and at once that man, of an open and truthful nature, spoke
+up in perfect good faith, rubbing together his brown, hairy hands--
+the hands of a master-craftsman upon the sea:
+
+"Humph! that's just about where I reckoned we had got to."
+
+The transparency and ingenuousness, in a way, of that delusion, the
+airy tone, the hint of already growing pride, were perfectly
+delicious.  But, in truth, this was one of the greatest surprises
+ever sprung by the clearing up mood of the West Wind upon one of
+the most accomplished of his courtiers.
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+
+
+The winds of North and South are, as I have said, but small princes
+amongst the powers of the sea.  They have no territory of their
+own; they are not reigning winds anywhere.  Yet it is from their
+houses that the reigning dynasties which have shared between them
+the waters of the earth are sprung.  All the weather of the world
+is based upon the contest of the Polar and Equatorial strains of
+that tyrannous race.  The West Wind is the greatest king.  The East
+rules between the Tropics.  They have shared each ocean between
+them.  Each has his genius of supreme rule.  The King of the West
+never intrudes upon the recognised dominion of his kingly brother.
+He is a barbarian, of a northern type.  Violent without craftiness,
+and furious without malice, one may imagine him seated masterfully
+with a double-edged sword on his knees upon the painted and gilt
+clouds of the sunset, bowing his shock head of golden locks, a
+flaming beard over his breast, imposing, colossal, mighty-limbed,
+with a thundering voice, distended cheeks and fierce blue eyes,
+urging the speed of his gales.  The other, the East king, the king
+of blood-red sunrises, I represent to myself as a spare Southerner
+with clear-cut features, black-browed and dark-eyed, gray-robed,
+upright in sunshine, resting a smooth-shaven cheek in the palm of
+his hand, impenetrable, secret, full of wiles, fine-drawn, keen--
+meditating aggressions.
+
+The West Wind keeps faith with his brother, the King of the
+Easterly weather.  "What we have divided we have divided," he seems
+to say in his gruff voice, this ruler without guile, who hurls as
+if in sport enormous masses of cloud across the sky, and flings the
+great waves of the Atlantic clear across from the shores of the New
+World upon the hoary headlands of Old Europe, which harbours more
+kings and rulers upon its seamed and furrowed body than all the
+oceans of the world together.  "What we have divided we have
+divided; and if no rest and peace in this world have fallen to my
+share, leave me alone.  Let me play at quoits with cyclonic gales,
+flinging the discs of spinning cloud and whirling air from one end
+of my dismal kingdom to the other:  over the Great Banks or along
+the edges of pack-ice--this one with true aim right into the bight
+of the Bay of Biscay, that other upon the fiords of Norway, across
+the North Sea where the fishermen of many nations look watchfully
+into my angry eye.  This is the time of kingly sport."
+
+And the royal master of high latitudes sighs mightily, with the
+sinking sun upon his breast and the double-edged sword upon his
+knees, as if wearied by the innumerable centuries of a strenuous
+rule and saddened by the unchangeable aspect of the ocean under his
+feet--by the endless vista of future ages where the work of sowing
+the wind and reaping the whirlwind shall go on and on till his
+realm of living waters becomes a frozen and motionless ocean.  But
+the other, crafty and unmoved, nursing his shaven chin between the
+thumb and forefinger of his slim and treacherous hand, thinks deep
+within his heart full of guile:  "Aha! our brother of the West has
+fallen into the mood of kingly melancholy.  He is tired of playing
+with circular gales, and blowing great guns, and unrolling thick
+streamers of fog in wanton sport at the cost of his own poor,
+miserable subjects.  Their fate is most pitiful.  Let us make a
+foray upon the dominions of that noisy barbarian, a great raid from
+Finisterre to Hatteras, catching his fishermen unawares, baffling
+the fleets that trust to his power, and shooting sly arrows into
+the livers of men who court his good graces.  He is, indeed, a
+worthless fellow."  And forthwith, while the West Wind meditates
+upon the vanity of his irresistible might, the thing is done, and
+the Easterly weather sets in upon the North Atlantic.
+
+The prevailing weather of the North Atlantic is typical of the way
+in which the West Wind rules his realm on which the sun never sets.
+North Atlantic is the heart of a great empire.  It is the part of
+the West Wind's dominions most thickly populated with generations
+of fine ships and hardy men.  Heroic deeds and adventurous exploits
+have been performed there, within the very stronghold of his sway.
+The best sailors in the world have been born and bred under the
+shadow of his sceptre, learning to manage their ships with skill
+and audacity before the steps of his stormy throne.  Reckless
+adventurers, toiling fishermen, admirals as wise and brave as the
+world has ever known, have waited upon the signs of his westerly
+sky.  Fleets of victorious ships have hung upon his breath.  He has
+tossed in his hand squadrons of war-scarred three-deckers, and
+shredded out in mere sport the bunting of flags hallowed in the
+traditions of honour and glory.  He is a good friend and a
+dangerous enemy, without mercy to unseaworthy ships and faint-
+hearted seamen.  In his kingly way he has taken but little account
+of lives sacrificed to his impulsive policy; he is a king with a
+double-edged sword bared in his right hand.  The East Wind, an
+interloper in the dominions of Westerly weather, is an impassive-
+faced tyrant with a sharp poniard held behind his back for a
+treacherous stab.
+
+In his forays into the North Atlantic the East Wind behaves like a
+subtle and cruel adventurer without a notion of honour or fair
+play.  Veiling his clear-cut, lean face in a thin layer of a hard,
+high cloud, I have seen him, like a wizened robber sheik of the
+sea, hold up large caravans of ships to the number of three hundred
+or more at the very gates of the English Channel.  And the worst of
+it was that there was no ransom that we could pay to satisfy his
+avidity; for whatever evil is wrought by the raiding East Wind, it
+is done only to spite his kingly brother of the West.  We gazed
+helplessly at the systematic, cold, gray-eyed obstinacy of the
+Easterly weather, while short rations became the order of the day,
+and the pinch of hunger under the breast-bone grew familiar to
+every sailor in that held-up fleet.  Every day added to our
+numbers.  In knots and groups and straggling parties we flung to
+and fro before the closed gate.  And meantime the outward-bound
+ships passed, running through our humiliated ranks under all the
+canvas they could show.  It is my idea that the Easterly Wind helps
+the ships away from home in the wicked hope that they shall all
+come to an untimely end and be heard of no more.  For six weeks did
+the robber sheik hold the trade route of the earth, while our liege
+lord, the West Wind, slept profoundly like a tired Titan, or else
+remained lost in a mood of idle sadness known only to frank
+natures.  All was still to the westward; we looked in vain towards
+his stronghold:  the King slumbered on so deeply that he let his
+foraging brother steal the very mantle of gold-lined purple clouds
+from his bowed shoulders.  What had become of the dazzling hoard of
+royal jewels exhibited at every close of day?  Gone, disappeared,
+extinguished, carried off without leaving a single gold band or the
+flash of a single sunbeam in the evening sky!  Day after day
+through a cold streak of heavens as bare and poor as the inside of
+a rifled safe a rayless and despoiled sun would slink shamefacedly,
+without pomp or show, to hide in haste under the waters.  And still
+the King slept on, or mourned the vanity of his might and his
+power, while the thin-lipped intruder put the impress of his cold
+and implacable spirit upon the sky and sea.  With every daybreak
+the rising sun had to wade through a crimson stream, luminous and
+sinister, like the spilt blood of celestial bodies murdered during
+the night.
+
+In this particular instance the mean interloper held the road for
+some six weeks on end, establishing his particular administrative
+methods over the best part of the North Atlantic.  It looked as if
+the easterly weather had come to stay for ever, or, at least, till
+we had all starved to death in the held-up fleet--starved within
+sight, as it were, of plenty, within touch, almost, of the
+bountiful heart of the Empire.  There we were, dotting with our
+white dry sails the hard blueness of the deep sea.  There we were,
+a growing company of ships, each with her burden of grain, of
+timber, of wool, of hides, and even of oranges, for we had one or
+two belated fruit schooners in company.  There we were, in that
+memorable spring of a certain year in the late seventies, dodging
+to and fro, baffled on every tack, and with our stores running down
+to sweepings of bread-lockers and scrapings of sugar-casks.  It was
+just like the East Wind's nature to inflict starvation upon the
+bodies of unoffending sailors, while he corrupted their simple
+souls by an exasperation leading to outbursts of profanity as lurid
+as his blood-red sunrises.  They were followed by gray days under
+the cover of high, motionless clouds that looked as if carved in a
+slab of ash-coloured marble.  And each mean starved sunset left us
+calling with imprecations upon the West Wind even in its most
+veiled misty mood to wake up and give us our liberty, if only to
+rush on and dash the heads of our ships against the very walls of
+our unapproachable home.
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+
+
+In the atmosphere of the Easterly weather, as pellucid as a piece
+of crystal and refracting like a prism, we could see the appalling
+numbers of our helpless company, even to those who in more normal
+conditions would have remained invisible, sails down under the
+horizon.  It is the malicious pleasure of the East Wind to augment
+the power of your eyesight, in order, perhaps, that you should see
+better the perfect humiliation, the hopeless character of your
+captivity.  Easterly weather is generally clear, and that is all
+that can be said for it--almost supernaturally clear when it likes;
+but whatever its mood, there is something uncanny in its nature.
+Its duplicity is such that it will deceive a scientific instrument.
+No barometer will give warning of an easterly gale, were it ever so
+wet.  It would be an unjust and ungrateful thing to say that a
+barometer is a stupid contrivance.  It is simply that the wiles of
+the East Wind are too much for its fundamental honesty.  After
+years and years of experience the most trusty instrument of the
+sort that ever went to sea screwed on to a ship's cabin bulkhead
+will, almost invariably, be induced to rise by the diabolic
+ingenuity of the Easterly weather, just at the moment when the
+Easterly weather, discarding its methods of hard, dry, impassive
+cruelty, contemplates drowning what is left of your spirit in
+torrents of a peculiarly cold and horrid rain.  The sleet-and-hail
+squalls following the lightning at the end of a westerly gale are
+cold and benumbing and stinging and cruel enough.  But the dry,
+Easterly weather, when it turns to wet, seems to rain poisoned
+showers upon your head.  It is a sort of steady, persistent,
+overwhelming, endlessly driving downpour, which makes your heart
+sick, and opens it to dismal forebodings.  And the stormy mood of
+the Easterly weather looms black upon the sky with a peculiar and
+amazing blackness.  The West Wind hangs heavy gray curtains of mist
+and spray before your gaze, but the Eastern interloper of the
+narrow seas, when he has mustered his courage and cruelty to the
+point of a gale, puts your eyes out, puts them out completely,
+makes you feel blind for life upon a lee-shore.  It is the wind,
+also, that brings snow.
+
+Out of his black and merciless heart he flings a white blinding
+sheet upon the ships of the sea.  He has more manners of villainy,
+and no more conscience than an Italian prince of the seventeenth
+century.  His weapon is a dagger carried under a black cloak when
+he goes out on his unlawful enterprises.  The mere hint of his
+approach fills with dread every craft that swims the sea, from
+fishing-smacks to four-masted ships that recognise the sway of the
+West Wind.  Even in his most accommodating mood he inspires a dread
+of treachery.  I have heard upwards of ten score of windlasses
+spring like one into clanking life in the dead of night, filling
+the Downs with a panic-struck sound of anchors being torn hurriedly
+out of the ground at the first breath of his approach.
+Fortunately, his heart often fails him:  he does not always blow
+home upon our exposed coast; he has not the fearless temper of his
+Westerly brother.
+
+The natures of those two winds that share the dominions of the
+great oceans are fundamentally different.  It is strange that the
+winds which men are prone to style capricious remain true to their
+character in all the various regions of the earth.  To us here, for
+instance, the East Wind comes across a great continent, sweeping
+over the greatest body of solid land upon this earth.  For the
+Australian east coast the East Wind is the wind of the ocean,
+coming across the greatest body of water upon the globe; and yet
+here and there its characteristics remain the same with a strange
+consistency in everything that is vile and base.  The members of
+the West Wind's dynasty are modified in a way by the regions they
+rule, as a Hohenzollern, without ceasing to be himself, becomes a
+Roumanian by virtue of his throne, or a Saxe-Coburg learns to put
+the dress of Bulgarian phrases upon his particular thoughts,
+whatever they are.
+
+The autocratic sway of the West Wind, whether forty north or forty
+south of the Equator, is characterized by an open, generous, frank,
+barbarous recklessness.  For he is a great autocrat, and to be a
+great autocrat you must be a great barbarian.  I have been too much
+moulded to his sway to nurse now any idea of rebellion in my heart.
+Moreover, what is a rebellion within the four walls of a room
+against the tempestuous rule of the West Wind?  I remain faithful
+to the memory of the mighty King with a double-edged sword in one
+hand, and in the other holding out rewards of great daily runs and
+famously quick passages to those of his courtiers who knew how to
+wait watchfully for every sign of his secret mood.  As we deep-
+water men always reckoned, he made one year in three fairly lively
+for anybody having business upon the Atlantic or down there along
+the "forties" of the Southern Ocean.  You had to take the bitter
+with the sweet; and it cannot be denied he played carelessly with
+our lives and fortunes.  But, then, he was always a great king, fit
+to rule over the great waters where, strictly speaking, a man would
+have no business whatever but for his audacity.
+
+The audacious should not complain.  A mere trader ought not to
+grumble at the tolls levied by a mighty king.  His mightiness was
+sometimes very overwhelming; but even when you had to defy him
+openly, as on the banks of the Agulhas homeward bound from the East
+Indies, or on the outward passage round the Horn, he struck at you
+fairly his stinging blows (full in the face, too), and it was your
+business not to get too much staggered.  And, after all, if you
+showed anything of a countenance, the good-natured barbarian would
+let you fight your way past the very steps of his throne.  It was
+only now and then that the sword descended and a head fell; but if
+you fell you were sure of impressive obsequies and of a roomy,
+generous grave.
+
+Such is the king to whom Viking chieftains bowed their heads, and
+whom the modern and palatial steamship defies with impunity seven
+times a week.  And yet it is but defiance, not victory.  The
+magnificent barbarian sits enthroned in a mantle of gold-lined
+clouds looking from on high on great ships gliding like mechanical
+toys upon his sea and on men who, armed with fire and iron, no
+longer need to watch anxiously for the slightest sign of his royal
+mood.  He is disregarded; but he has kept all his strength, all his
+splendour, and a great part of his power.  Time itself, that shakes
+all the thrones, is on the side of that king.  The sword in his
+hand remains as sharp as ever upon both its edges; and he may well
+go on playing his royal game of quoits with hurricanes, tossing
+them over from the continent of republics to the continent of
+kingdoms, in the assurance that both the new republics and the old
+kingdoms, the heat of fire and the strength of iron, with the
+untold generations of audacious men, shall crumble to dust at the
+steps of his throne, and pass away, and be forgotten before his own
+rule comes to an end.
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+
+
+The estuaries of rivers appeal strongly to an adventurous
+imagination.  This appeal is not always a charm, for there are
+estuaries of a particularly dispiriting ugliness:  lowlands, mud-
+flats, or perhaps barren sandhills without beauty of form or
+amenity of aspect, covered with a shabby and scanty vegetation
+conveying the impression of poverty and uselessness.  Sometimes
+such an ugliness is merely a repulsive mask.  A river whose estuary
+resembles a breach in a sand rampart may flow through a most
+fertile country.  But all the estuaries of great rivers have their
+fascination, the attractiveness of an open portal.  Water is
+friendly to man.  The ocean, a part of Nature furthest removed in
+the unchangeableness and majesty of its might from the spirit of
+mankind, has ever been a friend to the enterprising nations of the
+earth.  And of all the elements this is the one to which men have
+always been prone to trust themselves, as if its immensity held a
+reward as vast as itself.
+
+From the offing the open estuary promises every possible fruition
+to adventurous hopes.  That road open to enterprise and courage
+invites the explorer of coasts to new efforts towards the
+fulfilment of great expectations.  The commander of the first Roman
+galley must have looked with an intense absorption upon the estuary
+of the Thames as he turned the beaked prow of his ship to the
+westward under the brow of the North Foreland.  The estuary of the
+Thames is not beautiful; it has no noble features, no romantic
+grandeur of aspect, no smiling geniality; but it is wide open,
+spacious, inviting, hospitable at the first glance, with a strange
+air of mysteriousness which lingers about it to this very day.  The
+navigation of his craft must have engrossed all the Roman's
+attention in the calm of a summer's day (he would choose his
+weather), when the single row of long sweeps (the galley would be a
+light one, not a trireme) could fall in easy cadence upon a sheet
+of water like plate-glass, reflecting faithfully the classic form
+of his vessel and the contour of the lonely shores close on his
+left hand.  I assume he followed the land and passed through what
+is at present known as Margate Roads, groping his careful way along
+the hidden sandbanks, whose every tail and spit has its beacon or
+buoy nowadays.  He must have been anxious, though no doubt he had
+collected beforehand on the shores of the Gauls a store of
+information from the talk of traders, adventurers, fishermen,
+slave-dealers, pirates--all sorts of unofficial men connected with
+the sea in a more or less reputable way.  He would have heard of
+channels and sandbanks, of natural features of the land useful for
+sea-marks, of villages and tribes and modes of barter and
+precautions to take:  with the instructive tales about native
+chiefs dyed more or less blue, whose character for greediness,
+ferocity, or amiability must have been expounded to him with that
+capacity for vivid language which seems joined naturally to the
+shadiness of moral character and recklessness of disposition.  With
+that sort of spiced food provided for his anxious thought, watchful
+for strange men, strange beasts, strange turns of the tide, he
+would make the best of his way up, a military seaman with a short
+sword on thigh and a bronze helmet on his head, the pioneer post-
+captain of an imperial fleet.  Was the tribe inhabiting the Isle of
+Thanet of a ferocious disposition, I wonder, and ready to fall with
+stone-studded clubs and wooden lances hardened in the fire, upon
+the backs of unwary mariners?
+
+Amongst the great commercial streams of these islands, the Thames
+is the only one, I think, open to romantic feeling, from the fact
+that the sight of human labour and the sounds of human industry do
+not come down its shores to the very sea, destroying the suggestion
+of mysterious vastness caused by the configuration of the shore.
+The broad inlet of the shallow North Sea passes gradually into the
+contracted shape of the river; but for a long time the feeling of
+the open water remains with the ship steering to the westward
+through one of the lighted and buoyed passage-ways of the Thames,
+such as Queen's Channel, Prince's Channel, Four-Fathom Channel; or
+else coming down the Swin from the north.  The rush of the yellow
+flood-tide hurries her up as if into the unknown between the two
+fading lines of the coast.  There are no features to this land, no
+conspicuous, far-famed landmarks for the eye; there is nothing so
+far down to tell you of the greatest agglomeration of mankind on
+earth dwelling no more than five and twenty miles away, where the
+sun sets in a blaze of colour flaming on a gold background, and the
+dark, low shores trend towards each other.  And in the great
+silence the deep, faint booming of the big guns being tested at
+Shoeburyness hangs about the Nore--a historical spot in the keeping
+of one of England's appointed guardians.
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+
+
+The Nore sand remains covered at low-water, and never seen by human
+eye; but the Nore is a name to conjure with visions of historical
+events, of battles, of fleets, of mutinies, of watch and ward kept
+upon the great throbbing heart of the State.  This ideal point of
+the estuary, this centre of memories, is marked upon the steely
+gray expanse of the waters by a lightship painted red that, from a
+couple of miles off, looks like a cheap and bizarre little toy.  I
+remember how, on coming up the river for the first time, I was
+surprised at the smallness of that vivid object--a tiny warm speck
+of crimson lost in an immensity of gray tones.  I was startled, as
+if of necessity the principal beacon in the water-way of the
+greatest town on earth should have presented imposing proportions.
+And, behold! the brown sprit-sail of a barge hid it entirely from
+my view.
+
+Coming in from the eastward, the bright colouring of the lightship
+marking the part of the river committed to the charge of an Admiral
+(the Commander-in-Chief at the Nore) accentuates the dreariness and
+the great breadth of the Thames Estuary.  But soon the course of
+the ship opens the entrance of the Medway, with its men-of-war
+moored in line, and the long wooden jetty of Port Victoria, with
+its few low buildings like the beginning of a hasty settlement upon
+a wild and unexplored shore.  The famous Thames barges sit in brown
+clusters upon the water with an effect of birds floating upon a
+pond.  On the imposing expanse of the great estuary the traffic of
+the port where so much of the world's work and the world's thinking
+is being done becomes insignificant, scattered, streaming away in
+thin lines of ships stringing themselves out into the eastern
+quarter through the various navigable channels of which the Nore
+lightship marks the divergence.  The coasting traffic inclines to
+the north; the deep-water ships steer east with a southern
+inclination, on through the Downs, to the most remote ends of the
+world.  In the widening of the shores sinking low in the gray,
+smoky distances the greatness of the sea receives the mercantile
+fleet of good ships that London sends out upon the turn of every
+tide.  They follow each other, going very close by the Essex shore.
+Such as the beads of a rosary told by business-like shipowners for
+the greater profit of the world they slip one by one into the open:
+while in the offing the inward-bound ships come up singly and in
+bunches from under the sea horizon closing the mouth of the river
+between Orfordness and North Foreland.  They all converge upon the
+Nore, the warm speck of red upon the tones of drab and gray, with
+the distant shores running together towards the west, low and flat,
+like the sides of an enormous canal.  The sea-reach of the Thames
+is straight, and, once Sheerness is left behind, its banks seem
+very uninhabited, except for the cluster of houses which is
+Southend, or here and there a lonely wooden jetty where petroleum
+ships discharge their dangerous cargoes, and the oil-storage tanks,
+low and round with slightly-domed roofs, peep over the edge of the
+fore-shore, as it were a village of Central African huts imitated
+in iron.  Bordered by the black and shining mud-flats, the level
+marsh extends for miles.  Away in the far background the land
+rises, closing the view with a continuous wooded slope, forming in
+the distance an interminable rampart overgrown with bushes.
+
+Then, on the slight turn of the Lower Hope Reach, clusters of
+factory chimneys come distinctly into view, tall and slender above
+the squat ranges of cement works in Grays and Greenhithe.  Smoking
+quietly at the top against the great blaze of a magnificent sunset,
+they give an industrial character to the scene, speak of work,
+manufactures, and trade, as palm-groves on the coral strands of
+distant islands speak of the luxuriant grace, beauty and vigour of
+tropical nature.  The houses of Gravesend crowd upon the shore with
+an effect of confusion as if they had tumbled down haphazard from
+the top of the hill at the back.  The flatness of the Kentish shore
+ends there.  A fleet of steam-tugs lies at anchor in front of the
+various piers.  A conspicuous church spire, the first seen
+distinctly coming from the sea, has a thoughtful grace, the
+serenity of a fine form above the chaotic disorder of men's houses.
+But on the other side, on the flat Essex side, a shapeless and
+desolate red edifice, a vast pile of bricks with many windows and a
+slate roof more inaccessible than an Alpine slope, towers over the
+bend in monstrous ugliness, the tallest, heaviest building for
+miles around, a thing like an hotel, like a mansion of flats (all
+to let), exiled into these fields out of a street in West
+Kensington.  Just round the corner, as it were, on a pier defined
+with stone blocks and wooden piles, a white mast, slender like a
+stalk of straw and crossed by a yard like a knitting-needle, flying
+the signals of flag and balloon, watches over a set of heavy dock-
+gates.  Mast-heads and funnel-tops of ships peep above the ranges
+of corrugated iron roofs.  This is the entrance to Tilbury Dock,
+the most recent of all London docks, the nearest to the sea.
+
+Between the crowded houses of Gravesend and the monstrous red-brick
+pile on the Essex shore the ship is surrendered fairly to the grasp
+of the river.  That hint of loneliness, that soul of the sea which
+had accompanied her as far as the Lower Hope Reach, abandons her at
+the turn of the first bend above.  The salt, acrid flavour is gone
+out of the air, together with a sense of unlimited space opening
+free beyond the threshold of sandbanks below the Nore.  The waters
+of the sea rush on past Gravesend, tumbling the big mooring buoys
+laid along the face of the town; but the sea-freedom stops short
+there, surrendering the salt tide to the needs, the artifices, the
+contrivances of toiling men.  Wharves, landing-places, dock-gates,
+waterside stairs, follow each other continuously right up to London
+Bridge, and the hum of men's work fills the river with a menacing,
+muttering note as of a breathless, ever-driving gale.  The water-
+way, so fair above and wide below, flows oppressed by bricks and
+mortar and stone, by blackened timber and grimed glass and rusty
+iron, covered with black barges, whipped up by paddles and screws,
+overburdened with craft, overhung with chains, overshadowed by
+walls making a steep gorge for its bed, filled with a haze of smoke
+and dust.
+
+This stretch of the Thames from London Bridge to the Albert Docks
+is to other watersides of river ports what a virgin forest would be
+to a garden.  It is a thing grown up, not made.  It recalls a
+jungle by the confused, varied, and impenetrable aspect of the
+buildings that line the shore, not according to a planned purpose,
+but as if sprung up by accident from scattered seeds.  Like the
+matted growth of bushes and creepers veiling the silent depths of
+an unexplored wilderness, they hide the depths of London's
+infinitely varied, vigorous, seething life.  In other river ports
+it is not so.  They lie open to their stream, with quays like broad
+clearings, with streets like avenues cut through thick timber for
+the convenience of trade.  I am thinking now of river ports I have
+seen--of Antwerp, for instance; of Nantes or Bordeaux, or even old
+Rouen, where the night-watchmen of ships, elbows on rail, gaze at
+shop-windows and brilliant cafes, and see the audience go in and
+come out of the opera-house.  But London, the oldest and greatest
+of river ports, does not possess as much as a hundred yards of open
+quays upon its river front.  Dark and impenetrable at night, like
+the face of a forest, is the London waterside.  It is the waterside
+of watersides, where only one aspect of the world's life can be
+seen, and only one kind of men toils on the edge of the stream.
+The lightless walls seem to spring from the very mud upon which the
+stranded barges lie; and the narrow lanes coming down to the
+foreshore resemble the paths of smashed bushes and crumbled earth
+where big game comes to drink on the banks of tropical streams.
+
+Behind the growth of the London waterside the docks of London
+spread out unsuspected, smooth, and placid, lost amongst the
+buildings like dark lagoons hidden in a thick forest.  They lie
+concealed in the intricate growth of houses with a few stalks of
+mastheads here and there overtopping the roof of some four-story
+warehouse.
+
+It is a strange conjunction this of roofs and mastheads, of walls
+and yard-arms.  I remember once having the incongruity of the
+relation brought home to me in a practical way.  I was the chief
+officer of a fine ship, just docked with a cargo of wool from
+Sydney, after a ninety days' passage.  In fact, we had not been in
+more than half an hour and I was still busy making her fast to the
+stone posts of a very narrow quay in front of a lofty warehouse.
+An old man with a gray whisker under the chin and brass buttons on
+his pilot-cloth jacket, hurried up along the quay hailing my ship
+by name.  He was one of those officials called berthing-masters--
+not the one who had berthed us, but another, who, apparently, had
+been busy securing a steamer at the other end of the dock.  I could
+see from afar his hard blue eyes staring at us, as if fascinated,
+with a queer sort of absorption.  I wondered what that worthy sea-
+dog had found to criticise in my ship's rigging.  And I, too,
+glanced aloft anxiously.  I could see nothing wrong there.  But
+perhaps that superannuated fellow-craftsman was simply admiring the
+ship's perfect order aloft, I thought, with some secret pride; for
+the chief officer is responsible for his ship's appearance, and as
+to her outward condition, he is the man open to praise or blame.
+Meantime the old salt ("ex-coasting skipper" was writ large all
+over his person) had hobbled up alongside in his bumpy, shiny
+boots, and, waving an arm, short and thick like the flipper of a
+seal, terminated by a paw red as an uncooked beef-steak, addressed
+the poop in a muffled, faint, roaring voice, as if a sample of
+every North-Sea fog of his life had been permanently lodged in his
+throat:  "Haul 'em round, Mr. Mate!" were his words.  "If you don't
+look sharp, you'll have your topgallant yards through the windows
+of that 'ere warehouse presently!"  This was the only cause of his
+interest in the ship's beautiful spars.  I own that for a time I
+was struck dumb by the bizarre associations of yard-arms and
+window-panes.  To break windows is the last thing one would think
+of in connection with a ship's topgallant yard, unless, indeed, one
+were an experienced berthing-master in one of the London docks.
+This old chap was doing his little share of the world's work with
+proper efficiency.  His little blue eyes had made out the danger
+many hundred yards off.  His rheumaticky feet, tired with balancing
+that squat body for many years upon the decks of small coasters,
+and made sore by miles of tramping upon the flagstones of the dock
+side, had hurried up in time to avert a ridiculous catastrophe.  I
+answered him pettishly, I fear, and as if I had known all about it
+before.
+
+"All right, all right! can't do everything at once."
+
+He remained near by, muttering to himself till the yards had been
+hauled round at my order, and then raised again his foggy, thick
+voice:
+
+"None too soon," he observed, with a critical glance up at the
+towering side of the warehouse.  "That's a half-sovereign in your
+pocket, Mr. Mate.  You should always look first how you are for
+them windows before you begin to breast in your ship to the quay."
+
+It was good advice.  But one cannot think of everything or foresee
+contacts of things apparently as remote as stars and hop-poles.
+
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+
+
+The view of ships lying moored in some of the older docks of London
+has always suggested to my mind the image of a flock of swans kept
+in the flooded backyard of grim tenement houses.  The flatness of
+the walls surrounding the dark pool on which they float brings out
+wonderfully the flowing grace of the lines on which a ship's hull
+is built.  The lightness of these forms, devised to meet the winds
+and the seas, makes, by contrast with the great piles of bricks,
+the chains and cables of their moorings appear very necessary, as
+if nothing less could prevent them from soaring upwards and over
+the roofs.  The least puff of wind stealing round the corners of
+the dock buildings stirs these captives fettered to rigid shores.
+It is as if the soul of a ship were impatient of confinement.
+Those masted hulls, relieved of their cargo, become restless at the
+slightest hint of the wind's freedom.  However tightly moored, they
+range a little at their berths, swaying imperceptibly the spire-
+like assemblages of cordage and spars.  You can detect their
+impatience by watching the sway of the mastheads against the
+motionless, the soulless gravity of mortar and stones.  As you pass
+alongside each hopeless prisoner chained to the quay, the slight
+grinding noise of the wooden fenders makes a sound of angry
+muttering.  But, after all, it may be good for ships to go through
+a period of restraint and repose, as the restraint and self-
+communion of inactivity may be good for an unruly soul--not,
+indeed, that I mean to say that ships are unruly; on the contrary,
+they are faithful creatures, as so many men can testify.  And
+faithfulness is a great restraint, the strongest bond laid upon the
+self-will of men and ships on this globe of land and sea.
+
+This interval of bondage in the docks rounds each period of a
+ship's life with the sense of accomplished duty, of an effectively
+played part in the work of the world.  The dock is the scene of
+what the world would think the most serious part in the light,
+bounding, swaying life of a ship.  But there are docks and docks.
+The ugliness of some docks is appalling.  Wild horses would not
+drag from me the name of a certain river in the north whose narrow
+estuary is inhospitable and dangerous, and whose docks are like a
+nightmare of dreariness and misery.  Their dismal shores are
+studded thickly with scaffold-like, enormous timber structures,
+whose lofty heads are veiled periodically by the infernal gritty
+night of a cloud of coal-dust.  The most important ingredient for
+getting the world's work along is distributed there under the
+circumstances of the greatest cruelty meted out to helpless ships.
+Shut up in the desolate circuit of these basins, you would think a
+free ship would droop and die like a wild bird put into a dirty
+cage.  But a ship, perhaps because of her faithfulness to men, will
+endure an extraordinary lot of ill-usage.  Still, I have seen ships
+issue from certain docks like half-dead prisoners from a dungeon,
+bedraggled, overcome, wholly disguised in dirt, and with their men
+rolling white eyeballs in black and worried faces raised to a
+heaven which, in its smoky and soiled aspect, seemed to reflect the
+sordidness of the earth below.  One thing, however, may be said for
+the docks of the Port of London on both sides of the river:  for
+all the complaints of their insufficient equipment, of their
+obsolete rules, of failure (they say) in the matter of quick
+despatch, no ship need ever issue from their gates in a half-
+fainting condition.  London is a general cargo port, as is only
+proper for the greatest capital of the world to be.  General cargo
+ports belong to the aristocracy of the earth's trading places, and
+in that aristocracy London, as it is its way, has a unique
+physiognomy.
+
+The absence of picturesqueness cannot be laid to the charge of the
+docks opening into the Thames.  For all my unkind comparisons to
+swans and backyards, it cannot be denied that each dock or group of
+docks along the north side of the river has its own individual
+attractiveness.  Beginning with the cosy little St. Katherine's
+Dock, lying overshadowed and black like a quiet pool amongst rocky
+crags, through the venerable and sympathetic London Docks, with not
+a single line of rails in the whole of their area and the aroma of
+spices lingering between its warehouses, with their far-famed wine-
+cellars--down through the interesting group of West India Docks,
+the fine docks at Blackwall, on past the Galleons Reach entrance of
+the Victoria and Albert Docks, right down to the vast gloom of the
+great basins in Tilbury, each of those places of restraint for
+ships has its own peculiar physiognomy, its own expression.  And
+what makes them unique and attractive is their common trait of
+being romantic in their usefulness.
+
+In their way they are as romantic as the river they serve is unlike
+all the other commercial streams of the world.  The cosiness of the
+St. Katherine's Dock, the old-world air of the London Docks, remain
+impressed upon the memory.  The docks down the river, abreast of
+Woolwich, are imposing by their proportions and the vast scale of
+the ugliness that forms their surroundings--ugliness so picturesque
+as to become a delight to the eye.  When one talks of the Thames
+docks, "beauty" is a vain word, but romance has lived too long upon
+this river not to have thrown a mantle of glamour upon its banks.
+
+The antiquity of the port appeals to the imagination by the long
+chain of adventurous enterprises that had their inception in the
+town and floated out into the world on the waters of the river.
+Even the newest of the docks, the Tilbury Dock, shares in the
+glamour conferred by historical associations.  Queen Elizabeth has
+made one of her progresses down there, not one of her journeys of
+pomp and ceremony, but an anxious business progress at a crisis of
+national history.  The menace of that time has passed away, and now
+Tilbury is known by its docks.  These are very modern, but their
+remoteness and isolation upon the Essex marsh, the days of failure
+attending their creation, invested them with a romantic air.
+Nothing in those days could have been more striking than the vast,
+empty basins, surrounded by miles of bare quays and the ranges of
+cargo-sheds, where two or three ships seemed lost like bewitched
+children in a forest of gaunt, hydraulic cranes.  One received a
+wonderful impression of utter abandonment, of wasted efficiency.
+From the first the Tilbury Docks were very efficient and ready for
+their task, but they had come, perhaps, too soon into the field.  A
+great future lies before Tilbury Docks.  They shall never fill a
+long-felt want (in the sacramental phrase that is applied to
+railways, tunnels, newspapers, and new editions of books).  They
+were too early in the field.  The want shall never be felt because,
+free of the trammels of the tide, easy of access, magnificent and
+desolate, they are already there, prepared to take and keep the
+biggest ships that float upon the sea.  They are worthy of the
+oldest river port in the world.
+
+ And, truth to say, for all the criticisms flung upon the heads of
+the dock companies, the other docks of the Thames are no disgrace
+to the town with a population greater than that of some
+commonwealths.  The growth of London as a well-equipped port has
+been slow, while not unworthy of a great capital, of a great centre
+of distribution.  It must not be forgotten that London has not the
+backing of great industrial districts or great fields of natural
+exploitation.  In this it differs from Liverpool, from Cardiff,
+from Newcastle, from Glasgow; and therein the Thames differs from
+the Mersey, from the Tyne, from the Clyde.  It is an historical
+river; it is a romantic stream flowing through the centre of great
+affairs, and for all the criticism of the river's administration,
+my contention is that its development has been worthy of its
+dignity.  For a long time the stream itself could accommodate quite
+easily the oversea and coasting traffic.  That was in the days
+when, in the part called the Pool, just below London Bridge, the
+vessels moored stem and stern in the very strength of the tide
+formed one solid mass like an island covered with a forest of
+gaunt, leafless trees; and when the trade had grown too big for the
+river there came the St. Katherine's Docks and the London Docks,
+magnificent undertakings answering to the need of their time.  The
+same may be said of the other artificial lakes full of ships that
+go in and out upon this high road to all parts of the world.  The
+labour of the imperial waterway goes on from generation to
+generation, goes on day and night.  Nothing ever arrests its
+sleepless industry but the coming of a heavy fog, which clothes the
+teeming stream in a mantle of impenetrable stillness.
+
+After the gradual cessation of all sound and movement on the
+faithful river, only the ringing of ships' bells is heard,
+mysterious and muffled in the white vapour from London Bridge right
+down to the Nore, for miles and miles in a decrescendo tinkling, to
+where the estuary broadens out into the North Sea, and the anchored
+ships lie scattered thinly in the shrouded channels between the
+sand-banks of the Thames' mouth.  Through the long and glorious
+tale of years of the river's strenuous service to its people these
+are its only breathing times.
+
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+
+
+A ship in dock, surrounded by quays and the walls of warehouses,
+has the appearance of a prisoner meditating upon freedom in the
+sadness of a free spirit put under restraint.  Chain cables and
+stout ropes keep her bound to stone posts at the edge of a paved
+shore, and a berthing-master, with brass buttons on his coat, walks
+about like a weather-beaten and ruddy gaoler, casting jealous,
+watchful glances upon the moorings that fetter a ship lying passive
+and still and safe, as if lost in deep regrets of her days of
+liberty and danger on the sea.
+
+The swarm of renegades--dock-masters, berthing-masters, gatemen,
+and such like--appear to nurse an immense distrust of the captive
+ship's resignation.  There never seem chains and ropes enough to
+satisfy their minds concerned with the safe binding of free ships
+to the strong, muddy, enslaved earth.  "You had better put another
+bight of a hawser astern, Mr. Mate," is the usual phrase in their
+mouth.  I brand them for renegades, because most of them have been
+sailors in their time.  As if the infirmities of old age--the gray
+hair, the wrinkles at the corners of the eyes, and the knotted
+veins of the hands--were the symptoms of moral poison, they prowl
+about the quays with an underhand air of gloating over the broken
+spirit of noble captives.  They want more fenders, more breasting-
+ropes; they want more springs, more shackles, more fetters; they
+want to make ships with volatile souls as motionless as square
+blocks of stone.  They stand on the mud of pavements, these
+degraded sea-dogs, with long lines of railway-trucks clanking their
+couplings behind their backs, and run malevolent glances over your
+ship from headgear to taffrail, only wishing to tyrannize over the
+poor creature under the hypocritical cloak of benevolence and care.
+Here and there cargo cranes looking like instruments of torture for
+ships swing cruel hooks at the end of long chains.  Gangs of dock-
+labourers swarm with muddy feet over the gangways.  It is a moving
+sight this, of so many men of the earth, earthy, who never cared
+anything for a ship, trampling unconcerned, brutal and hob-nailed
+upon her helpless body.
+
+Fortunately, nothing can deface the beauty of a ship.  That sense
+of a dungeon, that sense of a horrible and degrading misfortune
+overtaking a creature fair to see and safe to trust, attaches only
+to ships moored in the docks of great European ports.  You feel
+that they are dishonestly locked up, to be hunted about from wharf
+to wharf on a dark, greasy, square pool of black water as a brutal
+reward at the end of a faithful voyage.
+
+A ship anchored in an open roadstead, with cargo-lighters alongside
+and her own tackle swinging the burden over the rail, is
+accomplishing in freedom a function of her life.  There is no
+restraint; there is space:  clear water around her, and a clear sky
+above her mastheads, with a landscape of green hills and charming
+bays opening around her anchorage.  She is not abandoned by her own
+men to the tender mercies of shore people.  She still shelters, and
+is looked after by, her own little devoted band, and you feel that
+presently she will glide between the headlands and disappear.  It
+is only at home, in dock, that she lies abandoned, shut off from
+freedom by all the artifices of men that think of quick despatch
+and profitable freights.  It is only then that the odious,
+rectangular shadows of walls and roofs fall upon her decks, with
+showers of soot.
+
+To a man who has never seen the extraordinary nobility, strength,
+and grace that the devoted generations of ship-builders have
+evolved from some pure nooks of their simple souls, the sight that
+could be seen five-and-twenty years ago of a large fleet of
+clippers moored along the north side of the New South Dock was an
+inspiring spectacle.  Then there was a quarter of a mile of them,
+from the iron dockyard-gates guarded by policemen, in a long,
+forest-like perspective of masts, moored two and two to many stout
+wooden jetties.  Their spars dwarfed with their loftiness the
+corrugated-iron sheds, their jibbooms extended far over the shore,
+their white-and-gold figure-heads, almost dazzling in their purity,
+overhung the straight, long quay above the mud and dirt of the
+wharfside, with the busy figures of groups and single men moving to
+and fro, restless and grimy under their soaring immobility.
+
+At tide-time you would see one of the loaded ships with battened-
+down hatches drop out of the ranks and float in the clear space of
+the dock, held by lines dark and slender, like the first threads of
+a spider's web, extending from her bows and her quarters to the
+mooring-posts on shore.  There, graceful and still, like a bird
+ready to spread its wings, she waited till, at the opening of the
+gates, a tug or two would hurry in noisily, hovering round her with
+an air of fuss and solicitude, and take her out into the river,
+tending, shepherding her through open bridges, through dam-like
+gates between the flat pier-heads, with a bit of green lawn
+surrounded by gravel and a white signal-mast with yard and gaff,
+flying a couple of dingy blue, red, or white flags.
+
+This New South Dock (it was its official name), round which my
+earlier professional memories are centred, belongs to the group of
+West India Docks, together with two smaller and much older basins
+called Import and Export respectively, both with the greatness of
+their trade departed from them already.  Picturesque and clean as
+docks go, these twin basins spread side by side the dark lustre of
+their glassy water, sparely peopled by a few ships laid up on buoys
+or tucked far away from each other at the end of sheds in the
+corners of empty quays, where they seemed to slumber quietly
+remote, untouched by the bustle of men's affairs--in retreat rather
+than in captivity.  They were quaint and sympathetic, those two
+homely basins, unfurnished and silent, with no aggressive display
+of cranes, no apparatus of hurry and work on their narrow shores.
+No railway-lines cumbered them.  The knots of labourers trooping in
+clumsily round the corners of cargo-sheds to eat their food in
+peace out of red cotton handkerchiefs had the air of picnicking by
+the side of a lonely mountain pool.  They were restful (and I
+should say very unprofitable), those basins, where the chief
+officer of one of the ships involved in the harassing, strenuous,
+noisy activity of the New South Dock only a few yards away could
+escape in the dinner-hour to stroll, unhampered by men and affairs,
+meditating (if he chose) on the vanity of all things human.  At one
+time they must have been full of good old slow West Indiamen of the
+square-stern type, that took their captivity, one imagines, as
+stolidly as they had faced the buffeting of the waves with their
+blunt, honest bows, and disgorged sugar, rum, molasses, coffee, or
+logwood sedately with their own winch and tackle.  But when I knew
+them, of exports there was never a sign that one could detect; and
+all the imports I have ever seen were some rare cargoes of tropical
+timber, enormous baulks roughed out of iron trunks grown in the
+woods about the Gulf of Mexico.  They lay piled up in stacks of
+mighty boles, and it was hard to believe that all this mass of dead
+and stripped trees had come out of the flanks of a slender,
+innocent-looking little barque with, as likely as not, a homely
+woman's name--Ellen this or Annie that--upon her fine bows.  But
+this is generally the case with a discharged cargo.  Once spread at
+large over the quay, it looks the most impossible bulk to have all
+come there out of that ship along-side.
+
+They were quiet, serene nooks in the busy world of docks, these
+basins where it has never been my good luck to get a berth after
+some more or less arduous passage.  But one could see at a glance
+that men and ships were never hustled there.  They were so quiet
+that, remembering them well, one comes to doubt that they ever
+existed--places of repose for tired ships to dream in, places of
+meditation rather than work, where wicked ships--the cranky, the
+lazy, the wet, the bad sea boats, the wild steerers, the
+capricious, the pig-headed, the generally ungovernable--would have
+full leisure to take count and repent of their sins, sorrowful and
+naked, with their rent garments of sailcloth stripped off them, and
+with the dust and ashes of the London atmosphere upon their
+mastheads.  For that the worst of ships would repent if she were
+ever given time I make no doubt.  I have known too many of them.
+No ship is wholly bad; and now that their bodies that had braved so
+many tempests have been blown off the face of the sea by a puff of
+steam, the evil and the good together into the limbo of things that
+have served their time, there can be no harm in affirming that in
+these vanished generations of willing servants there never has been
+one utterly unredeemable soul.
+
+In the New South Dock there was certainly no time for remorse,
+introspection, repentance, or any phenomena of inner life either
+for the captive ships or for their officers.  From six in the
+morning till six at night the hard labour of the prison-house,
+which rewards the valiance of ships that win the harbour went on
+steadily, great slings of general cargo swinging over the rail, to
+drop plumb into the hatchways at the sign of the gangway-tender's
+hand.  The New South Dock was especially a loading dock for the
+Colonies in those great (and last) days of smart wool-clippers,
+good to look at and--well--exciting to handle.  Some of them were
+more fair to see than the others; many were (to put it mildly)
+somewhat over-masted; all were expected to make good passages; and
+of all that line of ships, whose rigging made a thick, enormous
+network against the sky, whose brasses flashed almost as far as the
+eye of the policeman at the gates could reach, there was hardly one
+that knew of any other port amongst all the ports on the wide earth
+but London and Sydney, or London and Melbourne, or London and
+Adelaide, perhaps with Hobart Town added for those of smaller
+tonnage.  One could almost have believed, as her gray-whiskered
+second mate used to say of the old Duke of S-, that they knew the
+road to the Antipodes better than their own skippers, who, year in,
+year out, took them from London--the place of captivity--to some
+Australian port where, twenty-five years ago, though moored well
+and tight enough to the wooden wharves, they felt themselves no
+captives, but honoured guests.
+
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+
+
+These towns of the Antipodes, not so great then as they are now,
+took an interest in the shipping, the running links with "home,"
+whose numbers confirmed the sense of their growing importance.
+They made it part and parcel of their daily interests.  This was
+especially the case in Sydney, where, from the heart of the fair
+city, down the vista of important streets, could be seen the wool-
+clippers lying at the Circular Quay--no walled prison-house of a
+dock that, but the integral part of one of the finest, most
+beautiful, vast, and safe bays the sun ever shone upon.  Now great
+steam-liners lie at these berths, always reserved for the sea
+aristocracy--grand and imposing enough ships, but here to-day and
+gone next week; whereas the general cargo, emigrant, and passenger
+clippers of my time, rigged with heavy spars, and built on fine
+lines, used to remain for months together waiting for their load of
+wool.  Their names attained the dignity of household words.  On
+Sundays and holidays the citizens trooped down, on visiting bent,
+and the lonely officer on duty solaced himself by playing the
+cicerone--especially to the citizenesses with engaging manners and
+a well-developed sense of the fun that may be got out of the
+inspection of a ship's cabins and state-rooms.  The tinkle of more
+or less untuned cottage pianos floated out of open stern-ports till
+the gas-lamps began to twinkle in the streets, and the ship's
+night-watchman, coming sleepily on duty after his unsatisfactory
+day slumbers, hauled down the flags and fastened a lighted lantern
+at the break of the gangway.  The night closed rapidly upon the
+silent ships with their crews on shore.  Up a short, steep ascent
+by the King's Head pub., patronized by the cooks and stewards of
+the fleet, the voice of a man crying "Hot saveloys!" at the end of
+George Street, where the cheap eating-houses (sixpence a meal) were
+kept by Chinamen (Sun-kum-on's was not bad), is heard at regular
+intervals.  I have listened for hours to this most pertinacious
+pedlar (I wonder whether he is dead or has made a fortune), while
+sitting on the rail of the old Duke of S- (she's dead, poor thing!
+a violent death on the coast of New Zealand), fascinated by the
+monotony, the regularity, the abruptness of the recurring cry, and
+so exasperated at the absurd spell, that I wished the fellow would
+choke himself to death with a mouthful of his own infamous wares.
+
+A stupid job, and fit only for an old man, my comrades used to tell
+me, to be the night-watchman of a captive (though honoured) ship.
+And generally the oldest of the able seamen in a ship's crew does
+get it.  But sometimes neither the oldest nor any other fairly
+steady seaman is forthcoming.  Ships' crews had the trick of
+melting away swiftly in those days.  So, probably on account of my
+youth, innocence, and pensive habits (which made me sometimes
+dilatory in my work about the rigging), I was suddenly nominated,
+in our chief mate Mr. B-'s most sardonic tones, to that enviable
+situation.  I do not regret the experience.  The night humours of
+the town descended from the street to the waterside in the still
+watches of the night:  larrikins rushing down in bands to settle
+some quarrel by a stand-up fight, away from the police, in an
+indistinct ring half hidden by piles of cargo, with the sounds of
+blows, a groan now and then, the stamping of feet, and the cry of
+"Time!" rising suddenly above the sinister and excited murmurs;
+night-prowlers, pursued or pursuing, with a stifled shriek followed
+by a profound silence, or slinking stealthily along-side like
+ghosts, and addressing me from the quay below in mysterious tones
+with incomprehensible propositions.  The cabmen, too, who twice a
+week, on the night when the A.S.N. Company's passenger-boat was due
+to arrive, used to range a battalion of blazing lamps opposite the
+ship, were very amusing in their way.  They got down from their
+perches and told each other impolite stories in racy language,
+every word of which reached me distinctly over the bulwarks as I
+sat smoking on the main-hatch.  On one occasion I had an hour or so
+of a most intellectual conversation with a person whom I could not
+see distinctly, a gentleman from England, he said, with a
+cultivated voice, I on deck and he on the quay sitting on the case
+of a piano (landed out of our hold that very afternoon), and
+smoking a cigar which smelt very good.  We touched, in our
+discourse, upon science, politics, natural history, and operatic
+singers.  Then, after remarking abruptly, "You seem to be rather
+intelligent, my man," he informed me pointedly that his name was
+Mr. Senior, and walked off--to his hotel, I suppose.  Shadows!
+Shadows!  I think I saw a white whisker as he turned under the
+lamp-post.  It is a shock to think that in the natural course of
+nature he must be dead by now.  There was nothing to object to in
+his intelligence but a little dogmatism maybe.  And his name was
+Senior!  Mr. Senior!
+
+The position had its drawbacks, however.  One wintry, blustering,
+dark night in July, as I stood sleepily out of the rain under the
+break of the poop something resembling an ostrich dashed up the
+gangway.  I say ostrich because the creature, though it ran on two
+legs, appeared to help its progress by working a pair of short
+wings; it was a man, however, only his coat, ripped up the back and
+flapping in two halves above his shoulders, gave him that weird and
+fowl-like appearance.  At least, I suppose it was his coat, for it
+was impossible to make him out distinctly.  How he managed to come
+so straight upon me, at speed and without a stumble over a strange
+deck, I cannot imagine.  He must have been able to see in the dark
+better than any cat.  He overwhelmed me with panting entreaties to
+let him take shelter till morning in our forecastle.  Following my
+strict orders, I refused his request, mildly at first, in a sterner
+tone as he insisted with growing impudence.
+
+"For God's sake let me, matey!  Some of 'em are after me--and I've
+got hold of a ticker here."
+
+"You clear out of this!" I said.
+
+"Don't be hard on a chap, old man!" he whined pitifully.
+
+"Now then, get ashore at once.  Do you hear?"
+
+Silence.  He appeared to cringe, mute, as if words had failed him
+through grief; then--bang! came a concussion and a great flash of
+light in which he vanished, leaving me prone on my back with the
+most abominable black eye that anybody ever got in the faithful
+discharge of duty.  Shadows!  Shadows!  I hope he escaped the
+enemies he was fleeing from to live and flourish to this day.  But
+his fist was uncommonly hard and his aim miraculously true in the
+dark.
+
+There were other experiences, less painful and more funny for the
+most part, with one amongst them of a dramatic complexion; but the
+greatest experience of them all was Mr. B-, our chief mate himself.
+
+He used to go ashore every night to foregather in some hotel's
+parlour with his crony, the mate of the barque Cicero, lying on the
+other side of the Circular Quay.  Late at night I would hear from
+afar their stumbling footsteps and their voices raised in endless
+argument.  The mate of the Cicero was seeing his friend on board.
+They would continue their senseless and muddled discourse in tones
+of profound friendship for half an hour or so at the shore end of
+our gangway, and then I would hear Mr. B- insisting that he must
+see the other on board his ship.  And away they would go, their
+voices, still conversing with excessive amity, being heard moving
+all round the harbour.  It happened more than once that they would
+thus perambulate three or four times the distance, each seeing the
+other on board his ship out of pure and disinterested affection.
+Then, through sheer weariness, or perhaps in a moment of
+forgetfulness, they would manage to part from each other somehow,
+and by-and-by the planks of our long gangway would bend and creak
+under the weight of Mr. B- coming on board for good at last.
+
+On the rail his burly form would stop and stand swaying.
+
+"Watchman!"
+
+"Sir."
+
+A pause.
+
+He waited for a moment of steadiness before negotiating the three
+steps of the inside ladder from rail to deck; and the watchman,
+taught by experience, would forbear offering help which would be
+received as an insult at that particular stage of the mate's
+return.  But many times I trembled for his neck.  He was a heavy
+man.
+
+Then with a rush and a thump it would be done.  He never had to
+pick himself up; but it took him a minute or so to pull himself
+together after the descent.
+
+"Watchman!"
+
+"Sir."
+
+"Captain aboard?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Pause.
+
+"Dog aboard?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Pause.
+
+Our dog was a gaunt and unpleasant beast, more like a wolf in poor
+health than a dog, and I never noticed Mr. B- at any other time
+show the slightest interest in the doings of the animal.  But that
+question never failed.
+
+"Let's have your arm to steady me along."
+
+I was always prepared for that request.  He leaned on me heavily
+till near enough the cabin-door to catch hold of the handle.  Then
+he would let go my arm at once.
+
+"That'll do.  I can manage now."
+
+And he could manage.  He could manage to find his way into his
+berth, light his lamp, get into his bed--ay, and get out of it when
+I called him at half-past five, the first man on deck, lifting the
+cup of morning coffee to his lips with a steady hand, ready for
+duty as though he had virtuously slept ten solid hours--a better
+chief officer than many a man who had never tasted grog in his
+life.  He could manage all that, but could never manage to get on
+in life.
+
+Only once he failed to seize the cabin-door handle at the first
+grab.  He waited a little, tried again, and again failed.  His
+weight was growing heavier on my arm.  He sighed slowly.
+
+"D-n that handle!"
+
+Without letting go his hold of me he turned about, his face lit up
+bright as day by the full moon.
+
+"I wish she were out at sea," he growled savagely.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+I felt the need to say something, because he hung on to me as if
+lost, breathing heavily.
+
+"Ports are no good--ships rot, men go to the devil!"
+
+I kept still, and after a while he repeated with a sigh.
+
+"I wish she were at sea out of this."
+
+"So do I, sir," I ventured.
+
+Holding my shoulder, he turned upon me.
+
+"You!  What's that to you where she is?  You don't--drink."
+
+And even on that night he "managed it" at last.  He got hold of the
+handle.  But he did not manage to light his lamp (I don't think he
+even tried), though in the morning as usual he was the first on
+deck, bull-necked, curly-headed, watching the hands turn-to with
+his sardonic expression and unflinching gaze.
+
+I met him ten years afterwards, casually, unexpectedly, in the
+street, on coming out of my consignee office.  I was not likely to
+have forgotten him with his "I can manage now."  He recognised me
+at once, remembered my name, and in what ship I had served under
+his orders.  He looked me over from head to foot.
+
+"What are you doing here?" he asked.
+
+"I am commanding a little barque," I said, "loading here for
+Mauritius."  Then, thoughtlessly, I added:  "And what are you
+doing, Mr. B-?"
+
+"I," he said, looking at me unflinchingly, with his old sardonic
+grin--"I am looking for something to do."
+
+I felt I would rather have bitten out my tongue.  His jet-black,
+curly hair had turned iron-gray; he was scrupulously neat as ever,
+but frightfully threadbare.  His shiny boots were worn down at
+heel.  But he forgave me, and we drove off together in a hansom to
+dine on board my ship.  He went over her conscientiously, praised
+her heartily, congratulated me on my command with absolute
+sincerity.  At dinner, as I offered him wine and beer he shook his
+head, and as I sat looking at him interrogatively, muttered in an
+undertone:
+
+"I've given up all that."
+
+After dinner we came again on deck.  It seemed as though he could
+not tear himself away from the ship.  We were fitting some new
+lower rigging, and he hung about, approving, suggesting, giving me
+advice in his old manner.  Twice he addressed me as "My boy," and
+corrected himself quickly to "Captain."  My mate was about to leave
+me (to get married), but I concealed the fact from Mr. B-.  I was
+afraid he would ask me to give him the berth in some ghastly
+jocular hint that I could not refuse to take.  I was afraid.  It
+would have been impossible.  I could not have given orders to Mr.
+B-, and I am sure he would not have taken them from me very long.
+He could not have managed that, though he had managed to break
+himself from drink--too late.
+
+He said good-bye at last.  As I watched his burly, bull-necked
+figure walk away up the street, I wondered with a sinking heart
+whether he had much more than the price of a night's lodging in his
+pocket.  And I understood that if that very minute I were to call
+out after him, he would not even turn his head.  He, too, is no
+more than a shadow, but I seem to hear his words spoken on the
+moonlit deck of the old Duke--:
+
+"Ports are no good--ships rot, men go to the devil!"
+
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+
+
+"Ships!" exclaimed an elderly seaman in clean shore togs.  "Ships"-
+-and his keen glance, turning away from my face, ran along the
+vista of magnificent figure-heads that in the late seventies used
+to overhang in a serried rank the muddy pavement by the side of the
+New South Dock--"ships are all right; it's the men in 'em. . ."
+
+Fifty hulls, at least, moulded on lines of beauty and speed--hulls
+of wood, of iron, expressing in their forms the highest achievement
+of modern ship-building--lay moored all in a row, stem to quay, as
+if assembled there for an exhibition, not of a great industry, but
+of a great art.  Their colours were gray, black, dark green, with a
+narrow strip of yellow moulding defining their sheer, or with a row
+of painted ports decking in warlike decoration their robust flanks
+of cargo-carriers that would know no triumph but of speed in
+carrying a burden, no glory other than of a long service, no
+victory but that of an endless, obscure contest with the sea.  The
+great empty hulls with swept holds, just out of dry-dock, with
+their paint glistening freshly, sat high-sided with ponderous
+dignity alongside the wooden jetties, looking more like unmovable
+buildings than things meant to go afloat; others, half loaded, far
+on the way to recover the true sea-physiognomy of a ship brought
+down to her load-line, looked more accessible.  Their less steeply
+slanting gangways seemed to invite the strolling sailors in search
+of a berth to walk on board and try "for a chance" with the chief
+mate, the guardian of a ship's efficiency.  As if anxious to remain
+unperceived amongst their overtopping sisters, two or three
+"finished" ships floated low, with an air of straining at the leash
+of their level headfasts, exposing to view their cleared decks and
+covered hatches, prepared to drop stern first out of the labouring
+ranks, displaying the true comeliness of form which only her proper
+sea-trim gives to a ship.  And for a good quarter of a mile, from
+the dockyard gate to the farthest corner, where the old housed-in
+hulk, the President (drill-ship, then, of the Naval Reserve), used
+to lie with her frigate side rubbing against the stone of the quay,
+above all these hulls, ready and unready, a hundred and fifty lofty
+masts, more or less, held out the web of their rigging like an
+immense net, in whose close mesh, black against the sky, the heavy
+yards seemed to be entangled and suspended.
+
+It was a sight.  The humblest craft that floats makes its appeal to
+a seaman by the faithfulness of her life; and this was the place
+where one beheld the aristocracy of ships.  It was a noble
+gathering of the fairest and the swiftest, each bearing at the bow
+the carved emblem of her name, as in a gallery of plaster-casts,
+figures of women with mural crowns, women with flowing robes, with
+gold fillets on their hair or blue scarves round their waists,
+stretching out rounded arms as if to point the way; heads of men
+helmeted or bare; full lengths of warriors, of kings, of statesmen,
+of lords and princesses, all white from top to toe; with here and
+there a dusky turbaned figure, bedizened in many colours, of some
+Eastern sultan or hero, all inclined forward under the slant of
+mighty bowsprits as if eager to begin another run of 11,000 miles
+in their leaning attitudes.  These were the fine figure-heads of
+the finest ships afloat.  But why, unless for the love of the life
+those effigies shared with us in their wandering impassivity,
+should one try to reproduce in words an impression of whose
+fidelity there can be no critic and no judge, since such an
+exhibition of the art of shipbuilding and the art of figure-head
+carving as was seen from year's end to year's end in the open-air
+gallery of the New South Dock no man's eye shall behold again?  All
+that patient, pale company of queens and princesses, of kings and
+warriors, of allegorical women, of heroines and statesmen and
+heathen gods, crowned, helmeted, bare-headed, has run for good off
+the sea stretching to the last above the tumbling foam their fair,
+rounded arms; holding out their spears, swords, shields, tridents
+in the same unwearied, striving forward pose.  And nothing remains
+but lingering perhaps in the memory of a few men, the sound of
+their names, vanished a long time ago from the first page of the
+great London dailies; from big posters in railway-stations and the
+doors of shipping offices; from the minds of sailors, dockmasters,
+pilots, and tugmen; from the hail of gruff voices and the flutter
+of signal flags exchanged between ships closing upon each other and
+drawing apart in the open immensity of the sea.
