"I'd be a bad 'un if I wouldn't oblige you, sir, anyway. My jaw's main
sore, but I can do little things."
"You see, Lennard," quietly observed Lewis, after Larmor had gone, "I'm
making an experiment. If that lad had been left without such a mattress
as ours, he would have died, surely. And now I'll guarantee that I send
him back able to steer and do light work in ten days."
"That's where the hospital would come in. Well, you'll soon teach us
instead of us teaching you. Oh! surprising! oh-h-h! paralyzing! oh-h-h!
majestic! majestic!"
Tom was right in his exclamatory way, as we shall see by and by.
*CHAPTER VI.*
*THE MISSION HALL.*
And now you know what our people have been driving at all the time. I
have reported their talk, and we shall have very little space for more
of it, as the time must shortly come for swift action. From the moment
when Ferrier groaned with despair, a lightning thought shot into
Marion's brain and settled there. She had a grand idea, and she was
almost eager to get ashore: one indefinite attraction alone held her.
Ferrier was almost as eager to return, for his electric nature was
chafed by the limitations that bound him; he knew he could do nothing
without further means and appliances, and, in the meantime, he was only
half doing work of supreme importance. He wished to glance slightly at
the social and spiritual work of the fleet, but his heart was in his own
trade.
The weather held up nicely, and on the morning after Ferrier saved the
broken-ribbed youngster, the schooner had a rare crowd on board. The
men tumbled over the side with lumbering abandonment, and met each other
like schoolboys who gather in the common-room after a holiday. As Blair
said, they were like a lot of Newfoundland puppies. Poor Tom Betts came
up among the roistering crowd--pale, weary, and with that strange,
disquieting smile which flits over sick men's faces; he was received as
an interesting infant, and his narratives concerning the marvellous
skill of the doctor were enough to supply the fleet with gossip for a
month. None of the "weeds" of the fleet were on board, and the assembly
might be taken as representing the pick of the North Sea population.
With every observant faculty on the stretch Ferrier strolled from group
to group, chatting with man after man; no one was in the least familiar,
but the doctor was struck with the simple cordiality of all the fellows.
A subtle something was at work, and it gradually dawned on the young
student that these good folk had the sentiment of brotherhood which is
given by a common cause and a common secret. The early Christians loved
one another, and here, on that grey sea, our sceptic saw the early
Christian movement beginning all over again, with every essential
feature reproduced. All types were represented; the grave man, the
stern man, the sweet-faced dreamy man--even the comic man. The
last-named here was much beloved and admired on account of his vein of
humour, and he was decidedly the Sydney Smith of the fleet. His
good-temper was perfect; a large fellow of the Jutish type lifted him
with one huge arm, and hung him over the side; the humorist treated this
experience as a pleasant form of gentle exercise, and smiled blandly
until he was replaced on deck. When he was presented with a cigar, he
gave an exposition of the walk and conversation of an extremely haughty
aristocrat, and, on his saying, "Please don't haddress me as Bill. Say
'Hahdeyedoo, Colonel,'" the burly mob raised such a haw-haw as never was
heard elsewhere, and big fellows doubled themselves up out of sheer
enjoyment, the fun was so exquisite.
Lewis was struck by the men's extraordinary _isolation_ of mind; you may
not understand his thought now, but, when you visit the North Sea, the
meaning will flash on you. _Isolation_--that is the word; the men know
little of the world; they are infantine without being potty; they have
no curiosity about the passage of events on shore, and their solid world
is represented by an area of 70 feet by 18. They are always amusing,
always suggestive, and always superhumanly ignorant of the commonest
concerns that affect the lives of ordinary men. When your intellect
first begins to measure theirs, you feel as if you had been put down in
a strange country, and had to adapt your mind and soul to such a set of
conditions as might come before you in a dream. I, the transcriber of
this history, felt humiliated when a good man, who had been to sea for
thirty-three years on a stretch, asked me whether "them things is only
made up"; them things being a set of spirited natural history pictures.
I reckon if I took Mr. Herbert Spencer, or Mr. Grant Allen, or Mr. Lang
out to the fleets, I could give them a few shrewd observations regarding
the infancy of the human mind.
