_June 5._—To look down a lane in our village you might suppose that
literature was about as likely there as the harpsichord. The narrow
pathway (when two of us meet in it we must go sideways) is of wood, and
it has white walls and a roof of steel. There are doors all along its
length, and it ends at a ladder descending to the afterdeck. The doors
are generally open in a friendly way, as though we had no doubt about our
neighbors. Some of these doors give on comfortable little sanctuaries in
white and mahogany, with blue and orange bunk curtains, electric lamps,
and settles on which—should you call on a friend when he is off duty—you
may hear enough to keep your own improving knowledge modest and dumb.
There are sections of surprising warmth in that steel passage. You
feel no astonishment, therefore, when you come to other doors which do
not admit to mahogany and bright curtains, but to the noises and dark
business of the pit; you may see, down below, little figures most intent
on whatever duties have to be performed about eternal fires and boilers.
Therefore literature? No, nor flower boxes. Besides, this ship and its
men are as good as some books, and better than others. In the early
days of the voyage I felt no desire to read. Yet one night the initial
interest in the novelty of my new home wavered. There was no sound but
the creaking of a piece of unseen gear and the monody of the waters.
There was nothing to do, and the last word had been said. That was the
time when a book would have helped. But I knew it would be useless to
look for aid to the kind of books which go to sea. I recalled other
voyages and their chance volumes. Easy reading! Yet to take to sea what
has the comical name of “light literature,” because that is the stuff
to read there, is an insult to one’s circumstances, where ignorance
and light-mindedness are ever in jeopardy and may be severely handled.
Anyhow, I do know that the sea converts that kind of confectionery into
sodden, dismal, and unappetizing stuff.
There was nothing for it but patience. Mine had been rather a hurried
departure, and, except a few geographical and other reference works, I
had nothing with me but a Malay grammar, and so far the grammar had too
easily repulsed my polite and insinuating advances upon it. Our ship is
an extensive and busy place, managed in a way which shows an exclusive
attention for the job, and so I did not betray my interest in literature
till one day I saw a cadet with a likely volume. It turned out to be the
Iliad, in Derby’s translation. I was so impressed that I mentioned this
curious adventure to the captain.
He thought nothing of it. “Our ship has plenty of books—part of our
gear. Come with me.” He showed me a bookcase for the boys—I had passed
the place where it stood scores of times and would never have guessed so
much was secreted there. Excepting for some transient volumes of fiction,
changed whenever the ship is home again, the books in that case would
have shown a country parsonage to have an horizon strangely beyond the
parochial confines.
There was the Odyssey, the _Oxford Book of English Verse_, Milton,
Wordsworth, Tennyson, _Know Your Own Ship_, Lubbock’s _China Clippers_,
Green’s _Short History_, a history of China, Japanese and Malay grammars,
volumes on engineering and navigation. Ball’s _Wonders of the Heavens_,
the Oxford Dictionary, Wallace’s _Malay Archipelago_, books on sea
birds, books on marine zoölogy, books enough to keep one hunting along
their backs for something else unexpected and good. And in this very
place where I had imagined that I was cut off from letters, the captain,
casually at breakfast one morning, gave a frank judgment on a recent
novel, and his reasons for his opinion were so sparkling and original
that I saw at once what is the matter with the professional reviewing of
books. In the place where I had guessed that letters were nothing, the
significance of the popular reading is such that it would break the heart
of a sensational novelist to see it, and might drive him to seek his meat
in the more useful mysteries of crochet work.