+
+The elderly, respectable seaman, withdrawing his gaze from that
+multitude of spars, gave me a glance to make sure of our fellowship
+in the craft and mystery of the sea.  We had met casually, and had
+got into contact as I had stopped near him, my attention being
+caught by the same peculiarity he was looking at in the rigging of
+an obviously new ship, a ship with her reputation all to make yet
+in the talk of the seamen who were to share their life with her.
+Her name was already on their lips.  I had heard it uttered between
+two thick, red-necked fellows of the semi-nautical type at the
+Fenchurch Street Railway-station, where, in those days, the
+everyday male crowd was attired in jerseys and pilot-cloth mostly,
+and had the air of being more conversant with the times of high-
+water than with the times of the trains.  I had noticed that new
+ship's name on the first page of my morning paper.  I had stared at
+the unfamiliar grouping of its letters, blue on white ground, on
+the advertisement-boards, whenever the train came to a standstill
+alongside one of the shabby, wooden, wharf-like platforms of the
+dock railway-line.  She had been named, with proper observances, on
+the day she came off the stocks, no doubt, but she was very far yet
+from "having a name."  Untried, ignorant of the ways of the sea,
+she had been thrust amongst that renowned company of ships to load
+for her maiden voyage.  There was nothing to vouch for her
+soundness and the worth of her character, but the reputation of the
+building-yard whence she was launched headlong into the world of
+waters.  She looked modest to me.  I imagined her diffident, lying
+very quiet, with her side nestling shyly against the wharf to which
+she was made fast with very new lines, intimidated by the company
+of her tried and experienced sisters already familiar with all the
+violences of the ocean and the exacting love of men.  They had had
+more long voyages to make their names in than she had known weeks
+of carefully tended life, for a new ship receives as much attention
+as if she were a young bride.  Even crabbed old dock-masters look
+at her with benevolent eyes.  In her shyness at the threshold of a
+laborious and uncertain life, where so much is expected of a ship,
+she could not have been better heartened and comforted, had she
+only been able to hear and understand, than by the tone of deep
+conviction in which my elderly, respectable seaman repeated the
+first part of his saying, "Ships are all right . . ."
+
+His civility prevented him from repeating the other, the bitter
+part.  It had occurred to him that it was perhaps indelicate to
+insist.  He had recognised in me a ship's officer, very possibly
+looking for a berth like himself, and so far a comrade, but still a
+man belonging to that sparsely-peopled after-end of a ship, where a
+great part of her reputation as a "good ship," in seaman's
+parlance, is made or marred.
+
+"Can you say that of all ships without exception?" I asked, being
+in an idle mood, because, if an obvious ship's officer, I was not,
+as a matter of fact, down at the docks to "look for a berth," an
+occupation as engrossing as gambling, and as little favourable to
+the free exchange of ideas, besides being destructive of the kindly
+temper needed for casual intercourse with one's fellow-creatures.
+
+"You can always put up with 'em," opined the respectable seaman
+judicially.
+
+He was not averse from talking, either.  If he had come down to the
+dock to look for a berth, he did not seem oppressed by anxiety as
+to his chances.  He had the serenity of a man whose estimable
+character is fortunately expressed by his personal appearance in an
+unobtrusive, yet convincing, manner which no chief officer in want
+of hands could resist.  And, true enough, I learned presently that
+the mate of the Hyperion had "taken down" his name for quarter-
+master.  "We sign on Friday, and join next day for the morning
+tide," he remarked, in a deliberate, careless tone, which
+contrasted strongly with his evident readiness to stand there
+yarning for an hour or so with an utter stranger.
+
+"Hyperion," I said.  "I don't remember ever seeing that ship
+anywhere.  What sort of a name has she got?"
+
+It appeared from his discursive answer that she had not much of a
+name one way or another.  She was not very fast.  It took no fool,
+though, to steer her straight, he believed.  Some years ago he had
+seen her in Calcutta, and he remembered being told by somebody
+then, that on her passage up the river she had carried away both
+her hawse-pipes.  But that might have been the pilot's fault.  Just
+now, yarning with the apprentices on board, he had heard that this
+very voyage, brought up in the Downs, outward bound, she broke her
+sheer, struck adrift, and lost an anchor and chain.  But that might
+have occurred through want of careful tending in a tideway.  All
+the same, this looked as though she were pretty hard on her ground-
+tackle.  Didn't it?  She seemed a heavy ship to handle, anyway.
+For the rest, as she had a new captain and a new mate this voyage,
+he understood, one couldn't say how she would turn out. . . .
+
+In such marine shore-talk as this is the name of a ship slowly
+established, her fame made for her, the tale of her qualities and
+of her defects kept, her idiosyncrasies commented upon with the
+zest of personal gossip, her achievements made much of, her faults
+glossed over as things that, being without remedy in our imperfect
+world, should not be dwelt upon too much by men who, with the help
+of ships, wrest out a bitter living from the rough grasp of the
+sea.  All that talk makes up her "name," which is handed over from
+one crew to another without bitterness, without animosity, with the
+indulgence of mutual dependence, and with the feeling of close
+association in the exercise of her perfections and in the danger of
+her defects.
+
+This feeling explains men's pride in ships.  "Ships are all right,"
+as my middle-aged, respectable quartermaster said with much
+conviction and some irony; but they are not exactly what men make
+them.  They have their own nature; they can of themselves minister
+to our self-esteem by the demand their qualities make upon our
+skill and their shortcomings upon our hardiness and endurance.
+Which is the more flattering exaction it is hard to say; but there
+is the fact that in listening for upwards of twenty years to the
+sea-talk that goes on afloat and ashore I have never detected the
+true note of animosity.  I won't deny that at sea, sometimes, the
+note of profanity was audible enough in those chiding
+interpellations a wet, cold, weary seaman addresses to his ship,
+and in moments of exasperation is disposed to extend to all ships
+that ever were launched--to the whole everlastingly exacting brood
+that swims in deep waters.  And I have heard curses launched at the
+unstable element itself, whose fascination, outlasting the
+accumulated experience of ages, had captured him as it had captured
+the generations of his forebears.
+
+For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on
+shore) have professed to feel for it, for all the celebrations it
+had been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been
+friendly to man.  At most it has been the accomplice of human
+restlessness, and playing the part of dangerous abettor of world-
+wide ambitions.  Faithful to no race after the manner of the kindly
+earth, receiving no impress from valour and toil and self-
+sacrifice, recognising no finality of dominion, the sea has never
+adopted the cause of its masters like those lands where the
+victorious nations of mankind have taken root, rocking their
+cradles and setting up their gravestones.  He--man or people--who,
+putting his trust in the friendship of the sea, neglects the
+strength and cunning of his right hand, is a fool!  As if it were
+too great, too mighty for common virtues, the ocean has no
+compassion, no faith, no law, no memory.  Its fickleness is to be
+held true to men's purposes only by an undaunted resolution and by
+a sleepless, armed, jealous vigilance, in which, perhaps, there has
+always been more hate than love.  Odi et amo may well be the
+confession of those who consciously or blindly have surrendered
+their existence to the fascination of the sea.  All the tempestuous
+passions of mankind's young days, the love of loot and the love of
+glory, the love of adventure and the love of danger, with the great
+love of the unknown and vast dreams of dominion and power, have
+passed like images reflected from a mirror, leaving no record upon
+the mysterious face of the sea.  Impenetrable and heartless, the
+sea has given nothing of itself to the suitors for its precarious
+favours.  Unlike the earth, it cannot be subjugated at any cost of
+patience and toil.  For all its fascination that has lured so many
+to a violent death, its immensity has never been loved as the
+mountains, the plains, the desert itself, have been loved.  Indeed,
+I suspect that, leaving aside the protestations and tributes of
+writers who, one is safe in saying, care for little else in the
+world than the rhythm of their lines and the cadence of their
+phrase, the love of the sea, to which some men and nations confess
+so readily, is a complex sentiment wherein pride enters for much,
+necessity for not a little, and the love of ships--the untiring
+servants of our hopes and our self-esteem--for the best and most
+genuine part.  For the hundreds who have reviled the sea, beginning
+with Shakespeare in the line
+
+
+"More fell than hunger, anguish, or the sea,"
+
+
+down to the last obscure sea-dog of the "old model," having but few
+words and still fewer thoughts, there could not be found, I
+believe, one sailor who has ever coupled a curse with the good or
+bad name of a ship.  If ever his profanity, provoked by the
+hardships of the sea, went so far as to touch his ship, it would be
+lightly, as a hand may, without sin, be laid in the way of kindness
+on a woman.
+
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+
+
+The love that is given to ships is profoundly different from the
+love men feel for every other work of their hands--the love they
+bear to their houses, for instance--because it is untainted by the
+pride of possession.  The pride of skill, the pride of
+responsibility, the pride of endurance there may be, but otherwise
+it is a disinterested sentiment.  No seaman ever cherished a ship,
+even if she belonged to him, merely because of the profit she put
+in his pocket.  No one, I think, ever did; for a ship-owner, even
+of the best, has always been outside the pale of that sentiment
+embracing in a feeling of intimate, equal fellowship the ship and
+the man, backing each other against the implacable, if sometimes
+dissembled, hostility of their world of waters.  The sea--this
+truth must be confessed--has no generosity.  No display of manly
+qualities--courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness--has ever
+been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.  The
+ocean has the conscienceless temper of a savage autocrat spoiled by
+much adulation.  He cannot brook the slightest appearance of
+defiance, and has remained the irreconcilable enemy of ships and
+men ever since ships and men had the unheard of audacity to go
+afloat together in the face of his frown.  From that day he has
+gone on swallowing up fleets and men without his resentment being
+glutted by the number of victims--by so many wrecked ships and
+wrecked lives.  To-day, as ever, he is ready to beguile and betray,
+to smash and to drown the incorrigible optimism of men who, backed
+by the fidelity of ships, are trying to wrest from him the fortune
+of their house, the dominion of their world, or only a dole of food
+for their hunger.  If not always in the hot mood to smash, he is
+always stealthily ready for a drowning.  The most amazing wonder of
+the deep is its unfathomable cruelty.
+
+I felt its dread for the first time in mid-Atlantic one day, many
+years ago, when we took off the crew of a Danish brig homeward
+bound from the West Indies.  A thin, silvery mist softened the calm
+and majestic splendour of light without shadows--seemed to render
+the sky less remote and the ocean less immense.  It was one of the
+days, when the might of the sea appears indeed lovable, like the
+nature of a strong man in moments of quiet intimacy.  At sunrise we
+had made out a black speck to the westward, apparently suspended
+high up in the void behind a stirring, shimmering veil of silvery
+blue gauze that seemed at times to stir and float in the breeze
+which fanned us slowly along.  The peace of that enchanting
+forenoon was so profound, so untroubled, that it seemed that every
+word pronounced loudly on our deck would penetrate to the very
+heart of that infinite mystery born from the conjunction of water
+and sky.  We did not raise our voices.  "A water-logged derelict, I
+think, sir," said the second officer quietly, coming down from
+aloft with the binoculars in their case slung across his shoulders;
+and our captain, without a word, signed to the helmsman to steer
+for the black speck.  Presently we made out a low, jagged stump
+sticking up forward--all that remained of her departed masts.
+
+The captain was expatiating in a low conversational tone to the
+chief mate upon the danger of these derelicts, and upon his dread
+of coming upon them at night, when suddenly a man forward screamed
+out, "There's people on board of her, sir!  I see them!" in a most
+extraordinary voice--a voice never heard before in our ship; the
+amazing voice of a stranger.  It gave the signal for a sudden
+tumult of shouts.  The watch below ran up the forecastle head in a
+body, the cook dashed out of the galley.  Everybody saw the poor
+fellows now.  They were there!  And all at once our ship, which had
+the well-earned name of being without a rival for speed in light
+winds, seemed to us to have lost the power of motion, as if the
+sea, becoming viscous, had clung to her sides.  And yet she moved.
+Immensity, the inseparable companion of a ship's life, chose that
+day to breathe upon her as gently as a sleeping child.  The clamour
+of our excitement had died out, and our living ship, famous for
+never losing steerage way as long as there was air enough to float
+a feather, stole, without a ripple, silent and white as a ghost,
+towards her mutilated and wounded sister, come upon at the point of
+death in the sunlit haze of a calm day at sea.
+
+With the binoculars glued to his eyes, the captain said in a
+quavering tone:  "They are waving to us with something aft there."
+He put down the glasses on the skylight brusquely, and began to
+walk about the poop.  "A shirt or a flag," he ejaculated irritably.
+"Can't make it out. . . Some damn rag or other!"  He took a few
+more turns on the poop, glancing down over the rail now and then to
+see how fast we were moving.  His nervous footsteps rang sharply in
+the quiet of the ship, where the other men, all looking the same
+way, had forgotten themselves in a staring immobility.  "This will
+never do!" he cried out suddenly.  "Lower the boats at once!  Down
+with them!"
+
+Before I jumped into mine he took me aside, as being an
+inexperienced junior, for a word of warning:
+
+"You look out as you come alongside that she doesn't take you down
+with her.  You understand?"
+
+He murmured this confidentially, so that none of the men at the
+falls should overhear, and I was shocked.  "Heavens! as if in such
+an emergency one stopped to think of danger!" I exclaimed to myself
+mentally, in scorn of such cold-blooded caution.
+
+It takes many lessons to make a real seaman, and I got my rebuke at
+once.  My experienced commander seemed in one searching glance to
+read my thoughts on my ingenuous face.
+
+"What you're going for is to save life, not to drown your boat's
+crew for nothing," he growled severely in my ear.  But as we shoved
+off he leaned over and cried out:  "It all rests on the power of
+your arms, men.  Give way for life!"
+
+We made a race of it, and I would never have believed that a common
+boat's crew of a merchantman could keep up so much determined
+fierceness in the regular swing of their stroke.  What our captain
+had clearly perceived before we left had become plain to all of us
+since.  The issue of our enterprise hung on a hair above that abyss
+of waters which will not give up its dead till the Day of Judgment.
+It was a race of two ship's boats matched against Death for a prize
+of nine men's lives, and Death had a long start.  We saw the crew
+of the brig from afar working at the pumps--still pumping on that
+wreck, which already had settled so far down that the gentle, low
+swell, over which our boats rose and fell easily without a check to
+their speed, welling up almost level with her head-rails, plucked
+at the ends of broken gear swinging desolately under her naked
+bowsprit.
+
+We could not, in all conscience, have picked out a better day for
+our regatta had we had the free choice of all the days that ever
+dawned upon the lonely struggles and solitary agonies of ships
+since the Norse rovers first steered to the westward against the
+run of Atlantic waves.  It was a very good race.  At the finish
+there was not an oar's length between the first and second boat,
+with Death coming in a good third on the top of the very next
+smooth swell, for all one knew to the contrary.  The scuppers of
+the brig gurgled softly all together when the water rising against
+her sides subsided sleepily with a low wash, as if playing about an
+immovable rock.  Her bulwarks were gone fore and aft, and one saw
+her bare deck low-lying like a raft and swept clean of boats,
+spars, houses--of everything except the ringbolts and the heads of
+the pumps.  I had one dismal glimpse of it as I braced myself up to
+receive upon my breast the last man to leave her, the captain, who
+literally let himself fall into my arms.
+
+It had been a weirdly silent rescue--a rescue without a hail,
+without a single uttered word, without a gesture or a sign, without
+a conscious exchange of glances.  Up to the very last moment those
+on board stuck to their pumps, which spouted two clear streams of
+water upon their bare feet.  Their brown skin showed through the
+rents of their shirts; and the two small bunches of half-naked,
+tattered men went on bowing from the waist to each other in their
+back-breaking labour, up and down, absorbed, with no time for a
+glance over the shoulder at the help that was coming to them.  As
+we dashed, unregarded, alongside a voice let out one, only one
+hoarse howl of command, and then, just as they stood, without caps,
+with the salt drying gray in the wrinkles and folds of their hairy,
+haggard faces, blinking stupidly at us their red eyelids, they made
+a bolt away from the handles, tottering and jostling against each
+other, and positively flung themselves over upon our very heads.
+The clatter they made tumbling into the boats had an
+extraordinarily destructive effect upon the illusion of tragic
+dignity our self-esteem had thrown over the contests of mankind
+with the sea.  On that exquisite day of gently breathing peace and
+veiled sunshine perished my romantic love to what men's imagination
+had proclaimed the most august aspect of Nature.  The cynical
+indifference of the sea to the merits of human suffering and
+courage, laid bare in this ridiculous, panic-tainted performance
+extorted from the dire extremity of nine good and honourable
+seamen, revolted me.  I saw the duplicity of the sea's most tender
+mood.  It was so because it could not help itself, but the awed
+respect of the early days was gone.  I felt ready to smile bitterly
+at its enchanting charm and glare viciously at its furies.  In a
+moment, before we shoved off, I had looked coolly at the life of my
+choice.  Its illusions were gone, but its fascination remained.  I
+had become a seaman at last.
+
+We pulled hard for a quarter of an hour, then laid on our oars
+waiting for our ship.  She was coming down on us with swelling
+sails, looking delicately tall and exquisitely noble through the
+mist.  The captain of the brig, who sat in the stern sheets by my
+side with his face in his hands, raised his head and began to speak
+with a sort of sombre volubility.  They had lost their masts and
+sprung a leak in a hurricane; drifted for weeks, always at the
+pumps, met more bad weather; the ships they sighted failed to make
+them out, the leak gained upon them slowly, and the seas had left
+them nothing to make a raft of.  It was very hard to see ship after
+ship pass by at a distance, "as if everybody had agreed that we
+must be left to drown," he added.  But they went on trying to keep
+the brig afloat as long as possible, and working the pumps
+constantly on insufficient food, mostly raw, till "yesterday
+evening," he continued monotonously, "just as the sun went down,
+the men's hearts broke."
+
+He made an almost imperceptible pause here, and went on again with
+exactly the same intonation:
+
+"They told me the brig could not be saved, and they thought they
+had done enough for themselves.  I said nothing to that.  It was
+true.  It was no mutiny.  I had nothing to say to them.  They lay
+about aft all night, as still as so many dead men.  I did not lie
+down.  I kept a look-out.  When the first light came I saw your
+ship at once.  I waited for more light; the breeze began to fail on
+my face.  Then I shouted out as loud as I was able, 'Look at that
+ship!' but only two men got up very slowly and came to me.  At
+first only we three stood alone, for a long time, watching you
+coming down to us, and feeling the breeze drop to a calm almost;
+but afterwards others, too, rose, one after another, and by-and-by
+I had all my crew behind me.  I turned round and said to them that
+they could see the ship was coming our way, but in this small
+breeze she might come too late after all, unless we turned to and
+tried to keep the brig afloat long enough to give you time to save
+us all.  I spoke like that to them, and then I gave the command to
+man the pumps."
+
+He gave the command, and gave the example, too, by going himself to
+the handles, but it seems that these men did actually hang back for
+a moment, looking at each other dubiously before they followed him.
+"He! he! he!"  He broke out into a most unexpected, imbecile,
+pathetic, nervous little giggle.  "Their hearts were broken so!
+They had been played with too long," he explained apologetically,
+lowering his eyes, and became silent.
+
+Twenty-five years is a long time--a quarter of a century is a dim
+and distant past; but to this day I remember the dark-brown feet,
+hands, and faces of two of these men whose hearts had been broken
+by the sea.  They were lying very still on their sides on the
+bottom boards between the thwarts, curled up like dogs.  My boat's
+crew, leaning over the looms of their oars, stared and listened as
+if at the play.  The master of the brig looked up suddenly to ask
+me what day it was.
+
+They had lost the date.  When I told him it was Sunday, the 22nd,
+he frowned, making some mental calculation, then nodded twice sadly
+to himself, staring at nothing.
+
+His aspect was miserably unkempt and wildly sorrowful.  Had it not
+been for the unquenchable candour of his blue eyes, whose unhappy,
+tired glance every moment sought his abandoned, sinking brig, as if
+it could find rest nowhere else, he would have appeared mad.  But
+he was too simple to go mad, too simple with that manly simplicity
+which alone can bear men unscathed in mind and body through an
+encounter with the deadly playfulness of the sea or with its less
+abominable fury.
+
+Neither angry, nor playful, nor smiling, it enveloped our distant
+ship growing bigger as she neared us, our boats with the rescued
+men and the dismantled hull of the brig we were leaving behind, in
+the large and placid embrace of its quietness, half lost in the
+fair haze, as if in a dream of infinite and tender clemency.  There
+was no frown, no wrinkle on its face, not a ripple.  And the run of
+the slight swell was so smooth that it resembled the graceful
+undulation of a piece of shimmering gray silk shot with gleams of
+green.  We pulled an easy stroke; but when the master of the brig,
+after a glance over his shoulder, stood up with a low exclamation,
+my men feathered their oars instinctively, without an order, and
+the boat lost her way.
+
+He was steadying himself on my shoulder with a strong grip, while
+his other arm, flung up rigidly, pointed a denunciatory finger at
+the immense tranquillity of the ocean.  After his first
+exclamation, which stopped the swing of our oars, he made no sound,
+but his whole attitude seemed to cry out an indignant "Behold!" . .
+. I could not imagine what vision of evil had come to him.  I was
+startled, and the amazing energy of his immobilized gesture made my
+heart beat faster with the anticipation of something monstrous and
+unsuspected.  The stillness around us became crushing.
+
+For a moment the succession of silky undulations ran on innocently.
+I saw each of them swell up the misty line of the horizon, far, far
+away beyond the derelict brig, and the next moment, with a slight
+friendly toss of our boat, it had passed under us and was gone.
+The lulling cadence of the rise and fall, the invariable gentleness
+of this irresistible force, the great charm of the deep waters,
+warmed my breast deliciously, like the subtle poison of a love-
+potion.  But all this lasted only a few soothing seconds before I
+jumped up too, making the boat roll like the veriest landlubber.
+
+Something startling, mysterious, hastily confused, was taking
+place.  I watched it with incredulous and fascinated awe, as one
+watches the confused, swift movements of some deed of violence done
+in the dark.  As if at a given signal, the run of the smooth
+undulations seemed checked suddenly around the brig.  By a strange
+optical delusion the whole sea appeared to rise upon her in one
+overwhelming heave of its silky surface, where in one spot a
+smother of foam broke out ferociously.  And then the effort
+subsided.  It was all over, and the smooth swell ran on as before
+from the horizon in uninterrupted cadence of motion, passing under
+us with a slight friendly toss of our boat.  Far away, where the
+brig had been, an angry white stain undulating on the surface of
+steely-gray waters, shot with gleams of green, diminished swiftly,
+without a hiss, like a patch of pure snow melting in the sun.  And
+the great stillness after this initiation into the sea's implacable
+hate seemed full of dread thoughts and shadows of disaster.
+
+"Gone!" ejaculated from the depths of his chest my bowman in a
+final tone.  He spat in his hands, and took a better grip on his
+oar.  The captain of the brig lowered his rigid arm slowly, and
+looked at our faces in a solemnly conscious silence, which called
+upon us to share in his simple-minded, marvelling awe.  All at once
+he sat down by my side, and leaned forward earnestly at my boat's
+crew, who, swinging together in a long, easy stroke, kept their
+eyes fixed upon him faithfully.
+
+"No ship could have done so well," he addressed them firmly, after
+a moment of strained silence, during which he seemed with trembling
+lips to seek for words fit to bear such high testimony.  "She was
+small, but she was good.  I had no anxiety.  She was strong.  Last
+voyage I had my wife and two children in her.  No other ship could
+have stood so long the weather she had to live through for days and
+days before we got dismasted a fortnight ago.  She was fairly worn
+out, and that's all.  You may believe me.  She lasted under us for
+days and days, but she could not last for ever.  It was long
+enough.  I am glad it is over.  No better ship was ever left to
+sink at sea on such a day as this."
+
+He was competent to pronounce the funereal oration of a ship, this
+son of ancient sea-folk, whose national existence, so little
+stained by the excesses of manly virtues, had demanded nothing but
+the merest foothold from the earth.  By the merits of his sea-wise
+forefathers and by the artlessness of his heart, he was made fit to
+deliver this excellent discourse.  There was nothing wanting in its
+orderly arrangement--neither piety nor faith, nor the tribute of
+praise due to the worthy dead, with the edifying recital of their
+achievement.  She had lived, he had loved her; she had suffered,
+and he was glad she was at rest.  It was an excellent discourse.
+And it was orthodox, too, in its fidelity to the cardinal article
+of a seaman's faith, of which it was a single-minded confession.
+"Ships are all right."  They are.  They who live with the sea have
+got to hold by that creed first and last; and it came to me, as I
+glanced at him sideways, that some men were not altogether unworthy
+in honour and conscience to pronounce the funereal eulogium of a
+ship's constancy in life and death.
+
+After this, sitting by my side with his loosely-clasped hands
+hanging between his knees, he uttered no word, made no movement
+till the shadow of our ship's sails fell on the boat, when, at the
+loud cheer greeting the return of the victors with their prize, he
+lifted up his troubled face with a faint smile of pathetic
+indulgence.  This smile of the worthy descendant of the most
+ancient sea-folk whose audacity and hardihood had left no trace of
+greatness and glory upon the waters, completed the cycle of my
+initiation.  There was an infinite depth of hereditary wisdom in
+its pitying sadness.  It made the hearty bursts of cheering sound
+like a childish noise of triumph.  Our crew shouted with immense
+confidence--honest souls!  As if anybody could ever make sure of
+having prevailed against the sea, which has betrayed so many ships
+of great "name," so many proud men, so many towering ambitions of
+fame, power, wealth, greatness!
+
+As I brought the boat under the falls my captain, in high good-
+humour, leaned over, spreading his red and freckled elbows on the
+rail, and called down to me sarcastically, out of the depths of his
+cynic philosopher's beard:
+
+"So you have brought the boat back after all, have you?"
+
+Sarcasm was "his way," and the most that can be said for it is that
+it was natural.  This did not make it lovable.  But it is decorous
+and expedient to fall in with one's commander's way.  "Yes.  I
+brought the boat back all right, sir," I answered.  And the good
+man believed me.  It was not for him to discern upon me the marks
+of my recent initiation.  And yet I was not exactly the same
+youngster who had taken the boat away--all impatience for a race
+against death, with the prize of nine men's lives at the end.
+
+Already I looked with other eyes upon the sea.  I knew it capable
+of betraying the generous ardour of youth as implacably as,
+indifferent to evil and good, it would have betrayed the basest
+greed or the noblest heroism.  My conception of its magnanimous
+greatness was gone.  And I looked upon the true sea--the sea that
+plays with men till their hearts are broken, and wears stout ships
+to death.  Nothing can touch the brooding bitterness of its heart.
+Open to all and faithful to none, it exercises its fascination for
+the undoing of the best.  To love it is not well.  It knows no bond
+of plighted troth, no fidelity to misfortune, to long
+companionship, to long devotion.  The promise it holds out
+perpetually is very great; but the only secret of its possession is
+strength, strength--the jealous, sleepless strength of a man
+guarding a coveted treasure within his gates.
+
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+
+
+The cradle of oversea traffic and of the art of naval combats, the
+Mediterranean, apart from all the associations of adventure and
+glory, the common heritage of all mankind, makes a tender appeal to
+a seaman.  It has sheltered the infancy of his craft.  He looks
+upon it as a man may look at a vast nursery in an old, old mansion
+where innumerable generations of his own people have learned to
+walk.  I say his own people because, in a sense, all sailors belong
+to one family:  all are descended from that adventurous and shaggy
+ancestor who, bestriding a shapeless log and paddling with a
+crooked branch, accomplished the first coasting-trip in a sheltered
+bay ringing with the admiring howls of his tribe.  It is a matter
+of regret that all those brothers in craft and feeling, whose
+generations have learned to walk a ship's deck in that nursery,
+have been also more than once fiercely engaged in cutting each
+other's throats there.  But life, apparently, has such exigencies.
+Without human propensity to murder and other sorts of
+unrighteousness there would have been no historical heroism.  It is
+a consoling reflection.  And then, if one examines impartially the
+deeds of violence, they appear of but small consequence.  From
+Salamis to Actium, through Lepanto and the Nile to the naval
+massacre of Navarino, not to mention other armed encounters of
+lesser interest, all the blood heroically spilt into the
+Mediterranean has not stained with a single trail of purple the
+deep azure of its classic waters.
+
+Of course, it may be argued that battles have shaped the destiny of
+mankind.  The question whether they have shaped it well would
+remain open, however.  But it would be hardly worth discussing.  It
+is very probable that, had the Battle of Salamis never been fought,
+the face of the world would have been much as we behold it now,
+fashioned by the mediocre inspiration and the short-sighted labours
+of men.  From a long and miserable experience of suffering,
+injustice, disgrace and aggression the nations of the earth are
+mostly swayed by fear--fear of the sort that a little cheap oratory
+turns easily to rage, hate, and violence.  Innocent, guileless fear
+has been the cause of many wars.  Not, of course, the fear of war
+itself, which, in the evolution of sentiments and ideas, has come
+to be regarded at last as a half-mystic and glorious ceremony with
+certain fashionable rites and preliminary incantations, wherein the
+conception of its true nature has been lost.  To apprehend the true
+aspect, force, and morality of war as a natural function of mankind
+one requires a feather in the hair and a ring in the nose, or,
+better still, teeth filed to a point and a tattooed breast.
+Unfortunately, a return to such simple ornamentation is impossible.
+We are bound to the chariot of progress.  There is no going back;
+and, as bad luck would have it, our civilization, which has done so
+much for the comfort and adornment of our bodies and the elevation
+of our minds, has made lawful killing frightfully and needlessly
+expensive.
+
+The whole question of improved armaments has been approached by the
+governments of the earth in a spirit of nervous and unreflecting
+haste, whereas the right way was lying plainly before them, and had
+only to be pursued with calm determination.  The learned vigils and
+labours of a certain class of inventors should have been rewarded
+with honourable liberality as justice demanded; and the bodies of
+the inventors should have been blown to pieces by means of their
+own perfected explosives and improved weapons with extreme
+publicity as the commonest prudence dictated.  By this method the
+ardour of research in that direction would have been restrained
+without infringing the sacred privileges of science.  For the lack
+of a little cool thinking in our guides and masters this course has
+not been followed, and a beautiful simplicity has been sacrificed
+for no real advantage.  A frugal mind cannot defend itself from
+considerable bitterness when reflecting that at the Battle of
+Actium (which was fought for no less a stake than the dominion of
+the world) the fleet of Octavianus Caesar and the fleet of
+Antonius, including the Egyptian division and Cleopatra's galley
+with purple sails, probably cost less than two modern battleships,
+or, as the modern naval book-jargon has it, two capital units.  But
+no amount of lubberly book-jargon can disguise a fact well
+calculated to afflict the soul of every sound economist.  It is not
+likely that the Mediterranean will ever behold a battle with a
+greater issue; but when the time comes for another historical fight
+its bottom will be enriched as never before by a quantity of jagged
+scrap-iron, paid for at pretty nearly its weight of gold by the
+deluded populations inhabiting the isles and continents of this
+planet.
+
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+
+
+Happy he who, like Ulysses, has made an adventurous voyage; and
+there is no such sea for adventurous voyages as the Mediterranean--
+the inland sea which the ancients looked upon as so vast and so
+full of wonders.  And, indeed, it was terrible and wonderful; for
+it is we alone who, swayed by the audacity of our minds and the
+tremors of our hearts, are the sole artisans of all the wonder and
+romance of the world.
+
+It was for the Mediterranean sailors that fair-haired sirens sang
+among the black rocks seething in white foam and mysterious voices
+spoke in the darkness above the moving wave--voices menacing,
+seductive, or prophetic, like that voice heard at the beginning of
+the Christian era by the master of an African vessel in the Gulf of
+Syrta, whose calm nights are full of strange murmurs and flitting
+shadows.  It called him by name, bidding him go and tell all men
+that the great god Pan was dead.  But the great legend of the
+Mediterranean, the legend of traditional song and grave history,
+lives, fascinating and immortal, in our minds.
+
+The dark and fearful sea of the subtle Ulysses' wanderings,
+agitated by the wrath of Olympian gods, harbouring on its isles the
+fury of strange monsters and the wiles of strange women; the
+highway of heroes and sages, of warriors, pirates, and saints; the
+workaday sea of Carthaginian merchants and the pleasure lake of the
+Roman Caesars, claims the veneration of every seaman as the
+historical home of that spirit of open defiance against the great
+waters of the earth which is the very soul of his calling.  Issuing
+thence to the west and south, as a youth leaves the shelter of his
+parental house, this spirit found the way to the Indies, discovered
+the coasts of a new continent, and traversed at last the immensity
+of the great Pacific, rich in groups of islands remote and
+mysterious like the constellations of the sky.
+
+The first impulse of navigation took its visible form in that
+tideless basin freed from hidden shoals and treacherous currents,
+as if in tender regard for the infancy of the art.  The steep
+shores of the Mediterranean favoured the beginners in one of
+humanity's most daring enterprises, and the enchanting inland sea
+of classic adventure has led mankind gently from headland to
+headland, from bay to bay, from island to island, out into the
+promise of world-wide oceans beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
+
+
+
+XXXIX.
+
+
+
+The charm of the Mediterranean dwells in the unforgettable flavour
+of my early days, and to this hour this sea, upon which the Romans
+alone ruled without dispute, has kept for me the fascination of
+youthful romance.  The very first Christmas night I ever spent away
+from land was employed in running before a Gulf of Lions gale,
+which made the old ship groan in every timber as she skipped before
+it over the short seas until we brought her to, battered and out of
+breath, under the lee of Majorca, where the smooth water was torn
+by fierce cat's-paws under a very stormy sky.
+
+We--or, rather, they, for I had hardly had two glimpses of salt
+water in my life till then--kept her standing off and on all that
+day, while I listened for the first time with the curiosity of my
+tender years to the song of the wind in a ship's rigging.  The
+monotonous and vibrating note was destined to grow into the
+intimacy of the heart, pass into blood and bone, accompany the
+thoughts and acts of two full decades, remain to haunt like a
+reproach the peace of the quiet fireside, and enter into the very
+texture of respectable dreams dreamed safely under a roof of
+rafters and tiles.  The wind was fair, but that day we ran no more.
+
+The thing (I will not call her a ship twice in the same half-hour)
+leaked.  She leaked fully, generously, overflowingly, all over--
+like a basket.  I took an enthusiastic part in the excitement
+caused by that last infirmity of noble ships, without concerning
+myself much with the why or the wherefore.  The surmise of my
+maturer years is that, bored by her interminable life, the
+venerable antiquity was simply yawning with ennui at every seam.
+But at the time I did not know; I knew generally very little, and
+least of all what I was doing in that galere.
+
+I remember that, exactly as in the comedy of Moliere, my uncle
+asked the precise question in the very words--not of my
+confidential valet, however, but across great distances of land, in
+a letter whose mocking but indulgent turn ill concealed his almost
+paternal anxiety.  I fancy I tried to convey to him my (utterly
+unfounded) impression that the West Indies awaited my coming.  I
+had to go there.  It was a sort of mystic conviction--something in
+the nature of a call.  But it was difficult to state intelligibly
+the grounds of this belief to that man of rigorous logic, if of
+infinite charity.
+
+The truth must have been that, all unversed in the arts of the wily
+Greek, the deceiver of gods, the lover of strange women, the evoker
+of bloodthirsty shades, I yet longed for the beginning of my own
+obscure Odyssey, which, as was proper for a modern, should unroll
+its wonders and terrors beyond the Pillars of Hercules.  The
+disdainful ocean did not open wide to swallow up my audacity,
+though the ship, the ridiculous and ancient galere of my folly, the
+old, weary, disenchanted sugar-waggon, seemed extremely disposed to
+open out and swallow up as much salt water as she could hold.
+This, if less grandiose, would have been as final a catastrophe.
+
+But no catastrophe occurred.  I lived to watch on a strange shore a
+black and youthful Nausicaa, with a joyous train of attendant
+maidens, carrying baskets of linen to a clear stream overhung by
+the heads of slender palm-trees.  The vivid colours of their draped
+raiment and the gold of their earrings invested with a barbaric and
+regal magnificence their figures, stepping out freely in a shower
+of broken sunshine.  The whiteness of their teeth was still more
+dazzling than the splendour of jewels at their ears.  The shaded
+side of the ravine gleamed with their smiles.  They were as
+unabashed as so many princesses, but, alas! not one of them was the
+daughter of a jet-black sovereign.  Such was my abominable luck in
+being born by the mere hair's breadth of twenty-five centuries too
+late into a world where kings have been growing scarce with
+scandalous rapidity, while the few who remain have adopted the
+uninteresting manners and customs of simple millionaires.
+Obviously it was a vain hope in 187- to see the ladies of a royal
+household walk in chequered sunshine, with baskets of linen on
+their heads, to the banks of a clear stream overhung by the starry
+fronds of palm-trees.  It was a vain hope.  If I did not ask myself
+whether, limited by such discouraging impossibilities, life were
+still worth living, it was only because I had then before me
+several other pressing questions, some of which have remained
+unanswered to this day.  The resonant, laughing voices of these
+gorgeous maidens scared away the multitude of humming-birds, whose
+delicate wings wreathed with the mist of their vibration the tops
+of flowering bushes.
+
+No, they were not princesses.  Their unrestrained laughter filling
+the hot, fern-clad ravine had a soulless limpidity, as of wild,
+inhuman dwellers in tropical woodlands.  Following the example of
+certain prudent travellers, I withdrew unseen--and returned, not
+much wiser, to the Mediterranean, the sea of classic adventures.
+
+
+
+XL.
+
+
+
+It was written that there, in the nursery of our navigating
+ancestors, I should learn to walk in the ways of my craft and grow
+in the love of the sea, blind as young love often is, but absorbing
+and disinterested as all true love must be.  I demanded nothing
+from it--not even adventure.  In this I showed, perhaps, more
+intuitive wisdom than high self-denial.  No adventure ever came to
+one for the asking.  He who starts on a deliberate quest of
+adventure goes forth but to gather dead-sea fruit, unless, indeed,
+he be beloved of the gods and great amongst heroes, like that most
+excellent cavalier Don Quixote de la Mancha.  By us ordinary
+mortals of a mediocre animus that is only too anxious to pass by
+wicked giants for so many honest windmills, adventures are
+entertained like visiting angels.  They come upon our complacency
+unawares.  As unbidden guests are apt to do, they often come at
+inconvenient times.  And we are glad to let them go unrecognised,
+without any acknowledgment of so high a favour.  After many years,
+on looking back from the middle turn of life's way at the events of
+the past, which, like a friendly crowd, seem to gaze sadly after us
+hastening towards the Cimmerian shore, we may see here and there,
+in the gray throng, some figure glowing with a faint radiance, as
+though it had caught all the light of our already crepuscular sky.
+And by this glow we may recognise the faces of our true adventures,
+of the once unbidden guests entertained unawares in our young days.
+
+If the Mediterranean, the venerable (and sometimes atrociously ill-
+tempered) nurse of all navigators, was to rock my youth, the
+providing of the cradle necessary for that operation was entrusted
+by Fate to the most casual assemblage of irresponsible young men
+(all, however, older than myself) that, as if drunk with Provencal
+sunshine, frittered life away in joyous levity on the model of
+Balzac's "Histoire des Treize" qualified by a dash of romance de
+cape et d'epee.
+
+She who was my cradle in those years had been built on the River of
+Savona by a famous builder of boats, was rigged in Corsica by
+another good man, and was described on her papers as a 'tartane' of
+sixty tons.  In reality, she was a true balancelle, with two short
+masts raking forward and two curved yards, each as long as her
+hull; a true child of the Latin lake, with a spread of two enormous
+sails resembling the pointed wings on a sea-bird's slender body,
+and herself, like a bird indeed, skimming rather than sailing the
+seas.
+
+Her name was the Tremolino.  How is this to be translated?  The
+Quiverer?  What a name to give the pluckiest little craft that ever
+dipped her sides in angry foam!  I had felt her, it is true,
+trembling for nights and days together under my feet, but it was
+with the high-strung tenseness of her faithful courage.  In her
+short, but brilliant, career she has taught me nothing, but she has
+given me everything.  I owe to her the awakened love for the sea
+that, with the quivering of her swift little body and the humming
+of the wind under the foot of her lateen sails, stole into my heart
+with a sort of gentle violence, and brought my imagination under
+its despotic sway.  The Tremolino!  To this day I cannot utter or
+even write that name without a strange tightening of the breast and
+the gasp of mingled delight and dread of one's first passionate
+experience.
+
+
+
+XLI.
+
+
+
+We four formed (to use a term well understood nowadays in every
+social sphere) a "syndicate" owning the Tremolino:  an
+international and astonishing syndicate.  And we were all ardent
+Royalists of the snow-white Legitimist complexion--Heaven only
+knows why!  In all associations of men there is generally one who,
+by the authority of age and of a more experienced wisdom, imparts a
+collective character to the whole set.  If I mention that the
+oldest of us was very old, extremely old--nearly thirty years old--
+and that he used to declare with gallant carelessness, "I live by
+my sword," I think I have given enough information on the score of
+our collective wisdom.  He was a North Carolinian gentleman, J. M.
+K. B. were the initials of his name, and he really did live by the
+sword, as far as I know.  He died by it, too, later on, in a
+Balkanian squabble, in the cause of some Serbs or else Bulgarians,
+who were neither Catholics nor gentlemen--at least, not in the
+exalted but narrow sense he attached to that last word.
+
+Poor J. M. K. B., Americain, Catholique, et gentilhomme, as he was
+disposed to describe himself in moments of lofty expansion!  Are
+there still to be found in Europe gentlemen keen of face and
+elegantly slight of body, of distinguished aspect, with a
+fascinating drawing-room manner and with a dark, fatal glance, who
+live by their swords, I wonder?  His family had been ruined in the
+Civil War, I fancy, and seems for a decade or so to have led a
+wandering life in the Old World.  As to Henry C-, the next in age
+and wisdom of our band, he had broken loose from the unyielding
+rigidity of his family, solidly rooted, if I remember rightly, in a
+well-to-do London suburb.  On their respectable authority he
+introduced himself meekly to strangers as a "black sheep."  I have
+never seen a more guileless specimen of an outcast.  Never.
+
+However, his people had the grace to send him a little money now
+and then.  Enamoured of the South, of Provence, of its people, its
+life, its sunshine and its poetry, narrow-chested, tall and short-
+sighted, he strode along the streets and the lanes, his long feet
+projecting far in advance of his body, and his white nose and
+gingery moustache buried in an open book:  for he had the habit of
+reading as he walked.  How he avoided falling into precipices, off
+the quays, or down staircases is a great mystery.  The sides of his
+overcoat bulged out with pocket editions of various poets.  When
+not engaged in reading Virgil, Homer, or Mistral, in parks,
+restaurants, streets, and suchlike public places, he indited
+sonnets (in French) to the eyes, ears, chin, hair, and other
+visible perfections of a nymph called Therese, the daughter,
+honesty compels me to state, of a certain Madame Leonore who kept a
+small cafe for sailors in one of the narrowest streets of the old
+town.
+
+No more charming face, clear-cut like an antique gem, and delicate
+in colouring like the petal of a flower, had ever been set on,
+alas! a somewhat squat body.  He read his verses aloud to her in
+the very cafe with the innocence of a little child and the vanity
+of a poet.  We followed him there willingly enough, if only to
+watch the divine Therese laugh, under the vigilant black eyes of
+Madame Leonore, her mother.  She laughed very prettily, not so much
+at the sonnets, which she could not but esteem, as at poor Henry's
+French accent, which was unique, resembling the warbling of birds,
+if birds ever warbled with a stuttering, nasal intonation.
+
+Our third partner was Roger P. de la S-, the most Scandinavian-
+looking of Provencal squires, fair, and six feet high, as became a
+descendant of sea-roving Northmen, authoritative, incisive, wittily
+scornful, with a comedy in three acts in his pocket, and in his
+breast a heart blighted by a hopeless passion for his beautiful
+cousin, married to a wealthy hide and tallow merchant.  He used to
+take us to lunch at their house without ceremony.  I admired the
+good lady's sweet patience.  The husband was a conciliatory soul,
+with a great fund of resignation, which he expended on "Roger's
+friends."  I suspect he was secretly horrified at these invasions.
+But it was a Carlist salon, and as such we were made welcome.  The
+possibility of raising Catalonia in the interest of the Rey netto,
+who had just then crossed the Pyrenees, was much discussed there.
+
+Don Carlos, no doubt, must have had many queer friends (it is the
+common lot of all Pretenders), but amongst them none more
+extravagantly fantastic than the Tremolino Syndicate, which used to
+meet in a tavern on the quays of the old port.  The antique city of
+Massilia had surely never, since the days of the earliest
+Phoenicians, known an odder set of ship-owners.  We met to discuss
+and settle the plan of operations for each voyage of the Tremolino.
+In these operations a banking-house, too, was concerned--a very
+respectable banking-house.  But I am afraid I shall end by saying
+too much.  Ladies, too, were concerned (I am really afraid I am
+saying too much)--all sorts of ladies, some old enough to know
+better than to put their trust in princes, others young and full of
+illusions.
+
+One of these last was extremely amusing in the imitations, she gave
+us in confidence, of various highly-placed personages she was
+perpetually rushing off to Paris to interview in the interests of
+the cause--Por el Rey!  For she was a Carlist, and of Basque blood
+at that, with something of a lioness in the expression of her
+courageous face (especially when she let her hair down), and with
+the volatile little soul of a sparrow dressed in fine Parisian
+feathers, which had the trick of coming off disconcertingly at
+unexpected moments.
+
+But her imitations of a Parisian personage, very highly placed
+indeed, as she represented him standing in the corner of a room
+with his face to the wall, rubbing the back of his head and moaning
+helplessly, "Rita, you are the death of me!" were enough to make
+one (if young and free from cares) split one's sides laughing.  She
+had an uncle still living, a very effective Carlist, too, the
+priest of a little mountain parish in Guipuzcoa.  As the sea-going
+member of the syndicate (whose plans depended greatly on Dona
+Rita's information), I used to be charged with humbly affectionate
+messages for the old man.  These messages I was supposed to deliver
+to the Arragonese muleteers (who were sure to await at certain
+times the Tremolino in the neighbourhood of the Gulf of Rosas), for
+faithful transportation inland, together with the various unlawful
+goods landed secretly from under the Tremolino's hatches.
+
+Well, now, I have really let out too much (as I feared I should in
+the end) as to the usual contents of my sea-cradle.  But let it
+stand.  And if anybody remarks cynically that I must have been a
+promising infant in those days, let that stand, too.  I am
+concerned but for the good name of the Tremolino, and I affirm that
+a ship is ever guiltless of the sins, transgressions, and follies
+of her men.
+
+
+
+XLII.
+
+
+
+It was not Tremolino's fault that the syndicate depended so much on
+the wit and wisdom and the information of Dona Rita.  She had taken
+a little furnished house on the Prado for the good of the cause--
+Por el Rey!  She was always taking little houses for somebody's
+good, for the sick or the sorry, for broken-down artists, cleaned-
+out gamblers, temporarily unlucky speculators--vieux amis--old
+friends, as she used to explain apologetically, with a shrug of her
+fine shoulders.
+
+Whether Don Carlos was one of the "old friends," too, it's hard to
+say.  More unlikely things have been heard of in smoking-rooms.
+All I know is that one evening, entering incautiously the salon of
+the little house just after the news of a considerable Carlist
+success had reached the faithful, I was seized round the neck and
+waist and whirled recklessly three times round the room, to the
+crash of upsetting furniture and the humming of a valse tune in a
+warm contralto voice.
+
+When released from the dizzy embrace, I sat down on the carpet--
+suddenly, without affectation.  In this unpretentious attitude I
+became aware that J. M. K. B. had followed me into the room,
+elegant, fatal, correct and severe in a white tie and large shirt-
+front.  In answer to his politely sinister, prolonged glance of
+inquiry, I overheard Dona Rita murmuring, with some confusion and
+annoyance, "Vous etes bete mon cher.  Voyons!  Ca n'a aucune
+consequence."  Well content in this case to be of no particular
+consequence, I had already about me the elements of some worldly
+sense.
+
+Rearranging my collar, which, truth to say, ought to have been a
+round one above a short jacket, but was not, I observed
+felicitously that I had come to say good-bye, being ready to go off
+to sea that very night with the Tremolino.  Our hostess, slightly
+panting yet, and just a shade dishevelled, turned tartly upon J. M.
+K. B., desiring to know when HE would be ready to go off by the
+Tremolino, or in any other way, in order to join the royal
+headquarters.  Did he intend, she asked ironically, to wait for the
+very eve of the entry into Madrid?  Thus by a judicious exercise of
+tact and asperity we re-established the atmospheric equilibrium of
+the room long before I left them a little before midnight, now
+tenderly reconciled, to walk down to the harbour and hail the
+Tremolino by the usual soft whistle from the edge of the quay.  It
+was our signal, invariably heard by the ever-watchful Dominic, the
+padrone.
+
+He would raise a lantern silently to light my steps along the
+narrow, springy plank of our primitive gangway.  "And so we are
+going off," he would murmur directly my foot touched the deck.  I
+was the harbinger of sudden departures, but there was nothing in
+the world sudden enough to take Dominic unawares.  His thick black
+moustaches, curled every morning with hot tongs by the barber at
+the corner of the quay, seemed to hide a perpetual smile.  But
+nobody, I believe, had ever seen the true shape of his lips.  From
+the slow, imperturbable gravity of that broad-chested man you would
+think he had never smiled in his life.  In his eyes lurked a look
+of perfectly remorseless irony, as though he had been provided with
+an extremely experienced soul; and the slightest distension of his
+nostrils would give to his bronzed face a look of extraordinary
+boldness.  This was the only play of feature of which he seemed
+capable, being a Southerner of a concentrated, deliberate type.
+His ebony hair curled slightly on the temples.  He may have been
+forty years old, and he was a great voyager on the inland sea.
+
+Astute and ruthless, he could have rivalled in resource the
+unfortunate son of Laertes and Anticlea.  If he did not pit his
+craft and audacity against the very gods, it is only because the
+Olympian gods are dead.  Certainly no woman could frighten him.  A
+one-eyed giant would not have had the ghost of a chance against
+Dominic Cervoni, of Corsica, not Ithaca; and no king, son of kings,
+but of very respectable family--authentic Caporali, he affirmed.
+But that is as it may be.  The Caporali families date back to the
+twelfth century.
+
+For want of more exalted adversaries Dominic turned his audacity
+fertile in impious stratagems against the powers of the earth, as
+represented by the institution of Custom-houses and every mortal
+belonging thereto--scribes, officers, and guardacostas afloat and
+ashore.  He was the very man for us, this modern and unlawful
+wanderer with his own legend of loves, dangers, and bloodshed.  He
+told us bits of it sometimes in measured, ironic tones.  He spoke
+Catalonian, the Italian of Corsica and the French of Provence with
+the same easy naturalness.  Dressed in shore-togs, a white starched
+shirt, black jacket, and round hat, as I took him once to see Dona
+Rita, he was extremely presentable.  He could make himself
+interesting by a tactful and rugged reserve set off by a grim,
+almost imperceptible, playfulness of tone and manner.
+
+He had the physical assurance of strong-hearted men.  After half an
+hour's interview in the dining-room, during which they got in touch
+with each other in an amazing way, Rita told us in her best grande
+dame manner:  "Mais il esi parfait, cet homme."  He was perfect.
+On board the Tremolino, wrapped up in a black caban, the
+picturesque cloak of Mediterranean seamen, with those massive
+moustaches and his remorseless eyes set off by the shadow of the
+deep hood, he looked piratical and monkish and darkly initiated
+into the most awful mysteries of the sea.
+
+
+
+XLIII.
+
+
+
+Anyway, he was perfect, as Dona Rita had declared.  The only thing
+unsatisfactory (and even inexplicable) about our Dominic was his
+nephew, Cesar.  It was startling to see a desolate expression of
+shame veil the remorseless audacity in the eyes of that man
+superior to all scruples and terrors.
+
+"I would never have dared to bring him on board your balancelle,"
+he once apologized to me.  "But what am I to do?  His mother is
+dead, and my brother has gone into the bush."
+
+In this way I learned that our Dominic had a brother.  As to "going
+into the bush," this only means that a man has done his duty
+successfully in the pursuit of a hereditary vendetta.  The feud
+which had existed for ages between the families of Cervoni and
+Brunaschi was so old that it seemed to have smouldered out at last.
+One evening Pietro Brunaschi, after a laborious day amongst his
+olive-trees, sat on a chair against the wall of his house with a
+bowl of broth on his knees and a piece of bread in his hand.
+Dominic's brother, going home with a gun on his shoulder, found a
+sudden offence in this picture of content and rest so obviously
+calculated to awaken the feelings of hatred and revenge.  He and
+Pietro had never had any personal quarrel; but, as Dominic
+explained, "all our dead cried out to him."  He shouted from behind
+a wall of stones, "O Pietro!  Behold what is coming!"  And as the
+other looked up innocently he took aim at the forehead and squared
+the old vendetta account so neatly that, according to Dominic, the
+dead man continued to sit with the bowl of broth on his knees and
+the piece of bread in his hand.
+
+This is why--because in Corsica your dead will not leave you alone-
+-Dominic's brother had to go into the maquis, into the bush on the
+wild mountain-side, to dodge the gendarmes for the insignificant
+remainder of his life, and Dominic had charge of his nephew with a
+mission to make a man of him.
+
+No more unpromising undertaking could be imagined.  The very
+material for the task seemed wanting.  The Cervonis, if not
+handsome men, were good sturdy flesh and blood.  But this
+extraordinarily lean and livid youth seemed to have no more blood
+in him than a snail.
+
+"Some cursed witch must have stolen my brother's child from the
+cradle and put that spawn of a starved devil in its place," Dominic
+would say to me.  "Look at him!  Just look at him!"
+
+To look at Cesar was not pleasant.  His parchment skin, showing
+dead white on his cranium through the thin wisps of dirty brown
+hair, seemed to be glued directly and tightly upon his big bones,
+Without being in any way deformed, he was the nearest approach
+which I have ever seen or could imagine to what is commonly
+understood by the word "monster."  That the source of the effect
+produced was really moral I have no doubt.  An utterly, hopelessly
+depraved nature was expressed in physical terms, that taken each
+separately had nothing positively startling.  You imagined him
+clammily cold to the touch, like a snake.  The slightest reproof,
+the most mild and justifiable remonstrance, would be met by a
+resentful glare and an evil shrinking of his thin dry upper lip, a
+snarl of hate to which he generally added the agreeable sound of
+grinding teeth.
+
+It was for this venomous performance rather than for his lies,
+impudence, and laziness that his uncle used to knock him down.  It
+must not be imagined that it was anything in the nature of a brutal
+assault.  Dominic's brawny arm would be seen describing
+deliberately an ample horizontal gesture, a dignified sweep, and
+Cesar would go over suddenly like a ninepin--which was funny to
+see.  But, once down, he would writhe on the deck, gnashing his
+teeth in impotent rage--which was pretty horrible to behold.  And
+it also happened more than once that he would disappear completely-
+-which was startling to observe.  This is the exact truth.  Before
+some of these majestic cuffs Cesar would go down and vanish.  He
+would vanish heels overhead into open hatchways, into scuttles,
+behind up-ended casks, according to the place where he happened to
+come into contact with his uncle's mighty arm.
+
+Once--it was in the old harbour, just before the Tremolino's last
+voyage--he vanished thus overboard to my infinite consternation.
+Dominic and I had been talking business together aft, and Cesar had
+sneaked up behind us to listen, for, amongst his other perfections,
+he was a consummate eavesdropper and spy.  At the sound of the
+heavy plop alongside horror held me rooted to the spot; but Dominic
+stepped quietly to the rail and leaned over, waiting for his
+nephew's miserable head to bob up for the first time.
+
+"Ohe, Cesar!" he yelled contemptuously to the spluttering wretch.
+"Catch hold of that mooring hawser--charogne!"
+
+He approached me to resume the interrupted conversation.
+
+"What about Cesar?" I asked anxiously.
+
+"Canallia!  Let him hang there," was his answer.  And he went on
+talking over the business in hand calmly, while I tried vainly to
+dismiss from my mind the picture of Cesar steeped to the chin in
+the water of the old harbour, a decoction of centuries of marine
+refuse.  I tried to dismiss it, because the mere notion of that
+liquid made me feel very sick.  Presently Dominic, hailing an idle
+boatman, directed him to go and fish his nephew out; and by-and-by
+Cesar appeared walking on board from the quay, shivering, streaming
+with filthy water, with bits of rotten straws in his hair and a
+piece of dirty orange-peel stranded on his shoulder.  His teeth
+chattered; his yellow eyes squinted balefully at us as he passed
+forward.  I thought it my duty to remonstrate.
+
+"Why are you always knocking him about, Dominic?" I asked.  Indeed,
+I felt convinced it was no earthly good--a sheer waste of muscular
+force.
+
+"I must try to make a man of him," Dominic answered hopelessly.
+
+I restrained the obvious retort that in this way he ran the risk of
+making, in the words of the immortal Mr. Mantalini, "a demnition
+damp, unpleasant corpse of him."
+
+"He wants to be a locksmith!" burst out Cervoni.  "To learn how to
+pick locks, I suppose," he added with sardonic bitterness.
+
+"Why not let him be a locksmith?" I ventured.
+
+"Who would teach him?" he cried.  "Where could I leave him?" he
+asked, with a drop in his voice; and I had my first glimpse of
+genuine despair.  "He steals, you know, alas!  Par ta Madonne!  I
+believe he would put poison in your food and mine--the viper!"
+
+He raised his face and both his clenched fists slowly to heaven.
+However, Cesar never dropped poison into our cups.  One cannot be
+sure, but I fancy he went to work in another way.
+
+This voyage, of which the details need not be given, we had to
+range far afield for sufficient reasons.  Coming up from the South
+to end it with the important and really dangerous part of the
+scheme in hand, we found it necessary to look into Barcelona for
+certain definite information.  This appears like running one's head
+into the very jaws of the lion, but in reality it was not so.  We
+had one or two high, influential friends there, and many others
+humble but valuable because bought for good hard cash.  We were in
+no danger of being molested; indeed, the important information
+reached us promptly by the hands of a Custom-house officer, who
+came on board full of showy zeal to poke an iron rod into the layer
+of oranges which made the visible part of our cargo in the
+hatchway.
+
+I forgot to mention before that the Tremolino was officially known
+as a fruit and cork-wood trader.  The zealous officer managed to
+slip a useful piece of paper into Dominic's hand as he went ashore,
+and a few hours afterwards, being off duty, he returned on board
+again athirst for drinks and gratitude.  He got both as a matter of
+course.  While he sat sipping his liqueur in the tiny cabin,
+Dominic plied him with questions as to the whereabouts of the
+guardacostas.  The preventive service afloat was really the one for
+us to reckon with, and it was material for our success and safety
+to know the exact position of the patrol craft in the
+neighbourhood.  The news could not have been more favourable.  The
+officer mentioned a small place on the coast some twelve miles off,
+where, unsuspicious and unready, she was lying at anchor, with her
+sails unbent, painting yards and scraping spars.  Then he left us
+after the usual compliments, smirking reassurringly over his
+shoulder.
+
+I had kept below pretty close all day from excess of prudence.  The
+stake played on that trip was big.
+
+"We are ready to go at once, but for Cesar, who has been missing
+ever since breakfast," announced Dominic to me in his slow, grim
+way.
+
+Where the fellow had gone, and why, we could not imagine.  The
+usual surmises in the case of a missing seaman did not apply to
+Cesar's absence.  He was too odious for love, friendship, gambling,
+or even casual intercourse.  But once or twice he had wandered away
+like this before.
+
+Dominic went ashore to look for him, but returned at the end of two
+hours alone and very angry, as I could see by the token of the
+invisible smile under his moustache being intensified.  We wondered
+what had become of the wretch, and made a hurried investigation
+amongst our portable property.  He had stolen nothing.
+
+"He will be back before long," I said confidently.
+
+Ten minutes afterwards one of the men on deck called out loudly:
+
+"I can see him coming."
+
+Cesar had only his shirt and trousers on.  He had sold his coat,
+apparently for pocket-money.
+
+"You knave!" was all Dominic said, with a terrible softness of
+voice.  He restrained his choler for a time.  "Where have you been,
+vagabond?" he asked menacingly.
+
+Nothing would induce Cesar to answer that question.  It was as if
+he even disdained to lie.  He faced us, drawing back his lips and
+gnashing his teeth, and did not shrink an inch before the sweep of
+Dominic's arm.  He went down as if shot, of course.  But this time
+I noticed that, when picking himself up, he remained longer than
+usual on all fours, baring his big teeth over his shoulder and
+glaring upwards at his uncle with a new sort of hate in his round,
+yellow eyes.  That permanent sentiment seemed pointed at that
+moment by especial malice and curiosity.  I became quite
+interested.  If he ever manages to put poison in the dishes, I
+thought to myself, this is how he will look at us as we sit at our
+meal.  But I did not, of course, believe for a moment that he would
+ever put poison in our food.  He ate the same things himself.
+Moreover, he had no poison.  And I could not imagine a human being
+so blinded by cupidity as to sell poison to such an atrocious
+creature.
+
+
+
+XLIV.
+
+
+
+We slipped out to sea quietly at dusk, and all through the night
+everything went well.  The breeze was gusty; a southerly blow was
+making up.  It was fair wind for our course.  Now and then Dominic
+slowly and rhythmically struck his hands together a few times, as
+if applauding the performance of the Tremolino.  The balancelle
+hummed and quivered as she flew along, dancing lightly under our
+feet.
+
+At daybreak I pointed out to Dominic, amongst the several sail in
+view running before the gathering storm, one particular vessel.