There was a fair amount of room for a religious service, the men packed
themselves into their places with admirable and silent politeness, and
the yacht was transformed into a mission hall. As to the fishermen's
singing, one can never talk of it sufficiently. Ferrier was stirred by
the hoarse thunder of voices; he seemed to hear the storming of that
gale in the cordage once more, and he forgot the words of the hymn in
feeling only the strong passion and yearning of the music. Then
Fullerton and Blair prayed, and the sceptic heard two men humbly
uttering petitions like children, and, to his humorous Scotch intellect,
there was something nearly amusing in the naive language of these two
able, keen men. They seemed to say, "Some of our poor men cannot do so
much as think clearly yet; we will try to translate their dumb craving."
Charles Dickens, that good man, that very great man, should have heard
the two evangelists; he would have altered some of the savage opinions
that lacerated his gallant heart. To me, the talk and the prayers of
such men are entrancing as a merely literary experience; the balanced
simplicity, and the quivering earnestness are so exactly adapted to the
one end desired.
Blair's sermon was brief and straightforward; he talked no secondhand
formalities from the textbooks; he met his hearers as men, and they took
every word in with complete understanding. When I hear a man talking to
the fishers about the symbolism of an ephod, I always want to run away.
What is needed is the human voice, coming right from the human heart:
cut and dried theological terms only daze the fisherman; he is too
polite to look bored, but he suffers all the same. I fancy Blair's
little oration might be summed up thus: Fear God and keep His
commandments, for this is the whole duty of man--and I do not know that
you can go much further. The wild Kurd in the desert will say to you,
"I cannot do that. It is a shame"; he has no power of reasoning, but he
_knows_; and I take it that the fishers are much like him when their
minds are cleared alike of formalism and brutality. Many of the men
were strongly moved as Blair went on, and Lewis saw that our smiling
preacher had learned to cast away subtleties. Fullerton's preaching was
like Newman's prose style; it caught at the nerves of his hearers, and
left them in a state of not unhealthy tension. It seemed impossible for
them to evade the forcible practical application by the second speaker
of points in the discourse to which they had already listened; nor could
they soon--if ever--forget the earnest words with which he closed--"Bear
in mind, my friends, that Christianity does not consist in singing hymns
or saying prayers, but in a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ as your
Saviour; and when you have learned to know Him thus, your one object in
life will be to glorify Him. It is right and well both to sing and to
pray, but let us take care that these exercises are the expression in
words of the heart's devotion to its Divine Lord and Master."
They were ripe for the "experience" meeting, and this quaintest of all
religious exercises gave Ferrier data for much confused meditation.
Apparently a man _must_ unbosom himself, or else his whole nature
becomes charged with perilous stuff, so these smacksmen had, in some
instances, substituted the experience meeting for the confessional. In
Italy you may see the sailors creeping into the box while the priest
crouches inside and listens to whispers; on the North Sea a sailor
places a very different interpretation upon the Divine command, "Confess
your faults one to another, and pray one for another that ye may be
healed." He goes first to his Saviour, and afterwards stands up before
all his mates and makes his confession boldly: every new confidence
nails him to his vows; he knows that the very worst of his past will
never be brought up against him, and he is supported by the sympathy of
the rough fellows who punctuate his utterances with sighs and kindly
handshaking.
When the penitent sits down his mind is eased; the mysterious sympathy
of numbers cheers him, the sense of Divine forgiveness has given him
power, and he is ready to face life again with new heart. Ferrier
caught the note of formality again and again, but he could see that the
phrases had not putrefied into cant.
Just as the soul can only be made manifest through the body, so a
thought can only be made manifest by means of words. An importunate,
living thought is framed in a perfect phrase which reflects the life of
the thought. Then you have genuine religious utterance.
The conditions change and the thought is outworn: if the phrase that
clothed the old thought remains and is used glibly as a verbal counter,
then you have Cant, and the longer the phrase is parrotted by an
unbeliever, the more venomous does the virus of cant become. To the
fishers--childlike men--many of the old Methodist turns of speech are
vital; to a cultured man the husk of words may be dry and dead, but if
he is clever and indulgent he will see the difference between his own
mental state and that of the poor fisher to whom he listens.
