The voyage of Peter's Bark in search of another world has been less
fortunate than that of Columbus. There have been mutinies on board;
the other world is not yet found. Soon after this good ship, the
_Saint Christopher_, was launched from her Phoenician home-port, she
had a strange experience very like that which legend attributes to her
namesake, the sainted ferryman. Her freight at the beginning seemed
to be of the lightest--only living Hopes and daily Miracles; and the
crossing was to be very brief, the other shore being plainly visible
at a stone's throw. But that promised land turned out to be a mirage,
lying across the mouth of the port, which really opened out into a vast
ocean. Meantime the cargo too was strangely transformed; for whilst the
Hopes and Miracles were still reputed to be on board, they were hidden
from sight and smothered in a litter of Possessions. These included a
great load of Books, a heavy fund of Traditions, and a multitude of
unruly passengers, with their clamorous wives and children, and all
sorts of provender. So over-weighted, the _Saint Christopher_ sank down
until the waves almost covered her deck; but she was staunch, like the
wading saint when his light burden grew heavier and heavier, and she
laboured on.
Not only was this ship named after a saint--which in so old a ship
is no wonder--but incredible as it may seem, her captain was a saint
too--Saint Simon or (since these vague roving people often have an
_alias_) Saint Peter. He had been a fisherman by profession, and had
only become a saint late in life; a fact which explained his good
seamanship and his bad language. Besides, he did not pretend to be
a saint except in his official capacity, as captain, and in matters
of science and navigation: in his private life he was frankly not
impeccable, and deprecated any strict scrutiny of it as not to the
point. Not only might there have been some blemishes in his early
career, but even when in command he might have his faults. People enjoy
doing what they can do well from long habit; and he was perhaps too
fond of fishing, of cursing, and of commanding.
These foibles once brought upon him a serious mutiny. A large part of
the crew, imitating his expressive speech, cried, "Damn the captain!"
and took to the boats, saying the ship was rotten and water-logged.
They carried away with them most of the Hopes, whilst scrupulously
leaving the Miracles alone. In their boats and rafts they pulled ahead
in all directions, covering the sea with specks for a long distance;
and the captain, after running down and sinking a few of them in his
towering rage, got used to their existence, made things shipshape again
on board, and fell to observing them, not without some chucklings of
humour, rowing and splashing about, quarrelling and never getting
anywhere, but often merely drifting and quietly fishing, much in his
own old maimer.
The worst mutiny in the _Saint Christopher_, however, was of quite
another kind. The remaining crew had no objection to the captain--they
were human themselves--and no desire to paddle their own canoes. But
they got thoroughly weary of sailing day after day into the same
sunset, decided that there was no El Dorado, and insisted clamorously
on putting the ship about. But in what direction? Some were for going
home; they said all talk of another world was nonsense, that those
Hopes and Miracles were worthless, and that the only thing to do was
to return to the old country and live there in the old way, making the
best of it. But the majority said that such an acknowledgment of defeat
and error would be ignominious; and that life at home, never really
happy, would now be doubly intolerable. They would never have set out
on so problematical an expedition, had they found life possible in
their native seats. But it had been horrible. They remembered with a
shudder the cruelties and vanities of their ancestral heathenism. They
were adventurers and mariners by nature. They might be now bewildered
for a moment and discouraged in their explorations, but the impulse to
hope for the better and to try the unknown was ineradicable in their
breast.
In some of them, indeed, this brave impulse was so vigorous, that
they now had a sudden intuition of the romantic principle of life, and
harangued their companions as follows:
"What need, O shipmates, to sail for _any_ port? The sailor is not a
land animal. How we chafed and stifled when we lived on _terra firma_,
pent in those horrible stone dungeons called houses and churches, and
compelled to till those inert and filthy clods, year in and year out--a
most stupefying existence! Let us sail for the sake of sailing. It was
not in putting forth into this infinite sea that we were ill-advised,
but only in imagining that we could reach an opposite shore, and that
the sea was not infinite but hemmed about by dead land. That was a
gross illusion. In reality there is no _terra firma_ at all, but only
ships and rafts more or less extensive, covered over with earth and
trees, riding on the water. Fancy deceived us, when we supposed that
our Earth was anchored in some deeper earth. It floats and drifts
upon a bottomless flood, and will dissolve into it. Do not dream of
any backward voyage, or of reaching home. You will never find that
old home again; it exists no longer. But this good ship of ours,
with its wind-blown sails, can never sink and can never stop. If the
banners and crosses, which we still fly in deference to custom, have
lost their meaning for us, other symbols will take their place. We
must not confuse our infinite task with the illusions that may first
have prompted us to undertake it. A brave and an endless life awaits
us, battling with the storms of winter; in the summer days, leaping
over the waves with the dolphins and the porpoises; in the watches
of the night hailing the ever-new constellations which, as we sail
onward, will rise to greet us, and pass over our heads. For ocean is a
river that flows unendingly, and the stars and clouds are exhalations
attendant upon it; they rise and soar in great circles perpetually
before its course, like loosed doves before the bounding shell of
Galatea."
