A Dream of the North Sea Part 6

"He've eat somethin's disagreed with him, sir. We've tried Gregory, what my mate had, and we give him some pills what I had, would a'most done for me. 'Tisn't a morsel o' good."

Tom Lennard picked the poor fellow off the floor--so gently, so very gently; he eased him up and put the man's head against his breast. A slight swing of the vessel followed, and the lad shrieked and gasped.

Instantly Ferrier saw what had happened.

"Help me to take his clothes off, Lennard."

They stripped the patient to the skin; then Ferrier glanced once, touched just lightly enough to make the young man draw breath with a whistling sound, then the deft, steady fingers ran carefully down, and Lewis said--

"Tom, keep him as easy as you can till I come back from the yacht.

Skipper, you didn't think to strip him."

"No, sir; why?"

"Well, he has three ribs broken, that is all."

"Eh! he said he had a tumble agin the anchor in the breeze." "Yes, and I cannot tell how his lung has escaped."

When Lewis returned he strapped the sufferer up like an artist, and then said--

"Now, skipper, you must run home as soon as the trawl is up."

"Home! An' lose my woyage maybe?"

"Can't help that. You have no place for him here. See, he's off to sleep now his pain's gone, but where will he be if the sea rises?"

The skipper groaned; it seemed hard. Lewis thought a little and said--

"Will you let me take him aboard of us now while it's smooth, and I'll see if we can find you a man? If Larmor of the _Haughty Belle_ will come, can you work with him?"

"Like a shot."

Larmor's jaw was better, and he said--

"I'd be a bad 'un if I wouldn't oblige you, sir, anyway. My jaw's main sore, but I can do little things."

"You see, Lennard," quietly observed Lewis, after Larmor had gone, "I'm making an experiment. If that lad had been left without such a mattress as ours, he would have died, surely. And now I'll guarantee that I send him back able to steer and do light work in ten days."

"That's where the hospital would come in. Well, you'll soon teach us instead of us teaching you. Oh! surprising! oh-h-h! paralyzing! oh-h-h!

majestic! majestic!"

Tom was right in his exclamatory way, as we shall see by and by.

CHAPTER VI.

THE MISSION HALL.

And now you know what our people have been driving at all the time. I have reported their talk, and we shall have very little s.p.a.ce for more of it, as the time must shortly come for swift action. From the moment when Ferrier groaned with despair, a lightning thought shot into Marion's brain and settled there. She had a grand idea, and she was almost eager to get ash.o.r.e: one indefinite attraction alone held her.

Ferrier was almost as eager to return, for his electric nature was chafed by the limitations that bound him; he knew he could do nothing without further means and appliances, and, in the meantime, he was only half doing work of supreme importance. He wished to glance slightly at the social and spiritual work of the fleet, but his heart was in his own trade.

The weather held up nicely, and on the morning after Ferrier saved the broken-ribbed youngster, the schooner had a rare crowd on board. The men tumbled over the side with lumbering abandonment, and met each other like schoolboys who gather in the common-room after a holiday. As Blair said, they were like a lot of Newfoundland puppies. Poor Tom Betts came up among the roistering crowd--pale, weary, and with that strange, disquieting smile which flits over sick men's faces; he was received as an interesting infant, and his narratives concerning the marvellous skill of the doctor were enough to supply the fleet with gossip for a month. None of the "weeds" of the fleet were on board, and the a.s.sembly might be taken as representing the pick of the North Sea population.

With every observant faculty on the stretch Ferrier strolled from group to group, chatting with man after man; no one was in the least familiar, but the doctor was struck with the simple cordiality of all the fellows.