The experiences were as varied as possible; some were awe-striking, some
were pitiful, some verged on comedy. The comfortable thing--the
beautiful thing--about the confessions, was that each man seemed tacitly
to imply a piteous prayer, "My brothers help me to keep near my Saviour.
I may fall unless you keep by me;" while the steady-going, earnest men
took no praise to themselves for keeping straight, but generally ended
with some such phrase as, "Praise the blessed Lord; it's all along o'
His grace as I've been walkin' alongside o' Him."
One fine man, with stolid, hard face, rose and steadied himself against
a beam. His full bass tones were sad, and he showed no sign of that
self-satisfied smirk which sometimes makes the mind revolt against a
convert.
"My friends, I'm no great speaker, but I can tell you plain how I come
to be where I am. I was a strongish, rough young chap, and thought
about nothing but games. I would fight, play cards, and a lot of more
things that we don't want to talk about here. When I married, I drank
and thought of nothing but my own self. Once I took every penny I had
off a voyage to the public-house, and I stopped there and never had my
boots off till I went to sea again. Every duty was neglected, my wife
went cold in the bad weather, and my children were barefooted. When
you're drinking and fooling you can see nothing at all, and you think
you're a-doing all right, and everybody else is wrong when they try to
help you. Out at sea I gambled and drunk when I could get the money; I
made rare game of religious men, and lived as if I had never to die.
Then I was persuaded by one of my mates to visit the Mission ship, the
very first as ever come, and I wish there was twenty. I'd had a bad
time ashore, and my children was frightened of my ways, though I was
kind enough when sober, and I'd left the wife to pick up a living how
she could. Then I heard what Mr. Fullerton said. God bless him! And I
says to myself, 'Tom Barling, you're no better than a pig you're not.'
But I was proud, and I needed to be brought low. I went again and again
and talked with old John about the Mission ship, but, bless you, I
couldn't see nothing. But some kind of a--what I may say a voice kept
a-saying, 'Tom Barling, you're not a good 'un,' and at last I got what I
wanted, and I bursts out crying for joy, for I had learned to trust my
blessed Saviour, whose blood cleanses from all sin. And now by His grace
I've dropped the drink, and them fits of bad temper, and my family looks
well, and I'm so quiet in my breast here like, as I can walk for hours
on deck and pray quiet, and never think of no drink, nor cards, nor
excitement, and I never nags at any man that's wrong as I was, but I
says 'I wish you were happy as me, mate, and you may be if you'll come
to the dear Lord.' And that's all. I bless God for the Mission, because
there's many a chap like me that would like to do right but he don't
know how. I was a bad chap, and I went on doing bad things because I
knew no better; and so, brothers, when you see a mate going wrong just
coax him. And God bless you, gentlemen and ladies, and all on us."
Every variety of story was told, and, in the exaltation of the hour, the
men sang rapturously. Some of the speakers moved the doctor with
terrible pathos. (I, who chronicle these things, have heard tales which
come to me in wild dreams, and make me tremble with pity and terror.)
There was no showing off, and even those who used the stereotyped
phrase, "When I was in the world," did it with a simple modesty which
our learned friend found charming. Apparently not one of those poor
fellows felt a single prompting of conceit, and if their very innermost
feeling had been translated it would come out like this: "Brothers,
through mercy we've all slipped away from an ugly fate; we're on safe
ground; let's hang together and help each other nearer to God, lest we
should get adrift and make shipwreck."
Lewis was particularly pleased with their kindly mode of talking about
backsliders.
"Come, old lads," said one fair-haired Scandinavian, "let's all say a
word for poor old Joe Banks. He's a backslider just now, through that
dreadful drink. Let's all pray as he may see his sin against his
Saviour, and come right back to Him. He's too good to lose, and we
won't let go on him."
Then the excitement gathered, and the meeting really developed into what
might be fairly termed a Service of Praise. The men almost roared their
choruses, then they prayed passionately, then they sang again, and the
rush of harmless excitement went on hour by hour, until the strongest
enthusiasts had to obey the signal given by the darkness.