[Illustration: _Port Said Is More West Than East_
(_See p. 23_)]
_June 6._—The southwest monsoon has broken. The heat and languor of
the Red Sea are being washed from us by the Gulf of Arabia. The decks
have been wet and lively to-day. The ship is rolled by quick and abrupt
waves heaping along our starboard side. The waters recoil from our bulk,
and the sun shining through their translucent summits gives the tumult
brief pyramids of beryl. There are acres of noisy snow, and clouds of
apple-green foundered deep within inclines of dark glass. Spectra are
constant over the forward deck, where the spray towers between us and
the sun, and drives inboard. After a nasty lurch I hear more crockery
smash below. One of the other two passengers, the young Scots farmer who
has left his Ayrshire oats to see whether rubber trees are better, and
who had fancied at the first trial that he was a proved sailor, now seems
to miss the placidity of his cows. He groans. At first I was a little
doubtful about myself, but bluffed the Gulf of Arabia into supposing that
it was a mistake to take me for a longshoreman; yet for a mysterious
reason, so uncertain is the soul and its uninvited thoughts, I have had
“Tipperary” running through my head all this day—music, one would think,
which had nothing to do with monsoons; and thoughts of Paris, and the
look of the English soldiers of the Mons retreat I met long ago. Why? How
are we made? For here I am, with nothing to remind me of Crépy-en-Valois,
climbing companion ladders where ascent and descent are checked at times
by an invisible force, which holds me firm to the reality of a ship at
sea. And yet “Tipperary,” that fond and foolish air, will not leave me. I
wish I had the clew to this. After sunset, in a brief wild light, it was
a test of the firmness of the mind to be on deck. The clouds, the sea,
the horizon, were a great world displaced. The universe with its stars
swayed giddily at bonds that threatened to burst at any moment, and away
then we should have gone into space. It is darksome to see very heaven
itself behaving as though it were working loose from its eternal laws. An
anarchic firmament?
_June 7._—Bracing myself last night in my cot, from which the ship
tried to eject me, I read Kidd’s _Science of Power_. The captain had
commended it to me, saying it was one of the best books he had ever
read. Now, would it have been possible before 1914 for a book which
describes the theory of mankind’s inborn and unalterable nature as
blasphemous nonsense, and condemns civilization based on force, to win
so handsome a tribute from such a tough character as our skipper? Kidd
declares that it is the psychic condition of a people which matters, and
that their outlook on life can be changed in a generation. He says the
collective emotion can be charged for war or for peace. That our captain,
who had his share of war, should have been moved by such an idea, need
not surprise us to-day. Kidd’s theory is proved by our skipper’s own
eagerness in this new hope. But the prophets and all the artists who have
never served in the House of Rimmon have always held that faith, and have
worked in its light. Otherwise they would have cursed God and then have
cleared out of this world by a short cut. All the material manifestations
of our civilization, which are thought to be from everlasting to
everlasting, are nothing but the reflections of our commonest thoughts,
and may be changed like lantern slides. The better world will be here
as soon as we really want it. It depends on how we look at things. I
recall a school anniversary, and a brigadier as the central light to
shine on assembled youth. He advised the boys to take no notice of the
talk about the brotherhood of man; man always had been a fighting animal;
war was a fine training for our most manly qualities; with God’s help we
had to prepare for the next war, which was sure to come; all this peace
nonsense was eye-wash. It was plain that brigadier felt he was the very
man to scrawl upon the virgin minds of children, as indeed our applause
assured him he was. But suppose we pose the problem of the education of
boys on the same plane of intelligence, though from another angle. Let
us imagine the governors of that school had invited a painted lady to
address the boys, and that she had assured them that they should laugh
at this nonsense of the virtue of man, for man is a lecherous animal and
concupiscence brings out all his lusty qualities, and therefore they
should prepare for riotous nights because all the talk of honor and a
fastidious mind is just eye-wash. What would careful parents think of
that? But would the outrage be worse than the brigadier’s?
We have four cadets, and they make the best-looking group of our
company. They move about lightly in shorts and singlets as though they
were enjoying life in a delightful world. I stand where I can see them
unobserved. They reconcile me to great statesmen, brigadiers, Bottomley,
and the strong silent men. It is dreadful to think that soon they may
lose their jolly life and become serious lumber in the councils of the
world, and very highly respected.
_June 8._—Rain came like the collapse of the sky at six o’clock this
morning. Numerous waterfalls roared from the upper works as the ship
rolled. The weather cleared at breakfast time, and immense clouds walled
the sea, vague and still, and inclosed us in a glittering clammy heat.
