VI

In the retrospect of a life which had, besides its preliminary stage

of childhood and early youth, two distinct developments, and even two

distinct elements, such as earth and water, for its successive scenes,

a certain amount of naiveness is unavoidable. I am conscious of it in

these pages. This remark is put forward in no apologetic spirit. As

years go by and the number of pages grows steadily, the feeling grows

upon one, too, that one can write only for friends. Then why should one

put them to the necessity of protesting (as a friend would do) that no

apology is necessary, or put, perchance, into their heads the doubt of

one's discretion? So much as to the care due to those friends whom a

word here, a line there, a fortunate page of just feeling in the right

place, some happy simplicity, or even some lucky subtlety, has drawn

from the great multitude of fellow beings even as a fish is drawn from

the depths of the sea. Fishing is notoriously (I am talking now of the

deep sea) a matter of luck. As to one's enemies, they will take care of

themselves.

There is a gentleman, for instance, who, metaphorically speaking, jumps

upon me with both feet. This image has no grace, but it is exceedingly

apt to the occasion--to the several occasions. I don't know precisely

how long he has been indulging in that intermittent exercise, whose

seasons are ruled by the custom of the publishing trade. Somebody

pointed him out (in printed shape, of course) to my attention some time

ago, and straightway I experienced a sort of reluctant affection for

that robust man. He leaves not a shred of my substance untrodden: for

the writer's substance is his writing; the rest of him is but a vain

shadow, cherished or hated on uncritical grounds. Not a shred! Yet the

sentiment owned to is not a freak of affectation or perversity. It has

a deeper, and, I venture to think, a more estimable origin than the

caprice of emotional lawlessness. It is, indeed, lawful, in so much

that it is given (reluctantly) for a consideration, for several

considerations. There is that robustness, for instance, so often the

sign of good moral balance. That's a consideration. It is not, indeed,

pleasant to be stamped upon, but the very thoroughness of the operation,

implying not only a careful reading, but some real insight into work

whose qualities and defects, whatever they may be, are not so much on

the surface, is something to be thankful for in view of the fact that it

may happen to one's work to be condemned without being read at all. This

is the most fatuous adventure that can well happen to a writer venturing

his soul among criticisms. It can do one no harm, of course, but it

is disagreeable. It is disagreeable in the same way as discovering

a three-card-trick man among a decent lot of folk in a third-class

compartment. The open impudence of the whole transaction, appealing

insidiously to the folly and credulity of mankind, the brazen,

shameless patter, proclaiming the fraud openly while insisting on the

fairness of the game, give one a feeling of sickening disgust. The

honest violence of a plain man playing a fair game fairly--even if he

means to knock you over--may appear shocking, but it remains within the

pale of decency. Damaging as it may be, it is in no sense offensive. One

may well feel some regard for honesty, even if practised upon one's own

vile body. But it is very obvious that an enemy of that sort will not be

stayed by explanations or placated by apologies. Were I to advance the

plea of youth in excuse of the naiveness to be found in these pages, he

would be likely to say “Bosh!” in a column and a half of fierce print.

Yet a writer is no older than his first published book, and, not

withstanding the vain appearances of decay which attend us in this

transitory life, I stand here with the wreath of only fifteen short

summers on my brow.

With the remark, then, that at such tender age some naiveness of feeling

and expression is excusable, I proceed to admit that, upon the whole,

my previous state of existence was not a good equipment for a literary

life. Perhaps I should not have used the word literary. That word

presupposes an intimacy of acquaintance with letters, a turn of mind,

and a manner of feeling to which I dare lay no claim. I only love

letters; but the love of letters does not make a literary man, any more

than the love of the sea makes a seaman. And it is very possible, too,

that I love the letters in the same way a literary man may love the

sea he looks at from the shore--a scene of great endeavour and of great

achievements changing the face of the world, the great open way to all

sorts of undiscovered countries. No, perhaps I had better say that the

life at sea--and I don't mean a mere taste of it, but a good broad span

of years, something that really counts as real service--is not, upon the

whole, a good equipment for a writing life. God forbid, though, that I

should be thought of as denying my masters of the quarter-deck. I am not

capable of that sort of apostasy. I have confessed my attitude of piety

toward their shades in three or four tales, and if any man on earth more

than another needs to be true to himself as he hopes to be saved, it is

certainly the writer of fiction.