On deck there were merry partings, and the Newfoundland puppy business
was resumed with exceeding vigour. Tom Lennard was exalting his
popularity, and he knew the history of the father, the mother, the wife,
the children (down to the last baby), of every man with whom he talked.
The wind was still, the moon made silver of the air; the fleet hung like
painted ships on painted ocean,--and the men delayed their partings like
affectionate brothers whom broad seas must soon divide. The distant
adoration paid to the ladies would have amused some indifferent
shoregoers. You know the story of the miners who filled a Scotch
emigrant's hand with gold dust and "nuts" on condition that he let his
wife look out from the waggon? I can believe the tale. Great
fourteen-stone men lifted their extraordinary hats and trembled like
children when our good ladies talked to them; the sweetness of the
educated voice, the quiet naturalness of the thorough lady, are all
understood by those seadogs in a way which it does one good to remember.
The fellows are gentlemen; that is about the fact. Their struggles
after inward purity are reflected in their outward manners, and to see
one of them help a lady to a seat on deck is to learn something new
about fine breeding. Marion Dearsley was watched with a reverence which
never became sheepish, and Ferrier at last said to himself, "One might
do anything with these men! The noblest raw material in the world."
"Good-night; good-night. God bless you." One weird sound after another
came from boats that swam in the quivering moonbeams. Then came the
silence, broken only by the multitudinous whistling of the gaffs, and
the gentle moan of the timbers.
The nightly talk came off as usual; and also as usual the great
mathematician was forced to take the leading part, while Blair quizzed,
and the ladies, after the fashion of their sex, stimulated the men to
range from topic to topic. Fullerton was watching Ferrier, just as I
have seen a skilful professor of chemistry watching a tube for the first
appearance of the precipitate. This quiet thinker knew men, and he knew
how to use them; moreover, he thought he saw in Ferrier a born king, and
he strove to attract him just as he had striven to fascinate Miss
Dearsley. It was for the cause.
"What do you think of our work so far, Ferrier?"
"Good. But I want more."
Then, of course, Blair must needs have one of those wonderful jokes of
his. "Ha! I want more! A sort of scientific Oliver. I want more!
What a Bashaw! And what does his highness of many tails want?"
"Mr. Ferrier mustn't be too exorbitant. Science wears the seven-league
boots, but we have to be content with modest lace-ups and Balmorals,"
quietly observed Mrs. Walton.
"Oh! beautiful! A regular flash of--the real thing, don't you know. An
epigram. Most fahscinating! Oh-h!"
Poor Tom's elephantine delight over anything like a simile was always
emphatic, no matter whether he saw the exact point or not, and I'm
afraid that brilliant folk would have thought him perilously like a
fool. Happily his companions were ladies and gentlemen who were too
simple to sneer, and they laughed kindly at all the big man's
floundering ecstasies.
Ferrier said, "When I have got what I want, I shall vary your programme
if you will permit me. Do you know, it struck me that those good souls
are very like a live lizard cased in the dry clay? He fits his mould,
but he doesn't see out of it. I should like to give the men a little
wider horizon."
"Isn't heaven wide enough?"
"But your men are always staring up at heaven. Could you not give them
a chance of looking _round_ a bit?"
"What are you driving at?"
"Mr. Ferrier means that they do not employ all their faculties. They
are going cheerfully through a long cave because they see the sun at the
mouth; but they don't know anything about the earth on the top of the
cave."
This was a surprisingly long speech for Marion Dearsley.
"You take me exactly. Now, Fullerton, I'm going to stay the winter out
here."
"You're what?" interjected Blair.
"Yes, I'm going to see the winter through; and I mean to lay some plans
before you."
"The Bashaw has some glimmerings of sense. Yes, the scientific creature
has. Go on, oh! many-tailed one."
"You miss the secular side a little. You cannot expect those grand,
good-humoured fellows of yours to be always content with devotional
excitement."
"But we don't. Our secular work, our care for the men's bodies, is just
as great as our care for their souls," said Fullerton, warmly. "We
simply cannot do everything; we lack means, and that must be our plea,
no matter how sordid it may seem to you. But you must clearly
understand that for my part, while I hold tenaciously to the primary
duty of 'holding forth the Word of Life'--for it is 'the entrance of Thy
Word giveth light _and understanding to the simple_'--yet I am entirely
with you in feeling that we need to cultivate the intellect of these
men. Go on, Ferrier."
