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diff --git a/old/tmots10h.htm b/old/tmots10h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2dc3887 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/tmots10h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5804 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>The Mirror of the Sea</title> +</head> +<body> +<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) + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****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. 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</pre> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>“And shippes by the brinke comen and gon,<br />And in swich +forme endure a day or two.”<br /><i>The Frankeleyn’s Tale.</i></p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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. +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.</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. +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. . .</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</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’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.</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. 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 “hell +afloat”—as some ships have been called—the captain’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. +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.</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—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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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-. 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:</p> +<p>“Have you a ship in view after you have passed?”</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>“If you happen to be in want of employment, remember that as +long as I have a ship you have a ship, too.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?</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. 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?</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 “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.</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. 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.</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 “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.</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. 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!”</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. 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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>V.</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>The instances do not matter. The point is that there are ships +where things <i>do</i> 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 <i>his</i> end of +the ship, though, of course, he is the executive supervisor of the whole. +There are <i>his</i> anchors, <i>his</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>are</i> a lucky man!”</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, “What +on earth do you mean by that?”</p> +<p>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.”</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’ 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.</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, “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.”</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’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!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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!”</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 “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.</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. 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. +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.</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. 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 <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. 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.</p> +<p>For that was the gist of that article, written evidently by a man +who not only knows but <i>understands</i>—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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Of those three varieties of fore-and-aft rig, the cutter—the +racing rig <i>par excellence</i>—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.</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. 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.</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. +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.</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. +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.</p> +<p>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.</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—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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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: +“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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—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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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’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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</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. +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?</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. +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.</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. 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.</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’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.</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. +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 <i>Tweed</i>, +a ship famous the world over for her speed. The <i>Tweed</i> 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:</p> +<p>“Should think ’twas time some of them light sails were +coming off her.”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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 <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’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. 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:</p> +<p>“What are you trying to do with the ship?”</p> +<p>And Mr. P-, who was not good at catching what was shouted in the +wind, would say interrogatively:</p> +<p>“Yes, sir?”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“By Heavens, Mr. P-! I used to carry on sail in my time, +but—”</p> +<p>And the rest would be lost to me in a stormy gust of wind.</p> +<p>Then, in a lull, P-’s protesting innocence would become audible:</p> +<p>“She seems to stand it very well.”</p> +<p>And then another burst of an indignant voice:</p> +<p>“Any fool can carry sail on a ship—”</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. 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.</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. +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 +<i>Tweed</i>, 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.</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, +“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 <i>Tweed</i> +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 <i>Tweed’s</i> +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“What was the matter with you up there just now?” he +asked.</p> +<p>“Wind flew round on the lee quarter, sir,” I said.</p> +<p>“Couldn’t you see the shift coming?”</p> +<p>“Yes, sir, I thought it wasn’t very far off.”</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>But this was my chance, and I did not let it slip.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>He gazed at me darkly out of his head, lying very still on the white +pillow, for a time.</p> +<p>“Ah, yes, another half-hour. That’s the way ships +get dismasted.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>“No; but he’s provided for, anyhow. A heavy sea +took him off the poop in the run between New Zealand and the Horn.”</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. +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 <i>Punch</i>, +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!</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’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.</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. 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 <i>sail</i> 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.</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. +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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</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 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.</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. +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.