What I meant to say, simply, is that the quarter-deck training does not

prepare one sufficiently for the reception of literary criticism. Only

that, and no more. But this defect is not without gravity. If it be

permissible to twist, invert, adapt (and spoil) Mr. Anatole France's

definition of a good critic, then let us say that the good author is he

who contemplates without marked joy or excessive sorrow the adventures

of his soul among criticisms. Far be from me the intention to mislead an

attentive public into the belief that there is no criticism at sea. That

would be dishonest, and even impolite. Everything can be found at

sea, according to the spirit of your quest--strife, peace, romance,

naturalism of the most pronounced kind, ideals, boredom, disgust,

inspiration--and every conceivable opportunity, including the

opportunity to make a fool of yourself, exactly as in the pursuit of

literature. But the quarter-deck criticism is somewhat different from

literary criticism. This much they have in common, that before the one

and the other the answering back, as a general rule, does not pay.

Yes, you find criticism at sea, and even appreciation--I tell you

everything is to be found on salt water--criticism generally impromptu,

and always _viva voce_, which is the outward, obvious difference from the

literary operation of that kind, with consequent freshness and vigour

which may be lacking in the printed word. With appreciation, which comes

at the end, when the critic and the criticised are about to part, it

is otherwise. The sea appreciation of one's humble talents has the

permanency of the written word, seldom the charm of variety, is formal

in its phrasing. There the literary master has the superiority, though

he, too, can in effect but say--and often says it in the very phrase--“I

can highly recommend.” Only usually he uses the word “We,” there being

some occult virtue in the first person plural which makes it specially

fit for critical and royal declarations. I have a small handful of these

sea appreciations, signed by various masters, yellowing slowly in my

writing-table's left hand drawer, rustling under my reverent touch, like

a handful of dry leaves plucked for a tender memento from the tree of

knowledge. Strange! It seems that it is for these few bits of paper,

headed by the names of a few Scots and English shipmasters, that I have

faced the astonished indignations, the mockeries, and the reproaches of

a sort hard to bear for a boy of fifteen; that I have been charged with

the want of patriotism, the want of sense, and the want of heart, too;

that I went through agonies of self-conflict and shed secret tears not

a few, and had the beauties of the Furca Pass spoiled for me, and have

been called an “incorrigible Don Quixote,” in allusion to the book-born

madness of the knight. For that spoil! They rustle, those bits of

paper--some dozen of them in all. In that faint, ghostly sound there

live the memories of twenty years, the voices of rough men now no

more, the strong voice of the everlasting winds, and the whisper of a

mysterious spell, the murmur of the great sea, which must have somehow

reached my inland cradle and entered my unconscious ear, like that

formula of Mohammedan faith the Mussulman father whispers into the ear

of his new-born infant, making him one of the faithful almost with his

first breath. I do not know whether I have been a good seaman, but I

know I have been a very faithful one. And, after all, there is that

handful of “characters” from various ships to prove that all these years

have not been altogether a dream. There they are, brief, and monotonous

in tone, but as suggestive bits of writing to me as any inspired page to

be found in literature. But then, you see, I have been called romantic.

Well, that can't be helped. But stay. I seem to remember that I have

been called a realist, also. And as that charge, too, can be made out,

let us try to live up to it, at whatever cost, for a change. With this

end in view, I will confide to you coyly, and only because there is

no one about to see my blushes by the light of the midnight lamp, that

these suggestive bits of quarter-deck appreciation, one and all, contain

the words “strictly sober.”

Did I overhear a civil murmur, “That's very gratifying, to be sure?”