"Well; I meant to say that you must let the men know something of the
beauty of the world, and the wonder of it as well. Look here, Blair: do
you mean to say that I couldn't make a regular fairy tale out of the
geology of these Banks? Pray, ladies, excuse just a little shop; I
can't help it. Give me just one tooth of an elephant, dredged up off
Scarborough, and if I don't make those men delighted, then I may leave
the Royal Society."
"But, my good Bashaw," said Blair, "if you blindfold one of the
skippers, and tell him the soundings from time to time, he'll take you
from point to point, and pick up his marks just as surely as you could
touch your bedroom-door in the dark."
"Exactly. That's empirical knowledge; but when you explain _causes_,
you give a man a new pleasure. It _clinches_ his knowledge. Then,
again, supposing I were to tell those men something accurate about the
movement of the stars? Don't you think that would be interesting? If I
could not make it like a romance, then all the years I spent in learning
were thrown away."
"Could you get them to care for anything of the kind? Do you know that
a seaman is the most absolutely conservative of the human race?"
"We must begin. You give the men light, and I'll be bound that some of
us will make them like sweetness. If Miss Dearsley were to read
'Rizpah,' or 'Big Tom,' or any other story of pathos or self-sacrifice,
she would do the men good. Why, if I had the chance, I'd bring off my
friend Tom Gale, and let him make them laugh till they cried by reading
about Mr. Peggotty of Great Yarmouth and the lobster; or Mrs. Gummidge
and the drown-ded old-'un."
Mrs. Walton had been very quiet. She turned to the staid and taciturn
Mrs. Hellier and asked, "How do you find your readings suit at your
mission-room?"
"They please the women, and I suppose they would please men. Our people
are quite happy when we have a good reader. I'm a failure, because I
always begin to cry at the critical points; but Lena has no feelings at
all, and she can keep the room hushed for a whole hour."
Mrs. Walton smiled placidly.
"You see, Mr. Blair, there may be something in Mr. Ferrier's idea after
all. I believe that sweet, simple stories, or poetry, or pictures,
would please the men. See how pleased that Great Grimsby man was with
the girl's picture-book that you gave him. I'm almost converted.
Besides, now I remember it, I heard a gentleman who had been public
orator at Cambridge make a crowd of East-End people cry by reading
'Enoch Arden'--of all the incredible things in the world."
"Thank you, madam; and when I have got that hospital for you, I shall
insist on having one room for pleasure, and pleasure alone; and I'll
take good care my patients are not disturbed in any way. Fullerton is
already on our side, so you and I will take Blair in hand, and curb that
unruly scepticism of his. He is a most unblushing, scoffing sceptic, is
he not, madam?"
Blair shook his jolly sides and rose, muttering something about a
fahscinating young puppy;--whereby it may be perceived that he was
thinking of mocking Tom. The night was splendid, and when a sharp air
of wind set all the smacks gliding, our voyagers had once more an
experience that is one of the most memorable for those to whom it comes
seldom. The seaman tramps smartly; cocks an eye at the topsail, swings
round, and rolls back till he is abreast of the wheel; then _da capo_,
and so on all night. But the reflective landsman gathers many sheaves
for the harvest of the soul. Happy is he if he learns to know what the
dense seaman's life is like.
There are nights when the joy of living will not let one sleep. Do I
not know them?
Ferrier held a little chat with the girls before the scattered party
finally broke up, and Marion Dearsley pleased him mightily by saying,
"You were quite right about the pleasure-room. Only wait till we've
begun our work, and we shall make that dreadful Mr. Blair ashamed of
himself."
"What's this? Scandal and tittle-tattle begun on board? I shall exert
my authority as admiral."
"I knew you were behind me, and that is why I reproved you, sir. We
think the same about the matter, and so does Lena."
Then Ferrier and Blair and Tom talked until the air of the small hours
drove them below, and they saw the yacht skimming among the quiet fleet.
There was enough wind to move the trawls, but the lonely procession did
not travel as on that tremendous night when Lewis first learnt what a
regular hustler was like.