+The press of canvas she carried made her loom up high, end-on, like
+a gray column standing motionless directly in our wake.
+
+"Look at this fellow, Dominic," I said.  "He seems to be in a
+hurry."
+
+The Padrone made no remark, but, wrapping his black cloak close
+about him, stood up to look.  His weather-tanned face, framed in
+the hood, had an aspect of authority and challenging force, with
+the deep-set eyes gazing far away fixedly, without a wink, like the
+intent, merciless, steady eyes of a sea-bird.
+
+"Chi va piano va sano," he remarked at last, with a derisive glance
+over the side, in ironic allusion to our own tremendous speed.
+
+The Tremolino was doing her best, and seemed to hardly touch the
+great burst of foam over which she darted.  I crouched down again
+to get some shelter from the low bulwark.  After more than half an
+hour of swaying immobility expressing a concentrated, breathless
+watchfulness, Dominic sank on the deck by my side.  Within the
+monkish cowl his eyes gleamed with a fierce expression which
+surprised me.  All he said was:
+
+"He has come out here to wash the new paint off his yards, I
+suppose."
+
+"What?" I shouted, getting up on my knees.  "Is she the
+guardacosta?"
+
+The perpetual suggestion of a smile under Dominic's piratical
+moustaches seemed to become more accentuated--quite real, grim,
+actually almost visible through the wet and uncurled hair.  Judging
+by that symptom, he must have been in a towering rage.  But I could
+also see that he was puzzled, and that discovery affected me
+disagreeably.  Dominic puzzled!  For a long time, leaning against
+the bulwark, I gazed over the stern at the gray column that seemed
+to stand swaying slightly in our wake always at the same distance.
+
+Meanwhile Dominic, black and cowled, sat cross-legged on the deck,
+with his back to the wind, recalling vaguely an Arab chief in his
+burnuss sitting on the sand.  Above his motionless figure the
+little cord and tassel on the stiff point of the hood swung about
+inanely in the gale.  At last I gave up facing the wind and rain,
+and crouched down by his side.  I was satisfied that the sail was a
+patrol craft.  Her presence was not a thing to talk about, but
+soon, between two clouds charged with hail-showers, a burst of
+sunshine fell upon her sails, and our men discovered her character
+for themselves.  From that moment I noticed that they seemed to
+take no heed of each other or of anything else.  They could spare
+no eyes and no thought but for the slight column-shape astern of
+us.  Its swaying had become perceptible.  For a moment she remained
+dazzlingly white, then faded away slowly to nothing in a squall,
+only to reappear again, nearly black, resembling a post stuck
+upright against the slaty background of solid cloud.  Since first
+noticed she had not gained on us a foot.
+
+"She will never catch the Tremolino," I said exultingly.
+
+Dominic did not look at me.  He remarked absently, but justly, that
+the heavy weather was in our pursuer's favour.  She was three times
+our size.  What we had to do was to keep our distance till dark,
+which we could manage easily, and then haul off to seaward and
+consider the situation.  But his thoughts seemed to stumble in the
+darkness of some not-solved enigma, and soon he fell silent.  We
+ran steadily, wing-and-wing.  Cape San Sebastian nearly ahead
+seemed to recede from us in the squalls of rain, and come out again
+to meet our rush, every time more distinct between the showers.
+
+For my part I was by no means certain that this gabelou (as our men
+alluded to her opprobriously) was after us at all.  There were
+nautical difficulties in such a view which made me express the
+sanguine opinion that she was in all innocence simply changing her
+station.  At this Dominic condescended to turn his head.
+
+"I tell you she is in chase," he affirmed moodily, after one short
+glance astern.
+
+I never doubted his opinion.  But with all the ardour of a neophyte
+and the pride of an apt learner I was at that time a great nautical
+casuist.
+
+"What I can't understand," I insisted subtly, "is how on earth,
+with this wind, she has managed to be just where she was when we
+first made her out.  It is clear that she could not, and did not,
+gain twelve miles on us during the night.  And there are other
+impossibilities. . . ."
+
+Dominic had been sitting motionless, like an inanimate black cone
+posed on the stern deck, near the rudder-head, with a small tassel
+fluttering on its sharp point, and for a time he preserved the
+immobility of his meditation.  Then, bending over with a short
+laugh, he gave my ear the bitter fruit of it.  He understood
+everything now perfectly.  She was where we had seen her first, not
+because she had caught us up, but because we had passed her during
+the night while she was already waiting for us, hove-to, most
+likely, on our very track.
+
+"Do you understand--already?" Dominic muttered in a fierce
+undertone.  "Already!  You know we left a good eight hours before
+we were expected to leave, otherwise she would have been in time to
+lie in wait for us on the other side of the Cape, and"--he snapped
+his teeth like a wolf close to my face--"and she would have had us
+like--that."
+
+I saw it all plainly enough now.  They had eyes in their heads and
+all their wits about them in that craft.  We had passed them in the
+dark as they jogged on easily towards their ambush with the idea
+that we were yet far behind.  At daylight, however, sighting a
+balancelle ahead under a press of canvas, they had made sail in
+chase.  But if that was so, then--
+
+Dominic seized my arm.
+
+"Yes, yes!  She came out on an information--do you see, it?--on
+information. . . . We have been sold--betrayed.  Why?  How?  What
+for?  We always paid them all so well on shore. . . . No!  But it
+is my head that is going to burst."
+
+He seemed to choke, tugged at the throat button of the cloak,
+jumped up open-mouthed as if to hurl curses and denunciation, but
+instantly mastered himself, and, wrapping up the cloak closer about
+him, sat down on the deck again as quiet as ever.
+
+"Yes, it must be the work of some scoundrel ashore," I observed.
+
+He pulled the edge of the hood well forward over his brow before he
+muttered:
+
+"A scoundrel. . . . Yes. . . . It's evident."
+
+"Well," I said, "they can't get us, that's clear."
+
+"No," he assented quietly, "they cannot."
+
+We shaved the Cape very close to avoid an adverse current.  On the
+other side, by the effect of the land, the wind failed us so
+completely for a moment that the Tremolino's two great lofty sails
+hung idle to the masts in the thundering uproar of the seas
+breaking upon the shore we had left behind.  And when the returning
+gust filled them again, we saw with amazement half of the new
+mainsail, which we thought fit to drive the boat under before
+giving way, absolutely fly out of the bolt-ropes.  We lowered the
+yard at once, and saved it all, but it was no longer a sail; it was
+only a heap of soaked strips of canvas cumbering the deck and
+weighting the craft.  Dominic gave the order to throw the whole lot
+overboard.
+
+I would have had the yard thrown overboard, too, he said, leading
+me aft again, "if it had not been for the trouble.  Let no sign
+escape you," he continued, lowering his voice, "but I am going to
+tell you something terrible.  Listen:  I have observed that the
+roping stitches on that sail have been cut!  You hear?  Cut with a
+knife in many places.  And yet it stood all that time.  Not enough
+cut.  That flap did it at last.  What matters it?  But look!
+there's treachery seated on this very deck.  By the horns of the
+devil! seated here at our very backs.  Do not turn, signorine."
+
+We were facing aft then.
+
+"What's to be done?" I asked, appalled.
+
+"Nothing.  Silence!  Be a man, signorine."
+
+"What else?" I said.
+
+To show I could be a man, I resolved to utter no sound as long as
+Dominic himself had the force to keep his lips closed.  Nothing but
+silence becomes certain situations.  Moreover, the experience of
+treachery seemed to spread a hopeless drowsiness over my thoughts
+and senses.  For an hour or more we watched our pursuer surging out
+nearer and nearer from amongst the squalls that sometimes hid her
+altogether.  But even when not seen, we felt her there like a knife
+at our throats.  She gained on us frightfully.  And the Tremolino,
+in a fierce breeze and in much smoother water, swung on easily
+under her one sail, with something appallingly careless in the
+joyous freedom of her motion.  Another half-hour went by.  I could
+not stand it any longer.
+
+"They will get the poor barky," I stammered out suddenly, almost on
+the verge of tears.
+
+Dominic stirred no more than a carving.  A sense of catastrophic
+loneliness overcame my inexperienced soul.  The vision of my
+companions passed before me.  The whole Royalist gang was in Monte
+Carlo now, I reckoned.  And they appeared to me clear-cut and very
+small, with affected voices and stiff gestures, like a procession
+of rigid marionettes upon a toy stage.  I gave a start.  What was
+this?  A mysterious, remorseless whisper came from within the
+motionless black hood at my side.
+
+"Il faul la tuer."
+
+I heard it very well.
+
+"What do you say, Dominic?" I asked, moving nothing but my lips.
+
+And the whisper within the hood repeated mysteriously, "She must be
+killed."
+
+My heart began to beat violently.
+
+"That's it," I faltered out.  "But how?"
+
+"You love her well?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Then you must find the heart for that work too.  You must steer
+her yourself, and I shall see to it that she dies quickly, without
+leaving as much as a chip behind."
+
+"Can you?" I murmured, fascinated by the black hood turned
+immovably over the stern, as if in unlawful communion with that old
+sea of magicians, slave-dealers, exiles and warriors, the sea of
+legends and terrors, where the mariners of remote antiquity used to
+hear the restless shade of an old wanderer weep aloud in the dark.
+
+"I know a rock," whispered the initiated voice within the hood
+secretly.  "But--caution!  It must be done before our men perceive
+what we are about.  Whom can we trust now?  A knife drawn across
+the fore halyards would bring the foresail down, and put an end to
+our liberty in twenty minutes.  And the best of our men may be
+afraid of drowning.  There is our little boat, but in an affair
+like this no one can be sure of being saved."
+
+The voice ceased.  We had started from Barcelona with our dinghy in
+tow; afterwards it was too risky to try to get her in, so we let
+her take her chance of the seas at the end of a comfortable scope
+of rope.  Many times she had seemed to us completely overwhelmed,
+but soon we would see her bob up again on a wave, apparently as
+buoyant and whole as ever.
+
+"I understand," I said softly.  "Very well, Dominic.  When?"
+
+"Not yet.  We must get a little more in first," answered the voice
+from the hood in a ghostly murmur.
+
+
+
+XLV.
+
+
+
+It was settled.  I had now the courage to turn about.  Our men
+crouched about the decks here and there with anxious, crestfallen
+faces, all turned one way to watch the chaser.  For the first time
+that morning I perceived Cesar stretched out full length on the
+deck near the foremast and wondered where he had been skulking till
+then.  But he might in truth have been at my elbow all the time for
+all I knew.  We had been too absorbed in watching our fate to pay
+attention to each other.  Nobody had eaten anything that morning,
+but the men had been coming constantly to drink at the water-butt.
+
+I ran down to the cabin.  I had there, put away in a locker, ten
+thousand francs in gold of whose presence on board, so far as I was
+aware, not a soul, except Dominic had the slightest inkling.  When
+I emerged on deck again Dominic had turned about and was peering
+from under his cowl at the coast.  Cape Creux closed the view
+ahead.  To the left a wide bay, its waters torn and swept by fierce
+squalls, seemed full of smoke.  Astern the sky had a menacing look.
+
+Directly he saw me, Dominic, in a placid tone, wanted to know what
+was the matter.  I came close to him and, looking as unconcerned as
+I could, told him in an undertone that I had found the locker
+broken open and the money-belt gone.  Last evening it was still
+there.
+
+"What did you want to do with it?" he asked me, trembling
+violently.
+
+"Put it round my waist, of course," I answered, amazed to hear his
+teeth chattering.
+
+"Cursed gold!" he muttered.  "The weight of the money might have
+cost you your life, perhaps."  He shuddered.  "There is no time to
+talk about that now."
+
+"I am ready."
+
+"Not yet.  I am waiting for that squall to come over," he muttered.
+And a few leaden minutes passed.
+
+The squall came over at last.  Our pursuer, overtaken by a sort of
+murky whirlwind, disappeared from our sight.  The Tremolino
+quivered and bounded forward.  The land ahead vanished, too, and we
+seemed to be left alone in a world of water and wind.
+
+"Prenez la barre, monsieur," Dominic broke the silence suddenly in
+an austere voice.  "Take hold of the tiller."  He bent his hood to
+my ear.  "The balancelle is yours.  Your own hands must deal the
+blow.  I--I have yet another piece of work to do."  He spoke up
+loudly to the man who steered.  "Let the signorino take the tiller,
+and you with the others stand by to haul the boat alongside quickly
+at the word."
+
+The man obeyed, surprised, but silent.  The others stirred, and
+pricked up their ears at this.  I heard their murmurs.  "What now?
+Are we going to run in somewhere and take to our heels?  The
+Padrone knows what he is doing."
+
+Dominic went forward.  He paused to look down at Cesar, who, as I
+have said before, was lying full length face down by the foremast,
+then stepped over him, and dived out of my sight under the
+foresail.  I saw nothing ahead.  It was impossible for me to see
+anything except the foresail open and still, like a great shadowy
+wing.  But Dominic had his bearings.  His voice came to me from
+forward, in a just audible cry:
+
+"Now, signorino!"
+
+I bore on the tiller, as instructed before.  Again I heard him
+faintly, and then I had only to hold her straight.  No ship ran so
+joyously to her death before.  She rose and fell, as if floating in
+space, and darted forward, whizzing like an arrow.  Dominic,
+stooping under the foot of the foresail, reappeared, and stood
+steadying himself against the mast, with a raised forefinger in an
+attitude of expectant attention.  A second before the shock his arm
+fell down by his side.  At that I set my teeth.  And then--
+
+Talk of splintered planks and smashed timbers!  This shipwreck lies
+upon my soul with the dread and horror of a homicide, with the
+unforgettable remorse of having crushed a living, faithful heart at
+a single blow.  At one moment the rush and the soaring swing of
+speed; the next a crash, and death, stillness--a moment of horrible
+immobility, with the song of the wind changed to a strident wail,
+and the heavy waters boiling up menacing and sluggish around the
+corpse.  I saw in a distracting minute the foreyard fly fore and
+aft with a brutal swing, the men all in a heap, cursing with fear,
+and hauling frantically at the line of the boat.  With a strange
+welcoming of the familiar I saw also Cesar amongst them, and
+recognised Dominic's old, well-known, effective gesture, the
+horizontal sweep of his powerful arm.  I recollect distinctly
+saying to myself, "Cesar must go down, of course," and then, as I
+was scrambling on all fours, the swinging tiller I had let go
+caught me a crack under the ear, and knocked me over senseless.
+
+I don't think I was actually unconscious for more than a few
+minutes, but when I came to myself the dinghy was driving before
+the wind into a sheltered cove, two men just keeping her straight
+with their oars.  Dominic, with his arm round my shoulders,
+supported me in the stern-sheets.
+
+We landed in a familiar part of the country.  Dominic took one of
+the boat's oars with him.  I suppose he was thinking of the stream
+we would have presently to cross, on which there was a miserable
+specimen of a punt, often robbed of its pole.  But first of all we
+had to ascend the ridge of land at the back of the Cape.  He helped
+me up.  I was dizzy.  My head felt very large and heavy.  At the
+top of the ascent I clung to him, and we stopped to rest.
+
+To the right, below us, the wide, smoky bay was empty.  Dominic had
+kept his word.  There was not a chip to be seen around the black
+rock from which the Tremolino, with her plucky heart crushed at one
+blow, had slipped off into deep water to her eternal rest.  The
+vastness of the open sea was smothered in driving mists, and in the
+centre of the thinning squall, phantom-like, under a frightful
+press of canvas, the unconscious guardacosta dashed on, still
+chasing to the northward.  Our men were already descending the
+reverse slope to look for that punt which we knew from experience
+was not always to be found easily.  I looked after them with dazed,
+misty eyes.  One, two, three, four.
+
+"Dominic, where's Cesar?" I cried.
+
+As if repulsing the very sound of the name, the Padrone made that
+ample, sweeping, knocking-down gesture.  I stepped back a pace and
+stared at him fearfully.  His open shirt uncovered his muscular
+neck and the thick hair on his chest.  He planted the oar upright
+in the soft soil, and rolling up slowly his right sleeve, extended
+the bare arm before my face.
+
+"This," he began, with an extreme deliberation, whose superhuman
+restraint vibrated with the suppressed violence of his feelings,
+"is the arm which delivered the blow.  I am afraid it is your own
+gold that did the rest.  I forgot all about your money."  He
+clasped his hands together in sudden distress.  "I forgot, I
+forgot," he repeated disconsolately.
+
+"Cesar stole the belt?" I stammered out, bewildered.
+
+"And who else?  Canallia!  He must have been spying on you for
+days.  And he did the whole thing.  Absent all day in Barcelona.
+Traditore!  Sold his jacket--to hire a horse.  Ha! ha!  A good
+affair!  I tell you it was he who set him at us. . . ."
+
+Dominic pointed at the sea, where the guardacosta was a mere dark
+speck.  His chin dropped on his breast.
+
+". . . On information," he murmured, in a gloomy voice.  "A
+Cervoni!  Oh! my poor brother! . . ."
+
+"And you drowned him," I said feebly.
+
+"I struck once, and the wretch went down like a stone--with the
+gold.  Yes.  But he had time to read in my eyes that nothing could
+save him while I was alive.  And had I not the right--I, Dominic
+Cervoni, Padrone, who brought him aboard your fellucca--my nephew,
+a traitor?"
+
+He pulled the oar out of the ground and helped me carefully down
+the slope.  All the time he never once looked me in the face.  He
+punted us over, then shouldered the oar again and waited till our
+men were at some distance before he offered me his arm.  After we
+had gone a little way, the fishing hamlet we were making for came
+into view.  Dominic stopped.
+
+"Do you think you can make your way as far as the houses by
+yourself?" he asked me quietly.
+
+"Yes, I think so.  But why?  Where are you going, Dominic?"
+
+"Anywhere.  What a question!  Signorino, you are but little more
+than a boy to ask such a question of a man having this tale in his
+family.  Ah!  Traditore!  What made me ever own that spawn of a
+hungry devil for our own blood!  Thief, cheat, coward, liar--other
+men can deal with that.  But I was his uncle, and so . . . I wish
+he had poisoned me--charogne!  But this:  that I, a confidential
+man and a Corsican, should have to ask your pardon for bringing on
+board your vessel, of which I was Padrone, a Cervoni, who has
+betrayed you--a traitor!--that is too much.  It is too much.  Well,
+I beg your pardon; and you may spit in Dominic's face because a
+traitor of our blood taints us all.  A theft may be made good
+between men, a lie may be set right, a death avenged, but what can
+one do to atone for a treachery like this? . . . Nothing."
+
+He turned and walked away from me along the bank of the stream,
+flourishing a vengeful arm and repeating to himself slowly, with
+savage emphasis:  "Ah!  Canaille!  Canaille!  Canaille!. . ."  He
+left me there trembling with weakness and mute with awe.  Unable to
+make a sound, I gazed after the strangely desolate figure of that
+seaman carrying an oar on his shoulder up a barren, rock-strewn
+ravine under the dreary leaden sky of Tremolino's last day.  Thus,
+walking deliberately, with his back to the sea, Dominic vanished
+from my sight.
+
+With the quality of our desires, thoughts, and wonder proportioned
+to our infinite littleness, we measure even time itself by our own
+stature.  Imprisoned in the house of personal illusions, thirty
+centuries in mankind's history seem less to look back upon than
+thirty years of our own life.  And Dominic Cervoni takes his place
+in my memory by the side of the legendary wanderer on the sea of
+marvels and terrors, by the side of the fatal and impious
+adventurer, to whom the evoked shade of the soothsayer predicted a
+journey inland with an oar on his shoulder, till he met men who had
+never set eyes on ships and oars.  It seems to me I can see them
+side by side in the twilight of an arid land, the unfortunate
+possessors of the secret lore of the sea, bearing the emblem of
+their hard calling on their shoulders, surrounded by silent and
+curious men:  even as I, too, having turned my back upon the sea,
+am bearing those few pages in the twilight, with the hope of
+finding in an inland valley the silent welcome of some patient
+listener.
+
+
+
+XLVI.
+
+
+
+"A fellow has now no chance of promotion unless he jumps into the
+muzzle of a gun and crawls out of the touch-hole."
+
+He who, a hundred years ago, more or less, pronounced the above
+words in the uneasiness of his heart, thirsting for professional
+distinction, was a young naval officer.  Of his life, career,
+achievements, and end nothing is preserved for the edification of
+his young successors in the fleet of to-day--nothing but this
+phrase, which, sailor-like in the simplicity of personal sentiment
+and strength of graphic expression, embodies the spirit of the
+epoch.  This obscure but vigorous testimony has its price, its
+significance, and its lesson.  It comes to us from a worthy
+ancestor.  We do not know whether he lived long enough for a chance
+of that promotion whose way was so arduous.  He belongs to the
+great array of the unknown--who are great, indeed, by the sum total
+of the devoted effort put out, and the colossal scale of success
+attained by their insatiable and steadfast ambition.  We do not
+know his name; we only know of him what is material for us to know-
+-that he was never backward on occasions of desperate service.  We
+have this on the authority of a distinguished seaman of Nelson's
+time.  Departing this life as Admiral of the Fleet on the eve of
+the Crimean War, Sir Thomas Byam Martin has recorded for us amongst
+his all too short autobiographical notes these few characteristic
+words uttered by one young man of the many who must have felt that
+particular inconvenience of a heroic age.
+
+The distinguished Admiral had lived through it himself, and was a
+good judge of what was expected in those days from men and ships.
+A brilliant frigate captain, a man of sound judgment, of dashing
+bravery and of serene mind, scrupulously concerned for the welfare
+and honour of the navy, he missed a larger fame only by the chances
+of the service.  We may well quote on this day the words written of
+Nelson, in the decline of a well-spent life, by Sir T. B. Martin,
+who died just fifty years ago on the very anniversary of Trafalgar.
+
+"Nelson's nobleness of mind was a prominent and beautiful part of
+his character.  His foibles--faults if you like--will never be
+dwelt upon in any memorandum of mine," he declares, and goes on--
+"he whose splendid and matchless achievements will be remembered
+with admiration while there is gratitude in the hearts of Britons,
+or while a ship floats upon the ocean; he whose example on the
+breaking out of the war gave so chivalrous an impulse to the
+younger men of the service that all rushed into rivalry of daring
+which disdained every warning of prudence, and led to acts of
+heroic enterprise which tended greatly to exalt the glory of our
+nation."
+
+These are his words, and they are true.  The dashing young frigate
+captain, the man who in middle age was nothing loth to give chase
+single-handed in his seventy-four to a whole fleet, the man of
+enterprise and consummate judgment, the old Admiral of the Fleet,
+the good and trusted servant of his country under two kings and a
+queen, had felt correctly Nelson's influence, and expressed himself
+with precision out of the fulness of his seaman's heart.
+
+"Exalted," he wrote, not "augmented."  And therein his feeling and
+his pen captured the very truth.  Other men there were ready and
+able to add to the treasure of victories the British navy has given
+to the nation.  It was the lot of Lord Nelson to exalt all this
+glory.  Exalt! the word seems to be created for the man.
+
+
+
+XLVII.
+
+
+
+The British navy may well have ceased to count its victories.  It
+is rich beyond the wildest dreams of success and fame.  It may
+well, rather, on a culminating day of its history, cast about for
+the memory of some reverses to appease the jealous fates which
+attend the prosperity and triumphs of a nation.  It holds, indeed,
+the heaviest inheritance that has ever been entrusted to the
+courage and fidelity of armed men.
+
+It is too great for mere pride.  It should make the seamen of to-
+day humble in the secret of their hearts, and indomitable in their
+unspoken resolution.  In all the records of history there has never
+been a time when a victorious fortune has been so faithful to men
+making war upon the sea.  And it must be confessed that on their
+part they knew how to be faithful to their victorious fortune.
+They were exalted.  They were always watching for her smile; night
+or day, fair weather or foul, they waited for her slightest sign
+with the offering of their stout hearts in their hands.  And for
+the inspiration of this high constancy they were indebted to Lord
+Nelson alone.  Whatever earthly affection he abandoned or grasped,
+the great Admiral was always, before all, beyond all, a lover of
+Fame.  He loved her jealously, with an inextinguishable ardour and
+an insatiable desire--he loved her with a masterful devotion and an
+infinite trustfulness.  In the plenitude of his passion he was an
+exacting lover.  And she never betrayed the greatness of his trust!
+She attended him to the end of his life, and he died pressing her
+last gift (nineteen prizes) to his heart.  "Anchor, Hardy--anchor!"
+was as much the cry of an ardent lover as of a consummate seaman.
+Thus he would hug to his breast the last gift of Fame.
+
+It was this ardour which made him great.  He was a flaming example
+to the wooers of glorious fortune.  There have been great officers
+before--Lord Hood, for instance, whom he himself regarded as the
+greatest sea officer England ever had.  A long succession of great
+commanders opened the sea to the vast range of Nelson's genius.
+His time had come; and, after the great sea officers, the great
+naval tradition passed into the keeping of a great man.  Not the
+least glory of the navy is that it understood Nelson.  Lord Hood
+trusted him.  Admiral Keith told him:  "We can't spare you either
+as Captain or Admiral."  Earl St. Vincent put into his hands,
+untrammelled by orders, a division of his fleet, and Sir Hyde
+Parker gave him two more ships at Copenhagen than he had asked for.
+So much for the chiefs; the rest of the navy surrendered to him
+their devoted affection, trust, and admiration.  In return he gave
+them no less than his own exalted soul.  He breathed into them his
+own ardour and his own ambition.  In a few short years he
+revolutionized, not the strategy or tactics of sea-warfare, but the
+very conception of victory itself.  And this is genius.  In that
+alone, through the fidelity of his fortune and the power of his
+inspiration, he stands unique amongst the leaders of fleets and
+sailors.  He brought heroism into the line of duty.  Verily he is a
+terrible ancestor.
+
+And the men of his day loved him.  They loved him not only as
+victorious armies have loved great commanders; they loved him with
+a more intimate feeling as one of themselves.  In the words of a
+contemporary, he had "a most happy way of gaining the affectionate
+respect of all who had the felicity to serve under his command."
+
+To be so great and to remain so accessible to the affection of
+one's fellow-men is the mark of exceptional humanity.  Lord
+Nelson's greatness was very human.  It had a moral basis; it needed
+to feel itself surrounded by the warm devotion of a band of
+brothers.  He was vain and tender.  The love and admiration which
+the navy gave him so unreservedly soothed the restlessness of his
+professional pride.  He trusted them as much as they trusted him.
+He was a seaman of seamen.  Sir T. B. Martin states that he never
+conversed with any officer who had served under Nelson "without
+hearing the heartiest expressions of attachment to his person and
+admiration of his frank and conciliatory manner to his
+subordinates."  And Sir Robert Stopford, who commanded one of the
+ships with which Nelson chased to the West Indies a fleet nearly
+double in number, says in a letter:  "We are half-starved and
+otherwise inconvenienced by being so long out of port, but our
+reward is that we are with Nelson."
+
+This heroic spirit of daring and endurance, in which all public and
+private differences were sunk throughout the whole fleet, is Lord
+Nelson's great legacy, triply sealed by the victorious impress of
+the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar.  This is a legacy whose value
+the changes of time cannot affect.  The men and the ships he knew
+how to lead lovingly to the work of courage and the reward of glory
+have passed away, but Nelson's uplifting touch remains in the
+standard of achievement he has set for all time.  The principles of
+strategy may be immutable.  It is certain they have been, and shall
+be again, disregarded from timidity, from blindness, through
+infirmity of purpose.  The tactics of great captains on land and
+sea can be infinitely discussed.  The first object of tactics is to
+close with the adversary on terms of the greatest possible
+advantage; yet no hard-and-fast rules can be drawn from experience,
+for this capital reason, amongst others--that the quality of the
+adversary is a variable element in the problem.  The tactics of
+Lord Nelson have been amply discussed, with much pride and some
+profit.  And yet, truly, they are already of but archaic interest.
+A very few years more and the hazardous difficulties of handling a
+fleet under canvas shall have passed beyond the conception of
+seamen who hold in trust for their country Lord Nelson's legacy of
+heroic spirit.  The change in the character of the ships is too
+great and too radical.  It is good and proper to study the acts of
+great men with thoughtful reverence, but already the precise
+intention of Lord Nelson's famous memorandum seems to lie under
+that veil which Time throws over the clearest conceptions of every
+great art.  It must not be forgotten that this was the first time
+when Nelson, commanding in chief, had his opponents under way--the
+first time and the last.  Had he lived, had there been other fleets
+left to oppose him, we would, perhaps, have learned something more
+of his greatness as a sea officer.  Nothing could have been added
+to his greatness as a leader.  All that can be affirmed is, that on
+no other day of his short and glorious career was Lord Nelson more
+splendidly true to his genius and to his country's fortune.
+
+
+
+XLVIII.
+
+
+
+And yet the fact remains that, had the wind failed and the fleet
+lost steerage way, or, worse still, had it been taken aback from
+the eastward, with its leaders within short range of the enemy's
+guns, nothing, it seems, could have saved the headmost ships from
+capture or destruction.  No skill of a great sea officer would have
+availed in such a contingency.  Lord Nelson was more than that, and
+his genius would have remained undiminished by defeat.  But
+obviously tactics, which are so much at the mercy of irremediable
+accident, must seem to a modern seaman a poor matter of study.  The
+Commander-in-Chief in the great fleet action that will take its
+place next to the Battle of Trafalgar in the history of the British
+navy will have no such anxiety, and will feel the weight of no such
+dependence.  For a hundred years now no British fleet has engaged
+the enemy in line of battle.  A hundred years is a long time, but
+the difference of modern conditions is enormous.  The gulf is
+great.  Had the last great fight of the English navy been that of
+the First of June, for instance, had there been no Nelson's
+victories, it would have been wellnigh impassable.  The great
+Admiral's slight and passion-worn figure stands at the parting of
+the ways.  He had the audacity of genius, and a prophetic
+inspiration.
+
+The modern naval man must feel that the time has come for the
+tactical practice of the great sea officers of the past to be laid
+by in the temple of august memories.  The fleet tactics of the
+sailing days have been governed by two points:  the deadly nature
+of a raking fire, and the dread, natural to a commander dependent
+upon the winds, to find at some crucial moment part of his fleet
+thrown hopelessly to leeward.  These two points were of the very
+essence of sailing tactics, and these two points have been
+eliminated from the modern tactical problem by the changes of
+propulsion and armament.  Lord Nelson was the first to disregard
+them with conviction and audacity sustained by an unbounded trust
+in the men he led.  This conviction, this audacity and this trust
+stand out from amongst the lines of the celebrated memorandum,
+which is but a declaration of his faith in a crushing superiority
+of fire as the only means of victory and the only aim of sound
+tactics.  Under the difficulties of the then existing conditions he
+strove for that, and for that alone, putting his faith into
+practice against every risk.  And in that exclusive faith Lord
+Nelson appears to us as the first of the moderns.
+
+Against every risk, I have said; and the men of to-day, born and
+bred to the use of steam, can hardly realize how much of that risk
+was in the weather.  Except at the Nile, where the conditions were
+ideal for engaging a fleet moored in shallow water, Lord Nelson was
+not lucky in his weather.  Practically it was nothing but a quite
+unusual failure of the wind which cost him his arm during the
+Teneriffe expedition.  On Trafalgar Day the weather was not so much
+unfavourable as extremely dangerous.
+
+It was one of these covered days of fitful sunshine, of light,
+unsteady winds, with a swell from the westward, and hazy in
+general, but with the land about the Cape at times distinctly
+visible.  It has been my lot to look with reverence upon the very
+spot more than once, and for many hours together.  All but thirty
+years ago, certain exceptional circumstances made me very familiar
+for a time with that bight in the Spanish coast which would be
+enclosed within a straight line drawn from Faro to Spartel.  My
+well-remembered experience has convinced me that, in that corner of
+the ocean, once the wind has got to the northward of west (as it
+did on the 20th, taking the British fleet aback), appearances of
+westerly weather go for nothing, and that it is infinitely more
+likely to veer right round to the east than to shift back again.
+It was in those conditions that, at seven on the morning of the
+21st, the signal for the fleet to bear up and steer east was made.
+Holding a clear recollection of these languid easterly sighs
+rippling unexpectedly against the run of the smooth swell, with no
+other warning than a ten-minutes' calm and a queer darkening of the
+coast-line, I cannot think, without a gasp of professional awe, of
+that fateful moment.  Perhaps personal experience, at a time of
+life when responsibility had a special freshness and importance,
+has induced me to exaggerate to myself the danger of the weather.
+The great Admiral and good seaman could read aright the signs of
+sea and sky, as his order to prepare to anchor at the end of the
+day sufficiently proves; but, all the same, the mere idea of these
+baffling easterly airs, coming on at any time within half an hour
+or so, after the firing of the first shot, is enough to take one's
+breath away, with the image of the rearmost ships of both divisions
+falling off, unmanageable, broadside on to the westerly swell, and
+of two British Admirals in desperate jeopardy.  To this day I
+cannot free myself from the impression that, for some forty
+minutes, the fate of the great battle hung upon a breath of wind
+such as I have felt stealing from behind, as it were, upon my cheek
+while engaged in looking to the westward for the signs of the true
+weather.
+
+Never more shall British seamen going into action have to trust the
+success of their valour to a breath of wind.  The God of gales and
+battles favouring her arms to the last, has let the sun of
+England's sailing-fleet and of its greatest master set in unclouded
+glory.  And now the old ships and their men are gone; the new ships
+and the new men, many of them bearing the old, auspicious names,
+have taken up their watch on the stern and impartial sea, which
+offers no opportunities but to those who know how to grasp them
+with a ready hand and an undaunted heart.
+
+
+
+XLIX.
+
+
+
+This the navy of the Twenty Years' War knew well how to do, and
+never better than when Lord Nelson had breathed into its soul his
+own passion of honour and fame.  It was a fortunate navy.  Its
+victories were no mere smashing of helpless ships and massacres of
+cowed men.  It was spared that cruel favour, for which no brave
+heart had ever prayed.  It was fortunate in its adversaries.  I say
+adversaries, for on recalling such proud memories we should avoid
+the word "enemies," whose hostile sound perpetuates the antagonisms
+and strife of nations, so irremediable perhaps, so fateful--and
+also so vain.  War is one of the gifts of life; but, alas! no war
+appears so very necessary when time has laid its soothing hand upon
+the passionate misunderstandings and the passionate desires of
+great peoples.  "Le temps," as a distinguished Frenchman has said,
+"est un galant homme."  He fosters the spirit of concord and
+justice, in whose work there is as much glory to be reaped as in
+the deeds of arms.
+
+One of them disorganized by revolutionary changes, the other rusted
+in the neglect of a decayed monarchy, the two fleets opposed to us
+entered the contest with odds against them from the first.  By the
+merit of our daring and our faithfulness, and the genius of a great
+leader, we have in the course of the war augmented our advantage
+and kept it to the last.  But in the exulting illusion of
+irresistible might a long series of military successes brings to a
+nation the less obvious aspect of such a fortune may perchance be
+lost to view.  The old navy in its last days earned a fame that no
+belittling malevolence dare cavil at.  And this supreme favour they
+owe to their adversaries alone.
+
+Deprived by an ill-starred fortune of that self-confidence which
+strengthens the hands of an armed host, impaired in skill but not
+in courage, it may safely be said that our adversaries managed yet
+to make a better fight of it in 1797 than they did in 1793.  Later
+still, the resistance offered at the Nile was all, and more than
+all, that could be demanded from seamen, who, unless blind or
+without understanding, must have seen their doom sealed from the
+moment that the Goliath, bearing up under the bows of the Guerrier,
+took up an inshore berth.  The combined fleets of 1805, just come
+out of port, and attended by nothing but the disturbing memories of
+reverses, presented to our approach a determined front, on which
+Captain Blackwood, in a knightly spirit, congratulated his Admiral.
+By the exertions of their valour our adversaries have but added a
+greater lustre to our arms.  No friend could have done more, for
+even in war, which severs for a time all the sentiments of human
+fellowship, this subtle bond of association remains between brave
+men--that the final testimony to the value of victory must be
+received at the hands of the vanquished.
+
+Those who from the heat of that battle sank together to their
+repose in the cool depths of the ocean would not understand the
+watchwords of our day, would gaze with amazed eyes at the engines
+of our strife.  All passes, all changes:  the animosity of peoples,
+the handling of fleets, the forms of ships; and even the sea itself
+seems to wear a different and diminished aspect from the sea of
+Lord Nelson's day.  In this ceaseless rush of shadows and shades,
+that, like the fantastic forms of clouds cast darkly upon the
+waters on a windy day, fly past us to fall headlong below the hard
+edge of an implacable horizon, we must turn to the national spirit,
+which, superior in its force and continuity to good and evil
+fortune, can alone give us the feeling of an enduring existence and
+of an invincible power against the fates.
+
+Like a subtle and mysterious elixir poured into the perishable clay
+of successive generations, it grows in truth, splendour, and
+potency with the march of ages.  In its incorruptible flow all
+round the globe of the earth it preserves from the decay and
+forgetfulness of death the greatness of our great men, and amongst
+them the passionate and gentle greatness of Nelson, the nature of
+whose genius was, on the faith of a brave seaman and distinguished
+Admiral, such as to "Exalt the glory of our nation."
+
+
+
+
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+<title>The Mirror of the Sea</title>
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+<h2>
+<a href="#startoftext">The Mirror of the Sea, by Joseph Conrad</a>
+</h2>
+<pre>
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mirror of the Sea, by Joseph Conrad
+(#16 in our series by Joseph Conrad)
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+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: The Mirror of the Sea
+
+Author: Joseph Conrad
+
+Release Date: October, 1997  [EBook #1058]
+[This file was first posted on October 10, 1997]
+[Most recently updated: June 26, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+</pre>
+<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p>
+<p>Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h1>The Mirror of the Sea</h1>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<pre>Contents:</pre>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<pre>I.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  Landfalls and Departures
+IV.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Emblems of Hope
+VII.&nbsp; &nbsp;  The Fine Art
+X.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  Cobwebs and Gossamer
+XIII.&nbsp; &nbsp; The Weight of the Burden
+XVI.&nbsp; &nbsp;  Overdue and Missing
+XX.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The Grip of the Land
+XXII.&nbsp; &nbsp; The Character of the Foe
+XXV.&nbsp; &nbsp;  Rules of East and West
+XXX.&nbsp; &nbsp;  The Faithful River
+XXXIII.&nbsp; In Captivity
+XXXV.&nbsp; &nbsp; Initiation
+XXXVII.&nbsp; The Nursery of the Craft
+XL.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The Tremolino
+XLVI.&nbsp; &nbsp; The Heroic Age</pre>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;And shippes by the brinke comen and gon,<br />And in swich
+forme endure a day or two.&rdquo;<br /><i>The Frankeleyn&rsquo;s Tale.</i></p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Landfall and Departure mark the rhythmical swing of a seaman&rsquo;s
+life and of a ship&rsquo;s career.&nbsp; From land to land is the most
+concise definition of a ship&rsquo;s earthly fate.</p>
+<p>A &ldquo;Departure&rdquo; is not what a vain people of landsmen may
+think.&nbsp; The term &ldquo;Landfall&rdquo; is more easily understood;
+you fall in with the land, and it is a matter of a quick eye and of
+a clear atmosphere.&nbsp; The Departure is not the ship&rsquo;s going
+away from her port any more than the Landfall can be looked upon as
+the synonym of arrival.&nbsp; But there is this difference in the Departure:
+that the term does not imply so much a sea event as a definite act entailing
+a process&mdash;the precise observation of certain landmarks by means
+of the compass card.</p>
+<p>Your Landfall, be it a peculiarly-shaped mountain, a rocky headland,
+or a stretch of sand-dunes, you meet at first with a single glance.&nbsp;
+Further recognition will follow in due course; but essentially a Landfall,
+good or bad, is made and done with at the first cry of &ldquo;Land ho!&rdquo;&nbsp;
+The Departure is distinctly a ceremony of navigation.&nbsp; A ship may
+have left her port some time before; she may have been at sea, in the
+fullest sense of the phrase, for days; but, for all that, as long as
+the coast she was about to leave remained in sight, a southern-going
+ship of yesterday had not in the sailor&rsquo;s sense begun the enterprise
+of a passage.</p>
+<p>The taking of Departure, if not the last sight of the land, is, perhaps,
+the last professional recognition of the land on the part of a sailor.&nbsp;
+It is the technical, as distinguished from the sentimental, &ldquo;good-bye.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Henceforth he has done with the coast astern of his ship.&nbsp; It is
+a matter personal to the man.&nbsp; It is not the ship that takes her
+departure; the seaman takes his Departure by means of cross-bearings
+which fix the place of the first tiny pencil-cross on the white expanse
+of the track-chart, where the ship&rsquo;s position at noon shall be
+marked by just such another tiny pencil cross for every day of her passage.&nbsp;
+And there may be sixty, eighty, any number of these crosses on the ship&rsquo;s
+track from land to land.&nbsp; The greatest number in my experience
+was a hundred and thirty of such crosses from the pilot station at the
+Sand Heads in the Bay of Bengal to the Scilly&rsquo;s light.&nbsp; A
+bad passage. . .</p>
+<p>A Departure, the last professional sight of land, is always good,
+or at least good enough.&nbsp; For, even if the weather be thick, it
+does not matter much to a ship having all the open sea before her bows.&nbsp;
+A Landfall may be good or bad.&nbsp; You encompass the earth with one
+particular spot of it in your eye.&nbsp; In all the devious tracings
+the course of a sailing-ship leaves upon the white paper of a chart
+she is always aiming for that one little spot&mdash;maybe a small island
+in the ocean, a single headland upon the long coast of a continent,
+a lighthouse on a bluff, or simply the peaked form of a mountain like
+an ant-heap afloat upon the waters.&nbsp; But if you have sighted it
+on the expected bearing, then that Landfall is good.&nbsp; Fogs, snowstorms,
+gales thick with clouds and rain&mdash;those are the enemies of good
+Landfalls.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>II.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Some commanders of ships take their Departure from the home coast
+sadly, in a spirit of grief and discontent.&nbsp; They have a wife,
+children perhaps, some affection at any rate, or perhaps only some pet
+vice, that must be left behind for a year or more.&nbsp; I remember
+only one man who walked his deck with a springy step, and gave the first
+course of the passage in an elated voice.&nbsp; But he, as I learned
+afterwards, was leaving nothing behind him, except a welter of debts
+and threats of legal proceedings.</p>
+<p>On the other hand, I have known many captains who, directly their
+ship had left the narrow waters of the Channel, would disappear from
+the sight of their ship&rsquo;s company altogether for some three days
+or more.&nbsp; They would take a long dive, as it were, into their state-room,
+only to emerge a few days afterwards with a more or less serene brow.&nbsp;
+Those were the men easy to get on with.&nbsp; Besides, such a complete
+retirement seemed to imply a satisfactory amount of trust in their officers,
+and to be trusted displeases no seaman worthy of the name.</p>
+<p>On my first voyage as chief mate with good Captain MacW- I remember
+that I felt quite flattered, and went blithely about my duties, myself
+a commander for all practical purposes.&nbsp; Still, whatever the greatness
+of my illusion, the fact remained that the real commander was there,
+backing up my self-confidence, though invisible to my eyes behind a
+maple-wood veneered cabin-door with a white china handle.</p>
+<p>That is the time, after your Departure is taken, when the spirit
+of your commander communes with you in a muffled voice, as if from the
+sanctum sanctorum of a temple; because, call her a temple or a &ldquo;hell
+afloat&rdquo;&mdash;as some ships have been called&mdash;the captain&rsquo;s
+state-room is surely the august place in every vessel.</p>
+<p>The good MacW- would not even come out to his meals, and fed solitarily
+in his holy of holies from a tray covered with a white napkin.&nbsp;
+Our steward used to bend an ironic glance at the perfectly empty plates
+he was bringing out from there.&nbsp; This grief for his home, which
+overcomes so many married seamen, did not deprive Captain MacW- of his
+legitimate appetite.&nbsp; In fact, the steward would almost invariably
+come up to me, sitting in the captain&rsquo;s chair at the head of the
+table, to say in a grave murmur, &ldquo;The captain asks for one more
+slice of meat and two potatoes.&rdquo;&nbsp; We, his officers, could
+hear him moving about in his berth, or lightly snoring, or fetching
+deep sighs, or splashing and blowing in his bath-room; and we made our
+reports to him through the keyhole, as it were.&nbsp; It was the crowning
+achievement of his amiable character that the answers we got were given
+in a quite mild and friendly tone.&nbsp; Some commanders in their periods
+of seclusion are constantly grumpy, and seem to resent the mere sound
+of your voice as an injury and an insult.</p>
+<p>But a grumpy recluse cannot worry his subordinates: whereas the man
+in whom the sense of duty is strong (or, perhaps, only the sense of
+self-importance), and who persists in airing on deck his moroseness
+all day&mdash;and perhaps half the night&mdash;becomes a grievous infliction.&nbsp;
+He walks the poop darting gloomy glances, as though he wished to poison
+the sea, and snaps your head off savagely whenever you happen to blunder
+within earshot.&nbsp; And these vagaries are the harder to bear patiently,
+as becomes a man and an officer, because no sailor is really good-tempered
+during the first few days of a voyage.&nbsp; There are regrets, memories,
+the instinctive longing for the departed idleness, the instinctive hate
+of all work.&nbsp; Besides, things have a knack of going wrong at the
+start, especially in the matter of irritating trifles.&nbsp; And there
+is the abiding thought of a whole year of more or less hard life before
+one, because there was hardly a southern-going voyage in the yesterday
+of the sea which meant anything less than a twelvemonth.&nbsp; Yes;
+it needed a few days after the taking of your departure for a ship&rsquo;s
+company to shake down into their places, and for the soothing deep-water
+ship routine to establish its beneficent sway.</p>
+<p>It is a great doctor for sore hearts and sore heads, too, your ship&rsquo;s
+routine, which I have seen soothe&mdash;at least for a time&mdash;the
+most turbulent of spirits.&nbsp; There is health in it, and peace, and
+satisfaction of the accomplished round; for each day of the ship&rsquo;s
+life seems to close a circle within the wide ring of the sea horizon.&nbsp;
+It borrows a certain dignity of sameness from the majestic monotony
+of the sea.&nbsp; He who loves the sea loves also the ship&rsquo;s routine.</p>
+<p>Nowhere else than upon the sea do the days, weeks and months fall
+away quicker into the past.&nbsp; They seem to be left astern as easily
+as the light air-bubbles in the swirls of the ship&rsquo;s wake, and
+vanish into a great silence in which your ship moves on with a sort
+of magical effect.&nbsp; They pass away, the days, the weeks, the months.&nbsp;
+Nothing but a gale can disturb the orderly life of the ship; and the
+spell of unshaken monotony that seems to have fallen upon the very voices
+of her men is broken only by the near prospect of a Landfall.</p>
+<p>Then is the spirit of the ship&rsquo;s commander stirred strongly
+again.&nbsp; But it is not moved to seek seclusion, and to remain, hidden
+and inert, shut up in a small cabin with the solace of a good bodily
+appetite.&nbsp; When about to make the land, the spirit of the ship&rsquo;s
+commander is tormented by an unconquerable restlessness.&nbsp; It seems
+unable to abide for many seconds together in the holy of holies of the
+captain&rsquo;s state-room; it will out on deck and gaze ahead, through
+straining eyes, as the appointed moment comes nearer.&nbsp; It is kept
+vigorously upon the stretch of excessive vigilance.&nbsp; Meantime the
+body of the ship&rsquo;s commander is being enfeebled by want of appetite;
+at least, such is my experience, though &ldquo;enfeebled&rdquo; is perhaps
+not exactly the word.&nbsp; I might say, rather, that it is spiritualized
+by a disregard for food, sleep, and all the ordinary comforts, such
+as they are, of sea life.&nbsp; In one or two cases I have known that
+detachment from the grosser needs of existence remain regrettably incomplete
+in the matter of drink.</p>
+<p>But these two cases were, properly speaking, pathological cases,
+and the only two in all my sea experience.&nbsp; In one of these two
+instances of a craving for stimulants, developed from sheer anxiety,
+I cannot assert that the man&rsquo;s seaman-like qualities were impaired
+in the least.&nbsp; It was a very anxious case, too, the land being
+made suddenly, close-to, on a wrong bearing, in thick weather, and during
+a fresh onshore gale.&nbsp; Going below to speak to him soon after,
+I was unlucky enough to catch my captain in the very act of hasty cork-drawing.&nbsp;
+The sight, I may say, gave me an awful scare.&nbsp; I was well aware
+of the morbidly sensitive nature of the man.&nbsp; Fortunately, I managed
+to draw back unseen, and, taking care to stamp heavily with my sea-boots
+at the foot of the cabin stairs, I made my second entry.&nbsp; But for
+this unexpected glimpse, no act of his during the next twenty-four hours
+could have given me the slightest suspicion that all was not well with
+his nerve.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>III.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Quite another case, and having nothing to do with drink, was that
+of poor Captain B-.&nbsp; He used to suffer from sick headaches, in
+his young days, every time he was approaching a coast.&nbsp; Well over
+fifty years of age when I knew him, short, stout, dignified, perhaps
+a little pompous, he was a man of a singularly well-informed mind, the
+least sailor-like in outward aspect, but certainly one of the best seamen
+whom it has been my good luck to serve under.&nbsp; He was a Plymouth
+man, I think, the son of a country doctor, and both his elder boys were
+studying medicine.&nbsp; He commanded a big London ship, fairly well
+known in her day.&nbsp; I thought no end of him, and that is why I remember
+with a peculiar satisfaction the last words he spoke to me on board
+his ship after an eighteen months&rsquo; voyage.&nbsp; It was in the
+dock in Dundee, where we had brought a full cargo of jute from Calcutta.&nbsp;
+We had been paid off that morning, and I had come on board to take my
+sea-chest away and to say good-bye.&nbsp; In his slightly lofty but
+courteous way he inquired what were my plans.&nbsp; I replied that I
+intended leaving for London by the afternoon train, and thought of going
+up for examination to get my master&rsquo;s certificate.&nbsp; I had
+just enough service for that.&nbsp; He commended me for not wasting
+my time, with such an evident interest in my case that I was quite surprised;
+then, rising from his chair, he said:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Have you a ship in view after you have passed?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I answered that I had nothing whatever in view.</p>
+<p>He shook hands with me, and pronounced the memorable words:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If you happen to be in want of employment, remember that as
+long as I have a ship you have a ship, too.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the way of compliment there is nothing to beat this from a ship&rsquo;s
+captain to his second mate at the end of a voyage, when the work is
+over and the subordinate is done with.&nbsp; And there is a pathos in
+that memory, for the poor fellow never went to sea again after all.&nbsp;
+He was already ailing when we passed St. Helena; was laid up for a time
+when we were off the Western Islands, but got out of bed to make his
+Landfall.&nbsp; He managed to keep up on deck as far as the Downs, where,
+giving his orders in an exhausted voice, he anchored for a few hours
+to send a wire to his wife and take aboard a North Sea pilot to help
+him sail the ship up the east coast.&nbsp; He had not felt equal to
+the task by himself, for it is the sort of thing that keeps a deep-water
+man on his feet pretty well night and day.</p>
+<p>When we arrived in Dundee, Mrs. B- was already there, waiting to
+take him home.&nbsp; We travelled up to London by the same train; but
+by the time I had managed to get through with my examination the ship
+had sailed on her next voyage without him, and, instead of joining her
+again, I went by request to see my old commander in his home.&nbsp;
+This is the only one of my captains I have ever visited in that way.&nbsp;
+He was out of bed by then, &ldquo;quite convalescent,&rdquo; as he declared,
+making a few tottering steps to meet me at the sitting-room door.&nbsp;
+Evidently he was reluctant to take his final cross-bearings of this
+earth for a Departure on the only voyage to an unknown destination a
+sailor ever undertakes.&nbsp; And it was all very nice&mdash;the large,
+sunny room; his deep, easy-chair in a bow window, with pillows and a
+footstool; the quiet, watchful care of the elderly, gentle woman who
+had borne him five children, and had not, perhaps, lived with him more
+than five full years out of the thirty or so of their married life.&nbsp;
+There was also another woman there in a plain black dress, quite gray-haired,
+sitting very erect on her chair with some sewing, from which she snatched
+side-glances in his direction, and uttering not a single word during
+all the time of my call.&nbsp; Even when, in due course, I carried over
+to her a cup of tea, she only nodded at me silently, with the faintest
+ghost of a smile on her tight-set lips.&nbsp; I imagine she must have
+been a maiden sister of Mrs. B- come to help nurse her brother-in-law.&nbsp;
+His youngest boy, a late-comer, a great cricketer it seemed, twelve
+years old or thereabouts, chattered enthusiastically of the exploits
+of W. G. Grace.&nbsp; And I remember his eldest son, too, a newly-fledged
+doctor, who took me out to smoke in the garden, and, shaking his head
+with professional gravity, but with genuine concern, muttered: &ldquo;Yes,
+but he doesn&rsquo;t get back his appetite.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t like
+that&mdash;I don&rsquo;t like that at all.&rdquo;&nbsp; The last sight
+of Captain B- I had was as he nodded his head to me out of the bow window
+when I turned round to close the front gate.</p>
+<p>It was a distinct and complete impression, something that I don&rsquo;t
+know whether to call a Landfall or a Departure.&nbsp; Certainly he had
+gazed at times very fixedly before him with the Landfall&rsquo;s vigilant
+look, this sea-captain seated incongruously in a deep-backed chair.&nbsp;
+He had not then talked to me of employment, of ships, of being ready
+to take another command; but he had discoursed of his early days, in
+the abundant but thin flow of a wilful invalid&rsquo;s talk.&nbsp; The
+women looked worried, but sat still, and I learned more of him in that
+interview than in the whole eighteen months we had sailed together.&nbsp;
+It appeared he had &ldquo;served his time&rdquo; in the copper-ore trade,
+the famous copper-ore trade of old days between Swansea and the Chilian
+coast, coal out and ore in, deep-loaded both ways, as if in wanton defiance
+of the great Cape Horn seas&mdash;a work, this, for staunch ships, and
+a great school of staunchness for West-Country seamen.&nbsp; A whole
+fleet of copper-bottomed barques, as strong in rib and planking, as
+well-found in gear, as ever was sent upon the seas, manned by hardy
+crews and commanded by young masters, was engaged in that now long defunct
+trade.&nbsp; &ldquo;That was the school I was trained in,&rdquo; he
+said to me almost boastfully, lying back amongst his pillows with a
+rug over his legs.&nbsp; And it was in that trade that he obtained his
+first command at a very early age.&nbsp; It was then that he mentioned
+to me how, as a young commander, he was always ill for a few days before
+making land after a long passage.&nbsp; But this sort of sickness used
+to pass off with the first sight of a familiar landmark.&nbsp; Afterwards,
+he added, as he grew older, all that nervousness wore off completely;
+and I observed his weary eyes gaze steadily ahead, as if there had been
+nothing between him and the straight line of sea and sky, where whatever
+a seaman is looking for is first bound to appear.&nbsp; But I have also
+seen his eyes rest fondly upon the faces in the room, upon the pictures
+on the wall, upon all the familiar objects of that home, whose abiding
+and clear image must have flashed often on his memory in times of stress
+and anxiety at sea.&nbsp; Was he looking out for a strange Landfall,
+or taking with an untroubled mind the bearings for his last Departure?</p>
+<p>It is hard to say; for in that voyage from which no man returns Landfall
+and Departure are instantaneous, merging together into one moment of
+supreme and final attention.&nbsp; Certainly I do not remember observing
+any sign of faltering in the set expression of his wasted face, no hint
+of the nervous anxiety of a young commander about to make land on an
+uncharted shore.&nbsp; He had had too much experience of Departures
+and Landfalls!&nbsp; And had he not &ldquo;served his time&rdquo; in
+the famous copper-ore trade out of the Bristol Channel, the work of
+the staunchest ships afloat, and the school of staunch seamen?</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>IV.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Before an anchor can ever be raised, it must be let go; and this
+perfectly obvious truism brings me at once to the subject of the degradation
+of the sea language in the daily press of this country.</p>
+<p>Your journalist, whether he takes charge of a ship or a fleet, almost
+invariably &ldquo;casts&rdquo; his anchor.&nbsp; Now, an anchor is never
+cast, and to take a liberty with technical language is a crime against
+the clearness, precision, and beauty of perfected speech.</p>
+<p>An anchor is a forged piece of iron, admirably adapted to its end,
+and technical language is an instrument wrought into perfection by ages
+of experience, a flawless thing for its purpose.&nbsp; An anchor of
+yesterday (because nowadays there are contrivances like mushrooms and
+things like claws, of no particular expression or shape&mdash;just hooks)&mdash;an
+anchor of yesterday is in its way a most efficient instrument.&nbsp;
+To its perfection its size bears witness, for there is no other appliance
+so small for the great work it has to do.&nbsp; Look at the anchors
+hanging from the cat-heads of a big ship!&nbsp; How tiny they are in
+proportion to the great size of the hull!&nbsp; Were they made of gold
+they would look like trinkets, like ornamental toys, no bigger in proportion
+than a jewelled drop in a woman&rsquo;s ear.&nbsp; And yet upon them
+will depend, more than once, the very life of the ship.</p>
+<p>An anchor is forged and fashioned for faithfulness; give it ground
+that it can bite, and it will hold till the cable parts, and then, whatever
+may afterwards befall its ship, that anchor is &ldquo;lost.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+The honest, rough piece of iron, so simple in appearance, has more parts
+than the human body has limbs: the ring, the stock, the crown, the flukes,
+the palms, the shank.&nbsp; All this, according to the journalist, is
+&ldquo;cast&rdquo; when a ship arriving at an anchorage is brought up.</p>
+<p>This insistence in using the odious word arises from the fact that
+a particularly benighted landsman must imagine the act of anchoring
+as a process of throwing something overboard, whereas the anchor ready
+for its work is already overboard, and is not thrown over, but simply
+allowed to fall.&nbsp; It hangs from the ship&rsquo;s side at the end
+of a heavy, projecting timber called the cat-head, in the bight of a
+short, thick chain whose end link is suddenly released by a blow from
+a top-maul or the pull of a lever when the order is given.&nbsp; And
+the order is not &ldquo;Heave over!&rdquo; as the paragraphist seems
+to imagine, but &ldquo;Let go!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>As a matter of fact, nothing is ever cast in that sense on board
+ship but the lead, of which a cast is taken to search the depth of water
+on which she floats.&nbsp; A lashed boat, a spare spar, a cask or what
+not secured about the decks, is &ldquo;cast adrift&rdquo; when it is
+untied.&nbsp; Also the ship herself is &ldquo;cast to port or starboard&rdquo;
+when getting under way.&nbsp; She, however, never &ldquo;casts&rdquo;
+her anchor.</p>
+<p>To speak with severe technicality, a ship or a fleet is &ldquo;brought
+up&rdquo;&mdash;the complementary words unpronounced and unwritten being,
+of course, &ldquo;to an anchor.&rdquo;&nbsp; Less technically, but not
+less correctly, the word &ldquo;anchored,&rdquo; with its characteristic
+appearance and resolute sound, ought to be good enough for the newspapers
+of the greatest maritime country in the world.&nbsp; &ldquo;The fleet
+anchored at Spithead&rdquo;: can anyone want a better sentence for brevity
+and seamanlike ring?&nbsp; But the &ldquo;cast-anchor&rdquo; trick,
+with its affectation of being a sea-phrase&mdash;for why not write just
+as well &ldquo;threw anchor,&rdquo; &ldquo;flung anchor,&rdquo; or &ldquo;shied
+anchor&rdquo;?&mdash;is intolerably odious to a sailor&rsquo;s ear.&nbsp;
+I remember a coasting pilot of my early acquaintance (he used to read
+the papers assiduously) who, to define the utmost degree of lubberliness
+in a landsman, used to say, &ldquo;He&rsquo;s one of them poor, miserable
+&lsquo;cast-anchor&rsquo; devils.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>V.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>From first to last the seaman&rsquo;s thoughts are very much concerned
+with his anchors.&nbsp; It is not so much that the anchor is a symbol
+of hope as that it is the heaviest object that he has to handle on board
+his ship at sea in the usual routine of his duties.&nbsp; The beginning
+and the end of every passage are marked distinctly by work about the
+ship&rsquo;s anchors.&nbsp; A vessel in the Channel has her anchors
+always ready, her cables shackled on, and the land almost always in
+sight.&nbsp; The anchor and the land are indissolubly connected in a
+sailor&rsquo;s thoughts.&nbsp; But directly she is clear of the narrow
+seas, heading out into the world with nothing solid to speak of between
+her and the South Pole, the anchors are got in and the cables disappear
+from the deck.&nbsp; But the anchors do not disappear.&nbsp; Technically
+speaking, they are &ldquo;secured in-board&rdquo;; and, on the forecastle
+head, lashed down to ring-bolts with ropes and chains, under the straining
+sheets of the head-sails, they look very idle and as if asleep.&nbsp;
+Thus bound, but carefully looked after, inert and powerful, those emblems
+of hope make company for the look-out man in the night watches; and
+so the days glide by, with a long rest for those characteristically
+shaped pieces of iron, reposing forward, visible from almost every part
+of the ship&rsquo;s deck, waiting for their work on the other side of
+the world somewhere, while the ship carries them on with a great rush
+and splutter of foam underneath, and the sprays of the open sea rust
+their heavy limbs.</p>
+<p>The first approach to the land, as yet invisible to the crew&rsquo;s
+eyes, is announced by the brisk order of the chief mate to the boatswain:
+&ldquo;We will get the anchors over this afternoon&rdquo; or &ldquo;first
+thing to-morrow morning,&rdquo; as the case may be.&nbsp; For the chief
+mate is the keeper of the ship&rsquo;s anchors and the guardian of her
+cable.&nbsp; There are good ships and bad ships, comfortable ships and
+ships where, from first day to last of the voyage, there is no rest
+for a chief mate&rsquo;s body and soul.&nbsp; And ships are what men
+make them: this is a pronouncement of sailor wisdom, and, no doubt,
+in the main it is true.</p>
+<p>However, there are ships where, as an old grizzled mate once told
+me, &ldquo;nothing ever seems to go right!&rdquo;&nbsp; And, looking
+from the poop where we both stood (I had paid him a neighbourly call
+in dock), he added: &ldquo;She&rsquo;s one of them.&rdquo;&nbsp; He
+glanced up at my face, which expressed a proper professional sympathy,
+and set me right in my natural surmise: &ldquo;Oh no; the old man&rsquo;s
+right enough.&nbsp; He never interferes.&nbsp; Anything that&rsquo;s
+done in a seamanlike way is good enough for him.&nbsp; And yet, somehow,
+nothing ever seems to go right in this ship.&nbsp; I tell you what:
+she is naturally unhandy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The &ldquo;old man,&rdquo; of course, was his captain, who just then
+came on deck in a silk hat and brown overcoat, and, with a civil nod
+to us, went ashore.&nbsp; He was certainly not more than thirty, and
+the elderly mate, with a murmur to me of &ldquo;That&rsquo;s my old
+man,&rdquo; proceeded to give instances of the natural unhandiness of
+the ship in a sort of deprecatory tone, as if to say, &ldquo;You mustn&rsquo;t
+think I bear a grudge against her for that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The instances do not matter.&nbsp; The point is that there are ships
+where things <i>do</i> go wrong; but whatever the ship&mdash;good or
+bad, lucky or unlucky&mdash;it is in the forepart of her that her chief
+mate feels most at home.&nbsp; It is emphatically <i>his</i> end of
+the ship, though, of course, he is the executive supervisor of the whole.&nbsp;
+There are <i>his</i> anchors, <i>his</i> headgear, his foremast, his
+station for manoeuvring when the captain is in charge.&nbsp; And there,
+too, live the men, the ship&rsquo;s hands, whom it is his duty to keep
+employed, fair weather or foul, for the ship&rsquo;s welfare.&nbsp;
+It is the chief mate, the only figure of the ship&rsquo;s afterguard,
+who comes bustling forward at the cry of &ldquo;All hands on deck!&rdquo;&nbsp;
+He is the satrap of that province in the autocratic realm of the ship,
+and more personally responsible for anything that may happen there.</p>
+<p>There, too, on the approach to the land, assisted by the boatswain
+and the carpenter, he &ldquo;gets the anchors over&rdquo; with the men
+of his own watch, whom he knows better than the others.&nbsp; There
+he sees the cable ranged, the windlass disconnected, the compressors
+opened; and there, after giving his own last order, &ldquo;Stand clear
+of the cable!&rdquo; he waits attentive, in a silent ship that forges
+slowly ahead towards her picked-out berth, for the sharp shout from
+aft, &ldquo;Let go!&rdquo;&nbsp; Instantly bending over, he sees the
+trusty iron fall with a heavy plunge under his eyes, which watch and
+note whether it has gone clear.</p>
+<p>For the anchor &ldquo;to go clear&rdquo; means to go clear of its
+own chain.&nbsp; Your anchor must drop from the bow of your ship with
+no turn of cable on any of its limbs, else you would be riding to a
+foul anchor.&nbsp; Unless the pull of the cable is fair on the ring,
+no anchor can be trusted even on the best of holding ground.&nbsp; In
+time of stress it is bound to drag, for implements and men must be treated
+fairly to give you the &ldquo;virtue&rdquo; which is in them.&nbsp;
+The anchor is an emblem of hope, but a foul anchor is worse than the
+most fallacious of false hopes that ever lured men or nations into a
+sense of security.&nbsp; And the sense of security, even the most warranted,
+is a bad councillor.&nbsp; It is the sense which, like that exaggerated
+feeling of well-being ominous of the coming on of madness, precedes
+the swift fall of disaster.&nbsp; A seaman labouring under an undue
+sense of security becomes at once worth hardly half his salt.&nbsp;
+Therefore, of all my chief officers, the one I trusted most was a man
+called B-.&nbsp; He had a red moustache, a lean face, also red, and
+an uneasy eye.&nbsp; He was worth all his salt.</p>
+<p>On examining now, after many years, the residue of the feeling which
+was the outcome of the contact of our personalities, I discover, without
+much surprise, a certain flavour of dislike.&nbsp; Upon the whole, I
+think he was one of the most uncomfortable shipmates possible for a
+young commander.&nbsp; If it is permissible to criticise the absent,
+I should say he had a little too much of the sense of insecurity which
+is so invaluable in a seaman.&nbsp; He had an extremely disturbing air
+of being everlastingly ready (even when seated at table at my right
+hand before a plate of salt beef) to grapple with some impending calamity.&nbsp;
+I must hasten to add that he had also the other qualification necessary
+to make a trustworthy seaman&mdash;that of an absolute confidence in
+himself.&nbsp; What was really wrong with him was that he had these
+qualities in an unrestful degree.&nbsp; His eternally watchful demeanour,
+his jerky, nervous talk, even his, as it were, determined silences,
+seemed to imply&mdash;and, I believe, they did imply&mdash;that to his
+mind the ship was never safe in my hands.&nbsp; Such was the man who
+looked after the anchors of a less than five-hundred-ton barque, my
+first command, now gone from the face of the earth, but sure of a tenderly
+remembered existence as long as I live.&nbsp; No anchor could have gone
+down foul under Mr. B-&rsquo;s piercing eye.&nbsp; It was good for one
+to be sure of that when, in an open roadstead, one heard in the cabin
+the wind pipe up; but still, there were moments when I detested Mr.