A subtle something was at work, and it gradually dawned on the young student that these good folk had the sentiment of brotherhood which is given by a common cause and a common secret. The early Christians loved one another, and here, on that grey sea, our sceptic saw the early Christian movement beginning all over again, with every essential feature reproduced. All types were represented; the grave man, the stern man, the sweet-faced dreamy man--even the comic man. The last-named here was much beloved and admired on account of his vein of humour, and he was decidedly the Sydney Smith of the fleet. His good-temper was perfect; a large fellow of the Jutish type lifted him with one huge arm, and hung him over the side; the humorist treated this experience as a pleasant form of gentle exercise, and smiled blandly until he was replaced on deck. When he was presented with a cigar, he gave an exposition of the walk and conversation of an extremely haughty aristocrat, and, on his saying, "Please don't haddress me as Bill. Say 'Hahdeyedoo, Colonel,'" the burly mob raised such a haw-haw as never was heard elsewhere, and big fellows doubled themselves up out of sheer enjoyment, the fun was so exquisite.

Lewis was struck by the men's extraordinary _isolation_ of mind; you may not understand his thought now, but, when you visit the North Sea, the meaning will flash on you. _Isolation_--that is the word; the men know little of the world; they are infantine without being petty; they have no curiosity about the pa.s.sage of events on sh.o.r.e, and their solid world is represented by an area of 70 feet by 18. They are always amusing, always suggestive, and always superhumanly ignorant of the commonest concerns that affect the lives of ordinary men. When your intellect first begins to measure theirs, you feel as if you had been put down in a strange country, and had to adapt your mind and soul to such a set of conditions as might come before you in a dream. I, the transcriber of this history, felt humiliated when a good man, who had been to sea for thirty-three years on a stretch, asked me whether "them things is only made up"; them things being a set of spirited natural history pictures.

I reckon if I took Mr. Herbert Spencer, or Mr. Grant Allen, or Mr. Lang out to the fleets, I could give them a few shrewd observations regarding the infancy of the human mind.

There was a fair amount of room for a religious service, the men packed themselves into their places with admirable and silent politeness, and the yacht was transformed into a mission hall. As to the fishermen's singing, one can never talk of it sufficiently. Ferrier was stirred by the hoa.r.s.e thunder of voices; he seemed to hear the storming of that gale in the cordage once more, and he forgot the words of the hymn in feeling only the strong pa.s.sion and yearning of the music. Then Fullerton and Blair prayed, and the sceptic heard two men humbly uttering pet.i.tions like children, and, to his humorous Scotch intellect, there was something nearly amusing in the nave language of these two able, keen men. They seemed to say, "Some of our poor men cannot do so much as think clearly yet; we will try to translate their dumb craving."

Charles d.i.c.kens, that good man, that very great man, should have heard the two evangelists; he would have altered some of the savage opinions that lacerated his gallant heart. To me, the talk and the prayers of such men are entrancing as a merely literary experience; the balanced simplicity, and the quivering earnestness are so exactly adapted to the one end desired.

Blair's sermon was brief and straightforward; he talked no secondhand formalities from the textbooks; he met his hearers as men, and they took every word in with complete understanding. When I hear a man talking to the fishers about the symbolism of an ephod, I always want to run away.

What is needed is the human voice, coming right from the human heart: cut and dried theological terms only daze the fisherman; he is too polite to look bored, but he suffers all the same. I fancy Blair's little oration might be summed up thus: Fear G.o.d and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man--and I do not know that you can go much further. The wild Kurd in the desert will say to you, "I cannot do that. It is a shame"; he has no power of reasoning, but he _knows_; and I take it that the fishers are much like him when their minds are cleared alike of formalism and brutality. Many of the men were strongly moved as Blair went on, and Lewis saw that our smiling preacher had learned to cast away subtleties. Fullerton's preaching was like Newman's prose style; it caught at the nerves of his hearers, and left them in a state of not unhealthy tension. It seemed impossible for them to evade the forcible practical application by the second speaker of points in the discourse to which they had already listened; nor could they soon--if ever--forget the earnest words with which he closed--"Bear in mind, my friends, that Christianity does not consist in singing hymns or saying prayers, but in a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ as your Saviour; and when you have learned to know Him thus, your one object in life will be to glorify Him. It is right and well both to sing and to pray, but let us take care that these exercises are the expression in words of the heart's devotion to its Divine Lord and Master."