All the days that followed went by pleasantly enough, though Ferrier
could not help chafing. He was constantly busy with lancet, bandages,
splints; he kept a diary of his cases, and after he had cruised among
the fleet for three weeks he came to the conclusion that, if the average
of injuries and ailments were the same all the year round, every man in
the fleet must be under treatment at least _three times a year_. It
sounds queer, but I can back it with facts--definite cases.
November opened finely, and the weather, except for sharp breezes in the
chill of the early morning, left it possible to visit vessel after
vessel daily. Ferrier never had an uncivil word. One rough customer
whom he asked to board the yacht grinned and answered, "No, sir; I don't
hold with Bethel ships. But," he added remorsefully, "I've heard I
reckon fifty times about you and your ladies and gentlemen, and if you
was capsized out o' that eer boat, I'd have mine out and take her arter
you my own self if the seas was a comin' over that there mast-head."
Then Lewis shook hands with his frank opponent, who grinned affably and
waved until the boat was nearly out of sight. When the time for parting
came, Blair told the Admiral, and the bold fellow said humbly, "Well,
you've done us good. If you only knew, sir, what it is for us--us, you
know, to have people like you among us, why you'd go and give such a
message as would make the gentlemen ashore feel regular funny. When I
first come to sea we was brutes, and we was treated as brutes. We know
you can't do everything, but just the thought of you being about makes a
difference. It makes men prouder and more ready to take care o'
themselves--if you'll excuse me saying so."
"We'll do far more yet, Admiral," interposed Fullerton. "We're learning
to walk at present. Wait till you see us in full going order, and none
of you will know yourselves."
"Well, good-bye, sir. And I want to ask you particular, sir--_very_
particular. If the wind suits, don't run for home till just about dusk
to-morrow evening, and go through us. The glass is firm, and I think we
shall do well for days to come. Mind you oblige us, sir."
And next morning, as the boats met by the side of the carrier, there was
much gossip, and many mysterious messages passed. Blair told Skipper
Freeman what the Admiral wanted, and the good man grinned hard. "Right,
sir; your time's your own. I'll manage."
The dusk drooped early; a fair breeze was blowing, and the swift
schooner loitered with the smacks. Freeman sent up a rocket, the
schooner's foresail was let over, and she rustled away through the
squadron of brown-sailed craft.
"What's that, Freeman?" asked Blair, as a rocket shot up from the
Admiral's vessel.
"You'll see, sir, presently."
The schooner lay hard over when the big topsails were put on her, and
drew past one smack after another. Then a dingy vessel broke suddenly
into spots of fire; then another, then another. Flares, torches--every
kind of illumination was set going; the hands turned up, and a roar that
reverberated from ship to ship was carried over the water. The very
canopy of light haze looked fiery; the faces of the men flashed like
pallid or scarlet phantoms; the russet sails took every tint of crimson
and orange and warm brown, and from point to point of the horizon a
multitude of flames threw shaking shafts of light that glimmered far
down and splendidly incarnadined the multitudinous sea.
Every ship's company cheered vociferously, and the yacht tore on amid
clamour that might have scared timid folk.
"Why, the good fellows, they're giving us an illumination," said
Fullerton.
"Hah! very modest, I'm sure. I should just think they _were_ giving us
an illumination, sir. I should venture to say that they possibly _were_
doing a little in that way, sir. Yes, sir. Hah! Oh! No-o-oble, sir.
Picturesque, sir, in extreme! I'll write a poem descriptive of this,
sir. And, thank God," said Tom at last, with real feeling, "thank God
there are some people in the world who know what gratitude is like. Hah!
I'm glad I lived to see this day."
The last cheer rattled over the waves. "That's the grandest thing I ever
saw, Miss Dearsley," whispered Lewis.
"I was about to say those very words."
Still the schooner tore on; still the light failed more and more; and
then once again, with stars and sea-winds in her raiment, Night sank on
the sea. The yacht was bound for home, and every one on board had a
touch of that sweet fever that attacks even the most callous of sailors
when the vessel's head is the right way. We shall see what came of the
trip which I have described with dogged care.