</p> +<p>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.</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’ +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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’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?”</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 “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.</p> +<p>“Well, we shall have a lively time of it this passage, I bet,” +he said.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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 “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!”</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. +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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.</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 “missing” in the columns of +the <i>Shipping Gazette</i>. 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 <i>Shipping +Gazette</i> 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.</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’ 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.</p> +<p>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.</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. +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.</p> +<p>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.</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. +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.</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>“But for the turn of that wheel just in time, there would have +been another case of a ‘missing’ ship.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>XVIII.</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.”</p> +<p>“We had three weeks of it,” said my friend, “just +think of that!”</p> +<p>“How did you feel about it?” I asked.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>“I’ll tell you. Towards the last I used to shut +myself up in my berth and cry.”</p> +<p>“Cry?”</p> +<p>“Shed tears,” he explained briefly, and rolled up the +chart.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>XXI.</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>“We shall get her off before midnight, sir.”</p> +<p>He smiled faintly without looking up, and muttered as if to himself:</p> +<p>“Yes, yes; the captain put the ship ashore and we got her off.”</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>“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.”</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. 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.</p> +<p>It’s the captain who puts the ship ashore; it’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. +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.</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. +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. 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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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—<i>The</i> +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 <i>tout court</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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!”</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. +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.</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. 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.”</p> +<p>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.”</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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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: “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.</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. +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.</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. 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.</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. 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:</p> +<p>“Blows very hard, boatswain.”</p> +<p>His answer was:</p> +<p>“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.”</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. 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.</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—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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The south-westerly weather is the thick weather <i>par excellence</i>. +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:</p> +<p>“Can’t see very far in this weather.”</p> +<p>And have made answer in the same low, perfunctory tone</p> +<p>“No, sir.”</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. 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.</p> +<p>“No, sir. Can’t see very far.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</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’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.</p> +<p>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!”</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. 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.</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. +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.</p> +<p>“What do you think of it?” he addressed me in an interrogative +yell.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>“The weather’s bound to clear up with the shift of wind.”</p> +<p>“Anybody knows that much!” he snapped at me, at the highest +pitch of his voice.</p> +<p>“I mean before dark!” I cried.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</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. 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.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>“Humph! that’s just about where I reckoned we had got +to.”</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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.”</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—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.</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. +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.</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. +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.</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. 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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</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. +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.</p> +<p>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?</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. 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.</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. 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.</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. 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.</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. 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.</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. 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.</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. 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.</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. 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. 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.</p> +<p>“All right, all right! can’t do everything at once.”</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>“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.”</p> +<p>It was good advice. 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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</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. +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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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—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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</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. +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.</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’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.</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. 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.</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. 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.</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. 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 <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—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.</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 “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 <i>Duke of S</i>- (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.</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. +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!</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“For God’s sake let me, matey! Some of ’em +are after me—and I’ve got hold of a ticker here.”</p> +<p>“You clear out of this!” I said.</p> +<p>“Don’t be hard on a chap, old man!” he whined pitifully.