Well, yes, it is gratifying--thank you. It is at least as gratifying to

be certified sober as to be certified romantic, though such certificates

would not qualify one for the secretaryship of a temperance association

or for the post of official troubadour to some lordly democratic

institution such as the London County Council, for instance. The above

prosaic reflection is put down here only in order to prove the general

sobriety of my judgment in mundane affairs. I make a point of it because

a couple of years ago, a certain short story of mine being published in

a French translation, a Parisian critic--I am almost certain it was M.

Gustave Kahn in the “Gil Blas”--giving me a short notice, summed up

his rapid impression of the writer's quality in the words _un puissant

reveur_. So be it! Who could cavil at the words of a friendly reader? Yet

perhaps not such an unconditional dreamer as all that. I will make bold

to say that neither at sea nor ashore have I ever lost the sense of

responsibility. There is more than one sort of intoxication. Even before

the most seductive reveries I have remained mindful of that sobriety of

interior life, that asceticism of sentiment, in which alone the naked

form of truth, such as one conceives it, such as one feels it, can be

rendered without shame. It is but a maudlin and indecent verity that

comes out through the strength of wine. I have tried to be a sober

worker all my life--all my two lives. I did so from taste, no doubt,

having an instinctive horror of losing my sense of full self-possession,

but also from artistic conviction. Yet there are so many pitfalls on

each side of the true path that, having gone some way, and feeling a

little battered and weary, as a middle-aged traveller will from the

mere daily difficulties of the march, I ask myself whether I have kept

always, always faithful to that sobriety wherein there is power and

truth and peace.

As to my sea sobriety, that is quite properly certified under the

sign-manual of several trustworthy shipmasters of some standing in their

time. I seem to hear your polite murmur that “Surely this might have

been taken for granted.” Well, no. It might not have been. That August

academical body, the Marine Department of the Board of Trade, takes

nothing for granted in the granting of its learned degrees. By its

regulations issued under the first Merchant Shipping Act, the very word

_sober_ must be written, or a whole sackful, a ton, a mountain of the

most enthusiastic appreciation will avail you nothing. The door of the

examination rooms shall remain closed to your tears and entreaties.

The most fanatical advocate of temperance could not be more pitilessly

fierce in his rectitude than the Marine Department of the Board of

Trade. As I have been face to face at various times with all the

examiners of the Port of London in my generation, there can be no doubt

as to the force and the continuity of my abstemiousness. Three of them

were examiners in seamanship, and it was my fate to be delivered into

the hands of each of them at proper intervals of sea service. The first

of all, tall, spare, with a perfectly white head and mustache, a quiet,

kindly manner, and an air of benign intelligence, must, I am forced

to conclude, have been unfavourably impressed by something in my

appearance. His old, thin hands loosely clasped resting on his crossed

legs, he began by an elementary question, in a mild voice, and went

on, went on. . . . It lasted for hours, for hours. Had I been a strange

microbe with potentialities of deadly mischief to the Merchant Service I

could not have been submitted to a more microscopic examination. Greatly

reassured by his apparent benevolence, I had been at first very alert in

my answers. But at length the feeling of my brain getting addled crept

upon me. And still the passionless process went on, with a sense of

untold ages having been spent already on mere preliminaries. Then I got

frightened. I was not frightened of being plucked; that eventuality did

not even present itself to my mind. It was something much more serious

and weird. “This ancient person,” I said to myself, terrified, “is

so near his grave that he must have lost all notion of time. He is

considering this examination in terms of eternity. It is all very well

for him. His race is run. But I may find myself coming out of this

room into the world of men a stranger, friendless, forgotten by my very

landlady, even were I able after this endless experience to remember

the way to my hired home.” This statement is not so much of a verbal

exaggeration as may be supposed. Some very queer thoughts passed through

my head while I was considering my answers; thoughts which had nothing

to do with seamanship, nor yet with anything reasonable known to this

earth. I verily believe that at times I was light-headed in a sort of

languid way. At last there fell a silence, and that, too, seemed to

last for ages, while, bending over his desk, the examiner wrote out my

pass-slip slowly with a noiseless pen. He extended the scrap of paper to

me without a word, inclined his white head gravely to my parting

bow. . . .

When I got out of the room I felt limply flat, like a squeezed lemon,

and the doorkeeper in his glass cage, where I stopped to get my hat and

tip him a shilling, said:

“Well! I thought you were never coming out.”