They were ripe for the "experience" meeting, and this quaintest of all religious exercises gave Ferrier data for much confused meditation.

Apparently a man _must_ unbosom himself, or else his whole nature becomes charged with perilous stuff, so these smacksmen had, in some instances, subst.i.tuted the experience meeting for the confessional. In Italy you may see the sailors creeping into the box while the priest crouches inside and listens to whispers; on the North Sea a sailor places a very different interpretation upon the Divine command, "Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another that ye may be healed." He goes first to his Saviour, and afterwards stands up before all his mates and makes his confession boldly: every new confidence nails him to his vows; he knows that the very worst of his past will never be brought up against him, and he is supported by the sympathy of the rough fellows who punctuate his utterances with sighs and kindly handshaking.

When the penitent sits down his mind is eased; the mysterious sympathy of numbers cheers him, the sense of Divine forgiveness has given him power, and he is ready to face life again with new heart. Ferrier caught the note of formality again and again, but he could see that the phrases had not putrefied into cant.

Just as the soul can only be made manifest through the body, so a thought can only be made manifest by means of words. An importunate, living thought is framed in a perfect phrase which reflects the life of the thought. Then you have genuine religious utterance. The conditions change and the thought is outworn: if the phrase that clothed the old thought remains and is used glibly as a verbal counter, then you have Cant, and the longer the phrase is parrotted by an unbeliever, the more venomous does the virus of cant become. To the fishers--childlike men--many of the old Methodist turns of speech are vital; to a cultured man the husk of words may be dry and dead, but if he is clever and indulgent he will see the difference between his own mental state and that of the poor fisher to whom he listens.

The experiences were as varied as possible; some were awe-striking, some were pitiful, some verged on comedy. The comfortable thing--the beautiful thing--about the confessions, was that each man seemed tacitly to imply a piteous prayer, "My brothers help me to keep near my Saviour.

I may fall unless you keep by me;" while the steady-going, earnest men took no praise to themselves for keeping straight, but generally ended with some such phrase as, "Praise the blessed Lord; it's all along o'

His grace as I've been walkin' alongside o' Him."

One fine man, with stolid, hard face, rose and steadied himself against a beam. His full ba.s.s tones were sad, and he showed no sign of that self-satisfied smirk which sometimes makes the mind revolt against a convert.

"My friends, I'm no great speaker, but I can tell you plain how I come to be where I am. I was a strongish, rough young chap, and thought about nothing but games. I would fight, play cards, and a lot of more things that we don't want to talk about here. When I married, I drank and thought of nothing but my own self. Once I took every penny I had off a voyage to the public-house, and I stopped there and never had my boots off till I went to sea again. Every duty was neglected, my wife went cold in the bad weather, and my children were barefooted. When you're drinking and fooling you can see nothing at all, and you think you're a-doing all right, and everybody else is wrong when they try to help you. Out at sea I gambled and drunk when I could get the money; I made rare game of religious men, and lived as if I had never to die. Then I was persuaded by one of my mates to visit the Mission ship, the very first as ever come, and I wish there was twenty. I'd had a bad time ash.o.r.e, and my children was frightened of my ways, though I was kind enough when sober, and I'd left the wife to pick up a living how she could. Then I heard what Mr. Fullerton said; G.o.d bless him! And I says to myself, 'Tom Barling, you're no better than a pig you're not.' But I was proud, and I needed to be brought low. I went again and again and talked with old John about the Mission ship, but, bless you, I couldn't see nothing. But some kind of a--what I may say a voice kept a-saying, 'Tom Barling, you're not a good 'un,' and at last I got what I wanted, and I bursts out crying for joy, for I had learned to trust my blessed Saviour, whose blood cleanses from all sin. And now by His grace I've dropped the drink, and them fits of bad temper, and my family looks well, and I'm so quiet in my breast here like, as I can walk for hours on deck and pray quiet, and never think of no drink, nor cards, nor excitement, and I never nags at any man that's wrong as I was, but I says 'I wish you were happy as me, mate, and you may be if you'll come to the dear Lord.' And that's all. I bless G.o.d for the Mission, because there's many a chap like me that would like to do right but he don't know how. I was a bad chap, and I went on doing bad things because I knew no better; and so, brothers, when you see a mate going wrong just coax him. And G.o.d bless you, gentlemen and ladies, and all on us."

