I remember, in the grey dawn one day last week, my relief sang in my
ear as he wiped his hands after "feeling round," "_Deutschland's_
astern, goin' like fury." "Sure?" I asked. "Only boat with four
funnels in the line," he said. Four funnels! I raced up and aft, and
saw her. Some three miles astern going westward, going grandly. From
each of her enormous funnels belched vast clouds of black smoke till
she looked like some Yorkshire township afloat. Through glasses I
could see the dome of the immense dining saloon, and the myriad
port-holes in her wall-like side. I could see her moving fast, though
so far away. As the head sea caught the massive bows, she never
waited. Her 35,000 h.p. drove her crashing through them, and they
broke high in air in clouds of foam. Splendid! I thought. But my heart
was with those "below." Think of the toil! Six or seven hundred tons
of coal per day is flung into her dozens of furnaces, against our
twenty-five tons. Think of the twenty-odd engineers who scarcely see
their bunks from the Elbe to the Hudson. And, in that cool, grey,
pearly dawn, think of those passengers sleeping in their palatial
state-rooms, with never a thought of the slaves who drive that
monstrous ship across the Atlantic at such an appalling speed. I say
"appalling" because I know. The smoking-room nuisance will say, "Pooh!
My dear fellow, the _Lusitania_ licks us clean with her twenty-five
knots." He is coldly critical because he does not know.
But I digress.
Look around now. You observe we lose very little space in gangways.
Even in front of the engines, where we are walking to and fro, the
space is perilously narrow between the fly-wheel of the reversing
engine and the lathe. Some thirty feet long, this engine-room,
bulkhead to bulkhead, and, save for a recess or two extending to the
ship's skin, penned in between bunkers. Twelve hundred tons of coal,
distributed like a thick wall round us, make the place warm in the
tropics. Forward, the stokeholds, dimly enough lit save when a furnace
door opens and a fiery glow illuminates the bent back and soot-blurred
face of some cosmopolitan fireman. Overhead, each lit by a single
lamp, are the water-gauges--green glass tubes in which the water ebbs
and flows with the motion of the ship.
Well, the time is going fast--'twill soon be four o'clock, eight
bells, and I am relieved. What do I think of on "watch"? That's a
question! The engines chiefly, with an under-current of "other
things." Often and often, in the dark nooks of my dominions, will I
see the glimmering, phantom _light-o'-love_. Sometimes it will come
and sit beside me if all runs smooth, and then I fly across the broad
blue floors of the tropic night sky towards England. Not that my fairy
elf is a fair-weather friend. Through blinding oil and sweat I have
seen grey eyes smile and a white hand beckon. In times of trial and
sore need I have turned desperately towards that faery glimmer, and
never have I come back unencouraged or unrefreshed.
Of my friend, too, I think often, as I know he thinks of me. Of our
dear old rooms on the Walk; of our cosy evenings alone; of our rambles
in search of the Perfect Pub (where, he told me, they sold hot rum up
to 3 a.m.); of the Chelsea Freaks, who add so unconsciously to the
gaiety of the nations--how I have laughed incontinently, and how some
fireman's face would brighten when I laughed, though he knew not the
reason!
Of books, too, I have many thoughts; which reminds me that one cannot
imagine how different are the "values" of books, out here at sea, to
their values at home in the metropolis. To steal a phrase from
chemistry, their "valency" alters. Their relative "combining weights"
seem to vary; by which I mean, their applicability to life, their
vital importance to me as a man, changes. This change, moreover, is
all in favour of the classics. One sees through shams more quickly--at
least, I think so. Books which I could always respect, yet never
touch, now come forth and show their glories to me. My own past work,
too, drops pathetically into its own place. And that is? Spare me this
confession!
One night, one star-light night, when the dark blue heaven, slashed
across with the pale immensity of the Milky Way, watched me with its
million winking eyes, I stole out on the poop with some stories in my
hand, and dropped them into the creamy rush of the wake. As the poor
little bits of paper swayed and eddied and drowned in the foaming
vortex, I felt, deep down in that heart which some say I do not
possess, a vague tremor of unrest. I felt, somehow, close to Eternity.
And then, as I went below once more, I wondered, "Will they _all_ go
like that?" "Shall I live to do _any_ good work?" Oh, the terrible
sadness of Noble Attempts! How I toiled at those stories! And all for
nothing. Flung, like the ashes from our furnaces, like the rubbish
from our larders, into the cruel oblivion of the unheeding sea.