+B- exceedingly.&nbsp; From the way he used to glare sometimes, I fancy
+that more than once he paid me back with interest.&nbsp; It so happened
+that we both loved the little barque very much.&nbsp; And it was just
+the defect of Mr. B-&rsquo;s inestimable qualities that he would never
+persuade himself to believe that the ship was safe in my hands.&nbsp;
+To begin with, he was more than five years older than myself at a time
+of life when five years really do count, I being twenty-nine and he
+thirty-four; then, on our first leaving port (I don&rsquo;t see why
+I should make a secret of the fact that it was Bangkok), a bit of manoeuvring
+of mine amongst the islands of the Gulf of Siam had given him an unforgettable
+scare.&nbsp; Ever since then he had nursed in secret a bitter idea of
+my utter recklessness.&nbsp; But upon the whole, and unless the grip
+of a man&rsquo;s hand at parting means nothing whatever, I conclude
+that we did like each other at the end of two years and three months
+well enough.</p>
+<p>The bond between us was the ship; and therein a ship, though she
+has female attributes and is loved very unreasonably, is different from
+a woman.&nbsp; That I should have been tremendously smitten with my
+first command is nothing to wonder at, but I suppose I must admit that
+Mr. B-&rsquo;s sentiment was of a higher order.&nbsp; Each of us, of
+course, was extremely anxious about the good appearance of the beloved
+object; and, though I was the one to glean compliments ashore, B- had
+the more intimate pride of feeling, resembling that of a devoted handmaiden.&nbsp;
+And that sort of faithful and proud devotion went so far as to make
+him go about flicking the dust off the varnished teak-wood rail of the
+little craft with a silk pocket-handkerchief&mdash;a present from Mrs.
+B-, I believe.</p>
+<p>That was the effect of his love for the barque.&nbsp; The effect
+of his admirable lack of the sense of security once went so far as to
+make him remark to me: &ldquo;Well, sir, you <i>are</i> a lucky man!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was said in a tone full of significance, but not exactly offensive,
+and it was, I suppose, my innate tact that prevented my asking, &ldquo;What
+on earth do you mean by that?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Later on his meaning was illustrated more fully on a dark night in
+a tight corner during a dead on-shore gale.&nbsp; I had called him up
+on deck to help me consider our extremely unpleasant situation.&nbsp;
+There was not much time for deep thinking, and his summing-up was: &ldquo;It
+looks pretty bad, whichever we try; but, then, sir, you always do get
+out of a mess somehow.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>VI.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>It is difficult to disconnect the idea of ships&rsquo; anchors from
+the idea of the ship&rsquo;s chief mate&mdash;the man who sees them
+go down clear and come up sometimes foul; because not even the most
+unremitting care can always prevent a ship, swinging to winds and tide,
+from taking an awkward turn of the cable round stock or fluke.&nbsp;
+Then the business of &ldquo;getting the anchor&rdquo; and securing it
+afterwards is unduly prolonged, and made a weariness to the chief mate.&nbsp;
+He is the man who watches the growth of the cable&mdash;a sailor&rsquo;s
+phrase which has all the force, precision, and imagery of technical
+language that, created by simple men with keen eyes for the real aspect
+of the things they see in their trade, achieves the just expression
+seizing upon the essential, which is the ambition of the artist in words.&nbsp;
+Therefore the sailor will never say, &ldquo;cast anchor,&rdquo; and
+the ship-master aft will hail his chief mate on the forecastle in impressionistic
+phrase: &ldquo;How does the cable grow?&rdquo;&nbsp; Because &ldquo;grow&rdquo;
+is the right word for the long drift of a cable emerging aslant under
+the strain, taut as a bow-string above the water.&nbsp; And it is the
+voice of the keeper of the ship&rsquo;s anchors that will answer: &ldquo;Grows
+right ahead, sir,&rdquo; or &ldquo;Broad on the bow,&rdquo; or whatever
+concise and deferential shout will fit the case.</p>
+<p>There is no order more noisily given or taken up with lustier shouts
+on board a homeward-bound merchant ship than the command, &ldquo;Man
+the windlass!&rdquo;&nbsp; The rush of expectant men out of the forecastle,
+the snatching of hand-spikes, the tramp of feet, the clink of the pawls,
+make a stirring accompaniment to a plaintive up-anchor song with a roaring
+chorus; and this burst of noisy activity from a whole ship&rsquo;s crew
+seems like a voiceful awakening of the ship herself, till then, in the
+picturesque phrase of Dutch seamen, &ldquo;lying asleep upon her iron.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For a ship with her sails furled on her squared yards, and reflected
+from truck to water-line in the smooth gleaming sheet of a landlocked
+harbour, seems, indeed, to a seaman&rsquo;s eye the most perfect picture
+of slumbering repose.&nbsp; The getting of your anchor was a noisy operation
+on board a merchant ship of yesterday&mdash;an inspiring, joyous noise,
+as if, with the emblem of hope, the ship&rsquo;s company expected to
+drag up out of the depths, each man all his personal hopes into the
+reach of a securing hand&mdash;the hope of home, the hope of rest, of
+liberty, of dissipation, of hard pleasure, following the hard endurance
+of many days between sky and water.&nbsp; And this noisiness, this exultation
+at the moment of the ship&rsquo;s departure, make a tremendous contrast
+to the silent moments of her arrival in a foreign roadstead&mdash;the
+silent moments when, stripped of her sails, she forges ahead to her
+chosen berth, the loose canvas fluttering softly in the gear above the
+heads of the men standing still upon her decks, the master gazing intently
+forward from the break of the poop.&nbsp; Gradually she loses her way,
+hardly moving, with the three figures on her forecastle waiting attentively
+about the cat-head for the last order of, perhaps, full ninety days
+at sea: &ldquo;Let go!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This is the final word of a ship&rsquo;s ended journey, the closing
+word of her toil and of her achievement.&nbsp; In a life whose worth
+is told out in passages from port to port, the splash of the anchor&rsquo;s
+fall and the thunderous rumbling of the chain are like the closing of
+a distinct period, of which she seems conscious with a slight deep shudder
+of all her frame.&nbsp; By so much is she nearer to her appointed death,
+for neither years nor voyages can go on for ever.&nbsp; It is to her
+like the striking of a clock, and in the pause which follows she seems
+to take count of the passing time.</p>
+<p>This is the last important order; the others are mere routine directions.&nbsp;
+Once more the master is heard: &ldquo;Give her forty-five fathom to
+the water&rsquo;s edge,&rdquo; and then he, too, is done for a time.&nbsp;
+For days he leaves all the harbour work to his chief mate, the keeper
+of the ship&rsquo;s anchor and of the ship&rsquo;s routine.&nbsp; For
+days his voice will not be heard raised about the decks, with that curt,
+austere accent of the man in charge, till, again, when the hatches are
+on, and in a silent and expectant ship, he shall speak up from aft in
+commanding tones: &ldquo;Man the windlass!&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>VII.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The other year, looking through a newspaper of sound principles,
+but whose staff <i>will</i> persist in &ldquo;casting&rdquo; anchors
+and going to sea &ldquo;on&rdquo; a ship (ough!), I came across an article
+upon the season&rsquo;s yachting.&nbsp; And, behold! it was a good article.&nbsp;
+To a man who had but little to do with pleasure sailing (though all
+sailing is a pleasure), and certainly nothing whatever with racing in
+open waters, the writer&rsquo;s strictures upon the handicapping of
+yachts were just intelligible and no more.&nbsp; And I do not pretend
+to any interest in the enumeration of the great races of that year.&nbsp;
+As to the 52-foot linear raters, praised so much by the writer, I am
+warmed up by his approval of their performances; but, as far as any
+clear conception goes, the descriptive phrase, so precise to the comprehension
+of a yachtsman, evokes no definite image in my mind.</p>
+<p>The writer praises that class of pleasure vessels, and I am willing
+to endorse his words, as any man who loves every craft afloat would
+be ready to do.&nbsp; I am disposed to admire and respect the 52-foot
+linear raters on the word of a man who regrets in such a sympathetic
+and understanding spirit the threatened decay of yachting seamanship.</p>
+<p>Of course, yacht racing is an organized pastime, a function of social
+idleness ministering to the vanity of certain wealthy inhabitants of
+these isles nearly as much as to their inborn love of the sea.&nbsp;
+But the writer of the article in question goes on to point out, with
+insight and justice, that for a great number of people (20,000, I think
+he says) it is a means of livelihood&mdash;that it is, in his own words,
+an industry.&nbsp; Now, the moral side of an industry, productive or
+unproductive, the redeeming and ideal aspect of this bread-winning,
+is the attainment and preservation of the highest possible skill on
+the part of the craftsmen.&nbsp; Such skill, the skill of technique,
+is more than honesty; it is something wider, embracing honesty and grace
+and rule in an elevated and clear sentiment, not altogether utilitarian,
+which may be called the honour of labour.&nbsp; It is made up of accumulated
+tradition, kept alive by individual pride, rendered exact by professional
+opinion, and, like the higher arts, it spurred on and sustained by discriminating
+praise.</p>
+<p>This is why the attainment of proficiency, the pushing of your skill
+with attention to the most delicate shades of excellence, is a matter
+of vital concern.&nbsp; Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may
+be reached naturally in the struggle for bread.&nbsp; But there is something
+beyond&mdash;a higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love
+and pride beyond mere skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all
+work that finish which is almost art&mdash;which <i>is</i> art.</p>
+<p>As men of scrupulous honour set up a high standard of public conscience
+above the dead-level of an honest community, so men of that skill which
+passes into art by ceaseless striving raise the dead-level of correct
+practice in the crafts of land and sea.&nbsp; The conditions fostering
+the growth of that supreme, alive excellence, as well in work as in
+play, ought to be preserved with a most careful regard lest the industry
+or the game should perish of an insidious and inward decay.&nbsp; Therefore
+I have read with profound regret, in that article upon the yachting
+season of a certain year, that the seamanship on board racing yachts
+is not now what it used to be only a few, very few, years ago.</p>
+<p>For that was the gist of that article, written evidently by a man
+who not only knows but <i>understands</i>&mdash;a thing (let me remark
+in passing) much rarer than one would expect, because the sort of understanding
+I mean is inspired by love; and love, though in a sense it may be admitted
+to be stronger than death, is by no means so universal and so sure.&nbsp;
+In fact, love is rare&mdash;the love of men, of things, of ideas, the
+love of perfected skill.&nbsp; For love is the enemy of haste; it takes
+count of passing days, of men who pass away, of a fine art matured slowly
+in the course of years and doomed in a short time to pass away too,
+and be no more.&nbsp; Love and regret go hand in hand in this world
+of changes swifter than the shifting of the clouds reflected in the
+mirror of the sea.</p>
+<p>To penalize a yacht in proportion to the fineness of her performance
+is unfair to the craft and to her men.&nbsp; It is unfair to the perfection
+of her form and to the skill of her servants.&nbsp; For we men are,
+in fact, the servants of our creations.&nbsp; We remain in everlasting
+bondage to the productions of our brain and to the work of our hands.&nbsp;
+A man is born to serve his time on this earth, and there is something
+fine in the service being given on other grounds than that of utility.&nbsp;
+The bondage of art is very exacting.&nbsp; And, as the writer of the
+article which started this train of thought says with lovable warmth,
+the sailing of yachts is a fine art.</p>
+<p>His contention is that racing, without time allowances for anything
+else but tonnage&mdash;that is, for size&mdash;has fostered the fine
+art of sailing to the pitch of perfection.&nbsp; Every sort of demand
+is made upon the master of a sailing-yacht, and to be penalized in proportion
+to your success may be of advantage to the sport itself, but it has
+an obviously deteriorating effect upon the seamanship.&nbsp; The fine
+art is being lost.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>VIII.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The sailing and racing of yachts has developed a class of fore-and-aft
+sailors, men born and bred to the sea, fishing in winter and yachting
+in summer; men to whom the handling of that particular rig presents
+no mystery.&nbsp; It is their striving for victory that has elevated
+the sailing of pleasure craft to the dignity of a fine art in that special
+sense.&nbsp; As I have said, I know nothing of racing and but little
+of fore-and-aft rig; but the advantages of such a rig are obvious, especially
+for purposes of pleasure, whether in cruising or racing.&nbsp; It requires
+less effort in handling; the trimming of the sail-planes to the wind
+can be done with speed and accuracy; the unbroken spread of the sail-area
+is of infinite advantage; and the greatest possible amount of canvas
+can be displayed upon the least possible quantity of spars.&nbsp; Lightness
+and concentrated power are the great qualities of fore-and-aft rig.</p>
+<p>A fleet of fore-and-afters at anchor has its own slender graciousness.&nbsp;
+The setting of their sails resembles more than anything else the unfolding
+of a bird&rsquo;s wings; the facility of their evolutions is a pleasure
+to the eye.&nbsp; They are birds of the sea, whose swimming is like
+flying, and resembles more a natural function than the handling of man-invented
+appliances.&nbsp; The fore-and-aft rig in its simplicity and the beauty
+of its aspect under every angle of vision is, I believe, unapproachable.&nbsp;
+A schooner, yawl, or cutter in charge of a capable man seems to handle
+herself as if endowed with the power of reasoning and the gift of swift
+execution.&nbsp; One laughs with sheer pleasure at a smart piece of
+manoeuvring, as at a manifestation of a living creature&rsquo;s quick
+wit and graceful precision.</p>
+<p>Of those three varieties of fore-and-aft rig, the cutter&mdash;the
+racing rig <i>par excellence</i>&mdash;is of an appearance the most
+imposing, from the fact that practically all her canvas is in one piece.&nbsp;
+The enormous mainsail of a cutter, as she draws slowly past a point
+of land or the end of a jetty under your admiring gaze, invests her
+with an air of lofty and silent majesty.&nbsp; At anchor a schooner
+looks better; she has an aspect of greater efficiency and a better balance
+to the eye, with her two masts distributed over the hull with a swaggering
+rake aft.&nbsp; The yawl rig one comes in time to love.&nbsp; It is,
+I should think, the easiest of all to manage.</p>
+<p>For racing, a cutter; for a long pleasure voyage, a schooner; for
+cruising in home waters, the yawl; and the handling of them all is indeed
+a fine art.&nbsp; It requires not only the knowledge of the general
+principles of sailing, but a particular acquaintance with the character
+of the craft.&nbsp; All vessels are handled in the same way as far as
+theory goes, just as you may deal with all men on broad and rigid principles.&nbsp;
+But if you want that success in life which comes from the affection
+and confidence of your fellows, then with no two men, however similar
+they may appear in their nature, will you deal in the same way.&nbsp;
+There may be a rule of conduct; there is no rule of human fellowship.&nbsp;
+To deal with men is as fine an art as it is to deal with ships.&nbsp;
+Both men and ships live in an unstable element, are subject to subtle
+and powerful influences, and want to have their merits understood rather
+than their faults found out.</p>
+<p>It is not what your ship will <i>not</i> do that you want to know
+to get on terms of successful partnership with her; it is, rather, that
+you ought to have a precise knowledge of what she will do for you when
+called upon to put forth what is in her by a sympathetic touch.&nbsp;
+At first sight the difference does not seem great in either line of
+dealing with the difficult problem of limitations.&nbsp; But the difference
+is great.&nbsp; The difference lies in the spirit in which the problem
+is approached.&nbsp; After all, the art of handling ships is finer,
+perhaps, than the art of handling men.</p>
+<p>And, like all fine arts, it must be based upon a broad, solid sincerity,
+which, like a law of Nature, rules an infinity of different phenomena.&nbsp;
+Your endeavour must be single-minded.&nbsp; You would talk differently
+to a coal-heaver and to a professor.&nbsp; But is this duplicity?&nbsp;
+I deny it.&nbsp; The truth consists in the genuineness of the feeling,
+in the genuine recognition of the two men, so similar and so different,
+as your two partners in the hazard of life.&nbsp; Obviously, a humbug,
+thinking only of winning his little race, would stand a chance of profiting
+by his artifices.&nbsp; Men, professors or coal-heavers, are easily
+deceived; they even have an extraordinary knack of lending themselves
+to deception, a sort of curious and inexplicable propensity to allow
+themselves to be led by the nose with their eyes open.&nbsp; But a ship
+is a creature which we have brought into the world, as it were on purpose
+to keep us up to the mark.&nbsp; In her handling a ship will not put
+up with a mere pretender, as, for instance, the public will do with
+Mr. X, the popular statesman, Mr. Y, the popular scientist, or Mr. Z,
+the popular&mdash;what shall we say?&mdash;anything from a teacher of
+high morality to a bagman&mdash;who have won their little race.&nbsp;
+But I would like (though not accustomed to betting) to wager a large
+sum that not one of the few first-rate skippers of racing yachts has
+ever been a humbug.&nbsp; It would have been too difficult.&nbsp; The
+difficulty arises from the fact that one does not deal with ships in
+a mob, but with a ship as an individual.&nbsp; So we may have to do
+with men.&nbsp; But in each of us there lurks some particle of the mob
+spirit, of the mob temperament.&nbsp; No matter how earnestly we strive
+against each other, we remain brothers on the lowest side of our intellect
+and in the instability of our feelings.&nbsp; With ships it is not so.&nbsp;
+Much as they are to us, they are nothing to each other.&nbsp; Those
+sensitive creatures have no ears for our blandishments.&nbsp; It takes
+something more than words to cajole them to do our will, to cover us
+with glory.&nbsp; Luckily, too, or else there would have been more shoddy
+reputations for first-rate seamanship.&nbsp; Ships have no ears, I repeat,
+though, indeed, I think I have known ships who really seemed to have
+had eyes, or else I cannot understand on what ground a certain 1,000-ton
+barque of my acquaintance on one particular occasion refused to answer
+her helm, thereby saving a frightful smash to two ships and to a very
+good man&rsquo;s reputation.&nbsp; I knew her intimately for two years,
+and in no other instance either before or since have I known her to
+do that thing.&nbsp; The man she had served so well (guessing, perhaps,
+at the depths of his affection for her) I have known much longer, and
+in bare justice to him I must say that this confidence-shattering experience
+(though so fortunate) only augmented his trust in her.&nbsp; Yes, our
+ships have no ears, and thus they cannot be deceived.&nbsp; I would
+illustrate my idea of fidelity as between man and ship, between the
+master and his art, by a statement which, though it might appear shockingly
+sophisticated, is really very simple.&nbsp; I would say that a racing-yacht
+skipper who thought of nothing else but the glory of winning the race
+would never attain to any eminence of reputation.&nbsp; The genuine
+masters of their craft&mdash;I say this confidently from my experience
+of ships&mdash;have thought of nothing but of doing their very best
+by the vessel under their charge.&nbsp; To forget one&rsquo;s self,
+to surrender all personal feeling in the service of that fine art, is
+the only way for a seaman to the faithful discharge of his trust.</p>
+<p>Such is the service of a fine art and of ships that sail the sea.&nbsp;
+And therein I think I can lay my finger upon the difference between
+the seamen of yesterday, who are still with us, and the seamen of to-morrow,
+already entered upon the possession of their inheritance.&nbsp; History
+repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away
+is never reproduced.&nbsp; It is as utterly gone out of the world as
+the song of a destroyed wild bird.&nbsp; Nothing will awaken the same
+response of pleasurable emotion or conscientious endeavour.&nbsp; And
+the sailing of any vessel afloat is an art whose fine form seems already
+receding from us on its way to the overshadowed Valley of Oblivion.&nbsp;
+The taking of a modern steamship about the world (though one would not
+minimize its responsibilities) has not the same quality of intimacy
+with nature, which, after all, is an indispensable condition to the
+building up of an art.&nbsp; It is less personal and a more exact calling;
+less arduous, but also less gratifying in the lack of close communion
+between the artist and the medium of his art.&nbsp; It is, in short,
+less a matter of love.&nbsp; Its effects are measured exactly in time
+and space as no effect of an art can be.&nbsp; It is an occupation which
+a man not desperately subject to sea-sickness can be imagined to follow
+with content, without enthusiasm, with industry, without affection.&nbsp;
+Punctuality is its watchword.&nbsp; The incertitude which attends closely
+every artistic endeavour is absent from its regulated enterprise.&nbsp;
+It has no great moments of self-confidence, or moments not less great
+of doubt and heart-searching.&nbsp; It is an industry which, like other
+industries, has its romance, its honour and its rewards, its bitter
+anxieties and its hours of ease.&nbsp; But such sea-going has not the
+artistic quality of a single-handed struggle with something much greater
+than yourself; it is not the laborious absorbing practice of an art
+whose ultimate result remains on the knees of the gods.&nbsp; It is
+not an individual, temperamental achievement, but simply the skilled
+use of a captured force, merely another step forward upon the way of
+universal conquest.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>IX.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Every passage of a ship of yesterday, whose yards were braced round
+eagerly the very moment the pilot, with his pockets full of letters,
+had got over the side, was like a race&mdash;a race against time, against
+an ideal standard of achievement outstripping the expectations of common
+men.&nbsp; Like all true art, the general conduct of a ship and her
+handling in particular cases had a technique which could be discussed
+with delight and pleasure by men who found in their work, not bread
+alone, but an outlet for the peculiarities of their temperament.&nbsp;
+To get the best and truest effect from the infinitely varying moods
+of sky and sea, not pictorially, but in the spirit of their calling,
+was their vocation, one and all; and they recognised this with as much
+sincerity, and drew as much inspiration from this reality, as any man
+who ever put brush to canvas.&nbsp; The diversity of temperaments was
+immense amongst those masters of the fine art.</p>
+<p>Some of them were like Royal Academicians of a certain kind.&nbsp;
+They never startled you by a touch of originality, by a fresh audacity
+of inspiration.&nbsp; They were safe, very safe.&nbsp; They went about
+solemnly in the assurance of their consecrated and empty reputation.&nbsp;
+Names are odious, but I remember one of them who might have been their
+very president, the P.R.A. of the sea-craft.&nbsp; His weather-beaten
+and handsome face, his portly presence, his shirt-fronts and broad cuffs
+and gold links, his air of bluff distinction, impressed the humble beholders
+(stevedores, tally clerks, tide-waiters) as he walked ashore over the
+gangway of his ship lying at the Circular Quay in Sydney.&nbsp; His
+voice was deep, hearty, and authoritative&mdash;the voice of a very
+prince amongst sailors.&nbsp; He did everything with an air which put
+your attention on the alert and raised your expectations, but the result
+somehow was always on stereotyped lines, unsuggestive, empty of any
+lesson that one could lay to heart.&nbsp; He kept his ship in apple-pie
+order, which would have been seamanlike enough but for a finicking touch
+in its details.&nbsp; His officers affected a superiority over the rest
+of us, but the boredom of their souls appeared in their manner of dreary
+submission to the fads of their commander.&nbsp; It was only his apprenticed
+boys whose irrepressible spirits were not affected by the solemn and
+respectable mediocrity of that artist.&nbsp; There were four of these
+youngsters: one the son of a doctor, another of a colonel, the third
+of a jeweller; the name of the fourth was Twentyman, and this is all
+I remember of his parentage.&nbsp; But not one of them seemed to possess
+the smallest spark of gratitude in his composition.&nbsp; Though their
+commander was a kind man in his way, and had made a point of introducing
+them to the best people in the town in order that they should not fall
+into the bad company of boys belonging to other ships, I regret to say
+that they made faces at him behind his back, and imitated the dignified
+carriage of his head without any concealment whatever.</p>
+<p>This master of the fine art was a personage and nothing more; but,
+as I have said, there was an infinite diversity of temperament amongst
+the masters of the fine art I have known.&nbsp; Some were great impressionists.&nbsp;
+They impressed upon you the fear of God and Immensity&mdash;or, in other
+words, the fear of being drowned with every circumstance of terrific
+grandeur.&nbsp; One may think that the locality of your passing away
+by means of suffocation in water does not really matter very much.&nbsp;
+I am not so sure of that.&nbsp; I am, perhaps, unduly sensitive, but
+I confess that the idea of being suddenly spilt into an infuriated ocean
+in the midst of darkness and uproar affected me always with a sensation
+of shrinking distaste.&nbsp; To be drowned in a pond, though it might
+be called an ignominious fate by the ignorant, is yet a bright and peaceful
+ending in comparison with some other endings to one&rsquo;s earthly
+career which I have mentally quaked at in the intervals or even in the
+midst of violent exertions.</p>
+<p>But let that pass.&nbsp; Some of the masters whose influence left
+a trace upon my character to this very day, combined a fierceness of
+conception with a certitude of execution upon the basis of just appreciation
+of means and ends which is the highest quality of the man of action.&nbsp;
+And an artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality,
+invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.</p>
+<p>There were masters, too, I have known, whose very art consisted in
+avoiding every conceivable situation.&nbsp; It is needless to say that
+they never did great things in their craft; but they were not to be
+despised for that.&nbsp; They were modest; they understood their limitations.&nbsp;
+Their own masters had not handed the sacred fire into the keeping of
+their cold and skilful hands.&nbsp; One of those last I remember specially,
+now gone to his rest from that sea which his temperament must have made
+a scene of little more than a peaceful pursuit.&nbsp; Once only did
+he attempt a stroke of audacity, one early morning, with a steady breeze,
+entering a crowded roadstead.&nbsp; But he was not genuine in this display
+which might have been art.&nbsp; He was thinking of his own self; he
+hankered after the meretricious glory of a showy performance.</p>
+<p>As, rounding a dark, wooded point, bathed in fresh air and sunshine,
+we opened to view a crowd of shipping at anchor lying half a mile ahead
+of us perhaps, he called me aft from my station on the forecastle head,
+and, turning over and over his binoculars in his brown hands, said:
+&ldquo;Do you see that big, heavy ship with white lower masts?&nbsp;
+I am going to take up a berth between her and the shore.&nbsp; Now do
+you see to it that the men jump smartly at the first order.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I answered, &ldquo;Ay, ay, sir,&rdquo; and verily believed that this
+would be a fine performance.&nbsp; We dashed on through the fleet in
+magnificent style.&nbsp; There must have been many open mouths and following
+eyes on board those ships&mdash;Dutch, English, with a sprinkling of
+Americans and a German or two&mdash;who had all hoisted their flags
+at eight o&rsquo;clock as if in honour of our arrival.&nbsp; It would
+have been a fine performance if it had come off, but it did not.&nbsp;
+Through a touch of self-seeking that modest artist of solid merit became
+untrue to his temperament.&nbsp; It was not with him art for art&rsquo;s
+sake: it was art for his own sake; and a dismal failure was the penalty
+he paid for that greatest of sins.&nbsp; It might have been even heavier,
+but, as it happened, we did not run our ship ashore, nor did we knock
+a large hole in the big ship whose lower masts were painted white.&nbsp;
+But it is a wonder that we did not carry away the cables of both our
+anchors, for, as may be imagined, I did not stand upon the order to
+&ldquo;Let go!&rdquo; that came to me in a quavering, quite unknown
+voice from his trembling lips.&nbsp; I let them both go with a celerity
+which to this day astonishes my memory.&nbsp; No average merchantman&rsquo;s
+anchors have ever been let go with such miraculous smartness.&nbsp;
+And they both held.&nbsp; I could have kissed their rough, cold iron
+palms in gratitude if they had not been buried in slimy mud under ten
+fathoms of water.&nbsp; Ultimately they brought us up with the jibboom
+of a Dutch brig poking through our spanker&mdash;nothing worse.&nbsp;
+And a miss is as good as a mile.</p>
+<p>But not in art.&nbsp; Afterwards the master said to me in a shy mumble,
+&ldquo;She wouldn&rsquo;t luff up in time, somehow.&nbsp; What&rsquo;s
+the matter with her?&rdquo;&nbsp; And I made no answer.</p>
+<p>Yet the answer was clear.&nbsp; The ship had found out the momentary
+weakness of her man.&nbsp; Of all the living creatures upon land and
+sea, it is ships alone that cannot be taken in by barren pretences,
+that will not put up with bad art from their masters.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>X.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>From the main truck of the average tall ship the horizon describes
+a circle of many miles, in which you can see another ship right down
+to her water-line; and these very eyes which follow this writing have
+counted in their time over a hundred sail becalmed, as if within a magic
+ring, not very far from the Azores&mdash;ships more or less tall.&nbsp;
+There were hardly two of them heading exactly the same way, as if each
+had meditated breaking out of the enchanted circle at a different point
+of the compass.&nbsp; But the spell of the calm is a strong magic.&nbsp;
+The following day still saw them scattered within sight of each other
+and heading different ways; but when, at last, the breeze came with
+the darkling ripple that ran very blue on a pale sea, they all went
+in the same direction together.&nbsp; For this was the homeward-bound
+fleet from the far-off ends of the earth, and a Falmouth fruit-schooner,
+the smallest of them all, was heading the flight.&nbsp; One could have
+imagined her very fair, if not divinely tall, leaving a scent of lemons
+and oranges in her wake.</p>
+<p>The next day there were very few ships in sight from our mast-heads&mdash;seven
+at most, perhaps, with a few more distant specks, hull down, beyond
+the magic ring of the horizon.&nbsp; The spell of the fair wind has
+a subtle power to scatter a white-winged company of ships looking all
+the same way, each with its white fillet of tumbling foam under the
+bow.&nbsp; It is the calm that brings ships mysteriously together; it
+is your wind that is the great separator.</p>
+<p>The taller the ship, the further she can be seen; and her white tallness
+breathed upon by the wind first proclaims her size.&nbsp; The tall masts
+holding aloft the white canvas, spread out like a snare for catching
+the invisible power of the air, emerge gradually from the water, sail
+after sail, yard after yard, growing big, till, under the towering structure
+of her machinery, you perceive the insignificant, tiny speck of her
+hull.</p>
+<p>The tall masts are the pillars supporting the balanced planes that,
+motionless and silent, catch from the air the ship&rsquo;s motive-power,
+as it were a gift from Heaven vouchsafed to the audacity of man; and
+it is the ship&rsquo;s tall spars, stripped and shorn of their white
+glory, that incline themselves before the anger of the clouded heaven.</p>
+<p>When they yield to a squall in a gaunt and naked submission, their
+tallness is brought best home even to the mind of a seaman.&nbsp; The
+man who has looked upon his ship going over too far is made aware of
+the preposterous tallness of a ship&rsquo;s spars.&nbsp; It seems impossible
+but that those gilt trucks which one had to tilt one&rsquo;s head back
+to see, now falling into the lower plane of vision, must perforce hit
+the very edge of the horizon.&nbsp; Such an experience gives you a better
+impression of the loftiness of your spars than any amount of running
+aloft could do.&nbsp; And yet in my time the royal yards of an average
+profitable ship were a good way up above her decks.</p>
+<p>No doubt a fair amount of climbing up iron ladders can be achieved
+by an active man in a ship&rsquo;s engine-room, but I remember moments
+when even to my supple limbs and pride of nimbleness the sailing-ship&rsquo;s
+machinery seemed to reach up to the very stars.</p>
+<p>For machinery it is, doing its work in perfect silence and with a
+motionless grace, that seems to hide a capricious and not always governable
+power, taking nothing away from the material stores of the earth.&nbsp;
+Not for it the unerring precision of steel moved by white steam and
+living by red fire and fed with black coal.&nbsp; The other seems to
+draw its strength from the very soul of the world, its formidable ally,
+held to obedience by the frailest bonds, like a fierce ghost captured
+in a snare of something even finer than spun silk.&nbsp; For what is
+the array of the strongest ropes, the tallest spars and the stoutest
+canvas against the mighty breath of the infinite, but thistle stalks,
+cobwebs and gossamer?</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XI.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Indeed, it is less than nothing, and I have seen, when the great
+soul of the world turned over with a heavy sigh, a perfectly new, extra-stout
+foresail vanish like a bit of some airy stuff much lighter than gossamer.&nbsp;
+Then was the time for the tall spars to stand fast in the great uproar.&nbsp;
+The machinery must do its work even if the soul of the world has gone
+mad.</p>
+<p>The modern steamship advances upon a still and overshadowed sea with
+a pulsating tremor of her frame, an occasional clang in her depths,
+as if she had an iron heart in her iron body; with a thudding rhythm
+in her progress and the regular beat of her propeller, heard afar in
+the night with an august and plodding sound as of the march of an inevitable
+future.&nbsp; But in a gale, the silent machinery of a sailing-ship
+would catch not only the power, but the wild and exulting voice of the
+world&rsquo;s soul.&nbsp; Whether she ran with her tall spars swinging,
+or breasted it with her tall spars lying over, there was always that
+wild song, deep like a chant, for a bass to the shrill pipe of the wind
+played on the sea-tops, with a punctuating crash, now and then, of a
+breaking wave.&nbsp; At times the weird effects of that invisible orchestra
+would get upon a man&rsquo;s nerves till he wished himself deaf.</p>
+<p>And this recollection of a personal wish, experienced upon several
+oceans, where the soul of the world has plenty of room to turn over
+with a mighty sigh, brings me to the remark that in order to take a
+proper care of a ship&rsquo;s spars it is just as well for a seaman
+to have nothing the matter with his ears.&nbsp; Such is the intimacy
+with which a seaman had to live with his ship of yesterday that his
+senses were like her senses, that the stress upon his body made him
+judge of the strain upon the ship&rsquo;s masts.</p>
+<p>I had been some time at sea before I became aware of the fact that
+hearing plays a perceptible part in gauging the force of the wind.&nbsp;
+It was at night.&nbsp; The ship was one of those iron wool-clippers
+that the Clyde had floated out in swarms upon the world during the seventh
+decade of the last century.&nbsp; It was a fine period in ship-building,
+and also, I might say, a period of over-masting.&nbsp; The spars rigged
+up on the narrow hulls were indeed tall then, and the ship of which
+I think, with her coloured-glass skylight ends bearing the motto, &ldquo;Let
+Glasgow Flourish,&rdquo; was certainly one of the most heavily-sparred
+specimens.&nbsp; She was built for hard driving, and unquestionably
+she got all the driving she could stand.&nbsp; Our captain was a man
+famous for the quick passages he had been used to make in the old <i>Tweed</i>,
+a ship famous the world over for her speed.&nbsp; The <i>Tweed</i> had
+been a wooden vessel, and he brought the tradition of quick passages
+with him into the iron clipper.&nbsp; I was the junior in her, a third
+mate, keeping watch with the chief officer; and it was just during one
+of the night watches in a strong, freshening breeze that I overheard
+two men in a sheltered nook of the main deck exchanging these informing
+remarks.&nbsp; Said one:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Should think &rsquo;twas time some of them light sails were
+coming off her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And the other, an older man, uttered grumpily: &ldquo;No fear! not
+while the chief mate&rsquo;s on deck.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s that deaf he
+can&rsquo;t tell how much wind there is.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And, indeed, poor P-, quite young, and a smart seaman, was very hard
+of hearing.&nbsp; At the same time, he had the name of being the very
+devil of a fellow for carrying on sail on a ship.&nbsp; He was wonderfully
+clever at concealing his deafness, and, as to carrying on heavily, though
+he was a fearless man, I don&rsquo;t think that he ever meant to take
+undue risks.&nbsp; I can never forget his naive sort of astonishment
+when remonstrated with for what appeared a most dare-devil performance.&nbsp;
+The only person, of course, that could remonstrate with telling effect
+was our captain, himself a man of dare-devil tradition; and really,
+for me, who knew under whom I was serving, those were impressive scenes.&nbsp;
+Captain S- had a great name for sailor-like qualities&mdash;the sort
+of name that compelled my youthful admiration.&nbsp; To this day I preserve
+his memory, for, indeed, it was he in a sense who completed my training.&nbsp;
+It was often a stormy process, but let that pass.&nbsp; I am sure he
+meant well, and I am certain that never, not even at the time, could
+I bear him malice for his extraordinary gift of incisive criticism.&nbsp;
+And to hear <i>him</i> make a fuss about too much sail on the ship seemed
+one of those incredible experiences that take place only in one&rsquo;s
+dreams.</p>
+<p>It generally happened in this way: Night, clouds racing overhead,
+wind howling, royals set, and the ship rushing on in the dark, an immense
+white sheet of foam level with the lee rail.&nbsp; Mr. P-, in charge
+of the deck, hooked on to the windward mizzen rigging in a state of
+perfect serenity; myself, the third mate, also hooked on somewhere to
+windward of the slanting poop, in a state of the utmost preparedness
+to jump at the very first hint of some sort of order, but otherwise
+in a perfectly acquiescent state of mind.&nbsp; Suddenly, out of the
+companion would appear a tall, dark figure, bareheaded, with a short
+white beard of a perpendicular cut, very visible in the dark&mdash;Captain
+S-, disturbed in his reading down below by the frightful bounding and
+lurching of the ship.&nbsp; Leaning very much against the precipitous
+incline of the deck, he would take a turn or two, perfectly silent,
+hang on by the compass for a while, take another couple of turns, and
+suddenly burst out:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What are you trying to do with the ship?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And Mr. P-, who was not good at catching what was shouted in the
+wind, would say interrogatively:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then in the increasing gale of the sea there would be a little private
+ship&rsquo;s storm going on in which you could detect strong language,
+pronounced in a tone of passion and exculpatory protestations uttered
+with every possible inflection of injured innocence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By Heavens, Mr. P-!&nbsp; I used to carry on sail in my time,
+but&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And the rest would be lost to me in a stormy gust of wind.</p>
+<p>Then, in a lull, P-&rsquo;s protesting innocence would become audible:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She seems to stand it very well.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And then another burst of an indignant voice:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Any fool can carry sail on a ship&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And so on and so on, the ship meanwhile rushing on her way with a
+heavier list, a noisier splutter, a more threatening hiss of the white,
+almost blinding, sheet of foam to leeward.&nbsp; For the best of it
+was that Captain S- seemed constitutionally incapable of giving his
+officers a definite order to shorten sail; and so that extraordinarily
+vague row would go on till at last it dawned upon them both, in some
+particularly alarming gust, that it was time to do something.&nbsp;
+There is nothing like the fearful inclination of your tall spars overloaded
+with canvas to bring a deaf man and an angry one to their senses.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XII.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>So sail did get shortened more or less in time even in that ship,
+and her tall spars never went overboard while I served in her.&nbsp;
+However, all the time I was with them, Captain S- and Mr. P- did not
+get on very well together.&nbsp; If P- carried on &ldquo;like the very
+devil&rdquo; because he was too deaf to know how much wind there was,
+Captain S- (who, as I have said, seemed constitutionally incapable of
+ordering one of his officers to shorten sail) resented the necessity
+forced upon him by Mr. P-&rsquo;s desperate goings on.&nbsp; It was
+in Captain S-&rsquo;s tradition rather to reprove his officers for not
+carrying on quite enough&mdash;in his phrase &ldquo;for not taking every
+ounce of advantage of a fair wind.&rdquo;&nbsp; But there was also a
+psychological motive that made him extremely difficult to deal with
+on board that iron clipper.&nbsp; He had just come out of the marvellous
+<i>Tweed</i>, a ship, I have heard, heavy to look at but of phenomenal
+speed.&nbsp; In the middle sixties she had beaten by a day and a half
+the steam mail-boat from Hong Kong to Singapore.&nbsp; There was something
+peculiarly lucky, perhaps, in the placing of her masts&mdash;who knows?&nbsp;
+Officers of men-of-war used to come on board to take the exact dimensions
+of her sail-plan.&nbsp; Perhaps there had been a touch of genius or
+the finger of good fortune in the fashioning of her lines at bow and
+stern.&nbsp; It is impossible to say.&nbsp; She was built in the East
+Indies somewhere, of teak-wood throughout, except the deck.&nbsp; She
+had a great sheer, high bows, and a clumsy stern.&nbsp; The men who
+had seen her described her to me as &ldquo;nothing much to look at.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+But in the great Indian famine of the seventies that ship, already old
+then, made some wonderful dashes across the Gulf of Bengal with cargoes
+of rice from Rangoon to Madras.</p>
+<p>She took the secret of her speed with her, and, unsightly as she
+was, her image surely has its glorious place in the mirror of the old
+sea.</p>
+<p>The point, however, is that Captain S-, who used to say frequently,
+&ldquo;She never made a decent passage after I left her,&rdquo; seemed
+to think that the secret of her speed lay in her famous commander.&nbsp;
+No doubt the secret of many a ship&rsquo;s excellence does lie with
+the man on board, but it was hopeless for Captain S- to try to make
+his new iron clipper equal the feats which made the old <i>Tweed</i>
+a name of praise upon the lips of English-speaking seamen.&nbsp; There
+was something pathetic in it, as in the endeavour of an artist in his
+old age to equal the masterpieces of his youth&mdash;for the <i>Tweed&rsquo;s</i>
+famous passages were Captain S-&rsquo;s masterpieces.&nbsp; It was pathetic,
+and perhaps just the least bit dangerous.&nbsp; At any rate, I am glad
+that, what between Captain S-&rsquo;s yearning for old triumphs and
+Mr. P-&rsquo;s deafness, I have seen some memorable carrying on to make
+a passage.&nbsp; And I have carried on myself upon the tall spars of
+that Clyde shipbuilder&rsquo;s masterpiece as I have never carried on
+in a ship before or since.</p>
+<p>The second mate falling ill during the passage, I was promoted to
+officer of the watch, alone in charge of the deck.&nbsp; Thus the immense
+leverage of the ship&rsquo;s tall masts became a matter very near my
+own heart.&nbsp; I suppose it was something of a compliment for a young
+fellow to be trusted, apparently without any supervision, by such a
+commander as Captain S-; though, as far as I can remember, neither the
+tone, nor the manner, nor yet the drift of Captain S-&rsquo;s remarks
+addressed to myself did ever, by the most strained interpretation, imply
+a favourable opinion of my abilities.&nbsp; And he was, I must say,
+a most uncomfortable commander to get your orders from at night.&nbsp;
+If I had the watch from eight till midnight, he would leave the deck
+about nine with the words, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t take any sail off her.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Then, on the point of disappearing down the companion-way, he would
+add curtly: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t carry anything away.&rdquo;&nbsp; I am
+glad to say that I never did; one night, however, I was caught, not
+quite prepared, by a sudden shift of wind.</p>
+<p>There was, of course, a good deal of noise&mdash;running about, the,
+shouts of the sailors, the thrashing of the sails&mdash;enough, in fact,
+to wake the dead.&nbsp; But S- never came on deck.&nbsp; When I was
+relieved by the chief mate an hour afterwards, he sent for me.&nbsp;
+I went into his stateroom; he was lying on his couch wrapped up in a
+rug, with a pillow under his head.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What was the matter with you up there just now?&rdquo; he
+asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Wind flew round on the lee quarter, sir,&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t you see the shift coming?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir, I thought it wasn&rsquo;t very far off.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you have your courses hauled up at once,
+then?&rdquo; he asked in a tone that ought to have made my blood run
+cold.</p>
+<p>But this was my chance, and I did not let it slip.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; I said in an apologetic tone, &ldquo;she
+was going eleven knots very nicely, and I thought she would do for another
+half-hour or so.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He gazed at me darkly out of his head, lying very still on the white
+pillow, for a time.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, yes, another half-hour.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s the way ships
+get dismasted.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And that was all I got in the way of a wigging.&nbsp; I waited a
+little while and then went out, shutting carefully the door of the state-room
+after me.</p>
+<p>Well, I have loved, lived with, and left the sea without ever seeing
+a ship&rsquo;s tall fabric of sticks, cobwebs and gossamer go by the
+board.&nbsp; Sheer good luck, no doubt.&nbsp; But as to poor P-, I am
+sure that he would not have got off scot-free like this but for the
+god of gales, who called him away early from this earth, which is three
+parts ocean, and therefore a fit abode for sailors.&nbsp; A few years
+afterwards I met in an Indian port a man who had served in the ships
+of the same company.&nbsp; Names came up in our talk, names of our colleagues
+in the same employ, and, naturally enough, I asked after P-.&nbsp; Had
+he got a command yet?&nbsp; And the other man answered carelessly:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No; but he&rsquo;s provided for, anyhow.&nbsp; A heavy sea
+took him off the poop in the run between New Zealand and the Horn.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Thus P- passed away from amongst the tall spars of ships that he
+had tried to their utmost in many a spell of boisterous weather.&nbsp;
+He had shown me what carrying on meant, but he was not a man to learn
+discretion from.&nbsp; He could not help his deafness.&nbsp; One can
+only remember his cheery temper, his admiration for the jokes in <i>Punch</i>,
+his little oddities&mdash;like his strange passion for borrowing looking-glasses,
+for instance.&nbsp; Each of our cabins had its own looking-glass screwed
+to the bulkhead, and what he wanted with more of them we never could
+fathom.&nbsp; He asked for the loan in confidential tones.&nbsp; Why?&nbsp;
+Mystery.&nbsp; We made various surmises.&nbsp; No one will ever know
+now.&nbsp; At any rate, it was a harmless eccentricity, and may the
+god of gales, who took him away so abruptly between New Zealand and
+the Horn, let his soul rest in some Paradise of true seamen, where no
+amount of carrying on will ever dismast a ship!</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XIII.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>There has been a time when a ship&rsquo;s chief mate, pocket-book
+in hand and pencil behind his ear, kept one eye aloft upon his riggers
+and the other down the hatchway on the stevedores, and watched the disposition
+of his ship&rsquo;s cargo, knowing that even before she started he was
+already doing his best to secure for her an easy and quick passage.</p>
+<p>The hurry of the times, the loading and discharging organization
+of the docks, the use of hoisting machinery which works quickly and
+will not wait, the cry for prompt despatch, the very size of his ship,
+stand nowadays between the modern seaman and the thorough knowledge
+of his craft.</p>
+<p>There are profitable ships and unprofitable ships.&nbsp; The profitable
+ship will carry a large load through all the hazards of the weather,
+and, when at rest, will stand up in dock and shift from berth to berth
+without ballast.&nbsp; There is a point of perfection in a ship as a
+worker when she is spoken of as being able to <i>sail</i> without ballast.&nbsp;
+I have never met that sort of paragon myself, but I have seen these
+paragons advertised amongst ships for sale.&nbsp; Such excess of virtue
+and good-nature on the part of a ship always provoked my mistrust.&nbsp;
+It is open to any man to say that his ship will sail without ballast;
+and he will say it, too, with every mark of profound conviction, especially
+if he is not going to sail in her himself.&nbsp; The risk of advertising
+her as able to sail without ballast is not great, since the statement
+does not imply a warranty of her arriving anywhere.&nbsp; Moreover,
+it is strictly true that most ships will sail without ballast for some
+little time before they turn turtle upon the crew.</p>
+<p>A shipowner loves a profitable ship; the seaman is proud of her;
+a doubt of her good looks seldom exists in his mind; but if he can boast
+of her more useful qualities it is an added satisfaction for his self-love.</p>
+<p>The loading of ships was once a matter of skill, judgment, and knowledge.&nbsp;
+Thick books have been written about it.&nbsp; &ldquo;Stevens on Stowage&rdquo;
+is a portly volume with the renown and weight (in its own world) of
+Coke on Littleton.&nbsp; Stevens is an agreeable writer, and, as is
+the case with men of talent, his gifts adorn his sterling soundness.&nbsp;
+He gives you the official teaching on the whole subject, is precise
+as to rules, mentions illustrative events, quotes law cases where verdicts
+turned upon a point of stowage.&nbsp; He is never pedantic, and, for
+all his close adherence to broad principles, he is ready to admit that
+no two ships can be treated exactly alike.</p>
+<p>Stevedoring, which had been a skilled labour, is fast becoming a
+labour without the skill.&nbsp; The modern steamship with her many holds
+is not loaded within the sailor-like meaning of the word.&nbsp; She
+is filled up.&nbsp; Her cargo is not stowed in any sense; it is simply
+dumped into her through six hatchways, more or less, by twelve winches
+or so, with clatter and hurry and racket and heat, in a cloud of steam
+and a mess of coal-dust.&nbsp; As long as you keep her propeller under
+water and take care, say, not to fling down barrels of oil on top of
+bales of silk, or deposit an iron bridge-girder of five ton or so upon
+a bed of coffee-bags, you have done about all in the way of duty that
+the cry for prompt despatch will allow you to do.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XIV.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The sailing-ship, when I knew her in her days of perfection, was
+a sensible creature.&nbsp; When I say her days of perfection, I mean
+perfection of build, gear, seaworthy qualities and case of handling,
+not the perfection of speed.&nbsp; That quality has departed with the
+change of building material.&nbsp; No iron ship of yesterday ever attained
+the marvels of speed which the seamanship of men famous in their time
+had obtained from their wooden, copper-sheeted predecessors.&nbsp; Everything
+had been done to make the iron ship perfect, but no wit of man had managed
+to devise an efficient coating composition to keep her bottom clean
+with the smooth cleanness of yellow metal sheeting.&nbsp; After a spell
+of a few weeks at sea, an iron ship begins to lag as if she had grown
+tired too soon.&nbsp; It is only her bottom that is getting foul.&nbsp;
+A very little affects the speed of an iron ship which is not driven
+on by a merciless propeller.&nbsp; Often it is impossible to tell what
+inconsiderate trifle puts her off her stride.&nbsp; A certain mysteriousness
+hangs around the quality of speed as it was displayed by the old sailing-ships
+commanded by a competent seaman.&nbsp; In those days the speed depended
+upon the seaman; therefore, apart from the laws, rules, and regulations
+for the good preservation of his cargo, he was careful of his loading,&mdash;or
+what is technically called the trim of his ship.&nbsp; Some ships sailed
+fast on an even keel, others had to be trimmed quite one foot by the
+stern, and I have heard of a ship that gave her best speed on a wind
+when so loaded as to float a couple of inches by the head.</p>
+<p>I call to mind a winter landscape in Amsterdam&mdash;a flat foreground
+of waste land, with here and there stacks of timber, like the huts of
+a camp of some very miserable tribe; the long stretch of the Handelskade;
+cold, stone-faced quays, with the snow-sprinkled ground and the hard,
+frozen water of the canal, in which were set ships one behind another
+with their frosty mooring-ropes hanging slack and their decks idle and
+deserted, because, as the master stevedore (a gentle, pale person, with
+a few golden hairs on his chin and a reddened nose) informed me, their
+cargoes were frozen-in up-country on barges and schuyts.&nbsp; In the
+distance, beyond the waste ground, and running parallel with the line
+of ships, a line of brown, warm-toned houses seemed bowed under snow-laden
+roofs.&nbsp; From afar at the end of Tsar Peter Straat, issued in the
+frosty air the tinkle of bells of the horse tramcars, appearing and
+disappearing in the opening between the buildings, like little toy carriages
+harnessed with toy horses and played with by people that appeared no
+bigger than children.</p>
+<p>I was, as the French say, biting my fists with impatience for that
+cargo frozen up-country; with rage at that canal set fast, at the wintry
+and deserted aspect of all those ships that seemed to decay in grim
+depression for want of the open water.&nbsp; I was chief mate, and very
+much alone.&nbsp; Directly I had joined I received from my owners instructions
+to send all the ship&rsquo;s apprentices away on leave together, because
+in such weather there was nothing for anybody to do, unless to keep
+up a fire in the cabin stove.&nbsp; That was attended to by a snuffy
+and mop-headed, inconceivably dirty, and weirdly toothless Dutch ship-keeper,
+who could hardly speak three words of English, but who must have had
+some considerable knowledge of the language, since he managed invariably
+to interpret in the contrary sense everything that was said to him.</p>
+<p>Notwithstanding the little iron stove, the ink froze on the swing-table
+in the cabin, and I found it more convenient to go ashore stumbling
+over the arctic waste-land and shivering in glazed tramcars in order
+to write my evening letter to my owners in a gorgeous caf&eacute; in
+the centre of the town.&nbsp; It was an immense place, lofty and gilt,
+upholstered in red plush, full of electric lights and so thoroughly
+warmed that even the marble tables felt tepid to the touch.&nbsp; The
+waiter who brought me my cup of coffee bore, by comparison with my utter
+isolation, the dear aspect of an intimate friend.&nbsp; There, alone
+in a noisy crowd, I would write slowly a letter addressed to Glasgow,
+of which the gist would be: There is no cargo, and no prospect of any
+coming till late spring apparently.&nbsp; And all the time I sat there
+the necessity of getting back to the ship bore heavily on my already
+half-congealed spirits&mdash;the shivering in glazed tramcars, the stumbling
+over the snow-sprinkled waste ground, the vision of ships frozen in
+a row, appearing vaguely like corpses of black vessels in a white world,
+so silent, so lifeless, so soulless they seemed to be.</p>
+<p>With precaution I would go up the side of my own particular corpse,
+and would feel her as cold as ice itself and as slippery under my feet.&nbsp;
+My cold berth would swallow up like a chilly burial niche my bodily
+shivers and my mental excitement.&nbsp; It was a cruel winter.&nbsp;
+The very air seemed as hard and trenchant as steel; but it would have
+taken much more than this to extinguish my sacred fire for the exercise
+of my craft.&nbsp; No young man of twenty-four appointed chief mate
+for the first time in his life would have let that Dutch tenacious winter
+penetrate into his heart.&nbsp; I think that in those days I never forgot
+the fact of my elevation for five consecutive minutes.&nbsp; I fancy
+it kept me warm, even in my slumbers, better than the high pile of blankets,
+which positively crackled with frost as I threw them off in the morning.&nbsp;
+And I would get up early for no reason whatever except that I was in
+sole charge.&nbsp; The new captain had not been appointed yet.</p>
+<p>Almost each morning a letter from my owners would arrive, directing
+me to go to the charterers and clamour for the ship&rsquo;s cargo; to
+threaten them with the heaviest penalties of demurrage; to demand that
+this assortment of varied merchandise, set fast in a landscape of ice
+and windmills somewhere up-country, should be put on rail instantly,
+and fed up to the ship in regular quantities every day.&nbsp; After
+drinking some hot coffee, like an Arctic explorer setting off on a sledge
+journey towards the North Pole, I would go ashore and roll shivering
+in a tramcar into the very heart of the town, past clean-faced houses,
+past thousands of brass knockers upon a thousand painted doors glimmering
+behind rows of trees of the pavement species, leafless, gaunt, seemingly
+dead for ever.</p>
+<p>That part of the expedition was easy enough, though the horses were
+painfully glistening with icicles, and the aspect of the tram-conductors&rsquo;
+faces presented a repulsive blending of crimson and purple.&nbsp; But
+as to frightening or bullying, or even wheedling some sort of answer
+out of Mr. Hudig, that was another matter altogether.&nbsp; He was a
+big, swarthy Netherlander, with black moustaches and a bold glance.&nbsp;
+He always began by shoving me into a chair before I had time to open
+my mouth, gave me cordially a large cigar, and in excellent English
+would start to talk everlastingly about the phenomenal severity of the
+weather.&nbsp; It was impossible to threaten a man who, though he possessed
+the language perfectly, seemed incapable of understanding any phrase
+pronounced in a tone of remonstrance or discontent.&nbsp; As to quarrelling
+with him, it would have been stupid.&nbsp; The weather was too bitter
+for that.&nbsp; His office was so warm, his fire so bright, his sides
+shook so heartily with laughter, that I experienced always a great difficulty
+in making up my mind to reach for my hat.</p>
+<p>At last the cargo did come.&nbsp; At first it came dribbling in by
+rail in trucks, till the thaw set in; and then fast, in a multitude
+of barges, with a great rush of unbound waters.&nbsp; The gentle master
+stevedore had his hands very full at last; and the chief mate became
+worried in his mind as to the proper distribution of the weight of his
+first cargo in a ship he did not personally know before.</p>
+<p>Ships do want humouring.&nbsp; They want humouring in handling; and
+if you mean to handle them well, they must have been humoured in the
+distribution of the weight which you ask them to carry through the good
+and evil fortune of a passage.&nbsp; Your ship is a tender creature,
+whose idiosyncrasies must be attended to if you mean her to come with
+credit to herself and you through the rough-and-tumble of her life.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XV.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>So seemed to think the new captain, who arrived the day after we
+had finished loading, on the very eve of the day of sailing.&nbsp; I
+first beheld him on the quay, a complete stranger to me, obviously not
+a Hollander, in a black bowler and a short drab overcoat, ridiculously
+out of tone with the winter aspect of the waste-lands, bordered by the
+brown fronts of houses with their roofs dripping with melting snow.</p>
+<p>This stranger was walking up and down absorbed in the marked contemplation
+of the ship&rsquo;s fore and aft trim; but when I saw him squat on his
+heels in the slush at the very edge of the quay to peer at the draught
+of water under her counter, I said to myself, &ldquo;This is the captain.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+And presently I descried his luggage coming along&mdash;a real sailor&rsquo;s
+chest, carried by means of rope-beckets between two men, with a couple
+of leather portmanteaus and a roll of charts sheeted in canvas piled
+upon the lid.&nbsp; The sudden, spontaneous agility with which he bounded
+aboard right off the rail afforded me the first glimpse of his real
+character.&nbsp; Without further preliminaries than a friendly nod,
+he addressed me: &ldquo;You have got her pretty well in her fore and
+aft trim.&nbsp; Now, what about your weights?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I told him I had managed to keep the weight sufficiently well up,
+as I thought, one-third of the whole being in the upper part &ldquo;above
+the beams,&rdquo; as the technical expression has it.&nbsp; He whistled
+&ldquo;Phew!&rdquo; scrutinizing me from head to foot.&nbsp; A sort
+of smiling vexation was visible on his ruddy face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, we shall have a lively time of it this passage, I bet,&rdquo;
+he said.</p>
+<p>He knew.&nbsp; It turned out he had been chief mate of her for the
+two preceding voyages; and I was already familiar with his handwriting
+in the old log-books I had been perusing in my cabin with a natural
+curiosity, looking up the records of my new ship&rsquo;s luck, of her
+behaviour, of the good times she had had, and of the troubles she had
+escaped.</p>
+<p>He was right in his prophecy.&nbsp; On our passage from Amsterdam
+to Samarang with a general cargo, of which, alas! only one-third in
+weight was stowed &ldquo;above the beams,&rdquo; we had a lively time
+of it.&nbsp; It was lively, but not joyful.&nbsp; There was not even
+a single moment of comfort in it, because no seaman can feel comfortable
+in body or mind when he has made his ship uneasy.</p>
+<p>To travel along with a cranky ship for ninety days or so is no doubt
+a nerve-trying experience; but in this case what was wrong with our
+craft was this: that by my system of loading she had been made much
+too stable.</p>
+<p>Neither before nor since have I felt a ship roll so abruptly, so
+violently, so heavily.&nbsp; Once she began, you felt that she would
+never stop, and this hopeless sensation, characterizing the motion of
+ships whose centre of gravity is brought down too low in loading, made
+everyone on board weary of keeping on his feet.&nbsp; I remember once
+over-hearing one of the hands say: &ldquo;By Heavens, Jack!&nbsp; I
+feel as if I didn&rsquo;t mind how soon I let myself go, and let the
+blamed hooker knock my brains out if she likes.&rdquo;&nbsp; The captain
+used to remark frequently: &ldquo;Ah, yes; I dare say one-third weight
+above beams would have been quite enough for most ships.&nbsp; But then,
+you see, there&rsquo;s no two of them alike on the seas, and she&rsquo;s
+an uncommonly ticklish jade to load.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Down south, running before the gales of high latitudes, she made
+our life a burden to us.&nbsp; There were days when nothing would keep
+even on the swing-tables, when there was no position where you could
+fix yourself so as not to feel a constant strain upon all the muscles
+of your body.&nbsp; She rolled and rolled with an awful dislodging jerk
+and that dizzily fast sweep of her masts on every swing.&nbsp; It was
+a wonder that the men sent aloft were not flung off the yards, the yards
+not flung off the masts, the masts not flung overboard.&nbsp; The captain
+in his armchair, holding on grimly at the head of the table, with the
+soup-tureen rolling on one side of the cabin and the steward sprawling
+on the other, would observe, looking at me: &ldquo;That&rsquo;s your
+one-third above the beams.&nbsp; The only thing that surprises me is
+that the sticks have stuck to her all this time.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ultimately some of the minor spars did go&mdash;nothing important:
+spanker-booms and such-like&mdash;because at times the frightful impetus
+of her rolling would part a fourfold tackle of new three-inch Manilla
+line as if it were weaker than pack-thread.</p>
+<p>It was only poetic justice that the chief mate who had made a mistake&mdash;perhaps
+a half-excusable one&mdash;about the distribution of his ship&rsquo;s
+cargo should pay the penalty.&nbsp; A piece of one of the minor spars
+that did carry away flew against the chief mate&rsquo;s back, and sent
+him sliding on his face for quite a considerable distance along the
+main deck.&nbsp; Thereupon followed various and unpleasant consequences
+of a physical order&mdash;&ldquo;queer symptoms,&rdquo; as the captain,
+who treated them, used to say; inexplicable periods of powerlessness,
+sudden accesses of mysterious pain; and the patient agreed fully with
+the regretful mutters of his very attentive captain wishing that it
+had been a straightforward broken leg.&nbsp; Even the Dutch doctor who
+took the case up in Samarang offered no scientific explanation.&nbsp;
+All he said was: &ldquo;Ah, friend, you are young yet; it may be very
+serious for your whole life.&nbsp; You must leave your ship; you must
+quite silent be for three months&mdash;quite silent.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Of course, he meant the chief mate to keep quiet&mdash;to lay up,
+as a matter of fact.&nbsp; His manner was impressive enough, if his
+English was childishly imperfect when compared with the fluency of Mr.