Every variety of story was told, and, in the exaltation of the hour, the men sang rapturously. Some of the speakers moved the doctor with terrible pathos. (I, who chronicle these things, have heard tales which come to me in wild dreams, and make me tremble with pity and terror.) There was no showing off, and even those who used the stereotyped phrase, "When I was in the world," did it with a simple modesty which our learned friend found charming. Apparently not one of those poor fellows felt a single prompting of conceit, and if their very innermost feeling had been translated it would come out like this: "Brothers, through mercy we've all slipped away from an ugly fate; we're on safe ground; let's hang together and help each other nearer to G.o.d, lest we should get adrift and make shipwreck."

Lewis was particularly pleased with their kindly mode of talking about backsliders.

"Come, old lads," said one fair-haired Scandinavian, "let's all say a word for poor old Joe Banks. He's a backslider just now, through that dreadful drink. Let's all pray as he may see his sin against his Saviour, and come right back to Him. He's too good to lose, and we won't let go on him."

Then the excitement gathered, and the meeting really developed into what might be fairly termed a Service of Praise. The men almost roared their choruses, then they prayed pa.s.sionately, then they sang again, and the rush of harmless excitement went on hour by hour, until the strongest enthusiasts had to obey the signal given by the darkness.

On deck there were merry partings, and the Newfoundland puppy business was resumed with exceeding vigour. Tom Lennard was exalting his popularity, and he knew the history of the father, the mother, the wife, the children (down to the last baby), of every man with whom he talked.

The wind was still, the moon made silver of the air; the fleet hung like painted ships on painted ocean,--and the men delayed their partings like affectionate brothers whom broad seas must soon divide. The distant adoration paid to the ladies would have amused some indifferent sh.o.r.egoers. You know the story of the miners who filled a Scotch emigrant's hand with gold dust and "nuts" on condition that he let his wife look out from the waggon? I can believe the tale. Great fourteen-stone men lifted their extraordinary hats and trembled like children when our good ladies talked to them; the sweetness of the educated voice, the quiet naturalness of the thorough lady, are all understood by those seadogs in a way which it does one good to remember. The fellows are gentlemen; that is about the fact. Their struggles after inward purity are reflected in their outward manners, and to see one of them help a lady to a seat on deck is to learn something new about fine breeding. Marion Dearsley was watched with a reverence which, never became sheepish, and Ferrier at last said to himself, "One might do anything with these men! The n.o.blest raw material in the world."

"Good-night; good-night. G.o.d bless you." One weird sound after another came from boats that swam in the quivering moonbeams. Then came the silence, broken only by the mult.i.tudinous whistling of the gaffs, and the gentle moan of the timbers.

The nightly talk came off as usual; and also as usual the great mathematician was forced to take the leading part, while Blair quizzed, and the ladies, after the fashion of their s.e.x, stimulated the men to range from topic to topic. Fullerton was watching Ferrier, just as I have seen a skilful professor of chemistry watching a tube for the first appearance of the precipitate. This quiet thinker knew men, and he knew how to use them; moreover, he thought he saw in Ferrier a born king, and he strove to attract him just as he had striven to fascinate Miss Dearsley. It was for the cause.

"What do you think of our work so far, Ferrier?"

"Good. But I want more."