These words were not at all relished by the majority of those who
listened to them. They were stay-at-homes by temperament, who had
embarked only in the hope of gain, or of finding peace and plenty in
some softer climate. They were alarmed and disgusted at what they had
just heard, and not being quite sore that it was false, they denied it
with some irritation.
"What folly," they cried, "what nonsense you are talking. Of course it
is the land that is infinite, since it is much better than the sea;
and the sea is no river, or its water would be fresh, and you know how
brackish and bitter it is: indeed, but for the rain we have collected
in pans and hogsheads, we should already have died of thirst. This sea
is nothing but a stagnant lake in the midst of the green earth, one
of the myriad salt ponds studded all over it; and as for this leaky
little ship, which we were induced to embark in only by fraud, it is
not really sea-worthy. The planks and cordage are already rotting, and
how shall we replace them, unless we speedily sight land--and God grant
it may be a civilized country! And look there! Is not that land on the
horizon! Through the clearing mists I can discern a lighthouse, quite
distinctly; and beyond lies a low shore, overhung with smoke. Something
tells me this is the New Atlantis described by Bacon. A prosperous
and populous city, full of docks and factories, where we shall find
everything needful--warehouses, shops, inns, theatres, baths, even
churches and chapels of every sect and denomination. What joy!"
This sight was so welcome to those heartsick passengers, that they
could not wait for the ship to make fast, though they steered her
straight for the coast, but jumped over-board and eagerly swam ashore.
Their example was contagious. The other party could not bear to be left
behind without experiencing the new life, whatever it might bring. They
reflected that as the land was really a part of the sea, it was not
bad seamanship sometimes to run aground, that in leaving the ship they
would, in a higher sense, be continuing their voyage, and that they
would not be true to the supreme principle of their philosophy, which
was absolute free-will, if they did not often change their principles
in minor matters. The chief point was to experience everything. They
did not regret the past, as did their narrow-minded positivistic
friends, simply because it had involved hardships and errors. Hardships
and errors were blessings, if you could only outgrow them; and they,
in their splendid vitality, knew how to outgrow everything. Sacred
history, classic fable, chivalry, and the cure of one's soul had,
in that former age, proved absorbing themes for the fancy, and had
exquisitely modulated the emotions; but the fountain of those emotions
had always been their own breast, and since after such dramatic
adventures their breast remained deeply unsatisfied, it was time to
look again narrowly into its depths to discover some newer and truer
way of expressing it. Why should not the development of material arts
be the next phase in their career? They would not be less free amid the
gusts and the billows of politics than they had been in their marine
adventure; commerce would offer them glorious opportunities to exercise
their will-power and their invention; infinite vistas, here too, were
open before them: cities always more populous, possessions always more
varied, instruments always more wonderful, and labour always more
intense.
The romantic party accordingly joined the lovers of material progress
in their new city, called Mechanapolis: but the old opposition in their
temperaments remained undiminished. The lovers of adventure wanted
machines in order to make war, and the lovers of thrift wanted peace in
order to make other machines.
Meantime Peter the captain, with much grumbling and shaking of
his grey beard, had got the old _Saint Christopher_ afloat again,
and accompanied still by a faithful boatswain and cook, and some
nondescript recruits that he had got together, set out again to sea, in
search of that other land beyond the ocean which is called heaven. And
every evening with a trembling finger he pointed to it in the setting
sun, not seeing that heaven was above his head.
40