+Hudig, the figure at the other end of that passage, and memorable enough
+in its way.&nbsp; In a great airy ward of a Far Eastern hospital, lying
+on my back, I had plenty of leisure to remember the dreadful cold and
+snow of Amsterdam, while looking at the fronds of the palm-trees tossing
+and rustling at the height of the window.&nbsp; I could remember the
+elated feeling and the soul-gripping cold of those tramway journeys
+taken into town to put what in diplomatic language is called pressure
+upon the good Hudig, with his warm fire, his armchair, his big cigar,
+and the never-failing suggestion in his good-natured voice: &ldquo;I
+suppose in the end it is you they will appoint captain before the ship
+sails?&rdquo;&nbsp; It may have been his extreme good-nature, the serious,
+unsmiling good-nature of a fat, swarthy man with coal-black moustache
+and steady eyes; but he might have been a bit of a diplomatist, too.&nbsp;
+His enticing suggestions I used to repel modestly by the assurance that
+it was extremely unlikely, as I had not enough experience.&nbsp; &ldquo;You
+know very well how to go about business matters,&rdquo; he used to say,
+with a sort of affected moodiness clouding his serene round face.&nbsp;
+I wonder whether he ever laughed to himself after I had left the office.&nbsp;
+I dare say he never did, because I understand that diplomatists, in
+and out of the career, take themselves and their tricks with an exemplary
+seriousness.</p>
+<p>But he had nearly persuaded me that I was fit in every way to be
+trusted with a command.&nbsp; There came three months of mental worry,
+hard rolling, remorse, and physical pain to drive home the lesson of
+insufficient experience.</p>
+<p>Yes, your ship wants to be humoured with knowledge.&nbsp; You must
+treat with an understanding consideration the mysteries of her feminine
+nature, and then she will stand by you faithfully in the unceasing struggle
+with forces wherein defeat is no shame.&nbsp; It is a serious relation,
+that in which a man stands to his ship.&nbsp; She has her rights as
+though she could breathe and speak; and, indeed, there are ships that,
+for the right man, will do anything but speak, as the saying goes.</p>
+<p>A ship is not a slave.&nbsp; You must make her easy in a seaway,
+you must never forget that you owe her the fullest share of your thought,
+of your skill, of your self-love.&nbsp; If you remember that obligation,
+naturally and without effort, as if it were an instinctive feeling of
+your inner life, she will sail, stay, run for you as long as she is
+able, or, like a sea-bird going to rest upon the angry waves, she will
+lay out the heaviest gale that ever made you doubt living long enough
+to see another sunrise.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XVI.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Often I turn with melancholy eagerness to the space reserved in the
+newspapers under the general heading of &ldquo;Shipping Intelligence.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+I meet there the names of ships I have known.&nbsp; Every year some
+of these names disappear&mdash;the names of old friends.&nbsp; &ldquo;Tempi
+passati!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The different divisions of that kind of news are set down in their
+order, which varies but slightly in its arrangement of concise headlines.&nbsp;
+And first comes &ldquo;Speakings&rdquo;&mdash;reports of ships met and
+signalled at sea, name, port, where from, where bound for, so many days
+out, ending frequently with the words &ldquo;All well.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Then come &ldquo;Wrecks and Casualties&rdquo;&mdash;a longish array
+of paragraphs, unless the weather has been fair and clear, and friendly
+to ships all over the world.</p>
+<p>On some days there appears the heading &ldquo;Overdue&rdquo;&mdash;an
+ominous threat of loss and sorrow trembling yet in the balance of fate.&nbsp;
+There is something sinister to a seaman in the very grouping of the
+letters which form this word, clear in its meaning, and seldom threatening
+in vain.</p>
+<p>Only a very few days more&mdash;appallingly few to the hearts which
+had set themselves bravely to hope against hope&mdash;three weeks, a
+month later, perhaps, the name of ships under the blight of the &ldquo;Overdue&rdquo;
+heading shall appear again in the column of &ldquo;Shipping Intelligence,&rdquo;
+but under the final declaration of &ldquo;Missing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The ship, or barque, or brig So-and-so, bound from such a
+port, with such and such cargo, for such another port, having left at
+such and such a date, last spoken at sea on such a day, and never having
+been heard of since, was posted to-day as missing.&rdquo;&nbsp; Such
+in its strictly official eloquence is the form of funeral orations on
+ships that, perhaps wearied with a long struggle, or in some unguarded
+moment that may come to the readiest of us, had let themselves be overwhelmed
+by a sudden blow from the enemy.</p>
+<p>Who can say?&nbsp; Perhaps the men she carried had asked her to do
+too much, had stretched beyond breaking-point the enduring faithfulness
+which seems wrought and hammered into that assemblage of iron ribs and
+plating, of wood and steel and canvas and wire, which goes to the making
+of a ship&mdash;a complete creation endowed with character, individuality,
+qualities and defects, by men whose hands launch her upon the water,
+and that other men shall learn to know with an intimacy surpassing the
+intimacy of man with man, to love with a love nearly as great as that
+of man for woman, and often as blind in its infatuated disregard of
+defects.</p>
+<p>There are ships which bear a bad name, but I have yet to meet one
+whose crew for the time being failed to stand up angrily for her against
+every criticism.&nbsp; One ship which I call to mind now had the reputation
+of killing somebody every voyage she made.&nbsp; This was no calumny,
+and yet I remember well, somewhere far back in the late seventies, that
+the crew of that ship were, if anything, rather proud of her evil fame,
+as if they had been an utterly corrupt lot of desperadoes glorying in
+their association with an atrocious creature.&nbsp; We, belonging to
+other vessels moored all about the Circular Quay in Sydney, used to
+shake our heads at her with a great sense of the unblemished virtue
+of our own well-loved ships.</p>
+<p>I shall not pronounce her name.&nbsp; She is &ldquo;missing&rdquo;
+now, after a sinister but, from the point of view of her owners, a useful
+career extending over many years, and, I should say, across every ocean
+of our globe.&nbsp; Having killed a man for every voyage, and perhaps
+rendered more misanthropic by the infirmities that come with years upon
+a ship, she had made up her mind to kill all hands at once before leaving
+the scene of her exploits.&nbsp; A fitting end, this, to a life of usefulness
+and crime&mdash;in a last outburst of an evil passion supremely satisfied
+on some wild night, perhaps, to the applauding clamour of wind and wave.</p>
+<p>How did she do it?&nbsp; In the word &ldquo;missing&rdquo; there
+is a horrible depth of doubt and speculation.&nbsp; Did she go quickly
+from under the men&rsquo;s feet, or did she resist to the end, letting
+the sea batter her to pieces, start her butts, wrench her frame, load
+her with an increasing weight of salt water, and, dismasted, unmanageable,
+rolling heavily, her boats gone, her decks swept, had she wearied her
+men half to death with the unceasing labour at the pumps before she
+sank with them like a stone?</p>
+<p>However, such a case must be rare.&nbsp; I imagine a raft of some
+sort could always be contrived; and, even if it saved no one, it would
+float on and be picked up, perhaps conveying some hint of the vanished
+name.&nbsp; Then that ship would not be, properly speaking, missing.&nbsp;
+She would be &ldquo;lost with all hands,&rdquo; and in that distinction
+there is a subtle difference&mdash;less horror and a less appalling
+darkness.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XVII.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The unholy fascination of dread dwells in the thought of the last
+moments of a ship reported as &ldquo;missing&rdquo; in the columns of
+the <i>Shipping Gazette</i>.&nbsp; Nothing of her ever comes to light&mdash;no
+grating, no lifebuoy, no piece of boat or branded oar&mdash;to give
+a hint of the place and date of her sudden end.&nbsp; The <i>Shipping
+Gazette</i> does not even call her &ldquo;lost with all hands.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+She remains simply &ldquo;missing&rdquo;; she has disappeared enigmatically
+into a mystery of fate as big as the world, where your imagination of
+a brother-sailor, of a fellow-servant and lover of ships, may range
+unchecked.</p>
+<p>And yet sometimes one gets a hint of what the last scene may be like
+in the life of a ship and her crew, which resembles a drama in its struggle
+against a great force bearing it up, formless, ungraspable, chaotic
+and mysterious, as fate.</p>
+<p>It was on a gray afternoon in the lull of a three days&rsquo; gale
+that had left the Southern Ocean tumbling heavily upon our ship, under
+a sky hung with rags of clouds that seemed to have been cut and hacked
+by the keen edge of a sou&rsquo;-west gale.</p>
+<p>Our craft, a Clyde-built barque of 1,000 tons, rolled so heavily
+that something aloft had carried away.&nbsp; No matter what the damage
+was, but it was serious enough to induce me to go aloft myself with
+a couple of hands and the carpenter to see the temporary repairs properly
+done.</p>
+<p>Sometimes we had to drop everything and cling with both hands to
+the swaying spars, holding our breath in fear of a terribly heavy roll.&nbsp;
+And, wallowing as if she meant to turn over with us, the barque, her
+decks full of water, her gear flying in bights, ran at some ten knots
+an hour.&nbsp; We had been driven far south&mdash;much farther that
+way than we had meant to go; and suddenly, up there in the slings of
+the foreyard, in the midst of our work, I felt my shoulder gripped with
+such force in the carpenter&rsquo;s powerful paw that I positively yelled
+with unexpected pain.&nbsp; The man&rsquo;s eyes stared close in my
+face, and he shouted, &ldquo;Look, sir! look!&nbsp; What&rsquo;s this?&rdquo;
+pointing ahead with his other hand.</p>
+<p>At first I saw nothing.&nbsp; The sea was one empty wilderness of
+black and white hills.&nbsp; Suddenly, half-concealed in the tumult
+of the foaming rollers I made out awash, something enormous, rising
+and falling&mdash;something spread out like a burst of foam, but with
+a more bluish, more solid look.</p>
+<p>It was a piece of an ice-floe melted down to a fragment, but still
+big enough to sink a ship, and floating lower than any raft, right in
+our way, as if ambushed among the waves with murderous intent.&nbsp;
+There was no time to get down on deck.&nbsp; I shouted from aloft till
+my head was ready to split.&nbsp; I was heard aft, and we managed to
+clear the sunken floe which had come all the way from the Southern ice-cap
+to have a try at our unsuspecting lives.&nbsp; Had it been an hour later,
+nothing could have saved the ship, for no eye could have made out in
+the dusk that pale piece of ice swept over by the white-crested waves.</p>
+<p>And as we stood near the taffrail side by side, my captain and I,
+looking at it, hardly discernible already, but still quite close-to
+on our quarter, he remarked in a meditative tone:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But for the turn of that wheel just in time, there would have
+been another case of a &lsquo;missing&rsquo; ship.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Nobody ever comes back from a &ldquo;missing&rdquo; ship to tell
+how hard was the death of the craft, and how sudden and overwhelming
+the last anguish of her men.&nbsp; Nobody can say with what thoughts,
+with what regrets, with what words on their lips they died.&nbsp; But
+there is something fine in the sudden passing away of these hearts from
+the extremity of struggle and stress and tremendous uproar&mdash;from
+the vast, unrestful rage of the surface to the profound peace of the
+depths, sleeping untroubled since the beginning of ages.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XVIII.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>But if the word &ldquo;missing&rdquo; brings all hope to an end and
+settles the loss of the underwriters, the word &ldquo;overdue&rdquo;
+confirms the fears already born in many homes ashore, and opens the
+door of speculation in the market of risks.</p>
+<p>Maritime risks, be it understood.&nbsp; There is a class of optimists
+ready to reinsure an &ldquo;overdue&rdquo; ship at a heavy premium.&nbsp;
+But nothing can insure the hearts on shore against the bitterness of
+waiting for the worst.</p>
+<p>For if a &ldquo;missing&rdquo; ship has never turned up within the
+memory of seamen of my generation, the name of an &ldquo;overdue&rdquo;
+ship, trembling as it were on the edge of the fatal heading, has been
+known to appear as &ldquo;arrived.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It must blaze up, indeed, with a great brilliance the dull printer&rsquo;s
+ink expended on the assemblage of the few letters that form the ship&rsquo;s
+name to the anxious eyes scanning the page in fear and trembling.&nbsp;
+It is like the message of reprieve from the sentence of sorrow suspended
+over many a home, even if some of the men in her have been the most
+homeless mortals that you may find among the wanderers of the sea.</p>
+<p>The reinsurer, the optimist of ill-luck and disaster, slaps his pocket
+with satisfaction.&nbsp; The underwriter, who had been trying to minimize
+the amount of impending loss, regrets his premature pessimism.&nbsp;
+The ship has been stauncher, the skies more merciful, the seas less
+angry, or perhaps the men on board of a finer temper than he has been
+willing to take for granted.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The ship So-and-so, bound to such a port, and posted as &lsquo;overdue,&rsquo;
+has been reported yesterday as having arrived safely at her destination.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Thus run the official words of the reprieve addressed to the hearts
+ashore lying under a heavy sentence.&nbsp; And they come swiftly from
+the other side of the earth, over wires and cables, for your electric
+telegraph is a great alleviator of anxiety.&nbsp; Details, of course,
+shall follow.&nbsp; And they may unfold a tale of narrow escape, of
+steady ill-luck, of high winds and heavy weather, of ice, of interminable
+calms or endless head-gales; a tale of difficulties overcome, of adversity
+defied by a small knot of men upon the great loneliness of the sea;
+a tale of resource, of courage&mdash;of helplessness, perhaps.</p>
+<p>Of all ships disabled at sea, a steamer who has lost her propeller
+is the most helpless.&nbsp; And if she drifts into an unpopulated part
+of the ocean she may soon become overdue.&nbsp; The menace of the &ldquo;overdue&rdquo;
+and the finality of &ldquo;missing&rdquo; come very quickly to steamers
+whose life, fed on coals and breathing the black breath of smoke into
+the air, goes on in disregard of wind and wave.&nbsp; Such a one, a
+big steamship, too, whose working life had been a record of faithful
+keeping time from land to land, in disregard of wind and sea, once lost
+her propeller down south, on her passage out to New Zealand.</p>
+<p>It was the wintry, murky time of cold gales and heavy seas.&nbsp;
+With the snapping of her tail-shaft her life seemed suddenly to depart
+from her big body, and from a stubborn, arrogant existence she passed
+all at once into the passive state of a drifting log.&nbsp; A ship sick
+with her own weakness has not the pathos of a ship vanquished in a battle
+with the elements, wherein consists the inner drama of her life.&nbsp;
+No seaman can look without compassion upon a disabled ship, but to look
+at a sailing-vessel with her lofty spars gone is to look upon a defeated
+but indomitable warrior.&nbsp; There is defiance in the remaining stumps
+of her masts, raised up like maimed limbs against the menacing scowl
+of a stormy sky; there is high courage in the upward sweep of her lines
+towards the bow; and as soon as, on a hastily-rigged spar, a strip of
+canvas is shown to the wind to keep her head to sea, she faces the waves
+again with an unsubdued courage.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XIX.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The efficiency of a steamship consists not so much in her courage
+as in the power she carries within herself.&nbsp; It beats and throbs
+like a pulsating heart within her iron ribs, and when it stops, the
+steamer, whose life is not so much a contest as the disdainful ignoring
+of the sea, sickens and dies upon the waves.&nbsp; The sailing-ship,
+with her unthrobbing body, seemed to lead mysteriously a sort of unearthly
+existence, bordering upon the magic of the invisible forces, sustained
+by the inspiration of life-giving and death-dealing winds.</p>
+<p>So that big steamer, dying by a sudden stroke, drifted, an unwieldy
+corpse, away from the track of other ships.&nbsp; And she would have
+been posted really as &ldquo;overdue,&rdquo; or maybe as &ldquo;missing,&rdquo;
+had she not been sighted in a snowstorm, vaguely, like a strange rolling
+island, by a whaler going north from her Polar cruising ground.&nbsp;
+There was plenty of food on board, and I don&rsquo;t know whether the
+nerves of her passengers were at all affected by anything else than
+the sense of interminable boredom or the vague fear of that unusual
+situation.&nbsp; Does a passenger ever feel the life of the ship in
+which he is being carried like a sort of honoured bale of highly sensitive
+goods?&nbsp; For a man who has never been a passenger it is impossible
+to say.&nbsp; But I know that there is no harder trial for a seaman
+than to feel a dead ship under his feet.</p>
+<p>There is no mistaking that sensation, so dismal, so tormenting and
+so subtle, so full of unhappiness and unrest.&nbsp; I could imagine
+no worse eternal punishment for evil seamen who die unrepentant upon
+the earthly sea than that their souls should be condemned to man the
+ghosts of disabled ships, drifting for ever across a ghostly and tempestuous
+ocean.</p>
+<p>She must have looked ghostly enough, that broken-down steamer, rolling
+in that snowstorm&mdash;a dark apparition in a world of white snowflakes
+to the staring eyes of that whaler&rsquo;s crew.&nbsp; Evidently they
+didn&rsquo;t believe in ghosts, for on arrival into port her captain
+unromantically reported having sighted a disabled steamer in latitude
+somewhere about 50 degrees S. and a longitude still more uncertain.&nbsp;
+Other steamers came out to look for her, and ultimately towed her away
+from the cold edge of the world into a harbour with docks and workshops,
+where, with many blows of hammers, her pulsating heart of steel was
+set going again to go forth presently in the renewed pride of its strength,
+fed on fire and water, breathing black smoke into the air, pulsating,
+throbbing, shouldering its arrogant way against the great rollers in
+blind disdain of winds and sea.</p>
+<p>The track she had made when drifting while her heart stood still
+within her iron ribs looked like a tangled thread on the white paper
+of the chart.&nbsp; It was shown to me by a friend, her second officer.&nbsp;
+In that surprising tangle there were words in minute letters&mdash;&ldquo;gales,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;thick fog,&rdquo; &ldquo;ice&rdquo;&mdash;written by him here
+and there as memoranda of the weather.&nbsp; She had interminably turned
+upon her tracks, she had crossed and recrossed her haphazard path till
+it resembled nothing so much as a puzzling maze of pencilled lines without
+a meaning.&nbsp; But in that maze there lurked all the romance of the
+&ldquo;overdue&rdquo; and a menacing hint of &ldquo;missing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We had three weeks of it,&rdquo; said my friend, &ldquo;just
+think of that!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How did you feel about it?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+<p>He waved his hand as much as to say: It&rsquo;s all in the day&rsquo;s
+work.&nbsp; But then, abruptly, as if making up his mind:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you.&nbsp; Towards the last I used to shut
+myself up in my berth and cry.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Cry?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Shed tears,&rdquo; he explained briefly, and rolled up the
+chart.</p>
+<p>I can answer for it, he was a good man&mdash;as good as ever stepped
+upon a ship&rsquo;s deck&mdash;but he could not bear the feeling of
+a dead ship under his feet: the sickly, disheartening feeling which
+the men of some &ldquo;overdue&rdquo; ships that come into harbour at
+last under a jury-rig must have felt, combated, and overcome in the
+faithful discharge of their duty.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XX.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>It is difficult for a seaman to believe that his stranded ship does
+not feel as unhappy at the unnatural predicament of having no water
+under her keel as he is himself at feeling her stranded.</p>
+<p>Stranding is, indeed, the reverse of sinking.&nbsp; The sea does
+not close upon the water-logged hull with a sunny ripple, or maybe with
+the angry rush of a curling wave, erasing her name from the roll of
+living ships.&nbsp; No.&nbsp; It is as if an invisible hand had been
+stealthily uplifted from the bottom to catch hold of her keel as it
+glides through the water.</p>
+<p>More than any other event does stranding bring to the sailor a sense
+of utter and dismal failure.&nbsp; There are strandings and strandings,
+but I am safe to say that 90 per cent. of them are occasions in which
+a sailor, without dishonour, may well wish himself dead; and I have
+no doubt that of those who had the experience of their ship taking the
+ground, 90 per cent. did actually for five seconds or so wish themselves
+dead.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Taking the ground&rdquo; is the professional expression for
+a ship that is stranded in gentle circumstances.&nbsp; But the feeling
+is more as if the ground had taken hold of her.&nbsp; It is for those
+on her deck a surprising sensation.&nbsp; It is as if your feet had
+been caught in an imponderable snare; you feel the balance of your body
+threatened, and the steady poise of your mind is destroyed at once.&nbsp;
+This sensation lasts only a second, for even while you stagger something
+seems to turn over in your head, bringing uppermost the mental exclamation,
+full of astonishment and dismay, &ldquo;By Jove! she&rsquo;s on the
+ground!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And that is very terrible.&nbsp; After all, the only mission of a
+seaman&rsquo;s calling is to keep ships&rsquo; keels off the ground.&nbsp;
+Thus the moment of her stranding takes away from him every excuse for
+his continued existence.&nbsp; To keep ships afloat is his business;
+it is his trust; it is the effective formula of the bottom of all these
+vague impulses, dreams, and illusions that go to the making up of a
+boy&rsquo;s vocation.&nbsp; The grip of the land upon the keel of your
+ship, even if nothing worse comes of it than the wear and tear of tackle
+and the loss of time, remains in a seaman&rsquo;s memory an indelibly
+fixed taste of disaster.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Stranded&rdquo; within the meaning of this paper stands for
+a more or less excusable mistake.&nbsp; A ship may be &ldquo;driven
+ashore&rdquo; by stress of weather.&nbsp; It is a catastrophe, a defeat.&nbsp;
+To be &ldquo;run ashore&rdquo; has the littleness, poignancy, and bitterness
+of human error.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XXI.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>That is why your &ldquo;strandings&rdquo; are for the most part so
+unexpected.&nbsp; In fact, they are all unexpected, except those heralded
+by some short glimpse of the danger, full of agitation and excitement,
+like an awakening from a dream of incredible folly.</p>
+<p>The land suddenly at night looms up right over your bows, or perhaps
+the cry of &ldquo;Broken water ahead!&rdquo; is raised, and some long
+mistake, some complicated edifice of self-delusion, over-confidence,
+and wrong reasoning is brought down in a fatal shock, and the heart-searing
+experience of your ship&rsquo;s keel scraping and scrunching over, say,
+a coral reef.&nbsp; It is a sound, for its size, far more terrific to
+your soul than that of a world coming violently to an end.&nbsp; But
+out of that chaos your belief in your own prudence and sagacity reasserts
+itself.&nbsp; You ask yourself, Where on earth did I get to?&nbsp; How
+on earth did I get there? with a conviction that it could not be your
+own act, that there has been at work some mysterious conspiracy of accident;
+that the charts are all wrong, and if the charts are not wrong, that
+land and sea have changed their places; that your misfortune shall for
+ever remain inexplicable, since you have lived always with the sense
+of your trust, the last thing on closing your eyes, the first on opening
+them, as if your mind had kept firm hold of your responsibility during
+the hours of sleep.</p>
+<p>You contemplate mentally your mischance, till little by little your
+mood changes, cold doubt steals into the very marrow of your bones,
+you see the inexplicable fact in another light.&nbsp; That is the time
+when you ask yourself, How on earth could I have been fool enough to
+get there?&nbsp; And you are ready to renounce all belief in your good
+sense, in your knowledge, in your fidelity, in what you thought till
+then was the best in you, giving you the daily bread of life and the
+moral support of other men&rsquo;s confidence.</p>
+<p>The ship is lost or not lost.&nbsp; Once stranded, you have to do
+your best by her.&nbsp; She may be saved by your efforts, by your resource
+and fortitude bearing up against the heavy weight of guilt and failure.&nbsp;
+And there are justifiable strandings in fogs, on uncharted seas, on
+dangerous shores, through treacherous tides.&nbsp; But, saved or not
+saved, there remains with her commander a distinct sense of loss, a
+flavour in the mouth of the real, abiding danger that lurks in all the
+forms of human existence.&nbsp; It is an acquisition, too, that feeling.&nbsp;
+A man may be the better for it, but he will not be the same.&nbsp; Damocles
+has seen the sword suspended by a hair over his head, and though a good
+man need not be made less valuable by such a knowledge, the feast shall
+not henceforth have the same flavour.</p>
+<p>Years ago I was concerned as chief mate in a case of stranding which
+was not fatal to the ship.&nbsp; We went to work for ten hours on end,
+laying out anchors in readiness to heave off at high water.&nbsp; While
+I was still busy about the decks forward I heard the steward at my elbow
+saying: &ldquo;The captain asks whether you mean to come in, sir, and
+have something to eat to-day.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I went into the cuddy.&nbsp; My captain sat at the head of the table
+like a statue.&nbsp; There was a strange motionlessness of everything
+in that pretty little cabin.&nbsp; The swing-table which for seventy
+odd days had been always on the move, if ever so little, hung quite
+still above the soup-tureen.&nbsp; Nothing could have altered the rich
+colour of my commander&rsquo;s complexion, laid on generously by wind
+and sea; but between the two tufts of fair hair above his ears, his
+skull, generally suffused with the hue of blood, shone dead white, like
+a dome of ivory.&nbsp; And he looked strangely untidy.&nbsp; I perceived
+he had not shaved himself that day; and yet the wildest motion of the
+ship in the most stormy latitudes we had passed through, never made
+him miss one single morning ever since we left the Channel.&nbsp; The
+fact must be that a commander cannot possibly shave himself when his
+ship is aground.&nbsp; I have commanded ships myself, but I don&rsquo;t
+know; I have never tried to shave in my life.</p>
+<p>He did not offer to help me or himself till I had coughed markedly
+several times.&nbsp; I talked to him professionally in a cheery tone,
+and ended with the confident assertion:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We shall get her off before midnight, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He smiled faintly without looking up, and muttered as if to himself:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, yes; the captain put the ship ashore and we got her off.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Then, raising his head, he attacked grumpily the steward, a lanky,
+anxious youth with a long, pale face and two big front teeth.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What makes this soup so bitter?&nbsp; I am surprised the mate
+can swallow the beastly stuff.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m sure the cook&rsquo;s
+ladled some salt water into it by mistake.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The charge was so outrageous that the steward for all answer only
+dropped his eyelids bashfully.</p>
+<p>There was nothing the matter with the soup.&nbsp; I had a second
+helping.&nbsp; My heart was warm with hours of hard work at the head
+of a willing crew.&nbsp; I was elated with having handled heavy anchors,
+cables, boats without the slightest hitch; pleased with having laid
+out scientifically bower, stream, and kedge exactly where I believed
+they would do most good.&nbsp; On that occasion the bitter taste of
+a stranding was not for my mouth.&nbsp; That experience came later,
+and it was only then that I understood the loneliness of the man in
+charge.</p>
+<p>It&rsquo;s the captain who puts the ship ashore; it&rsquo;s we who
+get her off.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XXII.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>It seems to me that no man born and truthful to himself could declare
+that he ever saw the sea looking young as the earth looks young in spring.&nbsp;
+But some of us, regarding the ocean with understanding and affection,
+have seen it looking old, as if the immemorial ages had been stirred
+up from the undisturbed bottom of ooze.&nbsp; For it is a gale of wind
+that makes the sea look old.</p>
+<p>From a distance of years, looking at the remembered aspects of the
+storms lived through, it is that impression which disengages itself
+clearly from the great body of impressions left by many years of intimate
+contact.</p>
+<p>If you would know the age of the earth, look upon the sea in a storm.&nbsp;
+The grayness of the whole immense surface, the wind furrows upon the
+faces of the waves, the great masses of foam, tossed about and waving,
+like matted white locks, give to the sea in a gale an appearance of
+hoary age, lustreless, dull, without gleams, as though it had been created
+before light itself.</p>
+<p>Looking back after much love and much trouble, the instinct of primitive
+man, who seeks to personify the forces of Nature for his affection and
+for his fear, is awakened again in the breast of one civilized beyond
+that stage even in his infancy.&nbsp; One seems to have known gales
+as enemies, and even as enemies one embraces them in that affectionate
+regret which clings to the past.</p>
+<p>Gales have their personalities, and, after all, perhaps it is not
+strange; for, when all is said and done, they are adversaries whose
+wiles you must defeat, whose violence you must resist, and yet with
+whom you must live in the intimacies of nights and days.</p>
+<p>Here speaks the man of masts and sails, to whom the sea is not a
+navigable element, but an intimate companion.&nbsp; The length of passages,
+the growing sense of solitude, the close dependence upon the very forces
+that, friendly to-day, without changing their nature, by the mere putting
+forth of their might, become dangerous to-morrow, make for that sense
+of fellowship which modern seamen, good men as they are, cannot hope
+to know.&nbsp; And, besides, your modern ship which is a steamship makes
+her passages on other principles than yielding to the weather and humouring
+the sea.&nbsp; She receives smashing blows, but she advances; it is
+a slogging fight, and not a scientific campaign.&nbsp; The machinery,
+the steel, the fire, the steam, have stepped in between the man and
+the sea.&nbsp; A modern fleet of ships does not so much make use of
+the sea as exploit a highway.&nbsp; The modern ship is not the sport
+of the waves.&nbsp; Let us say that each of her voyages is a triumphant
+progress; and yet it is a question whether it is not a more subtle and
+more human triumph to be the sport of the waves and yet survive, achieving
+your end.</p>
+<p>In his own time a man is always very modern.&nbsp; Whether the seamen
+of three hundred years hence will have the faculty of sympathy it is
+impossible to say.&nbsp; An incorrigible mankind hardens its heart in
+the progress of its own perfectability.&nbsp; How will they feel on
+seeing the illustrations to the sea novels of our day, or of our yesterday?&nbsp;
+It is impossible to guess.&nbsp; But the seaman of the last generation,
+brought into sympathy with the caravels of ancient time by his sailing-ship,
+their lineal descendant, cannot look upon those lumbering forms navigating
+the na&iuml;ve seas of ancient woodcuts without a feeling of surprise,
+of affectionate derision, envy, and admiration.&nbsp; For those things,
+whose unmanageableness, even when represented on paper, makes one gasp
+with a sort of amused horror, were manned by men who are his direct
+professional ancestors.</p>
+<p>No; the seamen of three hundred years hence will probably be neither
+touched nor moved to derision, affection, or admiration.&nbsp; They
+will glance at the photogravures of our nearly defunct sailing-ships
+with a cold, inquisitive and indifferent eye.&nbsp; Our ships of yesterday
+will stand to their ships as no lineal ancestors, but as mere predecessors
+whose course will have been run and the race extinct.&nbsp; Whatever
+craft he handles with skill, the seaman of the future shall be, not
+our descendant, but only our successor.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XXIII.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>And so much depends upon the craft which, made by man, is one with
+man, that the sea shall wear for him another aspect.&nbsp; I remember
+once seeing the commander&mdash;officially the master, by courtesy the
+captain&mdash;of a fine iron ship of the old wool fleet shaking his
+head at a very pretty brigantine.&nbsp; She was bound the other way.&nbsp;
+She was a taut, trim, neat little craft, extremely well kept; and on
+that serene evening when we passed her close she looked the embodiment
+of coquettish comfort on the sea.&nbsp; It was somewhere near the Cape&mdash;<i>The</i>
+Cape being, of course, the Cape of Good Hope, the Cape of Storms of
+its Portuguese discoverer.&nbsp; And whether it is that the word &ldquo;storm&rdquo;
+should not be pronounced upon the sea where the storms dwell thickly,
+or because men are shy of confessing their good hopes, it has become
+the nameless cape&mdash;the Cape <i>tout court</i>.&nbsp; The other
+great cape of the world, strangely enough, is seldom if ever called
+a cape.&nbsp; We say, &ldquo;a voyage round the Horn&rdquo;; &ldquo;we
+rounded the Horn&rdquo;; &ldquo;we got a frightful battering off the
+Horn&rdquo;; but rarely &ldquo;Cape Horn,&rdquo; and, indeed, with some
+reason, for Cape Horn is as much an island as a cape.&nbsp; The third
+stormy cape of the world, which is the Leeuwin, receives generally its
+full name, as if to console its second-rate dignity.&nbsp; These are
+the capes that look upon the gales.</p>
+<p>The little brigantine, then, had doubled the Cape.&nbsp; Perhaps
+she was coming from Port Elizabeth, from East London&mdash;who knows?&nbsp;
+It was many years ago, but I remember well the captain of the wool-clipper
+nodding at her with the words, &ldquo;Fancy having to go about the sea
+in a thing like that!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He was a man brought up in big deep-water ships, and the size of
+the craft under his feet was a part of his conception of the sea.&nbsp;
+His own ship was certainly big as ships went then.&nbsp; He may have
+thought of the size of his cabin, or&mdash;unconsciously, perhaps&mdash;have
+conjured up a vision of a vessel so small tossing amongst the great
+seas.&nbsp; I didn&rsquo;t inquire, and to a young second mate the captain
+of the little pretty brigantine, sitting astride a camp stool with his
+chin resting on his hands that were crossed upon the rail, might have
+appeared a minor king amongst men.&nbsp; We passed her within earshot,
+without a hail, reading each other&rsquo;s names with the naked eye.</p>
+<p>Some years later, the second mate, the recipient of that almost involuntary
+mutter, could have told his captain that a man brought up in big ships
+may yet take a peculiar delight in what we should both then have called
+a small craft.&nbsp; Probably the captain of the big ship would not
+have understood very well.&nbsp; His answer would have been a gruff,
+&ldquo;Give me size,&rdquo; as I heard another man reply to a remark
+praising the handiness of a small vessel.&nbsp; It was not a love of
+the grandiose or the prestige attached to the command of great tonnage,
+for he continued, with an air of disgust and contempt, &ldquo;Why, you
+get flung out of your bunk as likely as not in any sort of heavy weather.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I don&rsquo;t know.&nbsp; I remember a few nights in my lifetime,
+and in a big ship, too (as big as they made them then), when one did
+not get flung out of one&rsquo;s bed simply because one never even attempted
+to get in; one had been made too weary, too hopeless, to try.&nbsp;
+The expedient of turning your bedding out on to a damp floor and lying
+on it there was no earthly good, since you could not keep your place
+or get a second&rsquo;s rest in that or any other position.&nbsp; But
+of the delight of seeing a small craft run bravely amongst the great
+seas there can be no question to him whose soul does not dwell ashore.&nbsp;
+Thus I well remember a three days&rsquo; run got out of a little barque
+of 400 tons somewhere between the islands of St. Paul and Amsterdam
+and Cape Otway on the Australian coast.&nbsp; It was a hard, long gale,
+gray clouds and green sea, heavy weather undoubtedly, but still what
+a sailor would call manageable.&nbsp; Under two lower topsails and a
+reefed foresail the barque seemed to race with a long, steady sea that
+did not becalm her in the troughs.&nbsp; The solemn thundering combers
+caught her up from astern, passed her with a fierce boiling up of foam
+level with the bulwarks, swept on ahead with a swish and a roar: and
+the little vessel, dipping her jib-boom into the tumbling froth, would
+go on running in a smooth, glassy hollow, a deep valley between two
+ridges of the sea, hiding the horizon ahead and astern.&nbsp; There
+was such fascination in her pluck, nimbleness, the continual exhibition
+of unfailing seaworthiness, in the semblance of courage and endurance,
+that I could not give up the delight of watching her run through the
+three unforgettable days of that gale which my mate also delighted to
+extol as &ldquo;a famous shove.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And this is one of those gales whose memory in after-years returns,
+welcome in dignified austerity, as you would remember with pleasure
+the noble features of a stranger with whom you crossed swords once in
+knightly encounter and are never to see again.&nbsp; In this way gales
+have their physiognomy.&nbsp; You remember them by your own feelings,
+and no two gales stamp themselves in the same way upon your emotions.&nbsp;
+Some cling to you in woebegone misery; others come back fiercely and
+weirdly, like ghouls bent upon sucking your strength away; others, again,
+have a catastrophic splendour; some are unvenerated recollections, as
+of spiteful wild-cats clawing at your agonized vitals; others are severe,
+like a visitation; and one or two rise up draped and mysterious, with
+an aspect of ominous menace.&nbsp; In each of them there is a characteristic
+point at which the whole feeling seems contained in one single moment.&nbsp;
+Thus there is a certain four o&rsquo;clock in the morning in the confused
+roar of a black and white world when coming on deck to take charge of
+my watch I received the instantaneous impression that the ship could
+not live for another hour in such a raging sea.</p>
+<p>I wonder what became of the men who silently (you couldn&rsquo;t
+hear yourself speak) must have shared that conviction with me.&nbsp;
+To be left to write about it is not, perhaps, the most enviable fate;
+but the point is that this impression resumes in its intensity the whole
+recollection of days and days of desperately dangerous weather.&nbsp;
+We were then, for reasons which it is not worth while to specify, in
+the close neighbourhood of Kerguelen Land; and now, when I open an atlas
+and look at the tiny dots on the map of the Southern Ocean, I see as
+if engraved upon the paper the enraged physiognomy of that gale.</p>
+<p>Another, strangely, recalls a silent man.&nbsp; And yet it was not
+din that was wanting; in fact, it was terrific.&nbsp; That one was a
+gale that came upon the ship swiftly, like a parnpero, which last is
+a very sudden wind indeed.&nbsp; Before we knew very well what was coming
+all the sails we had set had burst; the furled ones were blowing loose,
+ropes flying, sea hissing&mdash;it hissed tremendously&mdash;wind howling,
+and the ship lying on her side, so that half of the crew were swimming
+and the other half clawing desperately at whatever came to hand, according
+to the side of the deck each man had been caught on by the catastrophe,
+either to leeward or to windward.&nbsp; The shouting I need not mention&mdash;it
+was the merest drop in an ocean of noise&mdash;and yet the character
+of the gale seems contained in the recollection of one small, not particularly
+impressive, sallow man without a cap and with a very still face.&nbsp;
+Captain Jones&mdash;let us call him Jones&mdash;had been caught unawares.&nbsp;
+Two orders he had given at the first sign of an utterly unforeseen onset;
+after that the magnitude of his mistake seemed to have overwhelmed him.&nbsp;
+We were doing what was needed and feasible.&nbsp; The ship behaved well.&nbsp;
+Of course, it was some time before we could pause in our fierce and
+laborious exertions; but all through the work, the excitement, the uproar,
+and some dismay, we were aware of this silent little man at the break
+of the poop, perfectly motionless, soundless, and often hidden from
+us by the drift of sprays.</p>
+<p>When we officers clambered at last upon the poop, he seemed to come
+out of that numbed composure, and shouted to us down wind: &ldquo;Try
+the pumps.&rdquo;&nbsp; Afterwards he disappeared.&nbsp; As to the ship,
+I need not say that, although she was presently swallowed up in one
+of the blackest nights I can remember, she did not disappear.&nbsp;
+In truth, I don&rsquo;t fancy that there had ever been much danger of
+that, but certainly the experience was noisy and particularly distracting&mdash;and
+yet it is the memory of a very quiet silence that survives.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XXIV.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>For, after all, a gale of wind, the thing of mighty sound, is inarticulate.&nbsp;
+It is man who, in a chance phrase, interprets the elemental passion
+of his enemy.&nbsp; Thus there is another gale in my memory, a thing
+of endless, deep, humming roar, moonlight, and a spoken sentence.</p>
+<p>It was off that other cape which is always deprived of its title
+as the Cape of Good Hope is robbed of its name.&nbsp; It was off the
+Horn.&nbsp; For a true expression of dishevelled wildness there is nothing
+like a gale in the bright moonlight of a high latitude.</p>
+<p>The ship, brought-to and bowing to enormous flashing seas, glistened
+wet from deck to trucks; her one set sail stood out a coal-black shape
+upon the gloomy blueness of the air.&nbsp; I was a youngster then, and
+suffering from weariness, cold, and imperfect oilskins which let water
+in at every seam.&nbsp; I craved human companionship, and, coming off
+the poop, took my place by the side of the boatswain (a man whom I did
+not like) in a comparatively dry spot where at worst we had water only
+up to our knees.&nbsp; Above our heads the explosive booming gusts of
+wind passed continuously, justifying the sailor&rsquo;s saying &ldquo;It
+blows great guns.&rdquo;&nbsp; And just from that need of human companionship,
+being very close to the man, I said, or rather shouted:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Blows very hard, boatswain.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>His answer was:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ay, and if it blows only a little harder things will begin
+to go.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t mind as long as everything holds, but when
+things begin to go it&rsquo;s bad.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The note of dread in the shouting voice, the practical truth of these
+words, heard years ago from a man I did not like, have stamped its peculiar
+character on that gale.</p>
+<p>A look in the eyes of a shipmate, a low murmur in the most sheltered
+spot where the watch on duty are huddled together, a meaning moan from
+one to the other with a glance at the windward sky, a sigh of weariness,
+a gesture of disgust passing into the keeping of the great wind, become
+part and parcel of the gale.&nbsp; The olive hue of hurricane clouds
+presents an aspect peculiarly appalling.&nbsp; The inky ragged wrack,
+flying before a nor&rsquo;-west wind, makes you dizzy with its headlong
+speed that depicts the rush of the invisible air.&nbsp; A hard sou&rsquo;-wester
+startles you with its close horizon and its low gray sky, as if the
+world were a dungeon wherein there is no rest for body or soul.&nbsp;
+And there are black squalls, white squalls, thunder squalls, and unexpected
+gusts that come without a single sign in the sky; and of each kind no
+one of them resembles another.</p>
+<p>There is infinite variety in the gales of wind at sea, and except
+for the peculiar, terrible, and mysterious moaning that may be heard
+sometimes passing through the roar of a hurricane&mdash;except for that
+unforgettable sound, as if the soul of the universe had been goaded
+into a mournful groan&mdash;it is, after all, the human voice that stamps
+the mark of human consciousness upon the character of a gale.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XXV.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>There is no part of the world of coasts, continents, oceans, seas,
+straits, capes, and islands which is not under the sway of a reigning
+wind, the sovereign of its typical weather.&nbsp; The wind rules the
+aspects of the sky and the action of the sea.&nbsp; But no wind rules
+unchallenged his realm of land and water.&nbsp; As with the kingdoms
+of the earth, there are regions more turbulent than others.&nbsp; In
+the middle belt of the earth the Trade Winds reign supreme, undisputed,
+like monarchs of long-settled kingdoms, whose traditional power, checking
+all undue ambitions, is not so much an exercise of personal might as
+the working of long-established institutions.&nbsp; The intertropical
+kingdoms of the Trade Winds are favourable to the ordinary life of a
+merchantman.&nbsp; The trumpet-call of strife is seldom borne on their
+wings to the watchful ears of men on the decks of ships.&nbsp; The regions
+ruled by the north-east and south-east Trade Winds are serene.&nbsp;
+In a southern-going ship, bound out for a long voyage, the passage through
+their dominions is characterized by a relaxation of strain and vigilance
+on the part of the seamen.&nbsp; Those citizens of the ocean feel sheltered
+under the aegis of an uncontested law, of an undisputed dynasty.&nbsp;
+There, indeed, if anywhere on earth, the weather may be trusted.</p>
+<p>Yet not too implicitly.&nbsp; Even in the constitutional realm of
+Trade Winds, north and south of the equator, ships are overtaken by
+strange disturbances.&nbsp; Still, the easterly winds, and, generally
+speaking, the easterly weather all the world over, is characterized
+by regularity and persistence.</p>
+<p>As a ruler, the East Wind has a remarkable stability; as an invader
+of the high latitudes lying under the tumultuous sway of his great brother,
+the Wind of the West, he is extremely difficult to dislodge, by the
+reason of his cold craftiness and profound duplicity.</p>
+<p>The narrow seas around these isles, where British admirals keep watch
+and ward upon the marches of the Atlantic Ocean, are subject to the
+turbulent sway of the West Wind.&nbsp; Call it north-west or south-west,
+it is all one&mdash;a different phase of the same character, a changed
+expression on the same face.&nbsp; In the orientation of the winds that
+rule the seas, the north and south directions are of no importance.&nbsp;
+There are no North and South Winds of any account upon this earth.&nbsp;
+The North and South Winds are but small princes in the dynasties that
+make peace and war upon the sea.&nbsp; They never assert themselves
+upon a vast stage.&nbsp; They depend upon local causes&mdash;the configuration
+of coasts, the shapes of straits, the accidents of bold promontories
+round which they play their little part.&nbsp; In the polity of winds,
+as amongst the tribes of the earth, the real struggle lies between East
+and West.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XXVI.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The West Wind reigns over the seas surrounding the coasts of these
+kingdoms; and from the gateways of the channels, from promontories as
+if from watch-towers, from estuaries of rivers as if from postern gates,
+from passage-ways, inlets, straits, firths, the garrison of the Isle
+and the crews of the ships going and returning look to the westward
+to judge by the varied splendours of his sunset mantle the mood of that
+arbitrary ruler.&nbsp; The end of the day is the time to gaze at the
+kingly face of the Westerly Weather, who is the arbiter of ships&rsquo;
+destinies.&nbsp; Benignant and splendid, or splendid and sinister, the
+western sky reflects the hidden purposes of the royal mind.&nbsp; Clothed
+in a mantle of dazzling gold or draped in rags of black clouds like
+a beggar, the might of the Westerly Wind sits enthroned upon the western
+horizon with the whole North Atlantic as a footstool for his feet and
+the first twinkling stars making a diadem for his brow.&nbsp; Then the
+seamen, attentive courtiers of the weather, think of regulating the
+conduct of their ships by the mood of the master.&nbsp; The West Wind
+is too great a king to be a dissembler: he is no calculator plotting
+deep schemes in a sombre heart; he is too strong for small artifices;
+there is passion in all his moods, even in the soft mood of his serene
+days, in the grace of his blue sky whose immense and unfathomable tenderness
+reflected in the mirror of the sea embraces, possesses, lulls to sleep
+the ships with white sails.&nbsp; He is all things to all oceans; he
+is like a poet seated upon a throne&mdash;magnificent, simple, barbarous,
+pensive, generous, impulsive, changeable, unfathomable&mdash;but when
+you understand him, always the same.&nbsp; Some of his sunsets are like
+pageants devised for the delight of the multitude, when all the gems
+of the royal treasure-house are displayed above the sea.&nbsp; Others
+are like the opening of his royal confidence, tinged with thoughts of
+sadness and compassion in a melancholy splendour meditating upon the
+short-lived peace of the waters.&nbsp; And I have seen him put the pent-up
+anger of his heart into the aspect of the inaccessible sun, and cause
+it to glare fiercely like the eye of an implacable autocrat out of a
+pale and frightened sky.</p>
+<p>He is the war-lord who sends his battalions of Atlantic rollers to
+the assault of our seaboard.&nbsp; The compelling voice of the West
+Wind musters up to his service all the might of the ocean.&nbsp; At
+the bidding of the West Wind there arises a great commotion in the sky
+above these Islands, and a great rush of waters falls upon our shores.&nbsp;
+The sky of the westerly weather is full of flying clouds, of great big
+white clouds coming thicker and thicker till they seem to stand welded
+into a solid canopy, upon whose gray face the lower wrack of the gale,
+thin, black and angry-looking, flies past with vertiginous speed.&nbsp;
+Denser and denser grows this dome of vapours, descending lower and lower
+upon the sea, narrowing the horizon around the ship.&nbsp; And the characteristic
+aspect of westerly weather, the thick, gray, smoky and sinister tone
+sets in, circumscribing the view of the men, drenching their bodies,
+oppressing their souls, taking their breath away with booming gusts,
+deafening, blinding, driving, rushing them onwards in a swaying ship
+towards our coasts lost in mists and rain.</p>
+<p>The caprice of the winds, like the wilfulness of men, is fraught
+with the disastrous consequences of self-indulgence.&nbsp; Long anger,
+the sense of his uncontrolled power, spoils the frank and generous nature
+of the West Wind.&nbsp; It is as if his heart were corrupted by a malevolent
+and brooding rancour.&nbsp; He devastates his own kingdom in the wantonness
+of his force.&nbsp; South-west is the quarter of the heavens where he
+presents his darkened brow.&nbsp; He breathes his rage in terrific squalls,
+and overwhelms his realm with an inexhaustible welter of clouds.&nbsp;
+He strews the seeds of anxiety upon the decks of scudding ships, makes
+the foam-stripped ocean look old, and sprinkles with gray hairs the
+heads of ship-masters in the homeward-bound ships running for the Channel.&nbsp;
+The Westerly Wind asserting his sway from the south-west quarter is
+often like a monarch gone mad, driving forth with wild imprecations
+the most faithful of his courtiers to shipwreck, disaster, and death.</p>
+<p>The south-westerly weather is the thick weather <i>par excellence</i>.&nbsp;
+It is not the thickness of the fog; it is rather a contraction of the
+horizon, a mysterious veiling of the shores with clouds that seem to
+make a low-vaulted dungeon around the running ship.&nbsp; It is not
+blindness; it is a shortening of the sight.&nbsp; The West Wind does
+not say to the seaman, &ldquo;You shall be blind&rdquo;; it restricts
+merely the range of his vision and raises the dread of land within his
+breast.&nbsp; It makes of him a man robbed of half his force, of half
+his efficiency.&nbsp; Many times in my life, standing in long sea-boots
+and streaming oilskins at the elbow of my commander on the poop of a
+homeward-bound ship making for the Channel, and gazing ahead into the
+gray and tormented waste, I have heard a weary sigh shape itself into
+a studiously casual comment:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t see very far in this weather.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And have made answer in the same low, perfunctory tone</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It would be merely the instinctive voicing of an ever-present thought
+associated closely with the consciousness of the land somewhere ahead
+and of the great speed of the ship.&nbsp; Fair wind, fair wind!&nbsp;
+Who would dare to grumble at a fair wind?&nbsp; It was a favour of the
+Western King, who rules masterfully the North Atlantic from the latitude
+of the Azores to the latitude of Cape Farewell.&nbsp; A famous shove
+this to end a good passage with; and yet, somehow, one could not muster
+upon one&rsquo;s lips the smile of a courtier&rsquo;s gratitude.&nbsp;
+This favour was dispensed to you from under an overbearing scowl, which
+is the true expression of the great autocrat when he has made up his
+mind to give a battering to some ships and to hunt certain others home
+in one breath of cruelty and benevolence, equally distracting.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir.&nbsp; Can&rsquo;t see very far.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Thus would the mate&rsquo;s voice repeat the thought of the master,
+both gazing ahead, while under their feet the ship rushes at some twelve
+knots in the direction of the lee shore; and only a couple of miles
+in front of her swinging and dripping jib-boom, carried naked with an
+upward slant like a spear, a gray horizon closes the view with a multitude
+of waves surging upwards violently as if to strike at the stooping clouds.</p>
+<p>Awful and threatening scowls darken the face of the West Wind in
+his clouded, south-west mood; and from the King&rsquo;s throne-hall
+in the western board stronger gusts reach you, like the fierce shouts
+of raving fury to which only the gloomy grandeur of the scene imparts
+a saving dignity.&nbsp; A shower pelts the deck and the sails of the
+ship as if flung with a scream by an angry hand; and when the night
+closes in, the night of a south-westerly gale, it seems more hopeless
+than the shade of Hades.&nbsp; The south-westerly mood of the great
+West Wind is a lightless mood, without sun, moon, or stars, with no
+gleam of light but the phosphorescent flashes of the great sheets of
+foam that, boiling up on each side of the ship, fling bluish gleams
+upon her dark and narrow hull, rolling as she runs, chased by enormous
+seas, distracted in the tumult.</p>
+<p>There are some bad nights in the kingdom of the West Wind for homeward-bound
+ships making for the Channel; and the days of wrath dawn upon them colourless
+and vague like the timid turning up of invisible lights upon the scene
+of a tyrannical and passionate outbreak, awful in the monotony of its
+method and the increasing strength of its violence.&nbsp; It is the
+same wind, the same clouds, the same wildly racing seas, the same thick
+horizon around the ship.&nbsp; Only the wind is stronger, the clouds
+seem denser and more overwhelming, the waves appear to have grown bigger
+and more threatening during the night.&nbsp; The hours, whose minutes
+are marked by the crash of the breaking seas, slip by with the screaming,
+pelting squalls overtaking the ship as she runs on and on with darkened
+canvas, with streaming spars and dripping ropes.&nbsp; The down-pours
+thicken.&nbsp; Preceding each shower a mysterious gloom, like the passage
+of a shadow above the firmament of gray clouds, filters down upon the
+ship.&nbsp; Now and then the rain pours upon your head in streams as
+if from spouts.&nbsp; It seems as if your ship were going to be drowned
+before she sank, as if all atmosphere had turned to water.&nbsp; You
+gasp, you splutter, you are blinded and deafened, you are submerged,
+obliterated, dissolved, annihilated, streaming all over as if your limbs,
+too, had turned to water.&nbsp; And every nerve on the alert you watch
+for the clearing-up mood of the Western King, that shall come with a
+shift of wind as likely as not to whip all the three masts out of your
+ship in the twinkling of an eye.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XXVII.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Heralded by the increasing fierceness of the squalls, sometimes by
+a faint flash of lightning like the signal of a lighted torch waved
+far away behind the clouds, the shift of wind comes at last, the crucial
+moment of the change from the brooding and veiled violence of the south-west
+gale to the sparkling, flashing, cutting, clear-eyed anger of the King&rsquo;s
+north-westerly mood.&nbsp; You behold another phase of his passion,
+a fury bejewelled with stars, mayhap bearing the crescent of the moon
+on its brow, shaking the last vestiges of its torn cloud-mantle in inky-black
+squalls, with hail and sleet descending like showers of crystals and
+pearls, bounding off the spars, drumming on the sails, pattering on
+the oilskin coats, whitening the decks of homeward-bound ships.&nbsp;
+Faint, ruddy flashes of lightning flicker in the starlight upon her
+mastheads.&nbsp; A chilly blast hums in the taut rigging, causing the
+ship to tremble to her very keel, and the soaked men on her decks to
+shiver in their wet clothes to the very marrow of their bones.&nbsp;
+Before one squall has flown over to sink in the eastern board, the edge
+of another peeps up already above the western horizon, racing up swift,
+shapeless, like a black bag full of frozen water ready to burst over
+your devoted head.&nbsp; The temper of the ruler of the ocean has changed.&nbsp;
+Each gust of the clouded mood that seemed warmed by the heat of a heart
+flaming with anger has its counterpart in the chilly blasts that seem
+blown from a breast turned to ice with a sudden revulsion of feeling.&nbsp;
+Instead of blinding your eyes and crushing your soul with a terrible
+apparatus of cloud and mists and seas and rain, the King of the West
+turns his power to contemptuous pelting of your back with icicles, to
+making your weary eyes water as if in grief, and your worn-out carcass
+quake pitifully.&nbsp; But each mood of the great autocrat has its own
+greatness, and each is hard to bear.&nbsp; Only the north-west phase
+of that mighty display is not demoralizing to the same extent, because
+between the hail and sleet squalls of a north-westerly gale one can
+see a long way ahead.</p>
+<p>To see! to see!&mdash;this is the craving of the sailor, as of the
+rest of blind humanity.&nbsp; To have his path made clear for him is
+the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous
+existence.&nbsp; I have heard a reserved, silent man, with no nerves
+to speak of, after three days of hard running in thick south-westerly
+weather, burst out passionately: &ldquo;I wish to God we could get sight
+of something!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We had just gone down below for a moment to commune in a battened-down
+cabin, with a large white chart lying limp and damp upon a cold and
+clammy table under the light of a smoky lamp.&nbsp; Sprawling over that
+seaman&rsquo;s silent and trusted adviser, with one elbow upon the coast
+of Africa and the other planted in the neighbourhood of Cape Hatteras
+(it was a general track-chart of the North Atlantic), my skipper lifted
+his rugged, hairy face, and glared at me in a half-exasperated, half-appealing
+way.&nbsp; We have seen no sun, moon, or stars for something like seven
+days.&nbsp; By the effect of the West Wind&rsquo;s wrath the celestial
+bodies had gone into hiding for a week or more, and the last three days
+had seen the force of a south-west gale grow from fresh, through strong,
+to heavy, as the entries in my log-book could testify.&nbsp; Then we
+separated, he to go on deck again, in obedience to that mysterious call
+that seems to sound for ever in a shipmaster&rsquo;s ears, I to stagger
+into my cabin with some vague notion of putting down the words &ldquo;Very
+heavy weather&rdquo; in a log-book not quite written up-to-date.&nbsp;
+But I gave it up, and crawled into my bunk instead, boots and hat on,
+all standing (it did not matter; everything was soaking wet, a heavy
+sea having burst the poop skylights the night before), to remain in
+a nightmarish state between waking and sleeping for a couple of hours
+of so-called rest.</p>
+<p>The south-westerly mood of the West Wind is an enemy of sleep, and
+even of a recumbent position, in the responsible officers of a ship.&nbsp;
+After two hours of futile, light-headed, inconsequent thinking upon
+all things under heaven in that dark, dank, wet and devastated cabin,
+I arose suddenly and staggered up on deck.&nbsp; The autocrat of the
+North Atlantic was still oppressing his kingdom and its outlying dependencies,
+even as far as the Bay of Biscay, in the dismal secrecy of thick, very
+thick, weather.&nbsp; The force of the wind, though we were running
+before it at the rate of some ten knots an hour, was so great that it
+drove me with a steady push to the front of the poop, where my commander
+was holding on.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What do you think of it?&rdquo; he addressed me in an interrogative
+yell.</p>
+<p>What I really thought was that we both had had just about enough
+of it.&nbsp; The manner in which the great West Wind chooses at times
+to administer his possessions does not commend itself to a person of
+peaceful and law-abiding disposition, inclined to draw distinctions
+between right and wrong in the face of natural forces, whose standard,
+naturally, is that of might alone.&nbsp; But, of course, I said nothing.&nbsp;
+For a man caught, as it were, between his skipper and the great West
+Wind silence is the safest sort of diplomacy.&nbsp; Moreover, I knew
+my skipper.&nbsp; He did not want to know what I thought.&nbsp; Shipmasters
+hanging on a breath before the thrones of the winds ruling the seas
+have their psychology, whose workings are as important to the ship and
+those on board of her as the changing moods of the weather.&nbsp; The
+man, as a matter of fact, under no circumstances, ever cared a brass
+farthing for what I or anybody else in his ship thought.&nbsp; He had
+had just about enough of it, I guessed, and what he was at really was
+a process of fishing for a suggestion.&nbsp; It was the pride of his
+life that he had never wasted a chance, no matter how boisterous, threatening,
+and dangerous, of a fair wind.&nbsp; Like men racing blindfold for a
+gap in a hedge, we were finishing a splendidly quick passage from the
+Antipodes, with a tremendous rush for the Channel in as thick a weather
+as any I can remember, but his psychology did not permit him to bring
+the ship to with a fair wind blowing&mdash;at least not on his own initiative.&nbsp;
+And yet he felt that very soon indeed something would have to be done.&nbsp;
+He wanted the suggestion to come from me, so that later on, when the
+trouble was over, he could argue this point with his own uncompromising
+spirit, laying the blame upon my shoulders.&nbsp; I must render him
+the justice that this sort of pride was his only weakness.</p>
+<p>But he got no suggestion from me.&nbsp; I understood his psychology.&nbsp;
+Besides, I had my own stock of weaknesses at the time (it is a different
+one now), and amongst them was the conceit of being remarkably well
+up in the psychology of the Westerly weather.&nbsp; I believed&mdash;not
+to mince matters&mdash;that I had a genius for reading the mind of the
+great ruler of high latitudes.&nbsp; I fancied I could discern already
+the coming of a change in his royal mood.&nbsp; And all I said was:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The weather&rsquo;s bound to clear up with the shift of wind.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Anybody knows that much!&rdquo; he snapped at me, at the highest
+pitch of his voice.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I mean before dark!&rdquo; I cried.</p>
+<p>This was all the opening he ever got from me.&nbsp; The eagerness
+with which he seized upon it gave me the measure of the anxiety he had
+been labouring under.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; he shouted, with an affectation of impatience,
+as if giving way to long entreaties.&nbsp; &ldquo;All right.&nbsp; If
+we don&rsquo;t get a shift by then we&rsquo;ll take that foresail off
+her and put her head under her wing for the night.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I was struck by the picturesque character of the phrase as applied
+to a ship brought-to in order to ride out a gale with wave after wave
+passing under her breast.&nbsp; I could see her resting in the tumult
+of the elements like a sea-bird sleeping in wild weather upon the raging
+waters with its head tucked under its wing.&nbsp; In imaginative precision,
+in true feeling, this is one of the most expressive sentences I have
+ever heard on human lips.&nbsp; But as to taking the foresail off that
+ship before we put her head under her wing, I had my grave doubts.&nbsp;
+They were justified.&nbsp; That long enduring piece of canvas was confiscated
+by the arbitrary decree of the West Wind, to whom belong the lives of
+men and the contrivances of their hands within the limits of his kingdom.&nbsp;
+With the sound of a faint explosion it vanished into the thick weather
+bodily, leaving behind of its stout substance not so much as one solitary
+strip big enough to be picked into a handful of lint for, say, a wounded
+elephant.&nbsp; Torn out of its bolt-ropes, it faded like a whiff of
+smoke in the smoky drift of clouds shattered and torn by the shift of
+wind.&nbsp; For the shift of wind had come.&nbsp; The unveiled, low
+sun glared angrily from a chaotic sky upon a confused and tremendous
+sea dashing itself upon a coast.&nbsp; We recognised the headland, and
+looked at each other in the silence of dumb wonder.&nbsp; Without knowing
+it in the least, we had run up alongside the Isle of Wight, and that
+tower, tinged a faint evening red in the salt wind-haze, was the lighthouse
+on St. Catherine&rsquo;s Point.</p>
+<p>My skipper recovered first from his astonishment.&nbsp; His bulging
+eyes sank back gradually into their orbits.&nbsp; His psychology, taking
+it all round, was really very creditable for an average sailor.&nbsp;
+He had been spared the humiliation of laying his ship to with a fair
+wind; and at once that man, of an open and truthful nature, spoke up
+in perfect good faith, rubbing together his brown, hairy hands&mdash;the
+hands of a master-craftsman upon the sea:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Humph! that&rsquo;s just about where I reckoned we had got
+to.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The transparency and ingenuousness, in a way, of that delusion, the
+airy tone, the hint of already growing pride, were perfectly delicious.&nbsp;
+But, in truth, this was one of the greatest surprises ever sprung by
+the clearing up mood of the West Wind upon one of the most accomplished
+of his courtiers.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XXVIII.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The winds of North and South are, as I have said, but small princes
+amongst the powers of the sea.&nbsp; They have no territory of their
+own; they are not reigning winds anywhere.&nbsp; Yet it is from their
+houses that the reigning dynasties which have shared between them the
+waters of the earth are sprung.&nbsp; All the weather of the world is
+based upon the contest of the Polar and Equatorial strains of that tyrannous
+race.&nbsp; The West Wind is the greatest king.&nbsp; The East rules
+between the Tropics.&nbsp; They have shared each ocean between them.&nbsp;
+Each has his genius of supreme rule.&nbsp; The King of the West never
+intrudes upon the recognised dominion of his kingly brother.&nbsp; He
+is a barbarian, of a northern type.&nbsp; Violent without craftiness,
+and furious without malice, one may imagine him seated masterfully with
+a double-edged sword on his knees upon the painted and gilt clouds of
+the sunset, bowing his shock head of golden locks, a flaming beard over
+his breast, imposing, colossal, mighty-limbed, with a thundering voice,
+distended cheeks and fierce blue eyes, urging the speed of his gales.&nbsp;
+The other, the East king, the king of blood-red sunrises, I represent
+to myself as a spare Southerner with clear-cut features, black-browed
+and dark-eyed, gray-robed, upright in sunshine, resting a smooth-shaven
+cheek in the palm of his hand, impenetrable, secret, full of wiles,
+fine-drawn, keen&mdash;meditating aggressions.</p>
+<p>The West Wind keeps faith with his brother, the King of the Easterly
+weather.&nbsp; &ldquo;What we have divided we have divided,&rdquo; he
+seems to say in his gruff voice, this ruler without guile, who hurls
+as if in sport enormous masses of cloud across the sky, and flings the
+great waves of the Atlantic clear across from the shores of the New
+World upon the hoary headlands of Old Europe, which harbours more kings
+and rulers upon its seamed and furrowed body than all the oceans of
+the world together.&nbsp; &ldquo;What we have divided we have divided;
+and if no rest and peace in this world have fallen to my share, leave
+me alone.&nbsp; Let me play at quoits with cyclonic gales, flinging
+the discs of spinning cloud and whirling air from one end of my dismal
+kingdom to the other: over the Great Banks or along the edges of pack-ice&mdash;this
+one with true aim right into the bight of the Bay of Biscay, that other
+upon the fiords of Norway, across the North Sea where the fishermen
+of many nations look watchfully into my angry eye.&nbsp; This is the
+time of kingly sport.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And the royal master of high latitudes sighs mightily, with the sinking
+sun upon his breast and the double-edged sword upon his knees, as if
+wearied by the innumerable centuries of a strenuous rule and saddened
+by the unchangeable aspect of the ocean under his feet&mdash;by the
+endless vista of future ages where the work of sowing the wind and reaping
+the whirlwind shall go on and on till his realm of living waters becomes
+a frozen and motionless ocean.&nbsp; But the other, crafty and unmoved,
+nursing his shaven chin between the thumb and forefinger of his slim
+and treacherous hand, thinks deep within his heart full of guile: &ldquo;Aha!
