It was an unlucky Friday morning; "and, what's more," the chief officer
stopped on the gangway to call down to me on the quay, "a black cat
crossed my path when I left home this morning, and a very nice black
cat it was." The gangway was hauled up. The tugs began to move the
big steamer away from us, a process so slow that the daylight between
us and the ship increased imperceptibly.
On my way home I paused by the shop which sells such antiques as old
spring mattresses, china dogs, portable baths, dumb-bells, and even the
kind of bedroom furniture which one would never have supposed was
purchasable at second-hand. But lower, much lower in the shopkeeper's
estimate than even such commodities--thrown into a bin because they
were rubbish, and yet not quite valueless--was a mass of odd volumes.
_The First Principles of Algebra_, _Acts Relating to Pawnbrokers_, and
_Jessica's First Prayer_, were discovered in that order. The next was
_Superstitions of the Sea_.
I am not superstitious. I have never met a man who was. And look at
the ships in dock today, without figure-heads, with masts that are only
the support of derricks and the aerials of wireless, and with science
and an official certificate of competency even in the galley! Could
anything happen in such ships to bring one to awe and wonder? The dark
of the human mind is now lighted, one may say, with electricity. We
have no shadows to make us hesitate. That book of sea superstitions
was on my table, some weeks later, and a sailor, who gave up trading to
the East to patrol mine-fields for three years, and who has never been
known to lose any time when in doubt through wasting it on a secret
propitiatory gesture, picked up the book, smiling a little
superciliously, lost his smile when examining it, and then asked if he
might borrow it.
We are not superstitious, now we are sure a matter may be mysterious
only when we have not had the leisure to test it in the right way, but
we have our private reservations. There is a ship's doctor, who has
been called a hard case by those who know him, for he has grown grey
and serious in watching humanity from the Guinea Coast to the South
Seas. He only smiles now when listening to a religious or a political
discussion, and might not be supposed to have any more regard for the
mysteries than you would find in the _Cold Storage Gazette_. When he
is home again we go to the British Museum. He always takes me there.
It is one of his weaknesses. I invited him, when last we were there,
to let us search out a certain exhibit from Egypt about which curious
stories are whispered. "No you don't," he exclaimed peremptorily. He
gave me no argument, but I gathered that it is very well to be funny
about such coincidences, yet that one never certainly knows, and that
it is better to regard the unexplored dark with a well-simulated
respect till one can see through it. He had, he said, known of affairs
in the East, and they were not provided for in the books; he had tried
to see through them from all points, but not with the satisfaction he
desired. For that reason he never invited trouble unless he knew it
was not there.
Another man, very like him, a master mariner, and one who knew me well
enough for secrets, was bringing me from the French Coast for Barry at
full speed, in a fog. He was a clever, but an indiscreet navigator. I
was mildly rebuking him by the door of his chart-room for his
foolhardiness, but he laughed quietly, said he intended to make a good
passage, which his owners expected, and that when the problem was
straightforward he used science, but that when it was all a fog he
trusted mainly to his instinct, or whatever it might be, to inform him
in time. I was not to be alarmed. We should have the Lizard eight
miles on the starboard beam in another hour and a half. By this time
we were continuing our talk in the chart-room. An old cap of his was
on the floor, upside down. I faced him there, in rebuke of this
reliance on instinct, but he was staring at the cap, a little startled.
Then he dashed past me without a word for the bridge. While following
him at leisure I heard the telegraph ring. Outside I could see nothing
but the pallor of a blind world. The flat sea was but the fugitive
lustre of what might have been water; but all melted into nothing at a
distance which could have been anywhere. The tremor of the ship
lessened, and the noise of the wash fell, for the speed had slackened.
We might have become hushed, and were waiting, listening and anxious,
for something that was invisible, but threatening. Then I heard the
skippers voice, quick but quiet, and arrived on the bridge in time to
see the man at the wheel putting it hard over. Something had been
sighted ahead of us, and now was growing broad on the starboard bow--a
faint presentment of land, high and unrelated, for there was a luminous
void below it. It was a filmy and coloured ghost in the sky, with a
thin shine upon it of a sun we could not see. It grew more material as
we watched it, and brighter, a near and indubitable coast. "I know
where I am now," said the skipper. "Another minute or two, and we
should have been on the Manacles."
Smiling a little awkwardly, he explained that he had seen that old cap
on the floor before, without knowing how it could have got there, and
at the same time he had felt very nervous, without knowing why. The
last time was when, homeward bound in charge of a fine steamer, he
hoped Finisterre was distant, but not too far off. Just about _there_,
as it were; and that his dead reckoning was correct. The weather had
been dirty, the seas heavy, and the sun invisible. He went on, to find
nothing but worse weather. He did sight, however, two other steamers,
on the same course as himself, evidently having calculated to pass
Ushant in the morning; his own calculation. He would be off Ushant
later, for his speed was less than theirs. There they were, a lucky
and unexpected confirmation of his own reasoning. His chief officer,
an elderly man full of doubt, smiled again, and smacked his hands
together. That was all right. My friend then went into the
chart-room, and underwent the strange experience we know. He wondered
a little, concluded it was just as well to be on the safe side, and
slightly altered his course. Early next morning he sighted Ushant.
There was nothing to spare. He was, indeed, cutting it fine. The seas
were great, and piled up on the rocks of that bad coast were the two
steamers he had sighted the day before.
Why had not the other two masters received the same nudge from
Providence before it was too late? That is what the unfortunate, who
cannot genuinely offer solemn thanks like the lucky, will never know,
though they continually ask. It is the darkest and most unedifying
part of the mystery. Moreover, that side of the question, as a war has
helped us to remember, never troubles the lucky ones. Yet I wish to
add that later, my friend, when in waters not well known, in charge of
a ship on her maiden voyage--for he always got the last and best ship
from his owners, they having recognized that his stars were
well-assorted--was warned that to attempt a certain passage, in some
peculiar circumstances, was what a wise man would not lightly
undertake. But my friend was young, daring, clever, and fortunate.
That morning his cap was _not_ on the floor. At night his valuable
ship with her exceptionally valuable cargo was fast for ever on a coral
reef.
What did that prove? Apart from the fact that if the young reject the
experience of their elders they may regret it, just as they may regret
if they do pay heed to it, his later misfortune proves nothing; except,
perhaps, that the last thing on which a man should rely, unless he
must, is the supposed favour of the gods of whom he knows nothing but,
say, a cap unreasonably on the floor; yet gods, nevertheless, whose
existence even the wise and dubious cannot flatly deny.
It may have been for a reason of such a sort that I did not lend my
book to my young sailor friend who wished to borrow it. I should never
have had it back. Men go to sea, and forget us. Our world has
narrowed and has shut out Vanderdecken for ever. But now that
everything private and personal about us which is below the notice even
of the Freudian professor is pigeon-holed by officials at the Town
Hall, I enjoy reading the abundant evidence for the Extra Hand, that
one of the ship's company who cannot be counted in the watch, but is
felt to be there. And now that every Pacific dot is a concession to
some registered syndicate of money-makers, the Isle-of-No-Land-At-All,
which some lucky mariners profess to have sighted, is our last chance
of refuge. We cannot let even the thought of it go.