He was cruising in the Southern Seas (was the Ulysses who told me this
tale), when there bore down upon him a marvellous strange fleet, whose
like he had not before seen. For each little craft was a corpse,
stiffly “marlined,” or bound about with tarred rope, as mariners do use
to treat plug tobacco: also ballasted, and with a fair mast and sail
stepped through his midriff. These self-sufficing ships knew no divided
authority: no pilot ever took the helm from the captain’s hands; no
mutines lay in bilboes, no passengers complained of the provisions. In
a certain island to windward (the native pilot explained) it was the
practice, when a man died, to bury him for the time being in dry,
desiccating sand, till a chief should pass from his people, when the
waiting bodies were brought out and, caulked and rigged _secumdum
artem,_ were launched with the first fair breeze, the admiral at their
head, on their voyage to the Blessed Islands. And if a chief should
die, and the sand should hold no store of corpses for his escort, this
simple practical folk would solve the little difficulty by knocking
some dozen or twenty stout fellows on the head, that the notable might
voyage like a gentleman. Whence this gallant little company, running
before the breeze, stark, happy, and extinct, all bound for the Isles
of Light! ’Twas a sight to shame us sitters at home, who believe in
those Islands, most of us, even as they, yet are content to trundle
City-wards or to Margate, so long as the sorry breath is in us; and,
breathless at last, to Bow or Kensal Green; without one effort, dead or
alive, to reach the far-shining Hesperides.
“Dans la galère, capitane, nous étions quatre-vingt rameurs!” sang the
oarsmen in the ballad; and they, though indeed they toiled on the
galley-bench, were free and happy pirates, members of an honoured and
liberal profession. But all we—pirates, parsons, stockbrokers, whatever
our calling—are but galley-slaves of the basest sort, fettered to the
oar each for his little spell. A common misery links us all, like the
chain that runs the length of the thwarts. Can _nothing_ make it worth
our while not to quarrel with our fellows? The menace of the storms is
for each one and for all: the master’s whip has a fine impartiality.
Crack! the lash that scored my comrade’s back has flicked my withers
too; yet neither of us was shirking—it was that grinning ruffian in
front. Well: to-morrow, God willing, the evasion shall be ours, while
he writhes howling. But why do we never once combine—seize on the ship,
fling our masters into the sea, and steer for some pleasant isle far
down under the Line, beyond the still-vexed Bermoothes? When ho for
feasting! Hey for tobacco and free-quarters! But no: the days pass, and
are reckoned up, and done with; and ever more pressing cares engage.
Those fellows on the leeward benches are having an easier time than we
poor dogs on the weather side? Then, let us abuse, pelt, vilify then:
let us steal their grub, and have at them generally for a set of
shirking, malingering brutes! What matter that to-morrow they may be to
windward, we to lee? We never can look ahead. And they know this well,
the gods our masters, pliers of the whip. And mayhap we like them none
the worse for it.
Indeed, there is a traitor sort among ourselves, that spins facile
phrases in the honour of these whipmasters of ours—as _“omnes eodem
cogimur,”_ and the rest; which is all very pretty and mighty consoling.
The fact is, the poets are the only people who score by the present
arrangement; which it is therefore their interest to maintain. While we
are doing all the work, these incorrigible skulkers lounge about and
make ribald remarks; they write Greek tragedies on Fate, on the
sublimity of Suffering, on the Petty Span, and so on; and act in a
generally offensive way. And we are even weak enough to buy their
books; offer them drinks, peerages, and things; and say what
superlative fellows they are! But when the long-looked-for combination
comes, and we poor devils have risen and abolished fate, destiny, the
Olympian Council, early baldness, and the like, these poets will really
have to go.
And when every rhymester has walked the plank, shall we still put up
with our relations? True members of the “stupid party,” who never
believe in us, who know (and never forget) the follies of our
adolescence; who are always wanting us _not_ to do things; who are
lavish of advice, yet angered by the faintest suggestion of a small
advance in cash: shall the idle singers perish and these endure? No: as
soon as the last poet has splashed over the side, to the sharks with
our relations!
The old barkey is lightening famously: who shall be next to go? The
Sportsman of intolerable yarns: who slays twice over—first, his game,
and then the miserable being he button-holes for the tedious recital.
Shall we suffer _him_ longer? Who else? Who is that cowering under the
bulwarks yonder? The man who thinks he can imitate the Scottish accent!
Splash! And the next one? What a crowd is here! How they block the
hatchways, lumber the deck, and get between you and the purser’s
room—these fadmongers, teetotallers, missionaries of divers isms!
Overboard with them, and hey for the Fortunate Isles! Then for tobacco
in a hammock ’twixt the palms! Then for wine cooled in a brooklet
losing itself in silver sands! Then for—but O these bilboes on our
ankles, how mercilessly they grip! The vertical sun blisters the bare
back: faint echoes of Olympian laughter seem to flicker like Northern
Lights across the stark and pitiless sky. One earnest effort would do
it, my brothers! A little modesty, a short sinking of private
differences; and then we should all be free and equal gentlemen of
fortune, and I would be your Captain! “Who? you? you would make a
pretty Captain!” Better than you, you scurvy, skulking, little
galley-slave! “Galley-slave yourself, and be—- Pull together, boys, and
lie low! Here’s the Master coming with his whip!”