+our brother of the West has fallen into the mood of kingly melancholy.&nbsp;
+He is tired of playing with circular gales, and blowing great guns,
+and unrolling thick streamers of fog in wanton sport at the cost of
+his own poor, miserable subjects.&nbsp; Their fate is most pitiful.&nbsp;
+Let us make a foray upon the dominions of that noisy barbarian, a great
+raid from Finisterre to Hatteras, catching his fishermen unawares, baffling
+the fleets that trust to his power, and shooting sly arrows into the
+livers of men who court his good graces.&nbsp; He is, indeed, a worthless
+fellow.&rdquo;&nbsp; And forthwith, while the West Wind meditates upon
+the vanity of his irresistible might, the thing is done, and the Easterly
+weather sets in upon the North Atlantic.</p>
+<p>The prevailing weather of the North Atlantic is typical of the way
+in which the West Wind rules his realm on which the sun never sets.&nbsp;
+North Atlantic is the heart of a great empire.&nbsp; It is the part
+of the West Wind&rsquo;s dominions most thickly populated with generations
+of fine ships and hardy men.&nbsp; Heroic deeds and adventurous exploits
+have been performed there, within the very stronghold of his sway.&nbsp;
+The best sailors in the world have been born and bred under the shadow
+of his sceptre, learning to manage their ships with skill and audacity
+before the steps of his stormy throne.&nbsp; Reckless adventurers, toiling
+fishermen, admirals as wise and brave as the world has ever known, have
+waited upon the signs of his westerly sky.&nbsp; Fleets of victorious
+ships have hung upon his breath.&nbsp; He has tossed in his hand squadrons
+of war-scarred three-deckers, and shredded out in mere sport the bunting
+of flags hallowed in the traditions of honour and glory.&nbsp; He is
+a good friend and a dangerous enemy, without mercy to unseaworthy ships
+and faint-hearted seamen.&nbsp; In his kingly way he has taken but little
+account of lives sacrificed to his impulsive policy; he is a king with
+a double-edged sword bared in his right hand.&nbsp; The East Wind, an
+interloper in the dominions of Westerly weather, is an impassive-faced
+tyrant with a sharp poniard held behind his back for a treacherous stab.</p>
+<p>In his forays into the North Atlantic the East Wind behaves like
+a subtle and cruel adventurer without a notion of honour or fair play.&nbsp;
+Veiling his clear-cut, lean face in a thin layer of a hard, high cloud,
+I have seen him, like a wizened robber sheik of the sea, hold up large
+caravans of ships to the number of three hundred or more at the very
+gates of the English Channel.&nbsp; And the worst of it was that there
+was no ransom that we could pay to satisfy his avidity; for whatever
+evil is wrought by the raiding East Wind, it is done only to spite his
+kingly brother of the West.&nbsp; We gazed helplessly at the systematic,
+cold, gray-eyed obstinacy of the Easterly weather, while short rations
+became the order of the day, and the pinch of hunger under the breast-bone
+grew familiar to every sailor in that held-up fleet.&nbsp; Every day
+added to our numbers.&nbsp; In knots and groups and straggling parties
+we flung to and fro before the closed gate.&nbsp; And meantime the outward-bound
+ships passed, running through our humiliated ranks under all the canvas
+they could show.&nbsp; It is my idea that the Easterly Wind helps the
+ships away from home in the wicked hope that they shall all come to
+an untimely end and be heard of no more.&nbsp; For six weeks did the
+robber sheik hold the trade route of the earth, while our liege lord,
+the West Wind, slept profoundly like a tired Titan, or else remained
+lost in a mood of idle sadness known only to frank natures.&nbsp; All
+was still to the westward; we looked in vain towards his stronghold:
+the King slumbered on so deeply that he let his foraging brother steal
+the very mantle of gold-lined purple clouds from his bowed shoulders.&nbsp;
+What had become of the dazzling hoard of royal jewels exhibited at every
+close of day?&nbsp; Gone, disappeared, extinguished, carried off without
+leaving a single gold band or the flash of a single sunbeam in the evening
+sky!&nbsp; Day after day through a cold streak of heavens as bare and
+poor as the inside of a rifled safe a rayless and despoiled sun would
+slink shamefacedly, without pomp or show, to hide in haste under the
+waters.&nbsp; And still the King slept on, or mourned the vanity of
+his might and his power, while the thin-lipped intruder put the impress
+of his cold and implacable spirit upon the sky and sea.&nbsp; With every
+daybreak the rising sun had to wade through a crimson stream, luminous
+and sinister, like the spilt blood of celestial bodies murdered during
+the night.</p>
+<p>In this particular instance the mean interloper held the road for
+some six weeks on end, establishing his particular administrative methods
+over the best part of the North Atlantic.&nbsp; It looked as if the
+easterly weather had come to stay for ever, or, at least, till we had
+all starved to death in the held-up fleet&mdash;starved within sight,
+as it were, of plenty, within touch, almost, of the bountiful heart
+of the Empire.&nbsp; There we were, dotting with our white dry sails
+the hard blueness of the deep sea.&nbsp; There we were, a growing company
+of ships, each with her burden of grain, of timber, of wool, of hides,
+and even of oranges, for we had one or two belated fruit schooners in
+company.&nbsp; There we were, in that memorable spring of a certain
+year in the late seventies, dodging to and fro, baffled on every tack,
+and with our stores running down to sweepings of bread-lockers and scrapings
+of sugar-casks.&nbsp; It was just like the East Wind&rsquo;s nature
+to inflict starvation upon the bodies of unoffending sailors, while
+he corrupted their simple souls by an exasperation leading to outbursts
+of profanity as lurid as his blood-red sunrises.&nbsp; They were followed
+by gray days under the cover of high, motionless clouds that looked
+as if carved in a slab of ash-coloured marble.&nbsp; And each mean starved
+sunset left us calling with imprecations upon the West Wind even in
+its most veiled misty mood to wake up and give us our liberty, if only
+to rush on and dash the heads of our ships against the very walls of
+our unapproachable home.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XXIX.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>In the atmosphere of the Easterly weather, as pellucid as a piece
+of crystal and refracting like a prism, we could see the appalling numbers
+of our helpless company, even to those who in more normal conditions
+would have remained invisible, sails down under the horizon.&nbsp; It
+is the malicious pleasure of the East Wind to augment the power of your
+eyesight, in order, perhaps, that you should see better the perfect
+humiliation, the hopeless character of your captivity.&nbsp; Easterly
+weather is generally clear, and that is all that can be said for it&mdash;almost
+supernaturally clear when it likes; but whatever its mood, there is
+something uncanny in its nature.&nbsp; Its duplicity is such that it
+will deceive a scientific instrument.&nbsp; No barometer will give warning
+of an easterly gale, were it ever so wet.&nbsp; It would be an unjust
+and ungrateful thing to say that a barometer is a stupid contrivance.&nbsp;
+It is simply that the wiles of the East Wind are too much for its fundamental
+honesty.&nbsp; After years and years of experience the most trusty instrument
+of the sort that ever went to sea screwed on to a ship&rsquo;s cabin
+bulkhead will, almost invariably, be induced to rise by the diabolic
+ingenuity of the Easterly weather, just at the moment when the Easterly
+weather, discarding its methods of hard, dry, impassive cruelty, contemplates
+drowning what is left of your spirit in torrents of a peculiarly cold
+and horrid rain.&nbsp; The sleet-and-hail squalls following the lightning
+at the end of a westerly gale are cold and benumbing and stinging and
+cruel enough.&nbsp; But the dry, Easterly weather, when it turns to
+wet, seems to rain poisoned showers upon your head.&nbsp; It is a sort
+of steady, persistent, overwhelming, endlessly driving downpour, which
+makes your heart sick, and opens it to dismal forebodings.&nbsp; And
+the stormy mood of the Easterly weather looms black upon the sky with
+a peculiar and amazing blackness.&nbsp; The West Wind hangs heavy gray
+curtains of mist and spray before your gaze, but the Eastern interloper
+of the narrow seas, when he has mustered his courage and cruelty to
+the point of a gale, puts your eyes out, puts them out completely, makes
+you feel blind for life upon a lee-shore.&nbsp; It is the wind, also,
+that brings snow.</p>
+<p>Out of his black and merciless heart he flings a white blinding sheet
+upon the ships of the sea.&nbsp; He has more manners of villainy, and
+no more conscience than an Italian prince of the seventeenth century.&nbsp;
+His weapon is a dagger carried under a black cloak when he goes out
+on his unlawful enterprises.&nbsp; The mere hint of his approach fills
+with dread every craft that swims the sea, from fishing-smacks to four-masted
+ships that recognise the sway of the West Wind.&nbsp; Even in his most
+accommodating mood he inspires a dread of treachery.&nbsp; I have heard
+upwards of ten score of windlasses spring like one into clanking life
+in the dead of night, filling the Downs with a panic-struck sound of
+anchors being torn hurriedly out of the ground at the first breath of
+his approach.&nbsp; Fortunately, his heart often fails him: he does
+not always blow home upon our exposed coast; he has not the fearless
+temper of his Westerly brother.</p>
+<p>The natures of those two winds that share the dominions of the great
+oceans are fundamentally different.&nbsp; It is strange that the winds
+which men are prone to style capricious remain true to their character
+in all the various regions of the earth.&nbsp; To us here, for instance,
+the East Wind comes across a great continent, sweeping over the greatest
+body of solid land upon this earth.&nbsp; For the Australian east coast
+the East Wind is the wind of the ocean, coming across the greatest body
+of water upon the globe; and yet here and there its characteristics
+remain the same with a strange consistency in everything that is vile
+and base.&nbsp; The members of the West Wind&rsquo;s dynasty are modified
+in a way by the regions they rule, as a Hohenzollern, without ceasing
+to be himself, becomes a Roumanian by virtue of his throne, or a Saxe-Coburg
+learns to put the dress of Bulgarian phrases upon his particular thoughts,
+whatever they are.</p>
+<p>The autocratic sway of the West Wind, whether forty north or forty
+south of the Equator, is characterized by an open, generous, frank,
+barbarous recklessness.&nbsp; For he is a great autocrat, and to be
+a great autocrat you must be a great barbarian.&nbsp; I have been too
+much moulded to his sway to nurse now any idea of rebellion in my heart.&nbsp;
+Moreover, what is a rebellion within the four walls of a room against
+the tempestuous rule of the West Wind?&nbsp; I remain faithful to the
+memory of the mighty King with a double-edged sword in one hand, and
+in the other holding out rewards of great daily runs and famously quick
+passages to those of his courtiers who knew how to wait watchfully for
+every sign of his secret mood.&nbsp; As we deep-water men always reckoned,
+he made one year in three fairly lively for anybody having business
+upon the Atlantic or down there along the &ldquo;forties&rdquo; of the
+Southern Ocean.&nbsp; You had to take the bitter with the sweet; and
+it cannot be denied he played carelessly with our lives and fortunes.&nbsp;
+But, then, he was always a great king, fit to rule over the great waters
+where, strictly speaking, a man would have no business whatever but
+for his audacity.</p>
+<p>The audacious should not complain.&nbsp; A mere trader ought not
+to grumble at the tolls levied by a mighty king.&nbsp; His mightiness
+was sometimes very overwhelming; but even when you had to defy him openly,
+as on the banks of the Agulhas homeward bound from the East Indies,
+or on the outward passage round the Horn, he struck at you fairly his
+stinging blows (full in the face, too), and it was your business not
+to get too much staggered.&nbsp; And, after all, if you showed anything
+of a countenance, the good-natured barbarian would let you fight your
+way past the very steps of his throne.&nbsp; It was only now and then
+that the sword descended and a head fell; but if you fell you were sure
+of impressive obsequies and of a roomy, generous grave.</p>
+<p>Such is the king to whom Viking chieftains bowed their heads, and
+whom the modern and palatial steamship defies with impunity seven times
+a week.&nbsp; And yet it is but defiance, not victory.&nbsp; The magnificent
+barbarian sits enthroned in a mantle of gold-lined clouds looking from
+on high on great ships gliding like mechanical toys upon his sea and
+on men who, armed with fire and iron, no longer need to watch anxiously
+for the slightest sign of his royal mood.&nbsp; He is disregarded; but
+he has kept all his strength, all his splendour, and a great part of
+his power.&nbsp; Time itself, that shakes all the thrones, is on the
+side of that king.&nbsp; The sword in his hand remains as sharp as ever
+upon both its edges; and he may well go on playing his royal game of
+quoits with hurricanes, tossing them over from the continent of republics
+to the continent of kingdoms, in the assurance that both the new republics
+and the old kingdoms, the heat of fire and the strength of iron, with
+the untold generations of audacious men, shall crumble to dust at the
+steps of his throne, and pass away, and be forgotten before his own
+rule comes to an end.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XXX.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The estuaries of rivers appeal strongly to an adventurous imagination.&nbsp;
+This appeal is not always a charm, for there are estuaries of a particularly
+dispiriting ugliness: lowlands, mud-flats, or perhaps barren sandhills
+without beauty of form or amenity of aspect, covered with a shabby and
+scanty vegetation conveying the impression of poverty and uselessness.&nbsp;
+Sometimes such an ugliness is merely a repulsive mask.&nbsp; A river
+whose estuary resembles a breach in a sand rampart may flow through
+a most fertile country.&nbsp; But all the estuaries of great rivers
+have their fascination, the attractiveness of an open portal.&nbsp;
+Water is friendly to man.&nbsp; The ocean, a part of Nature furthest
+removed in the unchangeableness and majesty of its might from the spirit
+of mankind, has ever been a friend to the enterprising nations of the
+earth.&nbsp; And of all the elements this is the one to which men have
+always been prone to trust themselves, as if its immensity held a reward
+as vast as itself.</p>
+<p>From the offing the open estuary promises every possible fruition
+to adventurous hopes.&nbsp; That road open to enterprise and courage
+invites the explorer of coasts to new efforts towards the fulfilment
+of great expectations.&nbsp; The commander of the first Roman galley
+must have looked with an intense absorption upon the estuary of the
+Thames as he turned the beaked prow of his ship to the westward under
+the brow of the North Foreland.&nbsp; The estuary of the Thames is not
+beautiful; it has no noble features, no romantic grandeur of aspect,
+no smiling geniality; but it is wide open, spacious, inviting, hospitable
+at the first glance, with a strange air of mysteriousness which lingers
+about it to this very day.&nbsp; The navigation of his craft must have
+engrossed all the Roman&rsquo;s attention in the calm of a summer&rsquo;s
+day (he would choose his weather), when the single row of long sweeps
+(the galley would be a light one, not a trireme) could fall in easy
+cadence upon a sheet of water like plate-glass, reflecting faithfully
+the classic form of his vessel and the contour of the lonely shores
+close on his left hand.&nbsp; I assume he followed the land and passed
+through what is at present known as Margate Roads, groping his careful
+way along the hidden sandbanks, whose every tail and spit has its beacon
+or buoy nowadays.&nbsp; He must have been anxious, though no doubt he
+had collected beforehand on the shores of the Gauls a store of information
+from the talk of traders, adventurers, fishermen, slave-dealers, pirates&mdash;all
+sorts of unofficial men connected with the sea in a more or less reputable
+way.&nbsp; He would have heard of channels and sandbanks, of natural
+features of the land useful for sea-marks, of villages and tribes and
+modes of barter and precautions to take: with the instructive tales
+about native chiefs dyed more or less blue, whose character for greediness,
+ferocity, or amiability must have been expounded to him with that capacity
+for vivid language which seems joined naturally to the shadiness of
+moral character and recklessness of disposition.&nbsp; With that sort
+of spiced food provided for his anxious thought, watchful for strange
+men, strange beasts, strange turns of the tide, he would make the best
+of his way up, a military seaman with a short sword on thigh and a bronze
+helmet on his head, the pioneer post-captain of an imperial fleet.&nbsp;
+Was the tribe inhabiting the Isle of Thanet of a ferocious disposition,
+I wonder, and ready to fall with stone-studded clubs and wooden lances
+hardened in the fire, upon the backs of unwary mariners?</p>
+<p>Amongst the great commercial streams of these islands, the Thames
+is the only one, I think, open to romantic feeling, from the fact that
+the sight of human labour and the sounds of human industry do not come
+down its shores to the very sea, destroying the suggestion of mysterious
+vastness caused by the configuration of the shore.&nbsp; The broad inlet
+of the shallow North Sea passes gradually into the contracted shape
+of the river; but for a long time the feeling of the open water remains
+with the ship steering to the westward through one of the lighted and
+buoyed passage-ways of the Thames, such as Queen&rsquo;s Channel, Prince&rsquo;s
+Channel, Four-Fathom Channel; or else coming down the Swin from the
+north.&nbsp; The rush of the yellow flood-tide hurries her up as if
+into the unknown between the two fading lines of the coast.&nbsp; There
+are no features to this land, no conspicuous, far-famed landmarks for
+the eye; there is nothing so far down to tell you of the greatest agglomeration
+of mankind on earth dwelling no more than five and twenty miles away,
+where the sun sets in a blaze of colour flaming on a gold background,
+and the dark, low shores trend towards each other.&nbsp; And in the
+great silence the deep, faint booming of the big guns being tested at
+Shoeburyness hangs about the Nore&mdash;a historical spot in the keeping
+of one of England&rsquo;s appointed guardians.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XXXI.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The Nore sand remains covered at low-water, and never seen by human
+eye; but the Nore is a name to conjure with visions of historical events,
+of battles, of fleets, of mutinies, of watch and ward kept upon the
+great throbbing heart of the State.&nbsp; This ideal point of the estuary,
+this centre of memories, is marked upon the steely gray expanse of the
+waters by a lightship painted red that, from a couple of miles off,
+looks like a cheap and bizarre little toy.&nbsp; I remember how, on
+coming up the river for the first time, I was surprised at the smallness
+of that vivid object&mdash;a tiny warm speck of crimson lost in an immensity
+of gray tones.&nbsp; I was startled, as if of necessity the principal
+beacon in the water-way of the greatest town on earth should have presented
+imposing proportions.&nbsp; And, behold! the brown sprit-sail of a barge
+hid it entirely from my view.</p>
+<p>Coming in from the eastward, the bright colouring of the lightship
+marking the part of the river committed to the charge of an Admiral
+(the Commander-in-Chief at the Nore) accentuates the dreariness and
+the great breadth of the Thames Estuary.&nbsp; But soon the course of
+the ship opens the entrance of the Medway, with its men-of-war moored
+in line, and the long wooden jetty of Port Victoria, with its few low
+buildings like the beginning of a hasty settlement upon a wild and unexplored
+shore.&nbsp; The famous Thames barges sit in brown clusters upon the
+water with an effect of birds floating upon a pond.&nbsp; On the imposing
+expanse of the great estuary the traffic of the port where so much of
+the world&rsquo;s work and the world&rsquo;s thinking is being done
+becomes insignificant, scattered, streaming away in thin lines of ships
+stringing themselves out into the eastern quarter through the various
+navigable channels of which the Nore lightship marks the divergence.&nbsp;
+The coasting traffic inclines to the north; the deep-water ships steer
+east with a southern inclination, on through the Downs, to the most
+remote ends of the world.&nbsp; In the widening of the shores sinking
+low in the gray, smoky distances the greatness of the sea receives the
+mercantile fleet of good ships that London sends out upon the turn of
+every tide.&nbsp; They follow each other, going very close by the Essex
+shore.&nbsp; Such as the beads of a rosary told by business-like shipowners
+for the greater profit of the world they slip one by one into the open:
+while in the offing the inward-bound ships come up singly and in bunches
+from under the sea horizon closing the mouth of the river between Orfordness
+and North Foreland.&nbsp; They all converge upon the Nore, the warm
+speck of red upon the tones of drab and gray, with the distant shores
+running together towards the west, low and flat, like the sides of an
+enormous canal.&nbsp; The sea-reach of the Thames is straight, and,
+once Sheerness is left behind, its banks seem very uninhabited, except
+for the cluster of houses which is Southend, or here and there a lonely
+wooden jetty where petroleum ships discharge their dangerous cargoes,
+and the oil-storage tanks, low and round with slightly-domed roofs,
+peep over the edge of the fore-shore, as it were a village of Central
+African huts imitated in iron.&nbsp; Bordered by the black and shining
+mud-flats, the level marsh extends for miles.&nbsp; Away in the far
+background the land rises, closing the view with a continuous wooded
+slope, forming in the distance an interminable rampart overgrown with
+bushes.</p>
+<p>Then, on the slight turn of the Lower Hope Reach, clusters of factory
+chimneys come distinctly into view, tall and slender above the squat
+ranges of cement works in Grays and Greenhithe.&nbsp; Smoking quietly
+at the top against the great blaze of a magnificent sunset, they give
+an industrial character to the scene, speak of work, manufactures, and
+trade, as palm-groves on the coral strands of distant islands speak
+of the luxuriant grace, beauty and vigour of tropical nature.&nbsp;
+The houses of Gravesend crowd upon the shore with an effect of confusion
+as if they had tumbled down haphazard from the top of the hill at the
+back.&nbsp; The flatness of the Kentish shore ends there.&nbsp; A fleet
+of steam-tugs lies at anchor in front of the various piers.&nbsp; A
+conspicuous church spire, the first seen distinctly coming from the
+sea, has a thoughtful grace, the serenity of a fine form above the chaotic
+disorder of men&rsquo;s houses.&nbsp; But on the other side, on the
+flat Essex side, a shapeless and desolate red edifice, a vast pile of
+bricks with many windows and a slate roof more inaccessible than an
+Alpine slope, towers over the bend in monstrous ugliness, the tallest,
+heaviest building for miles around, a thing like an hotel, like a mansion
+of flats (all to let), exiled into these fields out of a street in West
+Kensington.&nbsp; Just round the corner, as it were, on a pier defined
+with stone blocks and wooden piles, a white mast, slender like a stalk
+of straw and crossed by a yard like a knitting-needle, flying the signals
+of flag and balloon, watches over a set of heavy dock-gates.&nbsp; Mast-heads
+and funnel-tops of ships peep above the ranges of corrugated iron roofs.&nbsp;
+This is the entrance to Tilbury Dock, the most recent of all London
+docks, the nearest to the sea.</p>
+<p>Between the crowded houses of Gravesend and the monstrous red-brick
+pile on the Essex shore the ship is surrendered fairly to the grasp
+of the river.&nbsp; That hint of loneliness, that soul of the sea which
+had accompanied her as far as the Lower Hope Reach, abandons her at
+the turn of the first bend above.&nbsp; The salt, acrid flavour is gone
+out of the air, together with a sense of unlimited space opening free
+beyond the threshold of sandbanks below the Nore.&nbsp; The waters of
+the sea rush on past Gravesend, tumbling the big mooring buoys laid
+along the face of the town; but the sea-freedom stops short there, surrendering
+the salt tide to the needs, the artifices, the contrivances of toiling
+men.&nbsp; Wharves, landing-places, dock-gates, waterside stairs, follow
+each other continuously right up to London Bridge, and the hum of men&rsquo;s
+work fills the river with a menacing, muttering note as of a breathless,
+ever-driving gale.&nbsp; The water-way, so fair above and wide below,
+flows oppressed by bricks and mortar and stone, by blackened timber
+and grimed glass and rusty iron, covered with black barges, whipped
+up by paddles and screws, overburdened with craft, overhung with chains,
+overshadowed by walls making a steep gorge for its bed, filled with
+a haze of smoke and dust.</p>
+<p>This stretch of the Thames from London Bridge to the Albert Docks
+is to other watersides of river ports what a virgin forest would be
+to a garden.&nbsp; It is a thing grown up, not made.&nbsp; It recalls
+a jungle by the confused, varied, and impenetrable aspect of the buildings
+that line the shore, not according to a planned purpose, but as if sprung
+up by accident from scattered seeds.&nbsp; Like the matted growth of
+bushes and creepers veiling the silent depths of an unexplored wilderness,
+they hide the depths of London&rsquo;s infinitely varied, vigorous,
+seething life.&nbsp; In other river ports it is not so.&nbsp; They lie
+open to their stream, with quays like broad clearings, with streets
+like avenues cut through thick timber for the convenience of trade.&nbsp;
+I am thinking now of river ports I have seen&mdash;of Antwerp, for instance;
+of Nantes or Bordeaux, or even old Rouen, where the night-watchmen of
+ships, elbows on rail, gaze at shop-windows and brilliant caf&eacute;s,
+and see the audience go in and come out of the opera-house.&nbsp; But
+London, the oldest and greatest of river ports, does not possess as
+much as a hundred yards of open quays upon its river front.&nbsp; Dark
+and impenetrable at night, like the face of a forest, is the London
+waterside.&nbsp; It is the waterside of watersides, where only one aspect
+of the world&rsquo;s life can be seen, and only one kind of men toils
+on the edge of the stream.&nbsp; The lightless walls seem to spring
+from the very mud upon which the stranded barges lie; and the narrow
+lanes coming down to the foreshore resemble the paths of smashed bushes
+and crumbled earth where big game comes to drink on the banks of tropical
+streams.</p>
+<p>Behind the growth of the London waterside the docks of London spread
+out unsuspected, smooth, and placid, lost amongst the buildings like
+dark lagoons hidden in a thick forest.&nbsp; They lie concealed in the
+intricate growth of houses with a few stalks of mastheads here and there
+overtopping the roof of some four-story warehouse.</p>
+<p>It is a strange conjunction this of roofs and mastheads, of walls
+and yard-arms.&nbsp; I remember once having the incongruity of the relation
+brought home to me in a practical way.&nbsp; I was the chief officer
+of a fine ship, just docked with a cargo of wool from Sydney, after
+a ninety days&rsquo; passage.&nbsp; In fact, we had not been in more
+than half an hour and I was still busy making her fast to the stone
+posts of a very narrow quay in front of a lofty warehouse.&nbsp; An
+old man with a gray whisker under the chin and brass buttons on his
+pilot-cloth jacket, hurried up along the quay hailing my ship by name.&nbsp;
+He was one of those officials called berthing-masters&mdash;not the
+one who had berthed us, but another, who, apparently, had been busy
+securing a steamer at the other end of the dock.&nbsp; I could see from
+afar his hard blue eyes staring at us, as if fascinated, with a queer
+sort of absorption.&nbsp; I wondered what that worthy sea-dog had found
+to criticise in my ship&rsquo;s rigging.&nbsp; And I, too, glanced aloft
+anxiously.&nbsp; I could see nothing wrong there.&nbsp; But perhaps
+that superannuated fellow-craftsman was simply admiring the ship&rsquo;s
+perfect order aloft, I thought, with some secret pride; for the chief
+officer is responsible for his ship&rsquo;s appearance, and as to her
+outward condition, he is the man open to praise or blame.&nbsp; Meantime
+the old salt (&ldquo;ex-coasting skipper&rdquo; was writ large all over
+his person) had hobbled up alongside in his bumpy, shiny boots, and,
+waving an arm, short and thick like the flipper of a seal, terminated
+by a paw red as an uncooked beef-steak, addressed the poop in a muffled,
+faint, roaring voice, as if a sample of every North-Sea fog of his life
+had been permanently lodged in his throat: &ldquo;Haul &rsquo;em round,
+Mr. Mate!&rdquo; were his words.&nbsp; &ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t look
+sharp, you&rsquo;ll have your topgallant yards through the windows of
+that &rsquo;ere warehouse presently!&rdquo;&nbsp; This was the only
+cause of his interest in the ship&rsquo;s beautiful spars.&nbsp; I own
+that for a time I was struck dumb by the bizarre associations of yard-arms
+and window-panes.&nbsp; To break windows is the last thing one would
+think of in connection with a ship&rsquo;s topgallant yard, unless,
+indeed, one were an experienced berthing-master in one of the London
+docks.&nbsp; This old chap was doing his little share of the world&rsquo;s
+work with proper efficiency.&nbsp; His little blue eyes had made out
+the danger many hundred yards off.&nbsp; His rheumaticky feet, tired
+with balancing that squat body for many years upon the decks of small
+coasters, and made sore by miles of tramping upon the flagstones of
+the dock side, had hurried up in time to avert a ridiculous catastrophe.&nbsp;
+I answered him pettishly, I fear, and as if I had known all about it
+before.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All right, all right! can&rsquo;t do everything at once.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He remained near by, muttering to himself till the yards had been
+hauled round at my order, and then raised again his foggy, thick voice:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;None too soon,&rdquo; he observed, with a critical glance
+up at the towering side of the warehouse.&nbsp; &ldquo;That&rsquo;s
+a half-sovereign in your pocket, Mr. Mate.&nbsp; You should always look
+first how you are for them windows before you begin to breast in your
+ship to the quay.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was good advice.&nbsp; But one cannot think of everything or foresee
+contacts of things apparently as remote as stars and hop-poles.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XXXII.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The view of ships lying moored in some of the older docks of London
+has always suggested to my mind the image of a flock of swans kept in
+the flooded backyard of grim tenement houses.&nbsp; The flatness of
+the walls surrounding the dark pool on which they float brings out wonderfully
+the flowing grace of the lines on which a ship&rsquo;s hull is built.&nbsp;
+The lightness of these forms, devised to meet the winds and the seas,
+makes, by contrast with the great piles of bricks, the chains and cables
+of their moorings appear very necessary, as if nothing less could prevent
+them from soaring upwards and over the roofs.&nbsp; The least puff of
+wind stealing round the corners of the dock buildings stirs these captives
+fettered to rigid shores.&nbsp; It is as if the soul of a ship were
+impatient of confinement.&nbsp; Those masted hulls, relieved of their
+cargo, become restless at the slightest hint of the wind&rsquo;s freedom.&nbsp;
+However tightly moored, they range a little at their berths, swaying
+imperceptibly the spire-like assemblages of cordage and spars.&nbsp;
+You can detect their impatience by watching the sway of the mastheads
+against the motionless, the soulless gravity of mortar and stones.&nbsp;
+As you pass alongside each hopeless prisoner chained to the quay, the
+slight grinding noise of the wooden fenders makes a sound of angry muttering.&nbsp;
+But, after all, it may be good for ships to go through a period of restraint
+and repose, as the restraint and self-communion of inactivity may be
+good for an unruly soul&mdash;not, indeed, that I mean to say that ships
+are unruly; on the contrary, they are faithful creatures, as so many
+men can testify.&nbsp; And faithfulness is a great restraint, the strongest
+bond laid upon the self-will of men and ships on this globe of land
+and sea.</p>
+<p>This interval of bondage in the docks rounds each period of a ship&rsquo;s
+life with the sense of accomplished duty, of an effectively played part
+in the work of the world.&nbsp; The dock is the scene of what the world
+would think the most serious part in the light, bounding, swaying life
+of a ship.&nbsp; But there are docks and docks.&nbsp; The ugliness of
+some docks is appalling.&nbsp; Wild horses would not drag from me the
+name of a certain river in the north whose narrow estuary is inhospitable
+and dangerous, and whose docks are like a nightmare of dreariness and
+misery.&nbsp; Their dismal shores are studded thickly with scaffold-like,
+enormous timber structures, whose lofty heads are veiled periodically
+by the infernal gritty night of a cloud of coal-dust.&nbsp; The most
+important ingredient for getting the world&rsquo;s work along is distributed
+there under the circumstances of the greatest cruelty meted out to helpless
+ships.&nbsp; Shut up in the desolate circuit of these basins, you would
+think a free ship would droop and die like a wild bird put into a dirty
+cage.&nbsp; But a ship, perhaps because of her faithfulness to men,
+will endure an extraordinary lot of ill-usage.&nbsp; Still, I have seen
+ships issue from certain docks like half-dead prisoners from a dungeon,
+bedraggled, overcome, wholly disguised in dirt, and with their men rolling
+white eyeballs in black and worried faces raised to a heaven which,
+in its smoky and soiled aspect, seemed to reflect the sordidness of
+the earth below.&nbsp; One thing, however, may be said for the docks
+of the Port of London on both sides of the river: for all the complaints
+of their insufficient equipment, of their obsolete rules, of failure
+(they say) in the matter of quick despatch, no ship need ever issue
+from their gates in a half-fainting condition.&nbsp; London is a general
+cargo port, as is only proper for the greatest capital of the world
+to be.&nbsp; General cargo ports belong to the aristocracy of the earth&rsquo;s
+trading places, and in that aristocracy London, as it is its way, has
+a unique physiognomy.</p>
+<p>The absence of picturesqueness cannot be laid to the charge of the
+docks opening into the Thames.&nbsp; For all my unkind comparisons to
+swans and backyards, it cannot be denied that each dock or group of
+docks along the north side of the river has its own individual attractiveness.&nbsp;
+Beginning with the cosy little St. Katherine&rsquo;s Dock, lying overshadowed
+and black like a quiet pool amongst rocky crags, through the venerable
+and sympathetic London Docks, with not a single line of rails in the
+whole of their area and the aroma of spices lingering between its warehouses,
+with their far-famed wine-cellars&mdash;down through the interesting
+group of West India Docks, the fine docks at Blackwall, on past the
+Galleons Reach entrance of the Victoria and Albert Docks, right down
+to the vast gloom of the great basins in Tilbury, each of those places
+of restraint for ships has its own peculiar physiognomy, its own expression.&nbsp;
+And what makes them unique and attractive is their common trait of being
+romantic in their usefulness.</p>
+<p>In their way they are as romantic as the river they serve is unlike
+all the other commercial streams of the world.&nbsp; The cosiness of
+the St. Katherine&rsquo;s Dock, the old-world air of the London Docks,
+remain impressed upon the memory.&nbsp; The docks down the river, abreast
+of Woolwich, are imposing by their proportions and the vast scale of
+the ugliness that forms their surroundings&mdash;ugliness so picturesque
+as to become a delight to the eye.&nbsp; When one talks of the Thames
+docks, &ldquo;beauty&rdquo; is a vain word, but romance has lived too
+long upon this river not to have thrown a mantle of glamour upon its
+banks.</p>
+<p>The antiquity of the port appeals to the imagination by the long
+chain of adventurous enterprises that had their inception in the town
+and floated out into the world on the waters of the river.&nbsp; Even
+the newest of the docks, the Tilbury Dock, shares in the glamour conferred
+by historical associations.&nbsp; Queen Elizabeth has made one of her
+progresses down there, not one of her journeys of pomp and ceremony,
+but an anxious business progress at a crisis of national history.&nbsp;
+The menace of that time has passed away, and now Tilbury is known by
+its docks.&nbsp; These are very modern, but their remoteness and isolation
+upon the Essex marsh, the days of failure attending their creation,
+invested them with a romantic air.&nbsp; Nothing in those days could
+have been more striking than the vast, empty basins, surrounded by miles
+of bare quays and the ranges of cargo-sheds, where two or three ships
+seemed lost like bewitched children in a forest of gaunt, hydraulic
+cranes.&nbsp; One received a wonderful impression of utter abandonment,
+of wasted efficiency.&nbsp; From the first the Tilbury Docks were very
+efficient and ready for their task, but they had come, perhaps, too
+soon into the field.&nbsp; A great future lies before Tilbury Docks.&nbsp;
+They shall never fill a long-felt want (in the sacramental phrase that
+is applied to railways, tunnels, newspapers, and new editions of books).&nbsp;
+They were too early in the field.&nbsp; The want shall never be felt
+because, free of the trammels of the tide, easy of access, magnificent
+and desolate, they are already there, prepared to take and keep the
+biggest ships that float upon the sea.&nbsp; They are worthy of the
+oldest river port in the world.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;And, truth to say, for all the criticisms flung upon the heads
+of the dock companies, the other docks of the Thames are no disgrace
+to the town with a population greater than that of some commonwealths.&nbsp;
+The growth of London as a well-equipped port has been slow, while not
+unworthy of a great capital, of a great centre of distribution.&nbsp;
+It must not be forgotten that London has not the backing of great industrial
+districts or great fields of natural exploitation.&nbsp; In this it
+differs from Liverpool, from Cardiff, from Newcastle, from Glasgow;
+and therein the Thames differs from the Mersey, from the Tyne, from
+the Clyde.&nbsp; It is an historical river; it is a romantic stream
+flowing through the centre of great affairs, and for all the criticism
+of the river&rsquo;s administration, my contention is that its development
+has been worthy of its dignity.&nbsp; For a long time the stream itself
+could accommodate quite easily the oversea and coasting traffic.&nbsp;
+That was in the days when, in the part called the Pool, just below London
+Bridge, the vessels moored stem and stern in the very strength of the
+tide formed one solid mass like an island covered with a forest of gaunt,
+leafless trees; and when the trade had grown too big for the river there
+came the St. Katherine&rsquo;s Docks and the London Docks, magnificent
+undertakings answering to the need of their time.&nbsp; The same may
+be said of the other artificial lakes full of ships that go in and out
+upon this high road to all parts of the world.&nbsp; The labour of the
+imperial waterway goes on from generation to generation, goes on day
+and night.&nbsp; Nothing ever arrests its sleepless industry but the
+coming of a heavy fog, which clothes the teeming stream in a mantle
+of impenetrable stillness.</p>
+<p>After the gradual cessation of all sound and movement on the faithful
+river, only the ringing of ships&rsquo; bells is heard, mysterious and
+muffled in the white vapour from London Bridge right down to the Nore,
+for miles and miles in a decrescendo tinkling, to where the estuary
+broadens out into the North Sea, and the anchored ships lie scattered
+thinly in the shrouded channels between the sand-banks of the Thames&rsquo;
+mouth.&nbsp; Through the long and glorious tale of years of the river&rsquo;s
+strenuous service to its people these are its only breathing times.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XXXIII.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>A ship in dock, surrounded by quays and the walls of warehouses,
+has the appearance of a prisoner meditating upon freedom in the sadness
+of a free spirit put under restraint.&nbsp; Chain cables and stout ropes
+keep her bound to stone posts at the edge of a paved shore, and a berthing-master,
+with brass buttons on his coat, walks about like a weather-beaten and
+ruddy gaoler, casting jealous, watchful glances upon the moorings that
+fetter a ship lying passive and still and safe, as if lost in deep regrets
+of her days of liberty and danger on the sea.</p>
+<p>The swarm of renegades&mdash;dock-masters, berthing-masters, gatemen,
+and such like&mdash;appear to nurse an immense distrust of the captive
+ship&rsquo;s resignation.&nbsp; There never seem chains and ropes enough
+to satisfy their minds concerned with the safe binding of free ships
+to the strong, muddy, enslaved earth.&nbsp; &ldquo;You had better put
+another bight of a hawser astern, Mr. Mate,&rdquo; is the usual phrase
+in their mouth.&nbsp; I brand them for renegades, because most of them
+have been sailors in their time.&nbsp; As if the infirmities of old
+age&mdash;the gray hair, the wrinkles at the corners of the eyes, and
+the knotted veins of the hands&mdash;were the symptoms of moral poison,
+they prowl about the quays with an underhand air of gloating over the
+broken spirit of noble captives.&nbsp; They want more fenders, more
+breasting-ropes; they want more springs, more shackles, more fetters;
+they want to make ships with volatile souls as motionless as square
+blocks of stone.&nbsp; They stand on the mud of pavements, these degraded
+sea-dogs, with long lines of railway-trucks clanking their couplings
+behind their backs, and run malevolent glances over your ship from headgear
+to taffrail, only wishing to tyrannize over the poor creature under
+the hypocritical cloak of benevolence and care.&nbsp; Here and there
+cargo cranes looking like instruments of torture for ships swing cruel
+hooks at the end of long chains.&nbsp; Gangs of dock-labourers swarm
+with muddy feet over the gangways.&nbsp; It is a moving sight this,
+of so many men of the earth, earthy, who never cared anything for a
+ship, trampling unconcerned, brutal and hob-nailed upon her helpless
+body.</p>
+<p>Fortunately, nothing can deface the beauty of a ship.&nbsp; That
+sense of a dungeon, that sense of a horrible and degrading misfortune
+overtaking a creature fair to see and safe to trust, attaches only to
+ships moored in the docks of great European ports.&nbsp; You feel that
+they are dishonestly locked up, to be hunted about from wharf to wharf
+on a dark, greasy, square pool of black water as a brutal reward at
+the end of a faithful voyage.</p>
+<p>A ship anchored in an open roadstead, with cargo-lighters alongside
+and her own tackle swinging the burden over the rail, is accomplishing
+in freedom a function of her life.&nbsp; There is no restraint; there
+is space: clear water around her, and a clear sky above her mastheads,
+with a landscape of green hills and charming bays opening around her
+anchorage.&nbsp; She is not abandoned by her own men to the tender mercies
+of shore people.&nbsp; She still shelters, and is looked after by, her
+own little devoted band, and you feel that presently she will glide
+between the headlands and disappear.&nbsp; It is only at home, in dock,
+that she lies abandoned, shut off from freedom by all the artifices
+of men that think of quick despatch and profitable freights.&nbsp; It
+is only then that the odious, rectangular shadows of walls and roofs
+fall upon her decks, with showers of soot.</p>
+<p>To a man who has never seen the extraordinary nobility, strength,
+and grace that the devoted generations of ship-builders have evolved
+from some pure nooks of their simple souls, the sight that could be
+seen five-and-twenty years ago of a large fleet of clippers moored along
+the north side of the New South Dock was an inspiring spectacle.&nbsp;
+Then there was a quarter of a mile of them, from the iron dockyard-gates
+guarded by policemen, in a long, forest-like perspective of masts, moored
+two and two to many stout wooden jetties.&nbsp; Their spars dwarfed
+with their loftiness the corrugated-iron sheds, their jibbooms extended
+far over the shore, their white-and-gold figure-heads, almost dazzling
+in their purity, overhung the straight, long quay above the mud and
+dirt of the wharfside, with the busy figures of groups and single men
+moving to and fro, restless and grimy under their soaring immobility.</p>
+<p>At tide-time you would see one of the loaded ships with battened-down
+hatches drop out of the ranks and float in the clear space of the dock,
+held by lines dark and slender, like the first threads of a spider&rsquo;s
+web, extending from her bows and her quarters to the mooring-posts on
+shore.&nbsp; There, graceful and still, like a bird ready to spread
+its wings, she waited till, at the opening of the gates, a tug or two
+would hurry in noisily, hovering round her with an air of fuss and solicitude,
+and take her out into the river, tending, shepherding her through open
+bridges, through dam-like gates between the flat pier-heads, with a
+bit of green lawn surrounded by gravel and a white signal-mast with
+yard and gaff, flying a couple of dingy blue, red, or white flags.</p>
+<p>This New South Dock (it was its official name), round which my earlier
+professional memories are centred, belongs to the group of West India
+Docks, together with two smaller and much older basins called Import
+and Export respectively, both with the greatness of their trade departed
+from them already.&nbsp; Picturesque and clean as docks go, these twin
+basins spread side by side the dark lustre of their glassy water, sparely
+peopled by a few ships laid up on buoys or tucked far away from each
+other at the end of sheds in the corners of empty quays, where they
+seemed to slumber quietly remote, untouched by the bustle of men&rsquo;s
+affairs&mdash;in retreat rather than in captivity.&nbsp; They were quaint
+and sympathetic, those two homely basins, unfurnished and silent, with
+no aggressive display of cranes, no apparatus of hurry and work on their
+narrow shores.&nbsp; No railway-lines cumbered them.&nbsp; The knots
+of labourers trooping in clumsily round the corners of cargo-sheds to
+eat their food in peace out of red cotton handkerchiefs had the air
+of picnicking by the side of a lonely mountain pool.&nbsp; They were
+restful (and I should say very unprofitable), those basins, where the
+chief officer of one of the ships involved in the harassing, strenuous,
+noisy activity of the New South Dock only a few yards away could escape
+in the dinner-hour to stroll, unhampered by men and affairs, meditating
+(if he chose) on the vanity of all things human.&nbsp; At one time they
+must have been full of good old slow West Indiamen of the square-stern
+type, that took their captivity, one imagines, as stolidly as they had
+faced the buffeting of the waves with their blunt, honest bows, and
+disgorged sugar, rum, molasses, coffee, or logwood sedately with their
+own winch and tackle.&nbsp; But when I knew them, of exports there was
+never a sign that one could detect; and all the imports I have ever
+seen were some rare cargoes of tropical timber, enormous baulks roughed
+out of iron trunks grown in the woods about the Gulf of Mexico.&nbsp;
+They lay piled up in stacks of mighty boles, and it was hard to believe
+that all this mass of dead and stripped trees had come out of the flanks
+of a slender, innocent-looking little barque with, as likely as not,
+a homely woman&rsquo;s name&mdash;Ellen this or Annie that&mdash;upon
+her fine bows.&nbsp; But this is generally the case with a discharged
+cargo.&nbsp; Once spread at large over the quay, it looks the most impossible
+bulk to have all come there out of that ship along-side.</p>
+<p>They were quiet, serene nooks in the busy world of docks, these basins
+where it has never been my good luck to get a berth after some more
+or less arduous passage.&nbsp; But one could see at a glance that men
+and ships were never hustled there.&nbsp; They were so quiet that, remembering
+them well, one comes to doubt that they ever existed&mdash;places of
+repose for tired ships to dream in, places of meditation rather than
+work, where wicked ships&mdash;the cranky, the lazy, the wet, the bad
+sea boats, the wild steerers, the capricious, the pig-headed, the generally
+ungovernable&mdash;would have full leisure to take count and repent
+of their sins, sorrowful and naked, with their rent garments of sailcloth
+stripped off them, and with the dust and ashes of the London atmosphere
+upon their mastheads.&nbsp; For that the worst of ships would repent
+if she were ever given time I make no doubt.&nbsp; I have known too
+many of them.&nbsp; No ship is wholly bad; and now that their bodies
+that had braved so many tempests have been blown off the face of the
+sea by a puff of steam, the evil and the good together into the limbo
+of things that have served their time, there can be no harm in affirming
+that in these vanished generations of willing servants there never has
+been one utterly unredeemable soul.</p>
+<p>In the New South Dock there was certainly no time for remorse, introspection,
+repentance, or any phenomena of inner life either for the captive ships
+or for their officers.&nbsp; From six in the morning till six at night
+the hard labour of the prison-house, which rewards the valiance of ships
+that win the harbour went on steadily, great slings of general cargo
+swinging over the rail, to drop plumb into the hatchways at the sign
+of the gangway-tender&rsquo;s hand.&nbsp; The New South Dock was especially
+a loading dock for the Colonies in those great (and last) days of smart
+wool-clippers, good to look at and&mdash;well&mdash;exciting to handle.&nbsp;
+Some of them were more fair to see than the others; many were (to put
+it mildly) somewhat over-masted; all were expected to make good passages;
+and of all that line of ships, whose rigging made a thick, enormous
+network against the sky, whose brasses flashed almost as far as the
+eye of the policeman at the gates could reach, there was hardly one
+that knew of any other port amongst all the ports on the wide earth
+but London and Sydney, or London and Melbourne, or London and Adelaide,
+perhaps with Hobart Town added for those of smaller tonnage.&nbsp; One
+could almost have believed, as her gray-whiskered second mate used to
+say of the old <i>Duke of S</i>-, that they knew the road to the Antipodes
+better than their own skippers, who, year in, year out, took them from
+London&mdash;the place of captivity&mdash;to some Australian port where,
+twenty-five years ago, though moored well and tight enough to the wooden
+wharves, they felt themselves no captives, but honoured guests.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XXXIV.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>These towns of the Antipodes, not so great then as they are now,
+took an interest in the shipping, the running links with &ldquo;home,&rdquo;
+whose numbers confirmed the sense of their growing importance.&nbsp;
+They made it part and parcel of their daily interests.&nbsp; This was
+especially the case in Sydney, where, from the heart of the fair city,
+down the vista of important streets, could be seen the wool-clippers
+lying at the Circular Quay&mdash;no walled prison-house of a dock that,
+but the integral part of one of the finest, most beautiful, vast, and
+safe bays the sun ever shone upon.&nbsp; Now great steam-liners lie
+at these berths, always reserved for the sea aristocracy&mdash;grand
+and imposing enough ships, but here to-day and gone next week; whereas
+the general cargo, emigrant, and passenger clippers of my time, rigged
+with heavy spars, and built on fine lines, used to remain for months
+together waiting for their load of wool.&nbsp; Their names attained
+the dignity of household words.&nbsp; On Sundays and holidays the citizens
+trooped down, on visiting bent, and the lonely officer on duty solaced
+himself by playing the cicerone&mdash;especially to the citizenesses
+with engaging manners and a well-developed sense of the fun that may
+be got out of the inspection of a ship&rsquo;s cabins and state-rooms.&nbsp;
+The tinkle of more or less untuned cottage pianos floated out of open
+stern-ports till the gas-lamps began to twinkle in the streets, and
+the ship&rsquo;s night-watchman, coming sleepily on duty after his unsatisfactory
+day slumbers, hauled down the flags and fastened a lighted lantern at
+the break of the gangway.&nbsp; The night closed rapidly upon the silent
+ships with their crews on shore.&nbsp; Up a short, steep ascent by the
+King&rsquo;s Head pub., patronized by the cooks and stewards of the
+fleet, the voice of a man crying &ldquo;Hot saveloys!&rdquo; at the
+end of George Street, where the cheap eating-houses (sixpence a meal)
+were kept by Chinamen (Sun-kum-on&rsquo;s was not bad), is heard at
+regular intervals.&nbsp; I have listened for hours to this most pertinacious
+pedlar (I wonder whether he is dead or has made a fortune), while sitting
+on the rail of the old <i>Duke of S</i>- (she&rsquo;s dead, poor thing!