Perhaps it was the heat that did it, but certainly the ship’s master
revealed himself in another character. Our captain has the bearing and
the look of a scholarly cleric. He is an elderly man, with a lean,
grave face, though his gray eyes, when they meet yours, have a playful
interrogatory irony. Luckily he is clean shaven, so that I may admire
a mouth and chin which would become a prelate. His thin nose points
downward in gentle deprecation. A few men, under the bo’sun, were at
some job this morning on the captain’s bridge, where we have our few
staterooms. The bo’sun is a short fellow, with the build of a higher
anthropoid. If he began to strangle me I should not resist. I should
commend my soul to God. I have not seen him bend iron bars in those paws
of his, but I am sure that if a straight bar ever displeases him he will
put a crook in it. And he knows his job. He is always waddling about
rapidly, glancing right and left with scowling dissatisfaction. There he
was this morning on our bridge, where I was enjoying early morning at sea
in the tropics while trying to keep clear of the men at work. Our captain
stood near me, indifferent to my existence, and apparently oblivious even
of the ship and its place in the sun. The bo’sun, growling in his throat,
and lifting in indication a brown and hairy paw, was keeping the men
active and silent. I don’t know what happened. But the captain turned;
he regarded for several seconds in silent disfavor the bo’sun, the men,
and their job; then there was a sudden blast from him which made all the
figures of those seamen appear to wilt and bend as in a cruel wind. The
captain did not raise his voice, but with that deep and sonorous tone
which in the peroration from a pulpit shakes the secret fastnesses of
wicked souls he stated how things looked to him in similes and with other
decorations that increased the heat and my perspiration till I looked
around for the nearest ladder out of it.
_June 9._—I met the chief engineer in an alleyway of the main deck. We
stopped to yarn, for we have become no more intimate yet than is possible
across the mess-room table. One of his Chinese firemen squeezed past us
as we were talking, and the chief’s eyes followed him. Then he chuckled.
“I found that man below last week with a bit of spun yarn round his
throat. He was pretending suicide, and kept up the joke to amuse me. The
Chink said, ‘Me all same Jesus Clist.’ I told him he was wrong. Christ
did not commit suicide. Christ was topside man, not a devil. That Chink
was quite surprised. He shook his head. I could see he did not believe
me. Nothing that I explained to him convinced him that Jesus was not a
devil. ‘Clist no devil? Velly good.’” The fellow smiled bitterly and
shook his head at the joke. It took me some minutes to get at his idea,
and from what I could make out that Chink thought it was incredible we
should go to any trouble about a good man. Good spirits would do us no
harm. People only kow-tow to devils they are afraid of.
_June 10._—We are nearing the Laccadives. A dragonfly passed over the
ship on the wind. The wind is southwest, and the nearest land in that
direction is Africa, over one thousand miles away. Some day a sailor who
has a taste for natural history will give us the records of his voyages,
and his notes may surprise the ornithologists, at least. Our men caught
a merlin in the Red Sea, which was quite friendly, and took its own time
to depart when it was released. Another day, while in the same waters, I
was looking at a group of Chinese, firemen sprawled on the after hatch
and was wondering where in England a chance group of workers could be
found to match those models, when a ray of colored light flashed over
them and focused on a davit. It was an unfamiliar bird, and I began to
stalk it with binoculars while it changed its perches about the poop,
till it was made out to be a bee-eater. Then I found the chief mate was
behind me, intent also with his binoculars. We had some bickering about
it. He said the bird was a roller; but I told him he should stick to his
chipping hammer and leave the birds to better men. He said he would soon
show me who was the better man, and escorted me the length of the ship
to his cabin, where he produced a bird book, which was a log of several
long voyages to the Far East. Like so many sailors to-day he is versed in
several matters which we landsmen think are certainly not the business
of sailors at all. He has been keeping a log of the land birds which he
has recognized at sea, and his record suggested what an excellent book a
sailor, who is also a naturalist, may write for us some day.