“How long have I been in there?” I asked, faintly.

He pulled out his watch.

“He kept you, sir, just under three hours. I don't think this ever

happened with any of the gentlemen before.”

It was only when I got out of the building that I began to walk on

air. And the human animal being averse from change and timid before the

unknown, I said to myself that I really would not mind being examined

by the same man on a future occasion. But when the time of ordeal

came round again the doorkeeper let me into another room, with the

now familiar paraphernalia of models of ships and tackle, a board for

signals on the wall, a big, long table covered with official forms

and having an unrigged mast fixed to the edge. The solitary tenant

was unknown to me by sight, though not by reputation, which was simply

execrable. Short and sturdy, as far as I could judge, clad in an old

brown morning-suit, he sat leaning on his elbow, his hand shading his

eyes, and half averted from the chair I was to occupy on the other side

of the table. He was motionless, mysterious, remote, enigmatical, with

something mournful, too, in the pose, like that statue of Giugliano (I

think) de Medici shading his face on the tomb by Michael Angelo, though,

of course, he was far, far from being beautiful. He began by trying to

make me talk nonsense. But I had been warned of that fiendish trait, and

contradicted him with great assurance. After a while he left off. So

far good. But his immobility, the thick elbow on the table, the

abrupt, unhappy voice, the shaded and averted face grew more and more

impressive. He kept inscrutably silent for a moment, and then, placing

me in a ship of a certain size, at sea, under conditions of weather,

season, locality, etc.--all very clear and precise--ordered me to

execute a certain manoeuvre. Before I was half through with it he did

some material damage to the ship. Directly I had grappled with the

difficulty he caused another to present itself, and when that, too,

was met he stuck another ship before me, creating a very dangerous

situation. I felt slightly outraged by this ingenuity in piling trouble

upon a man.

“I wouldn't have got into that mess,” I suggested, mildly. “I could have

seen that ship before.”

He never stirred the least bit.

“No, you couldn't. The weather's thick.”

“Oh! I didn't know,” I apologized blankly.

I suppose that after all I managed to stave off the smash with

sufficient approach to verisimilitude, and the ghastly business went on.

You must understand that the scheme of the test he was applying to me

was, I gathered, a homeward passage--the sort of passage I would not

wish to my bitterest enemy. That imaginary ship seemed to labour under

a most comprehensive curse. It's no use enlarging on these never-ending

misfortunes; suffice it to say that long before the end I would have

welcomed with gratitude an opportunity to exchange into the Flying

Dutchman. Finally he shoved me into the North Sea (I suppose) and

provided me with a lee shore with outlying sand-banks--the Dutch coast,

presumably. Distance, eight miles. The evidence of such implacable

animosity deprived me of speech for quite half a minute.

“Well,” he said--for our pace had been very smart, indeed, till then.

“I will have to think a little, sir.”

“Doesn't look as if there were much time to think,” he muttered,

sardonically, from under his hand.

“No, sir,” I said, with some warmth. “Not on board a ship, I could see.

But so many accidents have happened that I really can't remember what

there's left for me to work with.”

Still half averted, and with his eyes concealed, he made unexpectedly a

grunting remark.

“You've done very well.”

“Have I the two anchors at the bow, sir?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I prepared myself then, as a last hope for the ship, to let them both

go in the most effectual manner, when his infernal system of testing

resourcefulness came into play again.

“But there's only one cable. You've lost the other.”

It was exasperating.

“Then I would back them, if I could, and tail the heaviest hawser on

board on the end of the chain before letting go, and if she parted from

that, which is quite likely, I would just do nothing. She would have to

go.”

“Nothing more to do, eh?”

“No, sir. I could do no more.”

He gave a bitter half-laugh.

“You could always say your prayers.”