+a violent death on the coast of New Zealand), fascinated by the monotony,
+the regularity, the abruptness of the recurring cry, and so exasperated
+at the absurd spell, that I wished the fellow would choke himself to
+death with a mouthful of his own infamous wares.</p>
+<p>A stupid job, and fit only for an old man, my comrades used to tell
+me, to be the night-watchman of a captive (though honoured) ship.&nbsp;
+And generally the oldest of the able seamen in a ship&rsquo;s crew does
+get it.&nbsp; But sometimes neither the oldest nor any other fairly
+steady seaman is forthcoming.&nbsp; Ships&rsquo; crews had the trick
+of melting away swiftly in those days.&nbsp; So, probably on account
+of my youth, innocence, and pensive habits (which made me sometimes
+dilatory in my work about the rigging), I was suddenly nominated, in
+our chief mate Mr. B-&rsquo;s most sardonic tones, to that enviable
+situation.&nbsp; I do not regret the experience.&nbsp; The night humours
+of the town descended from the street to the waterside in the still
+watches of the night: larrikins rushing down in bands to settle some
+quarrel by a stand-up fight, away from the police, in an indistinct
+ring half hidden by piles of cargo, with the sounds of blows, a groan
+now and then, the stamping of feet, and the cry of &ldquo;Time!&rdquo;
+rising suddenly above the sinister and excited murmurs; night-prowlers,
+pursued or pursuing, with a stifled shriek followed by a profound silence,
+or slinking stealthily along-side like ghosts, and addressing me from
+the quay below in mysterious tones with incomprehensible propositions.&nbsp;
+The cabmen, too, who twice a week, on the night when the A.S.N. Company&rsquo;s
+passenger-boat was due to arrive, used to range a battalion of blazing
+lamps opposite the ship, were very amusing in their way.&nbsp; They
+got down from their perches and told each other impolite stories in
+racy language, every word of which reached me distinctly over the bulwarks
+as I sat smoking on the main-hatch.&nbsp; On one occasion I had an hour
+or so of a most intellectual conversation with a person whom I could
+not see distinctly, a gentleman from England, he said, with a cultivated
+voice, I on deck and he on the quay sitting on the case of a piano (landed
+out of our hold that very afternoon), and smoking a cigar which smelt
+very good.&nbsp; We touched, in our discourse, upon science, politics,
+natural history, and operatic singers.&nbsp; Then, after remarking abruptly,
+&ldquo;You seem to be rather intelligent, my man,&rdquo; he informed
+me pointedly that his name was Mr. Senior, and walked off&mdash;to his
+hotel, I suppose.&nbsp; Shadows!&nbsp; Shadows!&nbsp; I think I saw
+a white whisker as he turned under the lamp-post.&nbsp; It is a shock
+to think that in the natural course of nature he must be dead by now.&nbsp;
+There was nothing to object to in his intelligence but a little dogmatism
+maybe.&nbsp; And his name was Senior!&nbsp; Mr. Senior!</p>
+<p>The position had its drawbacks, however.&nbsp; One wintry, blustering,
+dark night in July, as I stood sleepily out of the rain under the break
+of the poop something resembling an ostrich dashed up the gangway.&nbsp;
+I say ostrich because the creature, though it ran on two legs, appeared
+to help its progress by working a pair of short wings; it was a man,
+however, only his coat, ripped up the back and flapping in two halves
+above his shoulders, gave him that weird and fowl-like appearance.&nbsp;
+At least, I suppose it was his coat, for it was impossible to make him
+out distinctly.&nbsp; How he managed to come so straight upon me, at
+speed and without a stumble over a strange deck, I cannot imagine.&nbsp;
+He must have been able to see in the dark better than any cat.&nbsp;
+He overwhelmed me with panting entreaties to let him take shelter till
+morning in our forecastle.&nbsp; Following my strict orders, I refused
+his request, mildly at first, in a sterner tone as he insisted with
+growing impudence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For God&rsquo;s sake let me, matey!&nbsp; Some of &rsquo;em
+are after me&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve got hold of a ticker here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You clear out of this!&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be hard on a chap, old man!&rdquo; he whined pitifully.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now then, get ashore at once.&nbsp; Do you hear?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Silence.&nbsp; He appeared to cringe, mute, as if words had failed
+him through grief; then&mdash;bang! came a concussion and a great flash
+of light in which he vanished, leaving me prone on my back with the
+most abominable black eye that anybody ever got in the faithful discharge
+of duty.&nbsp; Shadows!&nbsp; Shadows!&nbsp; I hope he escaped the enemies
+he was fleeing from to live and flourish to this day.&nbsp; But his
+fist was uncommonly hard and his aim miraculously true in the dark.</p>
+<p>There were other experiences, less painful and more funny for the
+most part, with one amongst them of a dramatic complexion; but the greatest
+experience of them all was Mr. B-, our chief mate himself.</p>
+<p>He used to go ashore every night to foregather in some hotel&rsquo;s
+parlour with his crony, the mate of the barque <i>Cicero</i>, lying
+on the other side of the Circular Quay.&nbsp; Late at night I would
+hear from afar their stumbling footsteps and their voices raised in
+endless argument.&nbsp; The mate of the <i>Cicero</i> was seeing his
+friend on board.&nbsp; They would continue their senseless and muddled
+discourse in tones of profound friendship for half an hour or so at
+the shore end of our gangway, and then I would hear Mr. B- insisting
+that he must see the other on board his ship.&nbsp; And away they would
+go, their voices, still conversing with excessive amity, being heard
+moving all round the harbour.&nbsp; It happened more than once that
+they would thus perambulate three or four times the distance, each seeing
+the other on board his ship out of pure and disinterested affection.&nbsp;
+Then, through sheer weariness, or perhaps in a moment of forgetfulness,
+they would manage to part from each other somehow, and by-and-by the
+planks of our long gangway would bend and creak under the weight of
+Mr. B- coming on board for good at last.</p>
+<p>On the rail his burly form would stop and stand swaying.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Watchman!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A pause.</p>
+<p>He waited for a moment of steadiness before negotiating the three
+steps of the inside ladder from rail to deck; and the watchman, taught
+by experience, would forbear offering help which would be received as
+an insult at that particular stage of the mate&rsquo;s return.&nbsp;
+But many times I trembled for his neck.&nbsp; He was a heavy man.</p>
+<p>Then with a rush and a thump it would be done.&nbsp; He never had
+to pick himself up; but it took him a minute or so to pull himself together
+after the descent.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Watchman!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Captain aboard?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Pause.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dog aboard?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Pause.</p>
+<p>Our dog was a gaunt and unpleasant beast, more like a wolf in poor
+health than a dog, and I never noticed Mr. B- at any other time show
+the slightest interest in the doings of the animal.&nbsp; But that question
+never failed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s have your arm to steady me along.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I was always prepared for that request.&nbsp; He leaned on me heavily
+till near enough the cabin-door to catch hold of the handle.&nbsp; Then
+he would let go my arm at once.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;ll do.&nbsp; I can manage now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And he could manage.&nbsp; He could manage to find his way into his
+berth, light his lamp, get into his bed&mdash;ay, and get out of it
+when I called him at half-past five, the first man on deck, lifting
+the cup of morning coffee to his lips with a steady hand, ready for
+duty as though he had virtuously slept ten solid hours&mdash;a better
+chief officer than many a man who had never tasted grog in his life.&nbsp;
+He could manage all that, but could never manage to get on in life.</p>
+<p>Only once he failed to seize the cabin-door handle at the first grab.&nbsp;
+He waited a little, tried again, and again failed.&nbsp; His weight
+was growing heavier on my arm.&nbsp; He sighed slowly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;D-n that handle!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Without letting go his hold of me he turned about, his face lit up
+bright as day by the full moon.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wish she were out at sea,&rdquo; he growled savagely.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I felt the need to say something, because he hung on to me as if
+lost, breathing heavily.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ports are no good&mdash;ships rot, men go to the devil!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I kept still, and after a while he repeated with a sigh.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wish she were at sea out of this.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So do I, sir,&rdquo; I ventured.</p>
+<p>Holding my shoulder, he turned upon me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You!&nbsp; What&rsquo;s that to you where she is?&nbsp; You
+don&rsquo;t&mdash;drink.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And even on that night he &ldquo;managed it&rdquo; at last.&nbsp;
+He got hold of the handle.&nbsp; But he did not manage to light his
+lamp (I don&rsquo;t think he even tried), though in the morning as usual
+he was the first on deck, bull-necked, curly-headed, watching the hands
+turn-to with his sardonic expression and unflinching gaze.</p>
+<p>I met him ten years afterwards, casually, unexpectedly, in the street,
+on coming out of my consignee office.&nbsp; I was not likely to have
+forgotten him with his &ldquo;I can manage now.&rdquo;&nbsp; He recognised
+me at once, remembered my name, and in what ship I had served under
+his orders.&nbsp; He looked me over from head to foot.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am commanding a little barque,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;loading
+here for Mauritius.&rdquo;&nbsp; Then, thoughtlessly, I added: &ldquo;And
+what are you doing, Mr. B-?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I,&rdquo; he said, looking at me unflinchingly, with his old
+sardonic grin&mdash;&ldquo;I am looking for something to do.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I felt I would rather have bitten out my tongue.&nbsp; His jet-black,
+curly hair had turned iron-gray; he was scrupulously neat as ever, but
+frightfully threadbare.&nbsp; His shiny boots were worn down at heel.&nbsp;
+But he forgave me, and we drove off together in a hansom to dine on
+board my ship.&nbsp; He went over her conscientiously, praised her heartily,
+congratulated me on my command with absolute sincerity.&nbsp; At dinner,
+as I offered him wine and beer he shook his head, and as I sat looking
+at him interrogatively, muttered in an undertone:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve given up all that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>After dinner we came again on deck.&nbsp; It seemed as though he
+could not tear himself away from the ship.&nbsp; We were fitting some
+new lower rigging, and he hung about, approving, suggesting, giving
+me advice in his old manner.&nbsp; Twice he addressed me as &ldquo;My
+boy,&rdquo; and corrected himself quickly to &ldquo;Captain.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+My mate was about to leave me (to get married), but I concealed the
+fact from Mr. B-.&nbsp; I was afraid he would ask me to give him the
+berth in some ghastly jocular hint that I could not refuse to take.&nbsp;
+I was afraid.&nbsp; It would have been impossible.&nbsp; I could not
+have given orders to Mr. B-, and I am sure he would not have taken them
+from me very long.&nbsp; He could not have managed that, though he had
+managed to break himself from drink&mdash;too late.</p>
+<p>He said good-bye at last.&nbsp; As I watched his burly, bull-necked
+figure walk away up the street, I wondered with a sinking heart whether
+he had much more than the price of a night&rsquo;s lodging in his pocket.&nbsp;
+And I understood that if that very minute I were to call out after him,
+he would not even turn his head.&nbsp; He, too, is no more than a shadow,
+but I seem to hear his words spoken on the moonlit deck of the old <i>Duke</i>&mdash;:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ports are no good&mdash;ships rot, men go to the devil!&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XXXV.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Ships!&rdquo; exclaimed an elderly seaman in clean shore togs.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Ships&rdquo;&mdash;and his keen glance, turning away from my
+face, ran along the vista of magnificent figure-heads that in the late
+seventies used to overhang in a serried rank the muddy pavement by the
+side of the New South Dock&mdash;&ldquo;ships are all right; it&rsquo;s
+the men in &rsquo;em. . .&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Fifty hulls, at least, moulded on lines of beauty and speed&mdash;hulls
+of wood, of iron, expressing in their forms the highest achievement
+of modern ship-building&mdash;lay moored all in a row, stem to quay,
+as if assembled there for an exhibition, not of a great industry, but
+of a great art.&nbsp; Their colours were gray, black, dark green, with
+a narrow strip of yellow moulding defining their sheer, or with a row
+of painted ports decking in warlike decoration their robust flanks of
+cargo-carriers that would know no triumph but of speed in carrying a
+burden, no glory other than of a long service, no victory but that of
+an endless, obscure contest with the sea.&nbsp; The great empty hulls
+with swept holds, just out of dry-dock, with their paint glistening
+freshly, sat high-sided with ponderous dignity alongside the wooden
+jetties, looking more like unmovable buildings than things meant to
+go afloat; others, half loaded, far on the way to recover the true sea-physiognomy
+of a ship brought down to her load-line, looked more accessible.&nbsp;
+Their less steeply slanting gangways seemed to invite the strolling
+sailors in search of a berth to walk on board and try &ldquo;for a chance&rdquo;
+with the chief mate, the guardian of a ship&rsquo;s efficiency.&nbsp;
+As if anxious to remain unperceived amongst their overtopping sisters,
+two or three &ldquo;finished&rdquo; ships floated low, with an air of
+straining at the leash of their level headfasts, exposing to view their
+cleared decks and covered hatches, prepared to drop stern first out
+of the labouring ranks, displaying the true comeliness of form which
+only her proper sea-trim gives to a ship.&nbsp; And for a good quarter
+of a mile, from the dockyard gate to the farthest corner, where the
+old housed-in hulk, the <i>President</i> (drill-ship, then, of the Naval
+Reserve), used to lie with her frigate side rubbing against the stone
+of the quay, above all these hulls, ready and unready, a hundred and
+fifty lofty masts, more or less, held out the web of their rigging like
+an immense net, in whose close mesh, black against the sky, the heavy
+yards seemed to be entangled and suspended.</p>
+<p>It was a sight.&nbsp; The humblest craft that floats makes its appeal
+to a seaman by the faithfulness of her life; and this was the place
+where one beheld the aristocracy of ships.&nbsp; It was a noble gathering
+of the fairest and the swiftest, each bearing at the bow the carved
+emblem of her name, as in a gallery of plaster-casts, figures of women
+with mural crowns, women with flowing robes, with gold fillets on their
+hair or blue scarves round their waists, stretching out rounded arms
+as if to point the way; heads of men helmeted or bare; full lengths
+of warriors, of kings, of statesmen, of lords and princesses, all white
+from top to toe; with here and there a dusky turbaned figure, bedizened
+in many colours, of some Eastern sultan or hero, all inclined forward
+under the slant of mighty bowsprits as if eager to begin another run
+of 11,000 miles in their leaning attitudes.&nbsp; These were the fine
+figure-heads of the finest ships afloat.&nbsp; But why, unless for the
+love of the life those effigies shared with us in their wandering impassivity,
+should one try to reproduce in words an impression of whose fidelity
+there can be no critic and no judge, since such an exhibition of the
+art of shipbuilding and the art of figure-head carving as was seen from
+year&rsquo;s end to year&rsquo;s end in the open-air gallery of the
+New South Dock no man&rsquo;s eye shall behold again?&nbsp; All that
+patient, pale company of queens and princesses, of kings and warriors,
+of allegorical women, of heroines and statesmen and heathen gods, crowned,
+helmeted, bare-headed, has run for good off the sea stretching to the
+last above the tumbling foam their fair, rounded arms; holding out their
+spears, swords, shields, tridents in the same unwearied, striving forward
+pose.&nbsp; And nothing remains but lingering perhaps in the memory
+of a few men, the sound of their names, vanished a long time ago from
+the first page of the great London dailies; from big posters in railway-stations
+and the doors of shipping offices; from the minds of sailors, dockmasters,
+pilots, and tugmen; from the hail of gruff voices and the flutter of
+signal flags exchanged between ships closing upon each other and drawing
+apart in the open immensity of the sea.</p>
+<p>The elderly, respectable seaman, withdrawing his gaze from that multitude
+of spars, gave me a glance to make sure of our fellowship in the craft
+and mystery of the sea.&nbsp; We had met casually, and had got into
+contact as I had stopped near him, my attention being caught by the
+same peculiarity he was looking at in the rigging of an obviously new
+ship, a ship with her reputation all to make yet in the talk of the
+seamen who were to share their life with her.&nbsp; Her name was already
+on their lips.&nbsp; I had heard it uttered between two thick, red-necked
+fellows of the semi-nautical type at the Fenchurch Street Railway-station,
+where, in those days, the everyday male crowd was attired in jerseys
+and pilot-cloth mostly, and had the air of being more conversant with
+the times of high-water than with the times of the trains.&nbsp; I had
+noticed that new ship&rsquo;s name on the first page of my morning paper.&nbsp;
+I had stared at the unfamiliar grouping of its letters, blue on white
+ground, on the advertisement-boards, whenever the train came to a standstill
+alongside one of the shabby, wooden, wharf-like platforms of the dock
+railway-line.&nbsp; She had been named, with proper observances, on
+the day she came off the stocks, no doubt, but she was very far yet
+from &ldquo;having a name.&rdquo;&nbsp; Untried, ignorant of the ways
+of the sea, she had been thrust amongst that renowned company of ships
+to load for her maiden voyage.&nbsp; There was nothing to vouch for
+her soundness and the worth of her character, but the reputation of
+the building-yard whence she was launched headlong into the world of
+waters.&nbsp; She looked modest to me.&nbsp; I imagined her diffident,
+lying very quiet, with her side nestling shyly against the wharf to
+which she was made fast with very new lines, intimidated by the company
+of her tried and experienced sisters already familiar with all the violences
+of the ocean and the exacting love of men.&nbsp; They had had more long
+voyages to make their names in than she had known weeks of carefully
+tended life, for a new ship receives as much attention as if she were
+a young bride.&nbsp; Even crabbed old dock-masters look at her with
+benevolent eyes.&nbsp; In her shyness at the threshold of a laborious
+and uncertain life, where so much is expected of a ship, she could not
+have been better heartened and comforted, had she only been able to
+hear and understand, than by the tone of deep conviction in which my
+elderly, respectable seaman repeated the first part of his saying, &ldquo;Ships
+are all right . . .&rdquo;</p>
+<p>His civility prevented him from repeating the other, the bitter part.&nbsp;
+It had occurred to him that it was perhaps indelicate to insist.&nbsp;
+He had recognised in me a ship&rsquo;s officer, very possibly looking
+for a berth like himself, and so far a comrade, but still a man belonging
+to that sparsely-peopled after-end of a ship, where a great part of
+her reputation as a &ldquo;good ship,&rdquo; in seaman&rsquo;s parlance,
+is made or marred.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Can you say that of all ships without exception?&rdquo; I
+asked, being in an idle mood, because, if an obvious ship&rsquo;s officer,
+I was not, as a matter of fact, down at the docks to &ldquo;look for
+a berth,&rdquo; an occupation as engrossing as gambling, and as little
+favourable to the free exchange of ideas, besides being destructive
+of the kindly temper needed for casual intercourse with one&rsquo;s
+fellow-creatures.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You can always put up with &rsquo;em,&rdquo; opined the respectable
+seaman judicially.</p>
+<p>He was not averse from talking, either.&nbsp; If he had come down
+to the dock to look for a berth, he did not seem oppressed by anxiety
+as to his chances.&nbsp; He had the serenity of a man whose estimable
+character is fortunately expressed by his personal appearance in an
+unobtrusive, yet convincing, manner which no chief officer in want of
+hands could resist.&nbsp; And, true enough, I learned presently that
+the mate of the <i>Hyperion</i> had &ldquo;taken down&rdquo; his name
+for quarter-master.&nbsp; &ldquo;We sign on Friday, and join next day
+for the morning tide,&rdquo; he remarked, in a deliberate, careless
+tone, which contrasted strongly with his evident readiness to stand
+there yarning for an hour or so with an utter stranger.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Hyperion</i>,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp; &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+remember ever seeing that ship anywhere.&nbsp; What sort of a name has
+she got?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It appeared from his discursive answer that she had not much of a
+name one way or another.&nbsp; She was not very fast.&nbsp; It took
+no fool, though, to steer her straight, he believed.&nbsp; Some years
+ago he had seen her in Calcutta, and he remembered being told by somebody
+then, that on her passage up the river she had carried away both her
+hawse-pipes.&nbsp; But that might have been the pilot&rsquo;s fault.&nbsp;
+Just now, yarning with the apprentices on board, he had heard that this
+very voyage, brought up in the Downs, outward bound, she broke her sheer,
+struck adrift, and lost an anchor and chain.&nbsp; But that might have
+occurred through want of careful tending in a tideway.&nbsp; All the
+same, this looked as though she were pretty hard on her ground-tackle.&nbsp;
+Didn&rsquo;t it?&nbsp; She seemed a heavy ship to handle, anyway.&nbsp;
+For the rest, as she had a new captain and a new mate this voyage, he
+understood, one couldn&rsquo;t say how she would turn out. . . .</p>
+<p>In such marine shore-talk as this is the name of a ship slowly established,
+her fame made for her, the tale of her qualities and of her defects
+kept, her idiosyncrasies commented upon with the zest of personal gossip,
+her achievements made much of, her faults glossed over as things that,
+being without remedy in our imperfect world, should not be dwelt upon
+too much by men who, with the help of ships, wrest out a bitter living
+from the rough grasp of the sea.&nbsp; All that talk makes up her &ldquo;name,&rdquo;
+which is handed over from one crew to another without bitterness, without
+animosity, with the indulgence of mutual dependence, and with the feeling
+of close association in the exercise of her perfections and in the danger
+of her defects.</p>
+<p>This feeling explains men&rsquo;s pride in ships.&nbsp; &ldquo;Ships
+are all right,&rdquo; as my middle-aged, respectable quartermaster said
+with much conviction and some irony; but they are not exactly what men
+make them.&nbsp; They have their own nature; they can of themselves
+minister to our self-esteem by the demand their qualities make upon
+our skill and their shortcomings upon our hardiness and endurance.&nbsp;
+Which is the more flattering exaction it is hard to say; but there is
+the fact that in listening for upwards of twenty years to the sea-talk
+that goes on afloat and ashore I have never detected the true note of
+animosity.&nbsp; I won&rsquo;t deny that at sea, sometimes, the note
+of profanity was audible enough in those chiding interpellations a wet,
+cold, weary seaman addresses to his ship, and in moments of exasperation
+is disposed to extend to all ships that ever were launched&mdash;to
+the whole everlastingly exacting brood that swims in deep waters.&nbsp;
+And I have heard curses launched at the unstable element itself, whose
+fascination, outlasting the accumulated experience of ages, had captured
+him as it had captured the generations of his forebears.</p>
+<p>For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore)
+have professed to feel for it, for all the celebrations it had been
+the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to
+man.&nbsp; At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness,
+and playing the part of dangerous abettor of world-wide ambitions.&nbsp;
+Faithful to no race after the manner of the kindly earth, receiving
+no impress from valour and toil and self-sacrifice, recognising no finality
+of dominion, the sea has never adopted the cause of its masters like
+those lands where the victorious nations of mankind have taken root,
+rocking their cradles and setting up their gravestones.&nbsp; He&mdash;man
+or people&mdash;who, putting his trust in the friendship of the sea,
+neglects the strength and cunning of his right hand, is a fool!&nbsp;
+As if it were too great, too mighty for common virtues, the ocean has
+no compassion, no faith, no law, no memory.&nbsp; Its fickleness is
+to be held true to men&rsquo;s purposes only by an undaunted resolution
+and by a sleepless, armed, jealous vigilance, in which, perhaps, there
+has always been more hate than love.&nbsp; <i>Odi</i> <i>et amo</i>
+may well be the confession of those who consciously or blindly have
+surrendered their existence to the fascination of the sea.&nbsp; All
+the tempestuous passions of mankind&rsquo;s young days, the love of
+loot and the love of glory, the love of adventure and the love of danger,
+with the great love of the unknown and vast dreams of dominion and power,
+have passed like images reflected from a mirror, leaving no record upon
+the mysterious face of the sea.&nbsp; Impenetrable and heartless, the
+sea has given nothing of itself to the suitors for its precarious favours.&nbsp;
+Unlike the earth, it cannot be subjugated at any cost of patience and
+toil.&nbsp; For all its fascination that has lured so many to a violent
+death, its immensity has never been loved as the mountains, the plains,
+the desert itself, have been loved.&nbsp; Indeed, I suspect that, leaving
+aside the protestations and tributes of writers who, one is safe in
+saying, care for little else in the world than the rhythm of their lines
+and the cadence of their phrase, the love of the sea, to which some
+men and nations confess so readily, is a complex sentiment wherein pride
+enters for much, necessity for not a little, and the love of ships&mdash;the
+untiring servants of our hopes and our self-esteem&mdash;for the best
+and most genuine part.&nbsp; For the hundreds who have reviled the sea,
+beginning with Shakespeare in the line</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;More fell than hunger, anguish, or the sea,&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>down to the last obscure sea-dog of the &ldquo;old model,&rdquo;
+having but few words and still fewer thoughts, there could not be found,
+I believe, one sailor who has ever coupled a curse with the good or
+bad name of a ship.&nbsp; If ever his profanity, provoked by the hardships
+of the sea, went so far as to touch his ship, it would be lightly, as
+a hand may, without sin, be laid in the way of kindness on a woman.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XXXVI.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The love that is given to ships is profoundly different from the
+love men feel for every other work of their hands&mdash;the love they
+bear to their houses, for instance&mdash;because it is untainted by
+the pride of possession.&nbsp; The pride of skill, the pride of responsibility,
+the pride of endurance there may be, but otherwise it is a disinterested
+sentiment.&nbsp; No seaman ever cherished a ship, even if she belonged
+to him, merely because of the profit she put in his pocket.&nbsp; No
+one, I think, ever did; for a ship-owner, even of the best, has always
+been outside the pale of that sentiment embracing in a feeling of intimate,
+equal fellowship the ship and the man, backing each other against the
+implacable, if sometimes dissembled, hostility of their world of waters.&nbsp;
+The sea&mdash;this truth must be confessed&mdash;has no generosity.&nbsp;
+No display of manly qualities&mdash;courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness&mdash;has
+ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.&nbsp;
+The ocean has the conscienceless temper of a savage autocrat spoiled
+by much adulation.&nbsp; He cannot brook the slightest appearance of
+defiance, and has remained the irreconcilable enemy of ships and men
+ever since ships and men had the unheard of audacity to go afloat together
+in the face of his frown.&nbsp; From that day he has gone on swallowing
+up fleets and men without his resentment being glutted by the number
+of victims&mdash;by so many wrecked ships and wrecked lives.&nbsp; To-day,
+as ever, he is ready to beguile and betray, to smash and to drown the
+incorrigible optimism of men who, backed by the fidelity of ships, are
+trying to wrest from him the fortune of their house, the dominion of
+their world, or only a dole of food for their hunger.&nbsp; If not always
+in the hot mood to smash, he is always stealthily ready for a drowning.&nbsp;
+The most amazing wonder of the deep is its unfathomable cruelty.</p>
+<p>I felt its dread for the first time in mid-Atlantic one day, many
+years ago, when we took off the crew of a Danish brig homeward bound
+from the West Indies.&nbsp; A thin, silvery mist softened the calm and
+majestic splendour of light without shadows&mdash;seemed to render the
+sky less remote and the ocean less immense.&nbsp; It was one of the
+days, when the might of the sea appears indeed lovable, like the nature
+of a strong man in moments of quiet intimacy.&nbsp; At sunrise we had
+made out a black speck to the westward, apparently suspended high up
+in the void behind a stirring, shimmering veil of silvery blue gauze
+that seemed at times to stir and float in the breeze which fanned us
+slowly along.&nbsp; The peace of that enchanting forenoon was so profound,
+so untroubled, that it seemed that every word pronounced loudly on our
+deck would penetrate to the very heart of that infinite mystery born
+from the conjunction of water and sky.&nbsp; We did not raise our voices.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;A water-logged derelict, I think, sir,&rdquo; said the second
+officer quietly, coming down from aloft with the binoculars in their
+case slung across his shoulders; and our captain, without a word, signed
+to the helmsman to steer for the black speck.&nbsp; Presently we made
+out a low, jagged stump sticking up forward&mdash;all that remained
+of her departed masts.</p>
+<p>The captain was expatiating in a low conversational tone to the chief
+mate upon the danger of these derelicts, and upon his dread of coming
+upon them at night, when suddenly a man forward screamed out, &ldquo;There&rsquo;s
+people on board of her, sir!&nbsp; I see them!&rdquo; in a most extraordinary
+voice&mdash;a voice never heard before in our ship; the amazing voice
+of a stranger.&nbsp; It gave the signal for a sudden tumult of shouts.&nbsp;
+The watch below ran up the forecastle head in a body, the cook dashed
+out of the galley.&nbsp; Everybody saw the poor fellows now.&nbsp; They
+were there!&nbsp; And all at once our ship, which had the well-earned
+name of being without a rival for speed in light winds, seemed to us
+to have lost the power of motion, as if the sea, becoming viscous, had
+clung to her sides.&nbsp; And yet she moved.&nbsp; Immensity, the inseparable
+companion of a ship&rsquo;s life, chose that day to breathe upon her
+as gently as a sleeping child.&nbsp; The clamour of our excitement had
+died out, and our living ship, famous for never losing steerage way
+as long as there was air enough to float a feather, stole, without a
+ripple, silent and white as a ghost, towards her mutilated and wounded
+sister, come upon at the point of death in the sunlit haze of a calm
+day at sea.</p>
+<p>With the binoculars glued to his eyes, the captain said in a quavering
+tone: &ldquo;They are waving to us with something aft there.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+He put down the glasses on the skylight brusquely, and began to walk
+about the poop.&nbsp; &ldquo;A shirt or a flag,&rdquo; he ejaculated
+irritably.&nbsp; &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t make it out. . . Some damn rag or
+other!&rdquo;&nbsp; He took a few more turns on the poop, glancing down
+over the rail now and then to see how fast we were moving.&nbsp; His
+nervous footsteps rang sharply in the quiet of the ship, where the other
+men, all looking the same way, had forgotten themselves in a staring
+immobility.&nbsp; &ldquo;This will never do!&rdquo; he cried out suddenly.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Lower the boats at once!&nbsp; Down with them!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Before I jumped into mine he took me aside, as being an inexperienced
+junior, for a word of warning:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You look out as you come alongside that she doesn&rsquo;t
+take you down with her.&nbsp; You understand?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He murmured this confidentially, so that none of the men at the falls
+should overhear, and I was shocked.&nbsp; &ldquo;Heavens! as if in such
+an emergency one stopped to think of danger!&rdquo; I exclaimed to myself
+mentally, in scorn of such cold-blooded caution.</p>
+<p>It takes many lessons to make a real seaman, and I got my rebuke
+at once.&nbsp; My experienced commander seemed in one searching glance
+to read my thoughts on my ingenuous face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What you&rsquo;re going for is to save life, not to drown
+your boat&rsquo;s crew for nothing,&rdquo; he growled severely in my
+ear.&nbsp; But as we shoved off he leaned over and cried out: &ldquo;It
+all rests on the power of your arms, men.&nbsp; Give way for life!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We made a race of it, and I would never have believed that a common
+boat&rsquo;s crew of a merchantman could keep up so much determined
+fierceness in the regular swing of their stroke.&nbsp; What our captain
+had clearly perceived before we left had become plain to all of us since.&nbsp;
+The issue of our enterprise hung on a hair above that abyss of waters
+which will not give up its dead till the Day of Judgment.&nbsp; It was
+a race of two ship&rsquo;s boats matched against Death for a prize of
+nine men&rsquo;s lives, and Death had a long start.&nbsp; We saw the
+crew of the brig from afar working at the pumps&mdash;still pumping
+on that wreck, which already had settled so far down that the gentle,
+low swell, over which our boats rose and fell easily without a check
+to their speed, welling up almost level with her head-rails, plucked
+at the ends of broken gear swinging desolately under her naked bowsprit.</p>
+<p>We could not, in all conscience, have picked out a better day for
+our regatta had we had the free choice of all the days that ever dawned
+upon the lonely struggles and solitary agonies of ships since the Norse
+rovers first steered to the westward against the run of Atlantic waves.&nbsp;
+It was a very good race.&nbsp; At the finish there was not an oar&rsquo;s
+length between the first and second boat, with Death coming in a good
+third on the top of the very next smooth swell, for all one knew to
+the contrary.&nbsp; The scuppers of the brig gurgled softly all together
+when the water rising against her sides subsided sleepily with a low
+wash, as if playing about an immovable rock.&nbsp; Her bulwarks were
+gone fore and aft, and one saw her bare deck low-lying like a raft and
+swept clean of boats, spars, houses&mdash;of everything except the ringbolts
+and the heads of the pumps.&nbsp; I had one dismal glimpse of it as
+I braced myself up to receive upon my breast the last man to leave her,
+the captain, who literally let himself fall into my arms.</p>
+<p>It had been a weirdly silent rescue&mdash;a rescue without a hail,
+without a single uttered word, without a gesture or a sign, without
+a conscious exchange of glances.&nbsp; Up to the very last moment those
+on board stuck to their pumps, which spouted two clear streams of water
+upon their bare feet.&nbsp; Their brown skin showed through the rents
+of their shirts; and the two small bunches of half-naked, tattered men
+went on bowing from the waist to each other in their back-breaking labour,
+up and down, absorbed, with no time for a glance over the shoulder at
+the help that was coming to them.&nbsp; As we dashed, unregarded, alongside
+a voice let out one, only one hoarse howl of command, and then, just
+as they stood, without caps, with the salt drying gray in the wrinkles
+and folds of their hairy, haggard faces, blinking stupidly at us their
+red eyelids, they made a bolt away from the handles, tottering and jostling
+against each other, and positively flung themselves over upon our very
+heads.&nbsp; The clatter they made tumbling into the boats had an extraordinarily
+destructive effect upon the illusion of tragic dignity our self-esteem
+had thrown over the contests of mankind with the sea.&nbsp; On that
+exquisite day of gently breathing peace and veiled sunshine perished
+my romantic love to what men&rsquo;s imagination had proclaimed the
+most august aspect of Nature.&nbsp; The cynical indifference of the
+sea to the merits of human suffering and courage, laid bare in this
+ridiculous, panic-tainted performance extorted from the dire extremity
+of nine good and honourable seamen, revolted me.&nbsp; I saw the duplicity
+of the sea&rsquo;s most tender mood.&nbsp; It was so because it could
+not help itself, but the awed respect of the early days was gone.&nbsp;
+I felt ready to smile bitterly at its enchanting charm and glare viciously
+at its furies.&nbsp; In a moment, before we shoved off, I had looked
+coolly at the life of my choice.&nbsp; Its illusions were gone, but
+its fascination remained.&nbsp; I had become a seaman at last.</p>
+<p>We pulled hard for a quarter of an hour, then laid on our oars waiting
+for our ship.&nbsp; She was coming down on us with swelling sails, looking
+delicately tall and exquisitely noble through the mist.&nbsp; The captain
+of the brig, who sat in the stern sheets by my side with his face in
+his hands, raised his head and began to speak with a sort of sombre
+volubility.&nbsp; They had lost their masts and sprung a leak in a hurricane;
+drifted for weeks, always at the pumps, met more bad weather; the ships
+they sighted failed to make them out, the leak gained upon them slowly,
+and the seas had left them nothing to make a raft of.&nbsp; It was very
+hard to see ship after ship pass by at a distance, &ldquo;as if everybody
+had agreed that we must be left to drown,&rdquo; he added.&nbsp; But
+they went on trying to keep the brig afloat as long as possible, and
+working the pumps constantly on insufficient food, mostly raw, till
+&ldquo;yesterday evening,&rdquo; he continued monotonously, &ldquo;just
+as the sun went down, the men&rsquo;s hearts broke.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He made an almost imperceptible pause here, and went on again with
+exactly the same intonation:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They told me the brig could not be saved, and they thought
+they had done enough for themselves.&nbsp; I said nothing to that.&nbsp;
+It was true.&nbsp; It was no mutiny.&nbsp; I had nothing to say to them.&nbsp;
+They lay about aft all night, as still as so many dead men.&nbsp; I
+did not lie down.&nbsp; I kept a look-out.&nbsp; When the first light
+came I saw your ship at once.&nbsp; I waited for more light; the breeze
+began to fail on my face.&nbsp; Then I shouted out as loud as I was
+able, &lsquo;Look at that ship!&rsquo; but only two men got up very
+slowly and came to me.&nbsp; At first only we three stood alone, for
+a long time, watching you coming down to us, and feeling the breeze
+drop to a calm almost; but afterwards others, too, rose, one after another,
+and by-and-by I had all my crew behind me.&nbsp; I turned round and
+said to them that they could see the ship was coming our way, but in
+this small breeze she might come too late after all, unless we turned
+to and tried to keep the brig afloat long enough to give you time to
+save us all.&nbsp; I spoke like that to them, and then I gave the command
+to man the pumps.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He gave the command, and gave the example, too, by going himself
+to the handles, but it seems that these men did actually hang back for
+a moment, looking at each other dubiously before they followed him.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;He! he! he!&rdquo;&nbsp; He broke out into a most unexpected,
+imbecile, pathetic, nervous little giggle.&nbsp; &ldquo;Their hearts
+were broken so!&nbsp; They had been played with too long,&rdquo; he
+explained apologetically, lowering his eyes, and became silent.</p>
+<p>Twenty-five years is a long time&mdash;a quarter of a century is
+a dim and distant past; but to this day I remember the dark-brown feet,
+hands, and faces of two of these men whose hearts had been broken by
+the sea.&nbsp; They were lying very still on their sides on the bottom
+boards between the thwarts, curled up like dogs.&nbsp; My boat&rsquo;s
+crew, leaning over the looms of their oars, stared and listened as if
+at the play.&nbsp; The master of the brig looked up suddenly to ask
+me what day it was.</p>
+<p>They had lost the date.&nbsp; When I told him it was Sunday, the
+22nd, he frowned, making some mental calculation, then nodded twice
+sadly to himself, staring at nothing.</p>
+<p>His aspect was miserably unkempt and wildly sorrowful.&nbsp; Had
+it not been for the unquenchable candour of his blue eyes, whose unhappy,
+tired glance every moment sought his abandoned, sinking brig, as if
+it could find rest nowhere else, he would have appeared mad.&nbsp; But
+he was too simple to go mad, too simple with that manly simplicity which
+alone can bear men unscathed in mind and body through an encounter with
+the deadly playfulness of the sea or with its less abominable fury.</p>
+<p>Neither angry, nor playful, nor smiling, it enveloped our distant
+ship growing bigger as she neared us, our boats with the rescued men
+and the dismantled hull of the brig we were leaving behind, in the large
+and placid embrace of its quietness, half lost in the fair haze, as
+if in a dream of infinite and tender clemency.&nbsp; There was no frown,
+no wrinkle on its face, not a ripple.&nbsp; And the run of the slight
+swell was so smooth that it resembled the graceful undulation of a piece
+of shimmering gray silk shot with gleams of green.&nbsp; We pulled an
+easy stroke; but when the master of the brig, after a glance over his
+shoulder, stood up with a low exclamation, my men feathered their oars
+instinctively, without an order, and the boat lost her way.</p>
+<p>He was steadying himself on my shoulder with a strong grip, while
+his other arm, flung up rigidly, pointed a denunciatory finger at the
+immense tranquillity of the ocean.&nbsp; After his first exclamation,
+which stopped the swing of our oars, he made no sound, but his whole
+attitude seemed to cry out an indignant &ldquo;Behold!&rdquo; . . .
+I could not imagine what vision of evil had come to him.&nbsp; I was
+startled, and the amazing energy of his immobilized gesture made my
+heart beat faster with the anticipation of something monstrous and unsuspected.&nbsp;
+The stillness around us became crushing.</p>
+<p>For a moment the succession of silky undulations ran on innocently.&nbsp;
+I saw each of them swell up the misty line of the horizon, far, far
+away beyond the derelict brig, and the next moment, with a slight friendly
+toss of our boat, it had passed under us and was gone.&nbsp; The lulling
+cadence of the rise and fall, the invariable gentleness of this irresistible
+force, the great charm of the deep waters, warmed my breast deliciously,
+like the subtle poison of a love-potion.&nbsp; But all this lasted only
+a few soothing seconds before I jumped up too, making the boat roll
+like the veriest landlubber.</p>
+<p>Something startling, mysterious, hastily confused, was taking place.&nbsp;
+I watched it with incredulous and fascinated awe, as one watches the
+confused, swift movements of some deed of violence done in the dark.&nbsp;
+As if at a given signal, the run of the smooth undulations seemed checked
+suddenly around the brig.&nbsp; By a strange optical delusion the whole
+sea appeared to rise upon her in one overwhelming heave of its silky
+surface, where in one spot a smother of foam broke out ferociously.&nbsp;
+And then the effort subsided.&nbsp; It was all over, and the smooth
+swell ran on as before from the horizon in uninterrupted cadence of
+motion, passing under us with a slight friendly toss of our boat.&nbsp;
+Far away, where the brig had been, an angry white stain undulating on
+the surface of steely-gray waters, shot with gleams of green, diminished
+swiftly, without a hiss, like a patch of pure snow melting in the sun.&nbsp;
+And the great stillness after this initiation into the sea&rsquo;s implacable
+hate seemed full of dread thoughts and shadows of disaster.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Gone!&rdquo; ejaculated from the depths of his chest my bowman
+in a final tone.&nbsp; He spat in his hands, and took a better grip
+on his oar.&nbsp; The captain of the brig lowered his rigid arm slowly,
+and looked at our faces in a solemnly conscious silence, which called
+upon us to share in his simple-minded, marvelling awe.&nbsp; All at
+once he sat down by my side, and leaned forward earnestly at my boat&rsquo;s
+crew, who, swinging together in a long, easy stroke, kept their eyes
+fixed upon him faithfully.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No ship could have done so well,&rdquo; he addressed them
+firmly, after a moment of strained silence, during which he seemed with
+trembling lips to seek for words fit to bear such high testimony.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;She was small, but she was good.&nbsp; I had no anxiety.&nbsp;
+She was strong.&nbsp; Last voyage I had my wife and two children in
+her.&nbsp; No other ship could have stood so long the weather she had
+to live through for days and days before we got dismasted a fortnight
+ago.&nbsp; She was fairly worn out, and that&rsquo;s all.&nbsp; You
+may believe me.&nbsp; She lasted under us for days and days, but she
+could not last for ever.&nbsp; It was long enough.&nbsp; I am glad it
+is over.&nbsp; No better ship was ever left to sink at sea on such a
+day as this.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He was competent to pronounce the funereal oration of a ship, this
+son of ancient sea-folk, whose national existence, so little stained
+by the excesses of manly virtues, had demanded nothing but the merest
+foothold from the earth.&nbsp; By the merits of his sea-wise forefathers
+and by the artlessness of his heart, he was made fit to deliver this
+excellent discourse.&nbsp; There was nothing wanting in its orderly
+arrangement&mdash;neither piety nor faith, nor the tribute of praise
+due to the worthy dead, with the edifying recital of their achievement.&nbsp;
+She had lived, he had loved her; she had suffered, and he was glad she
+was at rest.&nbsp; It was an excellent discourse.&nbsp; And it was orthodox,
+too, in its fidelity to the cardinal article of a seaman&rsquo;s faith,
+of which it was a single-minded confession.&nbsp; &ldquo;Ships are all
+right.&rdquo;&nbsp; They are.&nbsp; They who live with the sea have
+got to hold by that creed first and last; and it came to me, as I glanced
+at him sideways, that some men were not altogether unworthy in honour
+and conscience to pronounce the funereal eulogium of a ship&rsquo;s
+constancy in life and death.</p>
+<p>After this, sitting by my side with his loosely-clasped hands hanging
+between his knees, he uttered no word, made no movement till the shadow
+of our ship&rsquo;s sails fell on the boat, when, at the loud cheer
+greeting the return of the victors with their prize, he lifted up his
+troubled face with a faint smile of pathetic indulgence.&nbsp; This
+smile of the worthy descendant of the most ancient sea-folk whose audacity
+and hardihood had left no trace of greatness and glory upon the waters,
+completed the cycle of my initiation.&nbsp; There was an infinite depth
+of hereditary wisdom in its pitying sadness.&nbsp; It made the hearty
+bursts of cheering sound like a childish noise of triumph.&nbsp; Our
+crew shouted with immense confidence&mdash;honest souls!&nbsp; As if
+anybody could ever make sure of having prevailed against the sea, which
+has betrayed so many ships of great &ldquo;name,&rdquo; so many proud
+men, so many towering ambitions of fame, power, wealth, greatness!</p>
+<p>As I brought the boat under the falls my captain, in high good-humour,
+leaned over, spreading his red and freckled elbows on the rail, and
+called down to me sarcastically, out of the depths of his cynic philosopher&rsquo;s
+beard:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So you have brought the boat back after all, have you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Sarcasm was &ldquo;his way,&rdquo; and the most that can be said
+for it is that it was natural.&nbsp; This did not make it lovable.&nbsp;
+But it is decorous and expedient to fall in with one&rsquo;s commander&rsquo;s
+way.&nbsp; &ldquo;Yes.&nbsp; I brought the boat back all right, sir,&rdquo;
+I answered.&nbsp; And the good man believed me.&nbsp; It was not for
+him to discern upon me the marks of my recent initiation.&nbsp; And
+yet I was not exactly the same youngster who had taken the boat away&mdash;all
+impatience for a race against death, with the prize of nine men&rsquo;s
+lives at the end.</p>
+<p>Already I looked with other eyes upon the sea.&nbsp; I knew it capable
+of betraying the generous ardour of youth as implacably as, indifferent
+to evil and good, it would have betrayed the basest greed or the noblest
+heroism.&nbsp; My conception of its magnanimous greatness was gone.&nbsp;
+And I looked upon the true sea&mdash;the sea that plays with men till
+their hearts are broken, and wears stout ships to death.&nbsp; Nothing
+can touch the brooding bitterness of its heart.&nbsp; Open to all and
+faithful to none, it exercises its fascination for the undoing of the
+best.&nbsp; To love it is not well.&nbsp; It knows no bond of plighted
+troth, no fidelity to misfortune, to long companionship, to long devotion.&nbsp;
+The promise it holds out perpetually is very great; but the only secret
+of its possession is strength, strength&mdash;the jealous, sleepless
+strength of a man guarding a coveted treasure within his gates.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XXXVII.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The cradle of oversea traffic and of the art of naval combats, the
+Mediterranean, apart from all the associations of adventure and glory,
+the common heritage of all mankind, makes a tender appeal to a seaman.&nbsp;
+It has sheltered the infancy of his craft.&nbsp; He looks upon it as
+a man may look at a vast nursery in an old, old mansion where innumerable
+generations of his own people have learned to walk.&nbsp; I say his
+own people because, in a sense, all sailors belong to one family: all
+are descended from that adventurous and shaggy ancestor who, bestriding
+a shapeless log and paddling with a crooked branch, accomplished the
+first coasting-trip in a sheltered bay ringing with the admiring howls
+of his tribe.&nbsp; It is a matter of regret that all those brothers
+in craft and feeling, whose generations have learned to walk a ship&rsquo;s
+deck in that nursery, have been also more than once fiercely engaged
+in cutting each other&rsquo;s throats there.&nbsp; But life, apparently,
+has such exigencies.&nbsp; Without human propensity to murder and other
+sorts of unrighteousness there would have been no historical heroism.&nbsp;
+It is a consoling reflection.&nbsp; And then, if one examines impartially
+the deeds of violence, they appear of but small consequence.&nbsp; From
+Salamis to Actium, through Lepanto and the Nile to the naval massacre
+of Navarino, not to mention other armed encounters of lesser interest,
+all the blood heroically spilt into the Mediterranean has not stained
+with a single trail of purple the deep azure of its classic waters.</p>
+<p>Of course, it may be argued that battles have shaped the destiny
+of mankind.&nbsp; The question whether they have shaped it well would
+remain open, however.&nbsp; But it would be hardly worth discussing.&nbsp;
+It is very probable that, had the Battle of Salamis never been fought,
+the face of the world would have been much as we behold it now, fashioned
+by the mediocre inspiration and the short-sighted labours of men.&nbsp;
+From a long and miserable experience of suffering, injustice, disgrace
+and aggression the nations of the earth are mostly swayed by fear&mdash;fear
+of the sort that a little cheap oratory turns easily to rage, hate,
+and violence.&nbsp; Innocent, guileless fear has been the cause of many
+wars.&nbsp; Not, of course, the fear of war itself, which, in the evolution
+of sentiments and ideas, has come to be regarded at last as a half-mystic
+and glorious ceremony with certain fashionable rites and preliminary
+incantations, wherein the conception of its true nature has been lost.&nbsp;
+To apprehend the true aspect, force, and morality of war as a natural
+function of mankind one requires a feather in the hair and a ring in
+the nose, or, better still, teeth filed to a point and a tattooed breast.&nbsp;
+Unfortunately, a return to such simple ornamentation is impossible.&nbsp;
+We are bound to the chariot of progress.&nbsp; There is no going back;
+and, as bad luck would have it, our civilization, which has done so
+much for the comfort and adornment of our bodies and the elevation of
+our minds, has made lawful killing frightfully and needlessly expensive.</p>
+<p>The whole question of improved armaments has been approached by the
+governments of the earth in a spirit of nervous and unreflecting haste,
+whereas the right way was lying plainly before them, and had only to
+be pursued with calm determination.&nbsp; The learned vigils and labours
+of a certain class of inventors should have been rewarded with honourable
+liberality as justice demanded; and the bodies of the inventors should
+have been blown to pieces by means of their own perfected explosives
+and improved weapons with extreme publicity as the commonest prudence
+dictated.&nbsp; By this method the ardour of research in that direction
+would have been restrained without infringing the sacred privileges
+of science.&nbsp; For the lack of a little cool thinking in our guides
+and masters this course has not been followed, and a beautiful simplicity
+has been sacrificed for no real advantage.&nbsp; A frugal mind cannot
+defend itself from considerable bitterness when reflecting that at the
+Battle of Actium (which was fought for no less a stake than the dominion
+of the world) the fleet of Octavianus Caesar and the fleet of Antonius,
+including the Egyptian division and Cleopatra&rsquo;s galley with purple
+sails, probably cost less than two modern battleships, or, as the modern
+naval book-jargon has it, two capital units.&nbsp; But no amount of
+lubberly book-jargon can disguise a fact well calculated to afflict
+the soul of every sound economist.&nbsp; It is not likely that the Mediterranean
+will ever behold a battle with a greater issue; but when the time comes
+for another historical fight its bottom will be enriched as never before
+by a quantity of jagged scrap-iron, paid for at pretty nearly its weight
+of gold by the deluded populations inhabiting the isles and continents
+of this planet.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XXXVIII.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Happy he who, like Ulysses, has made an adventurous voyage; and there
+is no such sea for adventurous voyages as the Mediterranean&mdash;the
+inland sea which the ancients looked upon as so vast and so full of
+wonders.&nbsp; And, indeed, it was terrible and wonderful; for it is
+we alone who, swayed by the audacity of our minds and the tremors of
+our hearts, are the sole artisans of all the wonder and romance of the
+world.</p>
+<p>It was for the Mediterranean sailors that fair-haired sirens sang
+among the black rocks seething in white foam and mysterious voices spoke
+in the darkness above the moving wave&mdash;voices menacing, seductive,
+or prophetic, like that voice heard at the beginning of the Christian
+era by the master of an African vessel in the Gulf of Syrta, whose calm
+nights are full of strange murmurs and flitting shadows.&nbsp; It called
+him by name, bidding him go and tell all men that the great god Pan
+was dead.&nbsp; But the great legend of the Mediterranean, the legend
+of traditional song and grave history, lives, fascinating and immortal,
+in our minds.</p>
+<p>The dark and fearful sea of the subtle Ulysses&rsquo; wanderings,
+agitated by the wrath of Olympian gods, harbouring on its isles the
+fury of strange monsters and the wiles of strange women; the highway
+of heroes and sages, of warriors, pirates, and saints; the workaday
+sea of Carthaginian merchants and the pleasure lake of the Roman Caesars,
+claims the veneration of every seaman as the historical home of that
+spirit of open defiance against the great waters of the earth which
+is the very soul of his calling.&nbsp; Issuing thence to the west and
+south, as a youth leaves the shelter of his parental house, this spirit
+found the way to the Indies, discovered the coasts of a new continent,
+and traversed at last the immensity of the great Pacific, rich in groups
+of islands remote and mysterious like the constellations of the sky.</p>
+<p>The first impulse of navigation took its visible form in that tideless
+basin freed from hidden shoals and treacherous currents, as if in tender
+regard for the infancy of the art.&nbsp; The steep shores of the Mediterranean
+favoured the beginners in one of humanity&rsquo;s most daring enterprises,
+and the enchanting inland sea of classic adventure has led mankind gently
+from headland to headland, from bay to bay, from island to island, out
+into the promise of world-wide oceans beyond the Pillars of Hercules.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XXXIX.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The charm of the Mediterranean dwells in the unforgettable flavour
+of my early days, and to this hour this sea, upon which the Romans alone
+ruled without dispute, has kept for me the fascination of youthful romance.&nbsp;
+The very first Christmas night I ever spent away from land was employed
+in running before a Gulf of Lions gale, which made the old ship groan
+in every timber as she skipped before it over the short seas until we
+brought her to, battered and out of breath, under the lee of Majorca,
+where the smooth water was torn by fierce cat&rsquo;s-paws under a very
+stormy sky.</p>
+<p>We&mdash;or, rather, they, for I had hardly had two glimpses of salt
+water in my life till then&mdash;kept her standing off and on all that
+day, while I listened for the first time with the curiosity of my tender
+years to the song of the wind in a ship&rsquo;s rigging.&nbsp; The monotonous
+and vibrating note was destined to grow into the intimacy of the heart,
+pass into blood and bone, accompany the thoughts and acts of two full
+decades, remain to haunt like a reproach the peace of the quiet fireside,
+and enter into the very texture of respectable dreams dreamed safely
+under a roof of rafters and tiles.&nbsp; The wind was fair, but that
+day we ran no more.</p>
+<p>The thing (I will not call her a ship twice in the same half-hour)
+leaked.&nbsp; She leaked fully, generously, overflowingly, all over&mdash;like
+a basket.&nbsp; I took an enthusiastic part in the excitement caused
+by that last infirmity of noble ships, without concerning myself much
+with the why or the wherefore.&nbsp; The surmise of my maturer years
+is that, bored by her interminable life, the venerable antiquity was
+simply yawning with ennui at every seam.&nbsp; But at the time I did
+not know; I knew generally very little, and least of all what I was
+doing in that <i>gal&egrave;re</i>.</p>
+<p>I remember that, exactly as in the comedy of Moli&egrave;re, my uncle
+asked the precise question in the very words&mdash;not of my confidential
+valet, however, but across great distances of land, in a letter whose
+mocking but indulgent turn ill concealed his almost paternal anxiety.&nbsp;
+I fancy I tried to convey to him my (utterly unfounded) impression that
+the West Indies awaited my coming.&nbsp; I had to go there.&nbsp; It
+was a sort of mystic conviction&mdash;something in the nature of a call.&nbsp;
+But it was difficult to state intelligibly the grounds of this belief
+to that man of rigorous logic, if of infinite charity.</p>
+<p>The truth must have been that, all unversed in the arts of the wily
+Greek, the deceiver of gods, the lover of strange women, the evoker
+of bloodthirsty shades, I yet longed for the beginning of my own obscure
+Odyssey, which, as was proper for a modern, should unroll its wonders
+and terrors beyond the Pillars of Hercules.&nbsp; The disdainful ocean
+did not open wide to swallow up my audacity, though the ship, the ridiculous
+and ancient <i>gal&egrave;re</i> of my folly, the old, weary, disenchanted
+sugar-waggon, seemed extremely disposed to open out and swallow up as
+much salt water as she could hold.&nbsp; This, if less grandiose, would
+have been as final a catastrophe.</p>
+<p>But no catastrophe occurred.&nbsp; I lived to watch on a strange
+shore a black and youthful Nausicaa, with a joyous train of attendant
+maidens, carrying baskets of linen to a clear stream overhung by the
+heads of slender palm-trees.&nbsp; The vivid colours of their draped
+raiment and the gold of their earrings invested with a barbaric and
+regal magnificence their figures, stepping out freely in a shower of
+broken sunshine.&nbsp; The whiteness of their teeth was still more dazzling
+than the splendour of jewels at their ears.&nbsp; The shaded side of
+the ravine gleamed with their smiles.&nbsp; They were as unabashed as
+so many princesses, but, alas! not one of them was the daughter of a
+jet-black sovereign.&nbsp; Such was my abominable luck in being born
+by the mere hair&rsquo;s breadth of twenty-five centuries too late into
+a world where kings have been growing scarce with scandalous rapidity,
+while the few who remain have adopted the uninteresting manners and
+customs of simple millionaires.&nbsp; Obviously it was a vain hope in
+187- to see the ladies of a royal household walk in chequered sunshine,
+with baskets of linen on their heads, to the banks of a clear stream
+overhung by the starry fronds of palm-trees.&nbsp; It was a vain hope.&nbsp;
+If I did not ask myself whether, limited by such discouraging impossibilities,
+life were still worth living, it was only because I had then before
+me several other pressing questions, some of which have remained unanswered
+to this day.&nbsp; The resonant, laughing voices of these gorgeous maidens
+scared away the multitude of humming-birds, whose delicate wings wreathed
+with the mist of their vibration the tops of flowering bushes.</p>
+<p>No, they were not princesses.&nbsp; Their unrestrained laughter filling
+the hot, fern-clad ravine had a soulless limpidity, as of wild, inhuman
+dwellers in tropical woodlands.&nbsp; Following the example of certain
+prudent travellers, I withdrew unseen&mdash;and returned, not much wiser,
+to the Mediterranean, the sea of classic adventures.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XL.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>It was written that there, in the nursery of our navigating ancestors,
+I should learn to walk in the ways of my craft and grow in the love
+of the sea, blind as young love often is, but absorbing and disinterested
+as all true love must be.&nbsp; I demanded nothing from it&mdash;not
+even adventure.&nbsp; In this I showed, perhaps, more intuitive wisdom
+than high self-denial.&nbsp; No adventure ever came to one for the asking.&nbsp;
+He who starts on a deliberate quest of adventure goes forth but to gather
+dead-sea fruit, unless, indeed, he be beloved of the gods and great
+amongst heroes, like that most excellent cavalier Don Quixote de la
+Mancha.&nbsp; By us ordinary mortals of a mediocre animus that is only
+too anxious to pass by wicked giants for so many honest windmills, adventures
+are entertained like visiting angels.&nbsp; They come upon our complacency
+unawares.&nbsp; As unbidden guests are apt to do, they often come at
+inconvenient times.&nbsp; And we are glad to let them go unrecognised,
+without any acknowledgment of so high a favour.&nbsp; After many years,
+on looking back from the middle turn of life&rsquo;s way at the events
+of the past, which, like a friendly crowd, seem to gaze sadly after
+us hastening towards the Cimmerian shore, we may see here and there,
+in the gray throng, some figure glowing with a faint radiance, as though
+it had caught all the light of our already crepuscular sky.&nbsp; And
+by this glow we may recognise the faces of our true adventures, of the
+once unbidden guests entertained unawares in our young days.</p>
+<p>If the Mediterranean, the venerable (and sometimes atrociously ill-tempered)
+nurse of all navigators, was to rock my youth, the providing of the
+cradle necessary for that operation was entrusted by Fate to the most
+casual assemblage of irresponsible young men (all, however, older than
+myself) that, as if drunk with Proven&ccedil;al sunshine, frittered
+life away in joyous levity on the model of Balzac&rsquo;s &ldquo;Histoire
+des Treize&rdquo; qualified by a dash of romance <i>de cape et d&rsquo;&eacute;p&eacute;e.</i></p>
+<p>She who was my cradle in those years had been built on the River
+of Savona by a famous builder of boats, was rigged in Corsica by another
+good man, and was described on her papers as a &lsquo;tartane&rsquo;
+of sixty tons.&nbsp; In reality, she was a true balancelle, with two
+short masts raking forward and two curved yards, each as long as her
+hull; a true child of the Latin lake, with a spread of two enormous
+sails resembling the pointed wings on a sea-bird&rsquo;s slender body,
+and herself, like a bird indeed, skimming rather than sailing the seas.</p>
+<p>Her name was the <i>Tremolino</i>.&nbsp; How is this to be translated?&nbsp;
+The <i>Quiverer</i>?&nbsp; What a name to give the pluckiest little
+craft that ever dipped her sides in angry foam!&nbsp; I had felt her,
+it is true, trembling for nights and days together under my feet, but
+it was with the high-strung tenseness of her faithful courage.&nbsp;
+In her short, but brilliant, career she has taught me nothing, but she
+has given me everything.&nbsp; I owe to her the awakened love for the
+sea that, with the quivering of her swift little body and the humming
+of the wind under the foot of her lateen sails, stole into my heart
+with a sort of gentle violence, and brought my imagination under its
+despotic sway.&nbsp; The <i>Tremolino</i>!&nbsp; To this day I cannot
+utter or even write that name without a strange tightening of the breast
+and the gasp of mingled delight and dread of one&rsquo;s first passionate
+experience.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XLI.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>We four formed (to use a term well understood nowadays in every social
+sphere) a &ldquo;syndicate&rdquo; owning the <i>Tremolino</i>: an international
+and astonishing syndicate.&nbsp; And we were all ardent Royalists of
+the snow-white Legitimist complexion&mdash;Heaven only knows why!&nbsp;
+In all associations of men there is generally one who, by the authority
+of age and of a more experienced wisdom, imparts a collective character
+to the whole set.&nbsp; If I mention that the oldest of us was very
+old, extremely old&mdash;nearly thirty years old&mdash;and that he used
+to declare with gallant carelessness, &ldquo;I live by my sword,&rdquo;
+I think I have given enough information on the score of our collective
+wisdom.&nbsp; He was a North Carolinian gentleman, J. M. K. B. were
+the initials of his name, and he really did live by the sword, as far
+as I know.&nbsp; He died by it, too, later on, in a Balkanian squabble,
+in the cause of some Serbs or else Bulgarians, who were neither Catholics
+nor gentlemen&mdash;at least, not in the exalted but narrow sense he
+attached to that last word.</p>
+<p>Poor J. M. K. B., <i>Am&eacute;ricain, Catholique, et gentilhomme</i>,
+as he was disposed to describe himself in moments of lofty expansion!&nbsp;
+Are there still to be found in Europe gentlemen keen of face and elegantly
+slight of body, of distinguished aspect, with a fascinating drawing-room
+manner and with a dark, fatal glance, who live by their swords, I wonder?&nbsp;
+His family had been ruined in the Civil War, I fancy, and seems for
+a decade or so to have led a wandering life in the Old World.&nbsp;
+As to Henry C-, the next in age and wisdom of our band, he had broken
+loose from the unyielding rigidity of his family, solidly rooted, if
+I remember rightly, in a well-to-do London suburb.&nbsp; On their respectable
+authority he introduced himself meekly to strangers as a &ldquo;black
+sheep.&rdquo;&nbsp; I have never seen a more guileless specimen of an
+outcast.&nbsp; Never.</p>
+<p>However, his people had the grace to send him a little money now
+and then.&nbsp; Enamoured of the South, of Provence, of its people,
+its life, its sunshine and its poetry, narrow-chested, tall and short-sighted,
+he strode along the streets and the lanes, his long feet projecting
+far in advance of his body, and his white nose and gingery moustache
+buried in an open book: for he had the habit of reading as he walked.&nbsp;
+How he avoided falling into precipices, off the quays, or down staircases
+is a great mystery.&nbsp; The sides of his overcoat bulged out with
+pocket editions of various poets.&nbsp; When not engaged in reading
+Virgil, Homer, or Mistral, in parks, restaurants, streets, and suchlike
+public places, he indited sonnets (in French) to the eyes, ears, chin,
+hair, and other visible perfections of a nymph called Th&eacute;r&egrave;se,
+the daughter, honesty compels me to state, of a certain Madame Leonore
+who kept a small caf&eacute; for sailors in one of the narrowest streets
+of the old town.</p>
+<p>No more charming face, clear-cut like an antique gem, and delicate
+in colouring like the petal of a flower, had ever been set on, alas!