This sailor had observed for himself, what naturalists know well enough,
that the gulls are not sea birds at all in the sense that are albatrosses
and petrels, and the frigate and bo’sun birds of the tropics. When you
see gulls, then land is near, though dirty weather may hide it. The
herring gulls, kittiwakes, and black-backs never follow a ship to blue
water. When, outward bound, land dissolves astern, then they, too,
leave you. You may meet their fellows again off Ushant or Finisterre
if your ship passes not too far from the land; but should you be well
to the westward, then the ship’s next visitors will be land birds when
approaching Gibraltar.
Several pairs of noddies kept about the ship at the lower end of the Red
Sea, and not because of anything we could give them except our society.
They did not beg astern, like hungry gulls, for scraps, but wheeled about
the bows, or maneuvered close abeam like swallows at play. As a fact, I
think they were tired and wanted to rest. Once or twice they alighted on
our bulwarks and went through some astonishing aërial acrobatics while
their tiny webbed feet sought the awkward perch.
After sundown one actually tried to alight on my head, while I stood in
the dusk on the captain’s bridge watching its evolutions. It swerved
and stooped so unexpectedly that I ducked, as one used to at the sound
of a shell going over. But soon it alighted behind me, and it made no
more fuss about being picked up than though it were a rag. It was only a
little sick, but got over that, and settled down on the palm of my hand.
A group of shipmates were overworking a gramophone below on a hatch,
where lamps made the deck bright. Down went the noddy and I to them. Our
visitor cocked an eye at the gramophone and took quiet stock of the men
who came round to stroke it. It accepted us all as quietly as though it
had known us for years, and this was the usual routine. It heard its mate
later, or else our musical records were not to its taste, for it shook
itself disconsolately, waddled a little, and projected itself into the
night.
Last night the surgeon brought to my cabin another visitor. It was a
petrel, about the size of a blackbird, and of a uniform dark chocolate
color. We judged it was uncommon, and there was a brief hint of
chloroform, which was immediately dismissed, for our captain might have
objected to any modern version of the Ancient Mariner’s crime on his
ship, even in the name of science. We enjoyed our guest in life till it
was pleased to leave us.[1]
_June 11._—The south end of Ceylon was in sight twenty miles distant on
the port bow at 2 P.M. I did not notice any spicy breeze, but the water
had changed to an olive green. The coast was dim as we drew abreast of
Dondra Head, but the white stalk of its beacon was distinct and the
pulsing light of the combers. We seem to have been at sea for an age. The
exposed forecastle with its rusty gear, where I feel most at home, has
become friendly and comforting. You are secluded there. You are elevated
from the sea and outside the ship. The great red links of the cable, the
ochraceous stains on the plates, the squat black winches like crouched
and faithful familiars, the rush and gurgle of fountains in the hawse
pipes when the ship’s head dips, the glow of the deck and the rails, like
the grateful warmth of a living body, and the ancient smell, as if you
could sniff the antiquity of the sea and the sweat of a deathless ship on
a voyage beyond the counting of mere days, give me a deeper conviction
of immortality than all the eager arguments from welcome surmises. I am
in eternity. There is no time. There is no death. This is not only the
Indian Ocean. Those leisurely white caps diminishing to infinity, the
serene heaven, the silence except for the sonority of the waters, are
Bideford Bay, too, on a summer long past, and the Gulf Stream on a voyage
which ended I forget when, and what Magellan saw in the Pacific, and is
the Channel on our first passage across, and they are the lure and hope
of all the voyagers who ever stood at a ship’s head and looked to the
unknown. They are all the seas under the sun, and I am not myself, but
the yearning eyes of Man. To-day, when so disembodied and universal,
leaning on the rail over the stem, both the confident interrogation and
the answer to the mystery of the world, a little flying fish appeared in
the heaving glass beneath me, was bewildered by our approaching mass, and
got up too late. He emerged from a wave at the wrong angle, and the water
and draught flung him against our iron.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Later, Mr. Moulton, of the Raffles Museum at Singapore, showed me a
rarity, one of the six specimens taken of Swinhoe’s fork-tailed petrel.
Our little friend of the Indian Ocean was at once recognized and named,
and his visit to our liner added something new to our knowledge of his
kind, for it was unknown that he was likely to be found so far to the
westward.