He got up, stretched himself, and yawned slightly. It was a sallow,

strong, unamiable face. He put me, in a surly, bored fashion, through

the usual questions as to lights and signals, and I escaped from the

room thank fully--passed! Forty minutes! And again I walked on air

along Tower Hill, where so many good men had lost their heads because, I

suppose, they were not resourceful enough to save them. And in my heart

of hearts I had no objection to meeting that examiner once more when the

third and last ordeal became due in another year or so. I even hoped

I should. I knew the worst of him now, and forty minutes is not an

unreasonable time. Yes, I distinctly hoped. . . .

But not a bit of it. When I presented my self to be examined for master

the examiner who received me was short, plump, with a round, soft face

in gray, fluffy whiskers, and fresh, loquacious lips.

He commenced operations with an easy going “Let's see. H'm. Suppose you

tell me all you know of charter-parties.” He kept it up in that style

all through, wandering off in the shape of comment into bits out of his

own life, then pulling himself up short and returning to the business in

hand. It was very interesting. “What's your idea of a jury-rudder now?”

he queried, suddenly, at the end of an instructive anecdote bearing upon

a point of stowage.

I warned him that I had no experience of a lost rudder at sea, and gave

him two classical examples of makeshifts out of a text-book. In exchange

he described to me a jury-rudder he had invented himself years before,

when in command of a three-thousand-ton steamer. It was, I declare, the

cleverest contrivance imaginable. “May be of use to you some day,”

he concluded. “You will go into steam presently. Everybody goes into

steam.”

There he was wrong. I never went into steam--not really. If I only live

long enough I shall become a bizarre relic of a dead barbarism, a sort

of monstrous antiquity, the only seaman of the dark ages who had never

gone into steam--not really.

Before the examination was over he imparted to me a few interesting

details of the transport service in the time of the Crimean War.

“The use of wire rigging became general about that time, too,” he

observed. “I was a very young master then. That was before you were

born.”

“Yes, sir. I am of the year of 1857.”

“The Mutiny year,” he commented, as if to himself, adding in a louder

tone that his ship happened then to be in the Gulf of Bengal, employed

under a government charter.

Clearly the transport service had been the making of this examiner, who

so unexpectedly had given me an insight into his existence, awakening in

me the sense of the continuity of that sea life into which I had stepped

from outside; giving a touch of human intimacy to the machinery of

official relations. I felt adopted. His experience was for me, too, as

though he had been an ancestor.

Writing my long name (it has twelve letters) with laborious care on the

slip of blue paper, he remarked:

“You are of Polish extraction.”

“Born there, sir.”

He laid down the pen and leaned back to look at me as it were for the

first time.

“Not many of your nationality in our service, I should think. I never

remember meeting one either before or after I left the sea. Don't

remember ever hearing of one. An inland people, aren't you?”

I said yes--very much so. We were remote from the sea not only by

situation, but also from a complete absence of indirect association, not

being a commercial nation at all, but purely agricultural. He made then

the quaint reflection that it was “a long way for me to come out to

begin a sea life”; as if sea life were not precisely a life in which one

goes a long way from home.

I told him, smiling, that no doubt I could have found a ship much nearer

my native place, but I had thought to myself that if I was to be a

seaman, then I would be a British seaman and no other. It was a matter

of deliberate choice.

He nodded slightly at that; and, as he kept on looking at me

interrogatively, I enlarged a little, confessing that I had spent a

little time on the way in the Mediterranean and in the West Indies. I

did not want to present myself to the British Merchant Service in an

altogether green state. It was no use telling him that my mysterious

vocation was so strong that my very wild oats had to be sown at sea.

It was the exact truth, but he would not have understood the somewhat

exceptional psychology of my sea-going, I fear.

“I suppose you've never come across one of your countrymen at sea. Have

you, now?”

I admitted I never had. The examiner had given himself up to the spirit

of gossiping idleness. For myself, I was in no haste to leave that room.

Not in the least. The era of examinations was over. I would never

again see that friendly man who was a professional ancestor, a sort of

grandfather in the craft. Moreover, I had to wait till he dismissed me,

and of that there was no sign. As he remained silent, looking at me, I

added:

“But I have heard of one, some years ago. He seems to have been a boy

serving his time on board a Liverpool ship, if I am not mistaken.”

“What was his name?”