The feeding of cattle and of men was over for the afternoon. Scholar
was the first up on the poop. He leant over the rail, looking away out
and forward. The south end of Ireland was off there somewhere, out of
sight, northwards. The _Glory_ surged on, in a pother of spray, a mile
of smoke trailing from her smoke-stack a point or two off the bows,
southward. There was a touch of humidity in the air that was not the
humidity of the sea. It could not be said that Scholar had enjoyed the
trip any more than any of them, but nearing home the call of home
seemed to be an open question. In this riff-raff below him he had
found something likeable, something good amid all the evil. The people
at home, where he was going, he knew, could not appreciate one word
that he might have to tell of the voyage or the men. No, if they
pitied, it would be a very patronising pity, and even that annulled by
censure. His womenfolk would find only one more opportunity to say:
"What awful creatures men are!" Last night he had pitied these men
that they had no homes to go to. To-day, alert for Ireland, near home,
the sentimental glow was fading from the vision of his own. He felt
himself homeless as they. And then ahead there, northwards in the sea,
he beheld something advancing rapidly.
Some of the other men came on deck, among them Mike, who drew near and
looked in the direction of Scholar's gaze; and just then Scholar saw
what it was that came like a low cloud through the many foam-topped,
spray-topped waves--a blue-grey warship, lying low, with four short
funnels, a very short mast; and he experienced a thrill. He had met
Englishmen who were less moved than Frenchmen by such lines as those
that tell of how "the coastwise lights of England watch the ships of
England go." If they had objected to the same poet's: "Lord of our
far-flung battle line," to the Hebraic self-righteousness in that, he
could have been at one with them; that was a different matter. He
appreciated Kipling's song of the "coastwise lights of England." He
also appreciated Arnold's reminder to Victorian Englishmen that England
could be improved; but he loved the England that Arnold, in his love,
made to bloom and flower in such poems as his "Scholar Gipsy," that
England that coloured the same poet's "Resignation." It struck him
that the Englishman who could not tolerate a song simply because the
name of England was in it would be highly repulsive and irksome even to
Arnold, who so often lectured Englishmen upon their self-satisfaction.
They could not understand, these people; the moment they were left
alone they strayed. The road was pointed out to them time and again,
and off they went, but the moment they were alone they deviated into
paths that led otherwise, without knowing.
Scholar felt a thrill at sight of this long, low vessel that came with
tremendous speed, wasp-like, sweeping out from the haze beyond which
lay home. It might be a slightly tarnished home, the house not all in
order, but, by God, it was home, and worth loving and setting in order.
He had a feeling as of: "How they do watch!" There was nobody on her
decks. She was a thing of beauty, although of steel. She was nearly
abreast now, but far off. Then suddenly, hammering along between the
sheep-pens (the tarpaulins off them now) came a man in haste the
bo'sun--and as he ran this way sternwards upon the deck of the _Glory_,
there appeared, as out of a hole in the deck of that long, low wasp of
a thing, a small black spot that ran sternwards upon it. The bo'sun
was already at the flagpole, loosening the flag halyard, the flag was
dipping, and a little square of cloth, away off there on that other
ship, was dipping too, down and up. She slid past, rushing through the
sea; the spot went forward on her and disappeared again; she was hidden
in the smoke reeking from her four short stacks.
Mike, behind Scholar, expelled a gust of air from his nostrils and drew
erect.
"Bedad!" he said. "I guess she can smell us that far."
It had not occurred to Scholar before; and thereafter, when more ships
began to appear, where the sea-trails of the world converged, he
imagined the people on their decks all holding their noses.