</p> +<p>“Now then, get ashore at once. Do you hear?”</p> +<p>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.</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’s +parlour with his crony, the mate of the barque <i>Cicero</i>, 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 <i>Cicero</i> 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.</p> +<p>On the rail his burly form would stop and stand swaying.</p> +<p>“Watchman!”</p> +<p>“Sir.”</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’s return. +But many times I trembled for his neck. He was a heavy man.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Watchman!”</p> +<p>“Sir.”</p> +<p>“Captain aboard?”</p> +<p>“Yes, sir.”</p> +<p>Pause.</p> +<p>“Dog aboard?”</p> +<p>“Yes, sir.”</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. But that question +never failed.</p> +<p>“Let’s have your arm to steady me along.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“That’ll do. I can manage now.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“D-n that handle!”</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>“I wish she were out at sea,” he growled savagely.</p> +<p>“Yes, sir.”</p> +<p>I felt the need to say something, because he hung on to me as if +lost, breathing heavily.</p> +<p>“Ports are no good—ships rot, men go to the devil!”</p> +<p>I kept still, and after a while he repeated with a sigh.</p> +<p>“I wish she were at sea out of this.”</p> +<p>“So do I, sir,” I ventured.</p> +<p>Holding my shoulder, he turned upon me.</p> +<p>“You! What’s that to you where she is? You +don’t—drink.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“What are you doing here?” he asked.</p> +<p>“I am commanding a little barque,” I said, “loading +here for Mauritius.” Then, thoughtlessly, I added: “And +what are you doing, Mr. B-?”</p> +<p>“I,” he said, looking at me unflinchingly, with his old +sardonic grin—“I am looking for something to do.”</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>“I’ve given up all that.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Duke</i>—:</p> +<p>“Ports are no good—ships rot, men go to the devil!”</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>XXXV.</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>“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. . .”</p> +<p>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 <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. 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.</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. 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 . . .”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“You can always put up with ’em,” opined the respectable +seaman judicially.</p> +<p>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 <i>Hyperion</i> 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.</p> +<p>“<i>Hyperion</i>,” I said. “I don’t +remember ever seeing that ship anywhere. What sort of a name has +she got?”</p> +<p>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. . . .</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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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. <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. 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</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>“More fell than hunger, anguish, or the sea,”</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>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.</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—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.</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. 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.</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, “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.</p> +<p>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!”</p> +<p>Before I jumped into mine he took me aside, as being an inexperienced +junior, for a word of warning:</p> +<p>“You look out as you come alongside that she doesn’t +take you down with her. You understand?”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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!”</p> +<p>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.</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. +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>He made an almost imperceptible pause here, and went on again with +exactly the same intonation:</p> +<p>“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.”</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. +“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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.”</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. 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.</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’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!</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’s +beard:</p> +<p>“So you have brought the boat back after all, have you?”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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. +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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</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—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.</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—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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</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. +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>galère</i>.</p> +<p>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.</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. The disdainful ocean +did not open wide to swallow up my audacity, though the ship, the ridiculous +and ancient <i>galère</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. This, if less grandiose, would +have been as final a catastrophe.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</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 Provençal sunshine, frittered +life away in joyous levity on the model of Balzac’s “Histoire +des Treize” qualified by a dash of romance <i>de cape et d’épée.</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 ‘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.</p> +<p>Her name was the <i>Tremolino</i>. How is this to be translated? +The <i>Quiverer</i>? 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 <i>Tremolino</i>! 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.</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 “syndicate” owning the <i>Tremolino</i>: 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.</p> +<p>Poor J. M. K. B., <i>Américain, Catholique, et gentilhomme</i>, +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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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 <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. 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 <i>Tremolino</i>. 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.</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—<i>Por +el Rey</i>! 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, “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 <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’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. 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 <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’s</i> 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—<i>Por el Rey</i>! 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—<i>vieux +amis—</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 “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.</p> +<p>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, “<i>Vous êtes +bête mon</i> <i>cher. Voyons! Ça n’a +aucune conséquence</i>.” 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>. 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. +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 <i>Tremolino</i> by the usual soft +whistle from the edge of the quay. 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. “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.</p> +<p>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.</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—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.</p> +<p>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 <i>grande dame</i> manner: “<i>Mais il esi</i> <i>parfait, +cet homme</i>.” He was perfect. 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 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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>This is why—because in Corsica your dead will not leave you +alone—Dominic’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. 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.</p> +<p>“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!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Once—it was in the old harbour, just before the <i>Tremolino’s</i> +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.