+a somewhat squat body.&nbsp; He read his verses aloud to her in the
+very caf&eacute; with the innocence of a little child and the vanity
+of a poet.&nbsp; We followed him there willingly enough, if only to
+watch the divine Th&eacute;r&egrave;se laugh, under the vigilant black
+eyes of Madame Leonore, her mother.&nbsp; She laughed very prettily,
+not so much at the sonnets, which she could not but esteem, as at poor
+Henry&rsquo;s French accent, which was unique, resembling the warbling
+of birds, if birds ever warbled with a stuttering, nasal intonation.</p>
+<p>Our third partner was Roger P. de la S-, the most Scandinavian-looking
+of Proven&ccedil;al squires, fair, and six feet high, as became a descendant
+of sea-roving Northmen, authoritative, incisive, wittily scornful, with
+a comedy in three acts in his pocket, and in his breast a heart blighted
+by a hopeless passion for his beautiful cousin, married to a wealthy
+hide and tallow merchant.&nbsp; He used to take us to lunch at their
+house without ceremony.&nbsp; I admired the good lady&rsquo;s sweet
+patience.&nbsp; The husband was a conciliatory soul, with a great fund
+of resignation, which he expended on &ldquo;Roger&rsquo;s friends.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+I suspect he was secretly horrified at these invasions.&nbsp; But it
+was a Carlist salon, and as such we were made welcome.&nbsp; The possibility
+of raising Catalonia in the interest of the <i>Rey netto</i>, who had
+just then crossed the Pyrenees, was much discussed there.</p>
+<p>Don Carlos, no doubt, must have had many queer friends (it is the
+common lot of all Pretenders), but amongst them none more extravagantly
+fantastic than the <i>Tremolino</i> Syndicate, which used to meet in
+a tavern on the quays of the old port.&nbsp; The antique city of Massilia
+had surely never, since the days of the earliest Phoenicians, known
+an odder set of ship-owners.&nbsp; We met to discuss and settle the
+plan of operations for each voyage of the <i>Tremolino</i>.&nbsp; In
+these operations a banking-house, too, was concerned&mdash;a very respectable
+banking-house.&nbsp; But I am afraid I shall end by saying too much.&nbsp;
+Ladies, too, were concerned (I am really afraid I am saying too much)&mdash;all
+sorts of ladies, some old enough to know better than to put their trust
+in princes, others young and full of illusions.</p>
+<p>One of these last was extremely amusing in the imitations, she gave
+us in confidence, of various highly-placed personages she was perpetually
+rushing off to Paris to interview in the interests of the cause&mdash;<i>Por
+el Rey</i>!&nbsp; For she was a Carlist, and of Basque blood at that,
+with something of a lioness in the expression of her courageous face
+(especially when she let her hair down), and with the volatile little
+soul of a sparrow dressed in fine Parisian feathers, which had the trick
+of coming off disconcertingly at unexpected moments.</p>
+<p>But her imitations of a Parisian personage, very highly placed indeed,
+as she represented him standing in the corner of a room with his face
+to the wall, rubbing the back of his head and moaning helplessly, &ldquo;Rita,
+you are the death of me!&rdquo; were enough to make one (if young and
+free from cares) split one&rsquo;s sides laughing.&nbsp; She had an
+uncle still living, a very effective Carlist, too, the priest of a little
+mountain parish in Guipuzcoa.&nbsp; As the sea-going member of the syndicate
+(whose plans depended greatly on Do&ntilde;a Rita&rsquo;s information),
+I used to be charged with humbly affectionate messages for the old man.&nbsp;
+These messages I was supposed to deliver to the Arragonese muleteers
+(who were sure to await at certain times the <i>Tremolino</i> in the
+neighbourhood of the Gulf of Rosas), for faithful transportation inland,
+together with the various unlawful goods landed secretly from under
+the <i>Tremolino&rsquo;s</i> hatches.</p>
+<p>Well, now, I have really let out too much (as I feared I should in
+the end) as to the usual contents of my sea-cradle.&nbsp; But let it
+stand.&nbsp; And if anybody remarks cynically that I must have been
+a promising infant in those days, let that stand, too.&nbsp; I am concerned
+but for the good name of the <i>Tremolino</i>, and I affirm that a ship
+is ever guiltless of the sins, transgressions, and follies of her men.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XLII.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>It was not <i>Tremolino&rsquo;s</i> fault that the syndicate depended
+so much on the wit and wisdom and the information of Do&ntilde;a Rita.&nbsp;
+She had taken a little furnished house on the Prado for the good of
+the cause&mdash;<i>Por el Rey</i>!&nbsp; She was always taking little
+houses for somebody&rsquo;s good, for the sick or the sorry, for broken-down
+artists, cleaned-out gamblers, temporarily unlucky speculators&mdash;<i>vieux
+amis&mdash;</i>old friends, as she used to explain apologetically, with
+a shrug of her fine shoulders.</p>
+<p>Whether Don Carlos was one of the &ldquo;old friends,&rdquo; too,
+it&rsquo;s hard to say.&nbsp; More unlikely things have been heard of
+in smoking-rooms.&nbsp; All I know is that one evening, entering incautiously
+the salon of the little house just after the news of a considerable
+Carlist success had reached the faithful, I was seized round the neck
+and waist and whirled recklessly three times round the room, to the
+crash of upsetting furniture and the humming of a valse tune in a warm
+contralto voice.</p>
+<p>When released from the dizzy embrace, I sat down on the carpet&mdash;suddenly,
+without affectation.&nbsp; In this unpretentious attitude I became aware
+that J. M. K. B. had followed me into the room, elegant, fatal, correct
+and severe in a white tie and large shirt-front.&nbsp; In answer to
+his politely sinister, prolonged glance of inquiry, I overheard Do&ntilde;a
+Rita murmuring, with some confusion and annoyance, &ldquo;<i>Vous &ecirc;tes
+b&ecirc;te mon</i> <i>cher.&nbsp; Voyons!&nbsp; &Ccedil;a n&rsquo;a
+aucune cons&eacute;quence</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; Well content in this case
+to be of no particular consequence, I had already about me the elements
+of some worldly sense.</p>
+<p>Rearranging my collar, which, truth to say, ought to have been a
+round one above a short jacket, but was not, I observed felicitously
+that I had come to say good-bye, being ready to go off to sea that very
+night with the <i>Tremolino</i>.&nbsp; Our hostess, slightly panting
+yet, and just a shade dishevelled, turned tartly upon J. M. K. B., desiring
+to know when <i>he</i> would be ready to go off by the <i>Tremolino</i>,
+or in any other way, in order to join the royal headquarters.&nbsp;
+Did he intend, she asked ironically, to wait for the very eve of the
+entry into Madrid?&nbsp; Thus by a judicious exercise of tact and asperity
+we re-established the atmospheric equilibrium of the room long before
+I left them a little before midnight, now tenderly reconciled, to walk
+down to the harbour and hail the <i>Tremolino</i> by the usual soft
+whistle from the edge of the quay.&nbsp; It was our signal, invariably
+heard by the ever-watchful Dominic, the<i> padrone.</i></p>
+<p>He would raise a lantern silently to light my steps along the narrow,
+springy plank of our primitive gangway.&nbsp; &ldquo;And so we are going
+off,&rdquo; he would murmur directly my foot touched the deck.&nbsp;
+I was the harbinger of sudden departures, but there was nothing in the
+world sudden enough to take Dominic unawares.&nbsp; His thick black
+moustaches, curled every morning with hot tongs by the barber at the
+corner of the quay, seemed to hide a perpetual smile.&nbsp; But nobody,
+I believe, had ever seen the true shape of his lips.&nbsp; From the
+slow, imperturbable gravity of that broad-chested man you would think
+he had never smiled in his life.&nbsp; In his eyes lurked a look of
+perfectly remorseless irony, as though he had been provided with an
+extremely experienced soul; and the slightest distension of his nostrils
+would give to his bronzed face a look of extraordinary boldness.&nbsp;
+This was the only play of feature of which he seemed capable, being
+a Southerner of a concentrated, deliberate type.&nbsp; His ebony hair
+curled slightly on the temples.&nbsp; He may have been forty years old,
+and he was a great voyager on the inland sea.</p>
+<p>Astute and ruthless, he could have rivalled in resource the unfortunate
+son of Laertes and Anticlea.&nbsp; If he did not pit his craft and audacity
+against the very gods, it is only because the Olympian gods are dead.&nbsp;
+Certainly no woman could frighten him.&nbsp; A one-eyed giant would
+not have had the ghost of a chance against Dominic Cervoni, of Corsica,
+not Ithaca; and no king, son of kings, but of very respectable family&mdash;authentic
+Caporali, he affirmed.&nbsp; But that is as it may be.&nbsp; The Caporali
+families date back to the twelfth century.</p>
+<p>For want of more exalted adversaries Dominic turned his audacity
+fertile in impious stratagems against the powers of the earth, as represented
+by the institution of Custom-houses and every mortal belonging thereto&mdash;scribes,
+officers, and guardacostas afloat and ashore.&nbsp; He was the very
+man for us, this modern and unlawful wanderer with his own legend of
+loves, dangers, and bloodshed.&nbsp; He told us bits of it sometimes
+in measured, ironic tones.&nbsp; He spoke Catalonian, the Italian of
+Corsica and the French of Proven&ccedil;e with the same easy naturalness.&nbsp;
+Dressed in shore-togs, a white starched shirt, black jacket, and round
+hat, as I took him once to see Do&ntilde;a Rita, he was extremely presentable.&nbsp;
+He could make himself interesting by a tactful and rugged reserve set
+off by a grim, almost imperceptible, playfulness of tone and manner.</p>
+<p>He had the physical assurance of strong-hearted men.&nbsp; After
+half an hour&rsquo;s interview in the dining-room, during which they
+got in touch with each other in an amazing way, Rita told us in her
+best <i>grande dame</i> manner: &ldquo;<i>Mais il esi</i> <i>parfait,
+cet homme</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; He was perfect.&nbsp; On board the <i>Tremolino</i>,
+wrapped up in a black <i>caban</i>, the picturesque cloak of Mediterranean
+seamen, with those massive moustaches and his remorseless eyes set off
+by the shadow of the deep hood, he looked piratical and monkish and
+darkly initiated into the most awful mysteries of the sea.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XLIII.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Anyway, he was perfect, as Do&ntilde;a Rita had declared.&nbsp; The
+only thing unsatisfactory (and even inexplicable) about our Dominic
+was his nephew, Cesar.&nbsp; It was startling to see a desolate expression
+of shame veil the remorseless audacity in the eyes of that man superior
+to all scruples and terrors.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I would never have dared to bring him on board your balancelle,&rdquo;
+he once apologized to me.&nbsp; &ldquo;But what am I to do?&nbsp; His
+mother is dead, and my brother has gone into the bush.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In this way I learned that our Dominic had a brother.&nbsp; As to
+&ldquo;going into the bush,&rdquo; this only means that a man has done
+his duty successfully in the pursuit of a hereditary vendetta.&nbsp;
+The feud which had existed for ages between the families of Cervoni
+and Brunaschi was so old that it seemed to have smouldered out at last.&nbsp;
+One evening Pietro Brunaschi, after a laborious day amongst his olive-trees,
+sat on a chair against the wall of his house with a bowl of broth on
+his knees and a piece of bread in his hand.&nbsp; Dominic&rsquo;s brother,
+going home with a gun on his shoulder, found a sudden offence in this
+picture of content and rest so obviously calculated to awaken the feelings
+of hatred and revenge.&nbsp; He and Pietro had never had any personal
+quarrel; but, as Dominic explained, &ldquo;all our dead cried out to
+him.&rdquo;&nbsp; He shouted from behind a wall of stones, &ldquo;O
+Pietro!&nbsp; Behold what is coming!&rdquo;&nbsp; And as the other looked
+up innocently he took aim at the forehead and squared the old vendetta
+account so neatly that, according to Dominic, the dead man continued
+to sit with the bowl of broth on his knees and the piece of bread in
+his hand.</p>
+<p>This is why&mdash;because in Corsica your dead will not leave you
+alone&mdash;Dominic&rsquo;s brother had to go into the <i>maquis</i>,
+into the bush on the wild mountain-side, to dodge the gendarmes for
+the insignificant remainder of his life, and Dominic had charge of his
+nephew with a mission to make a man of him.</p>
+<p>No more unpromising undertaking could be imagined.&nbsp; The very
+material for the task seemed wanting.&nbsp; The Cervonis, if not handsome
+men, were good sturdy flesh and blood.&nbsp; But this extraordinarily
+lean and livid youth seemed to have no more blood in him than a snail.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Some cursed witch must have stolen my brother&rsquo;s child
+from the cradle and put that spawn of a starved devil in its place,&rdquo;
+Dominic would say to me.&nbsp; &ldquo;Look at him!&nbsp; Just look at
+him!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To look at Cesar was not pleasant.&nbsp; His parchment skin, showing
+dead white on his cranium through the thin wisps of dirty brown hair,
+seemed to be glued directly and tightly upon his big bones, Without
+being in any way deformed, he was the nearest approach which I have
+ever seen or could imagine to what is commonly understood by the word
+&ldquo;monster.&rdquo;&nbsp; That the source of the effect produced
+was really moral I have no doubt.&nbsp; An utterly, hopelessly depraved
+nature was expressed in physical terms, that taken each separately had
+nothing positively startling.&nbsp; You imagined him clammily cold to
+the touch, like a snake.&nbsp; The slightest reproof, the most mild
+and justifiable remonstrance, would be met by a resentful glare and
+an evil shrinking of his thin dry upper lip, a snarl of hate to which
+he generally added the agreeable sound of grinding teeth.</p>
+<p>It was for this venomous performance rather than for his lies, impudence,
+and laziness that his uncle used to knock him down.&nbsp; It must not
+be imagined that it was anything in the nature of a brutal assault.&nbsp;
+Dominic&rsquo;s brawny arm would be seen describing deliberately an
+ample horizontal gesture, a dignified sweep, and Cesar would go over
+suddenly like a ninepin&mdash;which was funny to see.&nbsp; But, once
+down, he would writhe on the deck, gnashing his teeth in impotent rage&mdash;which
+was pretty horrible to behold.&nbsp; And it also happened more than
+once that he would disappear completely&mdash;which was startling to
+observe.&nbsp; This is the exact truth.&nbsp; Before some of these majestic
+cuffs Cesar would go down and vanish.&nbsp; He would vanish heels overhead
+into open hatchways, into scuttles, behind up-ended casks, according
+to the place where he happened to come into contact with his uncle&rsquo;s
+mighty arm.</p>
+<p>Once&mdash;it was in the old harbour, just before the <i>Tremolino&rsquo;s</i>
+last voyage&mdash;he vanished thus overboard to my infinite consternation.&nbsp;
+Dominic and I had been talking business together aft, and Cesar had
+sneaked up behind us to listen, for, amongst his other perfections,
+he was a consummate eavesdropper and spy.&nbsp; At the sound of the
+heavy plop alongside horror held me rooted to the spot; but Dominic
+stepped quietly to the rail and leaned over, waiting for his nephew&rsquo;s
+miserable head to bob up for the first time.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh&eacute;, Cesar!&rdquo; he yelled contemptuously to the
+spluttering wretch.&nbsp; &ldquo;Catch hold of that mooring hawser&mdash;<i>charogne</i>!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He approached me to resume the interrupted conversation.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What about Cesar?&rdquo; I asked anxiously.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Canallia!&nbsp; Let him hang there,&rdquo; was his answer.&nbsp;
+And he went on talking over the business in hand calmly, while I tried
+vainly to dismiss from my mind the picture of Cesar steeped to the chin
+in the water of the old harbour, a decoction of centuries of marine
+refuse.&nbsp; I tried to dismiss it, because the mere notion of that
+liquid made me feel very sick.&nbsp; Presently Dominic, hailing an idle
+boatman, directed him to go and fish his nephew out; and by-and-by Cesar
+appeared walking on board from the quay, shivering, streaming with filthy
+water, with bits of rotten straws in his hair and a piece of dirty orange-peel
+stranded on his shoulder.&nbsp; His teeth chattered; his yellow eyes
+squinted balefully at us as he passed forward.&nbsp; I thought it my
+duty to remonstrate.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why are you always knocking him about, Dominic?&rdquo; I asked.&nbsp;
+Indeed, I felt convinced it was no earthly good&mdash;a sheer waste
+of muscular force.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I must try to make a man of him,&rdquo; Dominic answered hopelessly.</p>
+<p>I restrained the obvious retort that in this way he ran the risk
+of making, in the words of the immortal Mr. Mantalini, &ldquo;a demnition
+damp, unpleasant corpse of him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He wants to be a locksmith!&rdquo; burst out Cervoni.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;To learn how to pick locks, I suppose,&rdquo; he added with sardonic
+bitterness.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why not let him be a locksmith?&rdquo; I ventured.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who would teach him?&rdquo; he cried.&nbsp; &ldquo;Where could
+I leave him?&rdquo; he asked, with a drop in his voice; and I had my
+first glimpse of genuine despair.&nbsp; &ldquo;He steals, you know,
+alas!&nbsp; <i>Par ta</i> <i>Madonne</i>!&nbsp; I believe he would put
+poison in your food and mine&mdash;the viper!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He raised his face and both his clenched fists slowly to heaven.&nbsp;
+However, Cesar never dropped poison into our cups.&nbsp; One cannot
+be sure, but I fancy he went to work in another way.</p>
+<p>This voyage, of which the details need not be given, we had to range
+far afield for sufficient reasons.&nbsp; Coming up from the South to
+end it with the important and really dangerous part of the scheme in
+hand, we found it necessary to look into Barcelona for certain definite
+information.&nbsp; This appears like running one&rsquo;s head into the
+very jaws of the lion, but in reality it was not so.&nbsp; We had one
+or two high, influential friends there, and many others humble but valuable
+because bought for good hard cash.&nbsp; We were in no danger of being
+molested; indeed, the important information reached us promptly by the
+hands of a Custom-house officer, who came on board full of showy zeal
+to poke an iron rod into the layer of oranges which made the visible
+part of our cargo in the hatchway.</p>
+<p>I forgot to mention before that the <i>Tremolino</i> was officially
+known as a fruit and cork-wood trader.&nbsp; The zealous officer managed
+to slip a useful piece of paper into Dominic&rsquo;s hand as he went
+ashore, and a few hours afterwards, being off duty, he returned on board
+again athirst for drinks and gratitude.&nbsp; He got both as a matter
+of course.&nbsp; While he sat sipping his liqueur in the tiny cabin,
+Dominic plied him with questions as to the whereabouts of the guardacostas.&nbsp;
+The preventive service afloat was really the one for us to reckon with,
+and it was material for our success and safety to know the exact position
+of the patrol craft in the neighbourhood.&nbsp; The news could not have
+been more favourable.&nbsp; The officer mentioned a small place on the
+coast some twelve miles off, where, unsuspicious and unready, she was
+lying at anchor, with her sails unbent, painting yards and scraping
+spars.&nbsp; Then he left us after the usual compliments, smirking reassurringly
+over his shoulder.</p>
+<p>I had kept below pretty close all day from excess of prudence.&nbsp;
+The stake played on that trip was big.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We are ready to go at once, but for Cesar, who has been missing
+ever since breakfast,&rdquo; announced Dominic to me in his slow, grim
+way.</p>
+<p>Where the fellow had gone, and why, we could not imagine.&nbsp; The
+usual surmises in the case of a missing seaman did not apply to Cesar&rsquo;s
+absence.&nbsp; He was too odious for love, friendship, gambling, or
+even casual intercourse.&nbsp; But once or twice he had wandered away
+like this before.</p>
+<p>Dominic went ashore to look for him, but returned at the end of two
+hours alone and very angry, as I could see by the token of the invisible
+smile under his moustache being intensified.&nbsp; We wondered what
+had become of the wretch, and made a hurried investigation amongst our
+portable property.&nbsp; He had stolen nothing.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He will be back before long,&rdquo; I said confidently.</p>
+<p>Ten minutes afterwards one of the men on deck called out loudly:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I can see him coming.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Cesar had only his shirt and trousers on.&nbsp; He had sold his coat,
+apparently for pocket-money.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You knave!&rdquo; was all Dominic said, with a terrible softness
+of voice.&nbsp; He restrained his choler for a time.&nbsp; &ldquo;Where
+have you been, vagabond?&rdquo; he asked menacingly.</p>
+<p>Nothing would induce Cesar to answer that question.&nbsp; It was
+as if he even disdained to lie.&nbsp; He faced us, drawing back his
+lips and gnashing his teeth, and did not shrink an inch before the sweep
+of Dominic&rsquo;s arm.&nbsp; He went down as if shot, of course.&nbsp;
+But this time I noticed that, when picking himself up, he remained longer
+than usual on all fours, baring his big teeth over his shoulder and
+glaring upwards at his uncle with a new sort of hate in his round, yellow
+eyes.&nbsp; That permanent sentiment seemed pointed at that moment by
+especial malice and curiosity.&nbsp; I became quite interested.&nbsp;
+If he ever manages to put poison in the dishes, I thought to myself,
+this is how he will look at us as we sit at our meal.&nbsp; But I did
+not, of course, believe for a moment that he would ever put poison in
+our food.&nbsp; He ate the same things himself.&nbsp; Moreover, he had
+no poison.&nbsp; And I could not imagine a human being so blinded by
+cupidity as to sell poison to such an atrocious creature.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XLIV.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>We slipped out to sea quietly at dusk, and all through the night
+everything went well.&nbsp; The breeze was gusty; a southerly blow was
+making up.&nbsp; It was fair wind for our course.&nbsp; Now and then
+Dominic slowly and rhythmically struck his hands together a few times,
+as if applauding the performance of the <i>Tremolino</i>.&nbsp; The
+balancelle hummed and quivered as she flew along, dancing lightly under
+our feet.</p>
+<p>At daybreak I pointed out to Dominic, amongst the several sail in
+view running before the gathering storm, one particular vessel.&nbsp;
+The press of canvas she carried made her loom up high, end-on, like
+a gray column standing motionless directly in our wake.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look at this fellow, Dominic,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp; &ldquo;He
+seems to be in a hurry.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Padrone made no remark, but, wrapping his black cloak close about
+him, stood up to look.&nbsp; His weather-tanned face, framed in the
+hood, had an aspect of authority and challenging force, with the deep-set
+eyes gazing far away fixedly, without a wink, like the intent, merciless,
+steady eyes of a sea-bird.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Chi va piano va sano</i>,&rdquo; he remarked at last, with
+a derisive glance over the side, in ironic allusion to our own tremendous
+speed.</p>
+<p>The <i>Tremolino</i> was doing her best, and seemed to hardly touch
+the great burst of foam over which she darted.&nbsp; I crouched down
+again to get some shelter from the low bulwark.&nbsp; After more than
+half an hour of swaying immobility expressing a concentrated, breathless
+watchfulness, Dominic sank on the deck by my side.&nbsp; Within the
+monkish cowl his eyes gleamed with a fierce expression which surprised
+me.&nbsp; All he said was:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He has come out here to wash the new paint off his yards,
+I suppose.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What?&rdquo; I shouted, getting up on my knees.&nbsp; &ldquo;Is
+she the guardacosta?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The perpetual suggestion of a smile under Dominic&rsquo;s piratical
+moustaches seemed to become more accentuated&mdash;quite real, grim,
+actually almost visible through the wet and uncurled hair.&nbsp; Judging
+by that symptom, he must have been in a towering rage.&nbsp; But I could
+also see that he was puzzled, and that discovery affected me disagreeably.&nbsp;
+Dominic puzzled!&nbsp; For a long time, leaning against the bulwark,
+I gazed over the stern at the gray column that seemed to stand swaying
+slightly in our wake always at the same distance.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile Dominic, black and cowled, sat cross-legged on the deck,
+with his back to the wind, recalling vaguely an Arab chief in his burnuss
+sitting on the sand.&nbsp; Above his motionless figure the little cord
+and tassel on the stiff point of the hood swung about inanely in the
+gale.&nbsp; At last I gave up facing the wind and rain, and crouched
+down by his side.&nbsp; I was satisfied that the sail was a patrol craft.&nbsp;
+Her presence was not a thing to talk about, but soon, between two clouds
+charged with hail-showers, a burst of sunshine fell upon her sails,
+and our men discovered her character for themselves.&nbsp; From that
+moment I noticed that they seemed to take no heed of each other or of
+anything else.&nbsp; They could spare no eyes and no thought but for
+the slight column-shape astern of us.&nbsp; Its swaying had become perceptible.&nbsp;
+For a moment she remained dazzlingly white, then faded away slowly to
+nothing in a squall, only to reappear again, nearly black, resembling
+a post stuck upright against the slaty background of solid cloud.&nbsp;
+Since first noticed she had not gained on us a foot.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She will never catch the <i>Tremolino</i>,&rdquo; I said exultingly.</p>
+<p>Dominic did not look at me.&nbsp; He remarked absently, but justly,
+that the heavy weather was in our pursuer&rsquo;s favour.&nbsp; She
+was three times our size.&nbsp; What we had to do was to keep our distance
+till dark, which we could manage easily, and then haul off to seaward
+and consider the situation.&nbsp; But his thoughts seemed to stumble
+in the darkness of some not-solved enigma, and soon he fell silent.&nbsp;
+We ran steadily, wing-and-wing.&nbsp; Cape San Sebastian nearly ahead
+seemed to recede from us in the squalls of rain, and come out again
+to meet our rush, every time more distinct between the showers.</p>
+<p>For my part I was by no means certain that this <i>gabelou</i> (as
+our men alluded to her opprobriously) was after us at all.&nbsp; There
+were nautical difficulties in such a view which made me express the
+sanguine opinion that she was in all innocence simply changing her station.&nbsp;
+At this Dominic condescended to turn his head.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I tell you she is in chase,&rdquo; he affirmed moodily, after
+one short glance astern.</p>
+<p>I never doubted his opinion.&nbsp; But with all the ardour of a neophyte
+and the pride of an apt learner I was at that time a great nautical
+casuist.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What I can&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; I insisted subtly, &ldquo;is
+how on earth, with this wind, she has managed to be just where she was
+when we first made her out.&nbsp; It is clear that she could not, and
+did not, gain twelve miles on us during the night.&nbsp; And there are
+other impossibilities. . . .&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Dominic had been sitting motionless, like an inanimate black cone
+posed on the stern deck, near the rudder-head, with a small tassel fluttering
+on its sharp point, and for a time he preserved the immobility of his
+meditation.&nbsp; Then, bending over with a short laugh, he gave my
+ear the bitter fruit of it.&nbsp; He understood everything now perfectly.&nbsp;
+She was where we had seen her first, not because she had caught us up,
+but because we had passed her during the night while she was already
+waiting for us, hove-to, most likely, on our very track.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you understand&mdash;already?&rdquo; Dominic muttered in
+a fierce undertone.&nbsp; &ldquo;Already!&nbsp; You know we left a good
+eight hours before we were expected to leave, otherwise she would have
+been in time to lie in wait for us on the other side of the Cape, and&rdquo;&mdash;he
+snapped his teeth like a wolf close to my face&mdash;&ldquo;and she
+would have had us like&mdash;that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I saw it all plainly enough now.&nbsp; They had eyes in their heads
+and all their wits about them in that craft.&nbsp; We had passed them
+in the dark as they jogged on easily towards their ambush with the idea
+that we were yet far behind.&nbsp; At daylight, however, sighting a
+balancelle ahead under a press of canvas, they had made sail in chase.&nbsp;
+But if that was so, then&mdash;</p>
+<p>Dominic seized my arm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, yes!&nbsp; She came out on an information&mdash;do you
+see, it?&mdash;on information. . . . We have been sold&mdash;betrayed.&nbsp;
+Why?&nbsp; How?&nbsp; What for?&nbsp; We always paid them all so well
+on shore. . . . No!&nbsp; But it is my head that is going to burst.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He seemed to choke, tugged at the throat button of the cloak, jumped
+up open-mouthed as if to hurl curses and denunciation, but instantly
+mastered himself, and, wrapping up the cloak closer about him, sat down
+on the deck again as quiet as ever.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, it must be the work of some scoundrel ashore,&rdquo;
+I observed.</p>
+<p>He pulled the edge of the hood well forward over his brow before
+he muttered:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A scoundrel. . . . Yes. . . . It&rsquo;s evident.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;they can&rsquo;t get us, that&rsquo;s
+clear.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he assented quietly, &ldquo;they cannot.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We shaved the Cape very close to avoid an adverse current.&nbsp;
+On the other side, by the effect of the land, the wind failed us so
+completely for a moment that the <i>Tremolino&rsquo;s</i> two great
+lofty sails hung idle to the masts in the thundering uproar of the seas
+breaking upon the shore we had left behind.&nbsp; And when the returning
+gust filled them again, we saw with amazement half of the new mainsail,
+which we thought fit to drive the boat under before giving way, absolutely
+fly out of the bolt-ropes.&nbsp; We lowered the yard at once, and saved
+it all, but it was no longer a sail; it was only a heap of soaked strips
+of canvas cumbering the deck and weighting the craft.&nbsp; Dominic
+gave the order to throw the whole lot overboard.</p>
+<p>I would have had the yard thrown overboard, too, he said, leading
+me aft again, &ldquo;if it had not been for the trouble.&nbsp; Let no
+sign escape you,&rdquo; he continued, lowering his voice, &ldquo;but
+I am going to tell you something terrible.&nbsp; Listen: I have observed
+that the roping stitches on that sail have been cut!&nbsp; You hear?&nbsp;
+Cut with a knife in many places.&nbsp; And yet it stood all that time.&nbsp;
+Not enough cut.&nbsp; That flap did it at last.&nbsp; What matters it?&nbsp;
+But look! there&rsquo;s treachery seated on this very deck.&nbsp; By
+the horns of the devil! seated here at our very backs.&nbsp; Do not
+turn, signorine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We were facing aft then.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s to be done?&rdquo; I asked, appalled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing.&nbsp; Silence!&nbsp; Be a man, signorine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What else?&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>To show I could be a man, I resolved to utter no sound as long as
+Dominic himself had the force to keep his lips closed.&nbsp; Nothing
+but silence becomes certain situations.&nbsp; Moreover, the experience
+of treachery seemed to spread a hopeless drowsiness over my thoughts
+and senses.&nbsp; For an hour or more we watched our pursuer surging
+out nearer and nearer from amongst the squalls that sometimes hid her
+altogether.&nbsp; But even when not seen, we felt her there like a knife
+at our throats.&nbsp; She gained on us frightfully.&nbsp; And the <i>Tremolino</i>,
+in a fierce breeze and in much smoother water, swung on easily under
+her one sail, with something appallingly careless in the joyous freedom
+of her motion.&nbsp; Another half-hour went by.&nbsp; I could not stand
+it any longer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They will get the poor barky,&rdquo; I stammered out suddenly,
+almost on the verge of tears.</p>
+<p>Dominic stirred no more than a carving.&nbsp; A sense of catastrophic
+loneliness overcame my inexperienced soul.&nbsp; The vision of my companions
+passed before me.&nbsp; The whole Royalist gang was in Monte Carlo now,
+I reckoned.&nbsp; And they appeared to me clear-cut and very small,
+with affected voices and stiff gestures, like a procession of rigid
+marionettes upon a toy stage.&nbsp; I gave a start.&nbsp; What was this?&nbsp;
+A mysterious, remorseless whisper came from within the motionless black
+hood at my side.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Il faul la tuer</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I heard it very well.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What do you say, Dominic?&rdquo; I asked, moving nothing but
+my lips.</p>
+<p>And the whisper within the hood repeated mysteriously, &ldquo;She
+must be killed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>My heart began to beat violently.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s it,&rdquo; I faltered out.&nbsp; &ldquo;But how?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You love her well?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I do.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then you must find the heart for that work too.&nbsp; You
+must steer her yourself, and I shall see to it that she dies quickly,
+without leaving as much as a chip behind.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Can you?&rdquo; I murmured, fascinated by the black hood turned
+immovably over the stern, as if in unlawful communion with that old
+sea of magicians, slave-dealers, exiles and warriors, the sea of legends
+and terrors, where the mariners of remote antiquity used to hear the
+restless shade of an old wanderer weep aloud in the dark.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know a rock,&rdquo; whispered the initiated voice within
+the hood secretly.&nbsp; &ldquo;But&mdash;caution!&nbsp; It must be
+done before our men perceive what we are about.&nbsp; Whom can we trust
+now?&nbsp; A knife drawn across the fore halyards would bring the foresail
+down, and put an end to our liberty in twenty minutes.&nbsp; And the
+best of our men may be afraid of drowning.&nbsp; There is our little
+boat, but in an affair like this no one can be sure of being saved.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The voice ceased.&nbsp; We had started from Barcelona with our dinghy
+in tow; afterwards it was too risky to try to get her in, so we let
+her take her chance of the seas at the end of a comfortable scope of
+rope.&nbsp; Many times she had seemed to us completely overwhelmed,
+but soon we would see her bob up again on a wave, apparently as buoyant
+and whole as ever.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; I said softly.&nbsp; &ldquo;Very well,
+Dominic.&nbsp; When?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not yet.&nbsp; We must get a little more in first,&rdquo;
+answered the voice from the hood in a ghostly murmur.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XLV.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>It was settled.&nbsp; I had now the courage to turn about.&nbsp;
+Our men crouched about the decks here and there with anxious, crestfallen
+faces, all turned one way to watch the chaser.&nbsp; For the first time
+that morning I perceived Cesar stretched out full length on the deck
+near the foremast and wondered where he had been skulking till then.&nbsp;
+But he might in truth have been at my elbow all the time for all I knew.&nbsp;
+We had been too absorbed in watching our fate to pay attention to each
+other.&nbsp; Nobody had eaten anything that morning, but the men had
+been coming constantly to drink at the water-butt.</p>
+<p>I ran down to the cabin.&nbsp; I had there, put away in a locker,
+ten thousand francs in gold of whose presence on board, so far as I
+was aware, not a soul, except Dominic had the slightest inkling.&nbsp;
+When I emerged on deck again Dominic had turned about and was peering
+from under his cowl at the coast.&nbsp; Cape Creux closed the view ahead.&nbsp;
+To the left a wide bay, its waters torn and swept by fierce squalls,
+seemed full of smoke.&nbsp; Astern the sky had a menacing look.</p>
+<p>Directly he saw me, Dominic, in a placid tone, wanted to know what
+was the matter.&nbsp; I came close to him and, looking as unconcerned
+as I could, told him in an undertone that I had found the locker broken
+open and the money-belt gone.&nbsp; Last evening it was still there.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What did you want to do with it?&rdquo; he asked me, trembling
+violently.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Put it round my waist, of course,&rdquo; I answered, amazed
+to hear his teeth chattering.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Cursed gold!&rdquo; he muttered.&nbsp; &ldquo;The weight of
+the money might have cost you your life, perhaps.&rdquo;&nbsp; He shuddered.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;There is no time to talk about that now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am ready.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not yet.&nbsp; I am waiting for that squall to come over,&rdquo;
+he muttered.&nbsp; And a few leaden minutes passed.</p>
+<p>The squall came over at last.&nbsp; Our pursuer, overtaken by a sort
+of murky whirlwind, disappeared from our sight.&nbsp; The <i>Tremolino</i>
+quivered and bounded forward.&nbsp; The land ahead vanished, too, and
+we seemed to be left alone in a world of water and wind.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Prenez la barre, monsieur</i>,&rdquo; Dominic broke the
+silence suddenly in an austere voice.&nbsp; &ldquo;Take hold of the
+tiller.&rdquo;&nbsp; He bent his hood to my ear.&nbsp; &ldquo;The balancelle
+is yours.&nbsp; Your own hands must deal the blow.&nbsp; I&mdash;I have
+yet another piece of work to do.&rdquo;&nbsp; He spoke up loudly to
+the man who steered.&nbsp; &ldquo;Let the signorino take the tiller,
+and you with the others stand by to haul the boat alongside quickly
+at the word.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The man obeyed, surprised, but silent.&nbsp; The others stirred,
+and pricked up their ears at this.&nbsp; I heard their murmurs.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;What now?&nbsp; Are we going to run in somewhere and take to
+our heels?&nbsp; The Padrone knows what he is doing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Dominic went forward.&nbsp; He paused to look down at Cesar, who,
+as I have said before, was lying full length face down by the foremast,
+then stepped over him, and dived out of my sight under the foresail.&nbsp;
+I saw nothing ahead.&nbsp; It was impossible for me to see anything
+except the foresail open and still, like a great shadowy wing.&nbsp;
+But Dominic had his bearings.&nbsp; His voice came to me from forward,
+in a just audible cry:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now, signorino!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I bore on the tiller, as instructed before.&nbsp; Again I heard him
+faintly, and then I had only to hold her straight.&nbsp; No ship ran
+so joyously to her death before.&nbsp; She rose and fell, as if floating
+in space, and darted forward, whizzing like an arrow.&nbsp; Dominic,
+stooping under the foot of the foresail, reappeared, and stood steadying
+himself against the mast, with a raised forefinger in an attitude of
+expectant attention.&nbsp; A second before the shock his arm fell down
+by his side.&nbsp; At that I set my teeth.&nbsp; And then&mdash;</p>
+<p>Talk of splintered planks and smashed timbers!&nbsp; This shipwreck
+lies upon my soul with the dread and horror of a homicide, with the
+unforgettable remorse of having crushed a living, faithful heart at
+a single blow.&nbsp; At one moment the rush and the soaring swing of
+speed; the next a crash, and death, stillness&mdash;a moment of horrible
+immobility, with the song of the wind changed to a strident wail, and
+the heavy waters boiling up menacing and sluggish around the corpse.&nbsp;
+I saw in a distracting minute the foreyard fly fore and aft with a brutal
+swing, the men all in a heap, cursing with fear, and hauling frantically
+at the line of the boat.&nbsp; With a strange welcoming of the familiar
+I saw also Cesar amongst them, and recognised Dominic&rsquo;s old, well-known,
+effective gesture, the horizontal sweep of his powerful arm.&nbsp; I
+recollect distinctly saying to myself, &ldquo;Cesar must go down, of
+course,&rdquo; and then, as I was scrambling on all fours, the swinging
+tiller I had let go caught me a crack under the ear, and knocked me
+over senseless.</p>
+<p>I don&rsquo;t think I was actually unconscious for more than a few
+minutes, but when I came to myself the dinghy was driving before the
+wind into a sheltered cove, two men just keeping her straight with their
+oars.&nbsp; Dominic, with his arm round my shoulders, supported me in
+the stern-sheets.</p>
+<p>We landed in a familiar part of the country.&nbsp; Dominic took one
+of the boat&rsquo;s oars with him.&nbsp; I suppose he was thinking of
+the stream we would have presently to cross, on which there was a miserable
+specimen of a punt, often robbed of its pole.&nbsp; But first of all
+we had to ascend the ridge of land at the back of the Cape.&nbsp; He
+helped me up.&nbsp; I was dizzy.&nbsp; My head felt very large and heavy.&nbsp;
+At the top of the ascent I clung to him, and we stopped to rest.</p>
+<p>To the right, below us, the wide, smoky bay was empty.&nbsp; Dominic
+had kept his word.&nbsp; There was not a chip to be seen around the
+black rock from which the <i>Tremolino</i>, with her plucky heart crushed
+at one blow, had slipped off into deep water to her eternal rest.&nbsp;
+The vastness of the open sea was smothered in driving mists, and in
+the centre of the thinning squall, phantom-like, under a frightful press
+of canvas, the unconscious guardacosta dashed on, still chasing to the
+northward.&nbsp; Our men were already descending the reverse slope to
+look for that punt which we knew from experience was not always to be
+found easily.&nbsp; I looked after them with dazed, misty eyes.&nbsp;
+One, two, three, four.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dominic, where&rsquo;s Cesar?&rdquo; I cried.</p>
+<p>As if repulsing the very sound of the name, the Padrone made that
+ample, sweeping, knocking-down gesture.&nbsp; I stepped back a pace
+and stared at him fearfully.&nbsp; His open shirt uncovered his muscular
+neck and the thick hair on his chest.&nbsp; He planted the oar upright
+in the soft soil, and rolling up slowly his right sleeve, extended the
+bare arm before my face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This,&rdquo; he began, with an extreme deliberation, whose
+superhuman restraint vibrated with the suppressed violence of his feelings,
+&ldquo;is the arm which delivered the blow.&nbsp; I am afraid it is
+your own gold that did the rest.&nbsp; I forgot all about your money.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+He clasped his hands together in sudden distress.&nbsp; &ldquo;I forgot,
+I forgot,&rdquo; he repeated disconsolately.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Cesar stole the belt?&rdquo; I stammered out, bewildered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And who else?<i>&nbsp; Canallia</i>!&nbsp; He must have been
+spying on you for days.&nbsp; And he did the whole thing.&nbsp; Absent
+all day in Barcelona.&nbsp; <i>Traditore</i>!&nbsp; Sold his jacket&mdash;to
+hire a horse.&nbsp; Ha! ha!&nbsp; A good affair!&nbsp; I tell you it
+was he who set him at us. . . .&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Dominic pointed at the sea, where the guardacosta was a mere dark
+speck.&nbsp; His chin dropped on his breast.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;. . . On information,&rdquo; he murmured, in a gloomy voice.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;A Cervoni!&nbsp; Oh! my poor brother! . . .&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you drowned him,&rdquo; I said feebly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I struck once, and the wretch went down like a stone&mdash;with
+the gold.&nbsp; Yes.&nbsp; But he had time to read in my eyes that nothing
+could save him while I was alive.&nbsp; And had I not the right&mdash;I,
+Dominic Cervoni, Padrone, who brought him aboard your fellucca&mdash;my
+nephew, a traitor?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He pulled the oar out of the ground and helped me carefully down
+the slope.&nbsp; All the time he never once looked me in the face.&nbsp;
+He punted us over, then shouldered the oar again and waited till our
+men were at some distance before he offered me his arm.&nbsp; After
+we had gone a little way, the fishing hamlet we were making for came
+into view.&nbsp; Dominic stopped.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you think you can make your way as far as the houses by
+yourself?&rdquo; he asked me quietly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I think so.&nbsp; But why?&nbsp; Where are you going,
+Dominic?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Anywhere.&nbsp; What a question!&nbsp; Signorino, you are
+but little more than a boy to ask such a question of a man having this
+tale in his family.&nbsp; <i>Ah</i>!&nbsp; <i>Traditore</i>!&nbsp; What
+made me ever own that spawn of a hungry devil for our own blood!&nbsp;
+Thief, cheat, coward, liar&mdash;other men can deal with that.&nbsp;
+But I was his uncle, and so . . . I wish he had poisoned me&mdash;<i>charogne</i>!&nbsp;
+But this: that I, a confidential man and a Corsican, should have to
+ask your pardon for bringing on board your vessel, of which I was Padrone,
+a Cervoni, who has betrayed you&mdash;a traitor!&mdash;that is too much.&nbsp;
+It is too much.&nbsp; Well, I beg your pardon; and you may spit in Dominic&rsquo;s
+face because a traitor of our blood taints us all.&nbsp; A theft may
+be made good between men, a lie may be set right, a death avenged, but
+what can one do to atone for a treachery like this? . . . Nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He turned and walked away from me along the bank of the stream, flourishing
+a vengeful arm and repeating to himself slowly, with savage emphasis:
+&ldquo;<i>Ah</i>!&nbsp; <i>Canaille</i>!&nbsp; <i>Canaille</i>!&nbsp;
+<i>Canaille</i>!. . .&rdquo;&nbsp; He left me there trembling with weakness
+and mute with awe.&nbsp; Unable to make a sound, I gazed after the strangely
+desolate figure of that seaman carrying an oar on his shoulder up a
+barren, rock-strewn ravine under the dreary leaden sky of <i>Tremolino&rsquo;s</i>
+last day.&nbsp; Thus, walking deliberately, with his back to the sea,
+Dominic vanished from my sight.</p>
+<p>With the quality of our desires, thoughts, and wonder proportioned
+to our infinite littleness, we measure even time itself by our own stature.&nbsp;
+Imprisoned in the house of personal illusions, thirty centuries in mankind&rsquo;s
+history seem less to look back upon than thirty years of our own life.&nbsp;
+And Dominic Cervoni takes his place in my memory by the side of the
+legendary wanderer on the sea of marvels and terrors, by the side of
+the fatal and impious adventurer, to whom the evoked shade of the soothsayer
+predicted a journey inland with an oar on his shoulder, till he met
+men who had never set eyes on ships and oars.&nbsp; It seems to me I
+can see them side by side in the twilight of an arid land, the unfortunate
+possessors of the secret lore of the sea, bearing the emblem of their
+hard calling on their shoulders, surrounded by silent and curious men:
+even as I, too, having turned my back upon the sea, am bearing those
+few pages in the twilight, with the hope of finding in an inland valley
+the silent welcome of some patient listener.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XLVI.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;A fellow has now no chance of promotion unless he jumps into
+the muzzle of a gun and crawls out of the touch-hole.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He who, a hundred years ago, more or less, pronounced the above words
+in the uneasiness of his heart, thirsting for professional distinction,
+was a young naval officer.&nbsp; Of his life, career, achievements,
+and end nothing is preserved for the edification of his young successors
+in the fleet of to-day&mdash;nothing but this phrase, which, sailor-like
+in the simplicity of personal sentiment and strength of graphic expression,
+embodies the spirit of the epoch.&nbsp; This obscure but vigorous testimony
+has its price, its significance, and its lesson.&nbsp; It comes to us
+from a worthy ancestor.&nbsp; We do not know whether he lived long enough
+for a chance of that promotion whose way was so arduous.&nbsp; He belongs
+to the great array of the unknown&mdash;who are great, indeed, by the
+sum total of the devoted effort put out, and the colossal scale of success
+attained by their insatiable and steadfast ambition.&nbsp; We do not
+know his name; we only know of him what is material for us to know&mdash;that
+he was never backward on occasions of desperate service.&nbsp; We have
+this on the authority of a distinguished seaman of Nelson&rsquo;s time.&nbsp;
+Departing this life as Admiral of the Fleet on the eve of the Crimean
+War, Sir Thomas Byam Martin has recorded for us amongst his all too
+short autobiographical notes these few characteristic words uttered
+by one young man of the many who must have felt that particular inconvenience
+of a heroic age.</p>
+<p>The distinguished Admiral had lived through it himself, and was a
+good judge of what was expected in those days from men and ships.&nbsp;
+A brilliant frigate captain, a man of sound judgment, of dashing bravery
+and of serene mind, scrupulously concerned for the welfare and honour
+of the navy, he missed a larger fame only by the chances of the service.&nbsp;
+We may well quote on this day the words written of Nelson, in the decline
+of a well-spent life, by Sir T. B. Martin, who died just fifty years
+ago on the very anniversary of Trafalgar.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nelson&rsquo;s nobleness of mind was a prominent and beautiful
+part of his character.&nbsp; His foibles&mdash;faults if you like&mdash;will
+never be dwelt upon in any memorandum of mine,&rdquo; he declares, and
+goes on&mdash;&ldquo;he whose splendid and matchless achievements will
+be remembered with admiration while there is gratitude in the hearts
+of Britons, or while a ship floats upon the ocean; he whose example
+on the breaking out of the war gave so chivalrous an impulse to the
+younger men of the service that all rushed into rivalry of daring which
+disdained every warning of prudence, and led to acts of heroic enterprise
+which tended greatly to exalt the glory of our nation.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>These are his words, and they are true.&nbsp; The dashing young frigate
+captain, the man who in middle age was nothing loth to give chase single-handed
+in his seventy-four to a whole fleet, the man of enterprise and consummate
+judgment, the old Admiral of the Fleet, the good and trusted servant
+of his country under two kings and a queen, had felt correctly Nelson&rsquo;s
+influence, and expressed himself with precision out of the fulness of
+his seaman&rsquo;s heart.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Exalted,&rdquo; he wrote, not &ldquo;augmented.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+And therein his feeling and his pen captured the very truth.&nbsp; Other
+men there were ready and able to add to the treasure of victories the
+British navy has given to the nation.&nbsp; It was the lot of Lord Nelson
+to exalt all this glory.&nbsp; Exalt! the word seems to be created for
+the man.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XLVII.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The British navy may well have ceased to count its victories.&nbsp;
+It is rich beyond the wildest dreams of success and fame.&nbsp; It may
+well, rather, on a culminating day of its history, cast about for the
+memory of some reverses to appease the jealous fates which attend the
+prosperity and triumphs of a nation.&nbsp; It holds, indeed, the heaviest
+inheritance that has ever been entrusted to the courage and fidelity
+of armed men.</p>
+<p>It is too great for mere pride.&nbsp; It should make the seamen of
+to-day humble in the secret of their hearts, and indomitable in their
+unspoken resolution.&nbsp; In all the records of history there has never
+been a time when a victorious fortune has been so faithful to men making
+war upon the sea.&nbsp; And it must be confessed that on their part
+they knew how to be faithful to their victorious fortune.&nbsp; They
+were exalted.&nbsp; They were always watching for her smile; night or
+day, fair weather or foul, they waited for her slightest sign with the
+offering of their stout hearts in their hands.&nbsp; And for the inspiration
+of this high constancy they were indebted to Lord Nelson alone.&nbsp;
+Whatever earthly affection he abandoned or grasped, the great Admiral
+was always, before all, beyond all, a lover of Fame.&nbsp; He loved
+her jealously, with an inextinguishable ardour and an insatiable desire&mdash;he
+loved her with a masterful devotion and an infinite trustfulness.&nbsp;
+In the plenitude of his passion he was an exacting lover.&nbsp; And
+she never betrayed the greatness of his trust!&nbsp; She attended him
+to the end of his life, and he died pressing her last gift (nineteen
+prizes) to his heart.&nbsp; &ldquo;Anchor, Hardy&mdash;anchor!&rdquo;
+was as much the cry of an ardent lover as of a consummate seaman.&nbsp;
+Thus he would hug to his breast the last gift of Fame.</p>
+<p>It was this ardour which made him great.&nbsp; He was a flaming example
+to the wooers of glorious fortune.&nbsp; There have been great officers
+before&mdash;Lord Hood, for instance, whom he himself regarded as the
+greatest sea officer England ever had.&nbsp; A long succession of great
+commanders opened the sea to the vast range of Nelson&rsquo;s genius.&nbsp;
+His time had come; and, after the great sea officers, the great naval
+tradition passed into the keeping of a great man.&nbsp; Not the least
+glory of the navy is that it understood Nelson.&nbsp; Lord Hood trusted
+him.&nbsp; Admiral Keith told him: &ldquo;We can&rsquo;t spare you either
+as Captain or Admiral.&rdquo;&nbsp; Earl St. Vincent put into his hands,
+untrammelled by orders, a division of his fleet, and Sir Hyde Parker
+gave him two more ships at Copenhagen than he had asked for.&nbsp; So
+much for the chiefs; the rest of the navy surrendered to him their devoted
+affection, trust, and admiration.&nbsp; In return he gave them no less
+than his own exalted soul.&nbsp; He breathed into them his own ardour
+and his own ambition.&nbsp; In a few short years he revolutionized,
+not the strategy or tactics of sea-warfare, but the very conception
+of victory itself.&nbsp; And this is genius.&nbsp; In that alone, through
+the fidelity of his fortune and the power of his inspiration, he stands
+unique amongst the leaders of fleets and sailors.&nbsp; He brought heroism
+into the line of duty.&nbsp; Verily he is a terrible ancestor.</p>
+<p>And the men of his day loved him.&nbsp; They loved him not only as
+victorious armies have loved great commanders; they loved him with a
+more intimate feeling as one of themselves.&nbsp; In the words of a
+contemporary, he had &ldquo;a most happy way of gaining the affectionate
+respect of all who had the felicity to serve under his command.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To be so great and to remain so accessible to the affection of one&rsquo;s
+fellow-men is the mark of exceptional humanity.&nbsp; Lord Nelson&rsquo;s
+greatness was very human.&nbsp; It had a moral basis; it needed to feel
+itself surrounded by the warm devotion of a band of brothers.&nbsp;
+He was vain and tender.&nbsp; The love and admiration which the navy
+gave him so unreservedly soothed the restlessness of his professional
+pride.&nbsp; He trusted them as much as they trusted him.&nbsp; He was
+a seaman of seamen.&nbsp; Sir T. B. Martin states that he never conversed
+with any officer who had served under Nelson &ldquo;without hearing
+the heartiest expressions of attachment to his person and admiration
+of his frank and conciliatory manner to his subordinates.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+And Sir Robert Stopford, who commanded one of the ships with which Nelson
+chased to the West Indies a fleet nearly double in number, says in a
+letter: &ldquo;We are half-starved and otherwise inconvenienced by being
+so long out of port, but our reward is that we are with Nelson.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This heroic spirit of daring and endurance, in which all public and
+private differences were sunk throughout the whole fleet, is Lord Nelson&rsquo;s
+great legacy, triply sealed by the victorious impress of the Nile, Copenhagen,
+and Trafalgar.&nbsp; This is a legacy whose value the changes of time
+cannot affect.&nbsp; The men and the ships he knew how to lead lovingly
+to the work of courage and the reward of glory have passed away, but
+Nelson&rsquo;s uplifting touch remains in the standard of achievement
+he has set for all time.&nbsp; The principles of strategy may be immutable.&nbsp;
+It is certain they have been, and shall be again, disregarded from timidity,
+from blindness, through infirmity of purpose.&nbsp; The tactics of great
+captains on land and sea can be infinitely discussed.&nbsp; The first
+object of tactics is to close with the adversary on terms of the greatest
+possible advantage; yet no hard-and-fast rules can be drawn from experience,
+for this capital reason, amongst others&mdash;that the quality of the
+adversary is a variable element in the problem.&nbsp; The tactics of
+Lord Nelson have been amply discussed, with much pride and some profit.&nbsp;
+And yet, truly, they are already of but archaic interest.&nbsp; A very
+few years more and the hazardous difficulties of handling a fleet under
+canvas shall have passed beyond the conception of seamen who hold in
+trust for their country Lord Nelson&rsquo;s legacy of heroic spirit.&nbsp;
+The change in the character of the ships is too great and too radical.&nbsp;
+It is good and proper to study the acts of great men with thoughtful
+reverence, but already the precise intention of Lord Nelson&rsquo;s
+famous memorandum seems to lie under that veil which Time throws over
+the clearest conceptions of every great art.&nbsp; It must not be forgotten
+that this was the first time when Nelson, commanding in chief, had his
+opponents under way&mdash;the first time and the last.&nbsp; Had he
+lived, had there been other fleets left to oppose him, we would, perhaps,
+have learned something more of his greatness as a sea officer.&nbsp;
+Nothing could have been added to his greatness as a leader.&nbsp; All
+that can be affirmed is, that on no other day of his short and glorious
+career was Lord Nelson more splendidly true to his genius and to his
+country&rsquo;s fortune.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XLVIII.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>And yet the fact remains that, had the wind failed and the fleet
+lost steerage way, or, worse still, had it been taken aback from the
+eastward, with its leaders within short range of the enemy&rsquo;s guns,
+nothing, it seems, could have saved the headmost ships from capture
+or destruction.&nbsp; No skill of a great sea officer would have availed
+in such a contingency.&nbsp; Lord Nelson was more than that, and his
+genius would have remained undiminished by defeat.&nbsp; But obviously
+tactics, which are so much at the mercy of irremediable accident, must
+seem to a modern seaman a poor matter of study.&nbsp; The Commander-in-Chief
+in the great fleet action that will take its place next to the Battle
+of Trafalgar in the history of the British navy will have no such anxiety,
+and will feel the weight of no such dependence.&nbsp; For a hundred
+years now no British fleet has engaged the enemy in line of battle.&nbsp;
+A hundred years is a long time, but the difference of modern conditions
+is enormous.&nbsp; The gulf is great.&nbsp; Had the last great fight
+of the English navy been that of the First of June, for instance, had
+there been no Nelson&rsquo;s victories, it would have been wellnigh
+impassable.&nbsp; The great Admiral&rsquo;s slight and passion-worn
+figure stands at the parting of the ways.&nbsp; He had the audacity
+of genius, and a prophetic inspiration.</p>
+<p>The modern naval man must feel that the time has come for the tactical
+practice of the great sea officers of the past to be laid by in the
+temple of august memories.&nbsp; The fleet tactics of the sailing days
+have been governed by two points: the deadly nature of a raking fire,
+and the dread, natural to a commander dependent upon the winds, to find
+at some crucial moment part of his fleet thrown hopelessly to leeward.&nbsp;
+These two points were of the very essence of sailing tactics, and these
+two points have been eliminated from the modern tactical problem by
+the changes of propulsion and armament.&nbsp; Lord Nelson was the first
+to disregard them with conviction and audacity sustained by an unbounded
+trust in the men he led.&nbsp; This conviction, this audacity and this
+trust stand out from amongst the lines of the celebrated memorandum,
+which is but a declaration of his faith in a crushing superiority of
+fire as the only means of victory and the only aim of sound tactics.&nbsp;
+Under the difficulties of the then existing conditions he strove for
+that, and for that alone, putting his faith into practice against every
+risk.&nbsp; And in that exclusive faith Lord Nelson appears to us as
+the first of the moderns.</p>
+<p>Against every risk, I have said; and the men of to-day, born and
+bred to the use of steam, can hardly realize how much of that risk was
+in the weather.&nbsp; Except at the Nile, where the conditions were
+ideal for engaging a fleet moored in shallow water, Lord Nelson was
+not lucky in his weather.&nbsp; Practically it was nothing but a quite
+unusual failure of the wind which cost him his arm during the Teneriffe
+expedition.&nbsp; On Trafalgar Day the weather was not so much unfavourable
+as extremely dangerous.</p>
+<p>It was one of these covered days of fitful sunshine, of light, unsteady
+winds, with a swell from the westward, and hazy in general, but with
+the land about the Cape at times distinctly visible.&nbsp; It has been
+my lot to look with reverence upon the very spot more than once, and
+for many hours together.&nbsp; All but thirty years ago, certain exceptional
+circumstances made me very familiar for a time with that bight in the
+Spanish coast which would be enclosed within a straight line drawn from
+Faro to Spartel.&nbsp; My well-remembered experience has convinced me
+that, in that corner of the ocean, once the wind has got to the northward
+of west (as it did on the 20th, taking the British fleet aback), appearances
+of westerly weather go for nothing, and that it is infinitely more likely
+to veer right round to the east than to shift back again.&nbsp; It was
+in those conditions that, at seven on the morning of the 21st, the signal
+for the fleet to bear up and steer east was made.&nbsp; Holding a clear
+recollection of these languid easterly sighs rippling unexpectedly against
+the run of the smooth swell, with no other warning than a ten-minutes&rsquo;
+calm and a queer darkening of the coast-line, I cannot think, without
+a gasp of professional awe, of that fateful moment.&nbsp; Perhaps personal
+experience, at a time of life when responsibility had a special freshness
+and importance, has induced me to exaggerate to myself the danger of
+the weather.&nbsp; The great Admiral and good seaman could read aright
+the signs of sea and sky, as his order to prepare to anchor at the end
+of the day sufficiently proves; but, all the same, the mere idea of
+these baffling easterly airs, coming on at any time within half an hour
+or so, after the firing of the first shot, is enough to take one&rsquo;s
+breath away, with the image of the rearmost ships of both divisions
+falling off, unmanageable, broadside on to the westerly swell, and of
+two British Admirals in desperate jeopardy.&nbsp; To this day I cannot
+free myself from the impression that, for some forty minutes, the fate
+of the great battle hung upon a breath of wind such as I have felt stealing
+from behind, as it were, upon my cheek while engaged in looking to the
+westward for the signs of the true weather.</p>
+<p>Never more shall British seamen going into action have to trust the
+success of their valour to a breath of wind.&nbsp; The God of gales
+and battles favouring her arms to the last, has let the sun of England&rsquo;s
+sailing-fleet and of its greatest master set in unclouded glory.&nbsp;
+And now the old ships and their men are gone; the new ships and the
+new men, many of them bearing the old, auspicious names, have taken
+up their watch on the stern and impartial sea, which offers no opportunities
+but to those who know how to grasp them with a ready hand and an undaunted
+heart.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>XLIX.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>This the navy of the Twenty Years&rsquo; War knew well how to do,
+and never better than when Lord Nelson had breathed into its soul his
+own passion of honour and fame.&nbsp; It was a fortunate navy.&nbsp;
+Its victories were no mere smashing of helpless ships and massacres
+of cowed men.&nbsp; It was spared that cruel favour, for which no brave
+heart had ever prayed.&nbsp; It was fortunate in its adversaries.&nbsp;
+I say adversaries, for on recalling such proud memories we should avoid
+the word &ldquo;enemies,&rdquo; whose hostile sound perpetuates the
+antagonisms and strife of nations, so irremediable perhaps, so fateful&mdash;and
+also so vain.&nbsp; War is one of the gifts of life; but, alas! no war
+appears so very necessary when time has laid its soothing hand upon
+the passionate misunderstandings and the passionate desires of great
+peoples.&nbsp; &ldquo;Le temps,&rdquo; as a distinguished Frenchman
+has said, &ldquo;est un galant homme.&rdquo;&nbsp; He fosters the spirit
+of concord and justice, in whose work there is as much glory to be reaped
+as in the deeds of arms.</p>
+<p>One of them disorganized by revolutionary changes, the other rusted
+in the neglect of a decayed monarchy, the two fleets opposed to us entered
+the contest with odds against them from the first.&nbsp; By the merit
+of our daring and our faithfulness, and the genius of a great leader,
+we have in the course of the war augmented our advantage and kept it
+to the last.&nbsp; But in the exulting illusion of irresistible might
+a long series of military successes brings to a nation the less obvious
+aspect of such a fortune may perchance be lost to view.&nbsp; The old
+navy in its last days earned a fame that no belittling malevolence dare
+cavil at.&nbsp; And this supreme favour they owe to their adversaries
+alone.</p>
+<p>Deprived by an ill-starred fortune of that self-confidence which
+strengthens the hands of an armed host, impaired in skill but not in
+courage, it may safely be said that our adversaries managed yet to make
+a better fight of it in 1797 than they did in 1793.&nbsp; Later still,
+the resistance offered at the Nile was all, and more than all, that
+could be demanded from seamen, who, unless blind or without understanding,
+must have seen their doom sealed from the moment that the <i>Goliath</i>,
+bearing up under the bows of the <i>Guerrier</i>, took up an inshore
+berth.&nbsp; The combined fleets of 1805, just come out of port, and
+attended by nothing but the disturbing memories of reverses, presented
+to our approach a determined front, on which Captain Blackwood, in a
+knightly spirit, congratulated his Admiral.&nbsp; By the exertions of
+their valour our adversaries have but added a greater lustre to our
+arms.&nbsp; No friend could have done more, for even in war, which severs
+for a time all the sentiments of human fellowship, this subtle bond
+of association remains between brave men&mdash;that the final testimony
+to the value of victory must be received at the hands of the vanquished.</p>
+<p>Those who from the heat of that battle sank together to their repose
+in the cool depths of the ocean would not understand the watchwords
+of our day, would gaze with amazed eyes at the engines of our strife.&nbsp;
+All passes, all changes: the animosity of peoples, the handling of fleets,
+the forms of ships; and even the sea itself seems to wear a different
+and diminished aspect from the sea of Lord Nelson&rsquo;s day.&nbsp;
+In this ceaseless rush of shadows and shades, that, like the fantastic
+forms of clouds cast darkly upon the waters on a windy day, fly past
+us to fall headlong below the hard edge of an implacable horizon, we
+must turn to the national spirit, which, superior in its force and continuity
+to good and evil fortune, can alone give us the feeling of an enduring
+existence and of an invincible power against the fates.</p>
+<p>Like a subtle and mysterious elixir poured into the perishable clay
+of successive generations, it grows in truth, splendour, and potency
+with the march of ages.&nbsp; In its incorruptible flow all round the
+globe of the earth it preserves from the decay and forgetfulness of
+death the greatness of our great men, and amongst them the passionate
+and gentle greatness of Nelson, the nature of whose genius was, on the
+faith of a brave seaman and distinguished Admiral, such as to &ldquo;Exalt
+the glory of our nation.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<p>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE MIRROR OF THE SEA ***</p>
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