</p> +<p>“Ohé, Cesar!” he yelled contemptuously to the +spluttering wretch. “Catch hold of that mooring hawser—<i>charogne</i>!”</p> +<p>He approached me to resume the interrupted conversation.</p> +<p>“What about Cesar?” I asked anxiously.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“I must try to make a man of him,” 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, “a demnition +damp, unpleasant corpse of him.”</p> +<p>“He wants to be a locksmith!” burst out Cervoni. +“To learn how to pick locks, I suppose,” he added with sardonic +bitterness.</p> +<p>“Why not let him be a locksmith?” I ventured.</p> +<p>“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! <i>Par ta</i> <i>Madonne</i>! I believe he would put +poison in your food and mine—the viper!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>I forgot to mention before that the <i>Tremolino</i> 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.</p> +<p>I had kept below pretty close all day from excess of prudence. +The stake played on that trip was big.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>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.</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. We wondered what +had become of the wretch, and made a hurried investigation amongst our +portable property. He had stolen nothing.</p> +<p>“He will be back before long,” I said confidently.</p> +<p>Ten minutes afterwards one of the men on deck called out loudly:</p> +<p>“I can see him coming.”</p> +<p>Cesar had only his shirt and trousers on. He had sold his coat, +apparently for pocket-money.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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 <i>Tremolino</i>. 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. +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>“Look at this fellow, Dominic,” I said. “He +seems to be in a hurry.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“<i>Chi va piano va sano</i>,” 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. 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:</p> +<p>“He has come out here to wash the new paint off his yards, +I suppose.”</p> +<p>“What?” I shouted, getting up on my knees. “Is +she the guardacosta?”</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>“She will never catch the <i>Tremolino</i>,” I said exultingly.</p> +<p>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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>“I tell you she is in chase,” he affirmed moodily, after +one short glance astern.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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. . . .”</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. 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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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—</p> +<p>Dominic seized my arm.</p> +<p>“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.”</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>“Yes, it must be the work of some scoundrel ashore,” +I observed.</p> +<p>He pulled the edge of the hood well forward over his brow before +he muttered:</p> +<p>“A scoundrel. . . . Yes. . . . It’s evident.”</p> +<p>“Well,” I said, “they can’t get us, that’s +clear.”</p> +<p>“No,” he assented quietly, “they cannot.”</p> +<p>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 <i>Tremolino’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. 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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>We were facing aft then.</p> +<p>“What’s to be done?” I asked, appalled.</p> +<p>“Nothing. Silence! Be a man, signorine.”</p> +<p>“What else?” 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. 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 <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. Another half-hour went by. I could not stand +it any longer.</p> +<p>“They will get the poor barky,” I stammered out suddenly, +almost on the verge of tears.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“<i>Il faul la tuer</i>.”</p> +<p>I heard it very well.</p> +<p>“What do you say, Dominic?” I asked, moving nothing but +my lips.</p> +<p>And the whisper within the hood repeated mysteriously, “She +must be killed.”</p> +<p>My heart began to beat violently.</p> +<p>“That’s it,” I faltered out. “But how?”</p> +<p>“You love her well?”</p> +<p>“I do.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“I understand,” I said softly. “Very well, +Dominic. When?”</p> +<p>“Not yet. We must get a little more in first,” +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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“What did you want to do with it?” he asked me, trembling +violently.</p> +<p>“Put it round my waist, of course,” I answered, amazed +to hear his teeth chattering.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“I am ready.”</p> +<p>“Not yet. I am waiting for that squall to come over,” +he muttered. And a few leaden minutes passed.</p> +<p>The squall came over at last. Our pursuer, overtaken by a sort +of murky whirlwind, disappeared from our sight. The <i>Tremolino</i> +quivered and bounded forward. The land ahead vanished, too, and +we seemed to be left alone in a world of water and wind.</p> +<p>“<i>Prenez la barre, monsieur</i>,” 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.”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>“Now, signorino!”</p> +<p>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—</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Tremolino</i>, 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.</p> +<p>“Dominic, where’s Cesar?” I cried.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“Cesar stole the belt?” I stammered out, bewildered.</p> +<p>“And who else?<i> Canallia</i>! He must have been +spying on you for days. And he did the whole thing. Absent +all day in Barcelona. <i>Traditore</i>! Sold his jacket—to +hire a horse. Ha! ha! A good affair! I tell you it +was he who set him at us. . . .”</p> +<p>Dominic pointed at the sea, where the guardacosta was a mere dark +speck. His chin dropped on his breast.</p> +<p>“. . . On information,” he murmured, in a gloomy voice. +“A Cervoni! Oh! my poor brother! . . .”</p> +<p>“And you drowned him,” I said feebly.</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Do you think you can make your way as far as the houses by +yourself?” he asked me quietly.</p> +<p>“Yes, I think so. But why? Where are you going, +Dominic?”</p> +<p>“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. <i>Ah</i>! <i>Traditore</i>! 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—<i>charogne</i>! +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.”</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: +“<i>Ah</i>! <i>Canaille</i>! <i>Canaille</i>! +<i>Canaille</i>!. . .” 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 <i>Tremolino’s</i> +last day. 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. +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.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>XLVI.</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>“A fellow has now no chance of promotion unless he jumps into +the muzzle of a gun and crawls out of the touch-hole.”</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. 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.</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. +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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.</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. +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.”</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’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.</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’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.</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. 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.</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. 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.</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. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>XLIX.</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>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.</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. 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.</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. 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. 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.</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. +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.</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. 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.”</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div> +<p>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE MIRROR OF THE SEA ***</p> +<pre> + +******This file should be named tmots10h.htm or tmots10h.zip****** +Corrected EDITIONS of our EBooks get a new NUMBER, tmots11h.htm +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, tmots10ah.htm + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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