An Ocean Tramp Part 4

But I digress.

Look around now. You observe we lose very little s.p.a.ce in gangways.

Even in front of the engines, where we are walking to and fro, the s.p.a.ce 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 gla.s.s 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 cla.s.sics. 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 p.o.o.p 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 n.o.ble 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.

IX

Such is the mood which comes over me at times when the pettiness of the past starts up in the presence of these immensities of sea and sky. M., you know, when he would come back to his studio from some yachting cruise in the Channel, and find me in his armchair, would drag me out to look at the ceaselessly changing glories of the river at sunset, and tell me how the vastness of the sea always communicated to him an overwhelming sense of the Power of G.o.d.

"You can't get away from it, old man," he would say. "Out there alone, man is nothing, G.o.d is everything." Why could I never a.s.sent to that? Why, when people ask me if I love the sea, am I silent? Well, have you ever heard the sudden yapping of a puppy at night? Imagine it, then, at sea. The two Immensities between which we creep: the sea flashing with her own secret glory of phosph.o.r.escent fire, the sky emblazoned with her countless diadems, and then--yap-yap-yap! That is how the pestilent cackle of many people affects me when they rave about the sea. Why do they not keep silent, like the stars?

G.o.d! These fools, I think, would clatter up the steps of the Great White Throne, talking, talking, talking! When the pearly gates swing wide to let us in, when we pace the burnished vistas towards the Presence, when the measureless music of the Most High G.o.d fills our hearts--_yap-yap-yap!_

Music, I said! I think I stand towards music as I stand towards sea and sky. Oh, I could squirm when I think of the bickerings I have had with music-lovers. And yet with you, my friend, prince of music-lovers, I have had no quarrel. Because, I think, you let me alone. When you feel in the mood, when the moon is on the river, and the warm breeze gently sways the curtains by the open window, you will sit down and improvise, and I will lie in my deep chair, and smoke and dream. You cease, and say "Do you like it?" and I am silent.

Then you laugh and go on again. You understand. But what maniacal frenzy is this which demands a vociferous "pa.s.sionate love of music"

from everyone? Watch the current dish-water fiction. Every character, male and female, is "pa.s.sionately fond of music." Which means? That the readers of this stuff consider a pa.s.sionate love of music to be fashionable. It is so easy, you see, to possess it. There is no need to study either musical theory, practice, history, or biography. An inane expression of vacuous content when music is being rendered, a quant.i.ty of rhapsodical rubbish about Chopin and Beethoven without any knowledge of either, and behold! a lover of music. _Yap-yap-yap!_

With all this, I know, you agree, but you ask yourself, as you read, what has this to do with a marine engineer's working day? It has everything to do with it. It has everything to do with the working day of every man. For this indiscriminate belauding of the love of music leads to an almost unimaginable hypocrisy among those who do not think. Certainly, Music is the highest of the Arts, and the oldest, just (I presume) as Astronomy is the highest and most ancient science. One is pure form, the other pure mathematics. And so, I may conclude, the "Music of the Spheres" comprises all that is highest and purest and truest within our comprehension. But this fashionable, open-mouthed delirium is no more a worship of music than star-gazing is serious astronomy. These hypocrites are sailing under false colours. I noticed, when I once suggested at a dinner-table the cultivation of the tin whistle, amus.e.m.e.nt among the men, and t.i.tters among the women. When I asked why old Pan's instrument should be so bespattered with ridicule, they were instantly serious, as is their habit when you mention any one who has pa.s.sed away. You see my point?

I protest against this nasty slime of hypocrisy which is befouling every part of our intellectual and national life. We love the sea, we old sea-dogs, descendants (we proudly think) of the mighty Nors.e.m.e.n--we love it from Brighton Beach. We love Sport, do we who sneer at Frenchmen because they cannot play football--we love it from the closely packed amphitheatres of the race-course and footer-field, as spectators. We love War--with a penny flag and a yell in front of the Mansion House. We love Children, for we leave them to dwell in slums. And we love Music with all our hearts, because we were told that we did, and the wise repeat that it elevates and refines the soul.

X

I am disappointed with the meagre letter my friend sends me, "in haste"! Disappointed and surprised withal, inasmuch as he finds time to say, hastily enough, "Give me of your best; describe, _toujours_, describe!" To which I can only reply, "Humph!" _Mon ami_, I do not write for the sake of showing off my penmanship, nor my authorship.

When I have time, I lie down, on my stuffed-seaweed bed, and write my thoughts leisurely and enjoyably. A letter is something which would not be set down if the two persons concerned were within speaking distance. The mere fact that I endeavour to give my jottings some rude literary finish proves nothing to the contrary. When we are gathered together round the fire or the tea-table, the same thing obtains. The difference between conversation and t.i.ttle-tattle lies in the partic.i.p.ants of the former giving a finish to their contributions, watching for points, keeping the main channel of conversation clear of the lumber of extraneous witticism and personalities, gradually leading the timid to think and, later, to express their thoughts, using the learning which they have acquired in secret for the _edification_ or building-up of us all.

I remember how, when young H---- visited our anchorage, he sat silent and abashed while we thundered and declaimed about his bewildered head. And then, when the conversation moved, naturally enough, from education to religion, from religion to science, and from science to evolution, I noticed how, so to speak, he p.r.i.c.ked up his ears. He was thinking then, trying to realize, however faintly, that inside him was something different to anything inside us. His Catholic training, his sequestered up-bringing, his entomological studies, his _intellectual resiliency_, so deftly utilized by the Society of Jesus--all these came gradually into view, and we found truth, which is perfected praise, emanating from the babe by whom, I had been a.s.sured, we were to be bored to distraction.

We realize only too little what has been lost through the decay of conversation. "_Come, let us reason together._" And "letters" are only a form of reasoning together adapted to our special needs, gaining perhaps some added pathos from the implied separation of kindred souls, and a further value from the permanence and potential artistry of the form itself. It is not inc.u.mbent upon us to be very deep in the eighteenth century to remark that, with conversation, letter-writing dwindles and dies before the rush of mechanism and trade. It is easy to see the reason of this. Mechanism and trade are expressions of dissatisfaction with one's circ.u.mstances. Men used machines to make and carry commodities, not because they felt the exquisite joy of making, or the still higher joy of giving, but because they, or their wives, wanted larger houses, more splendid equipages, more sumptuous provender. Conversation, on the other hand, implies leisure and contentment of mind. I do not mean idlers and persons of no ambition.

Neither of these cla.s.ses ever wrote letters or shone in conversations.

So, musing upon my friend's hasty screed, I wonder how I am, in very truth, to give him of my best. True, I know from that hint that he is fighting with beasts at Ephesus to get his play into working, or rather playing order. This is sufficient to make me forgive my friend.

But consider in future, _mon ami_, that your letters are the only conversation I can enjoy out here, for the heroes with whom I toil know not the art.

XI

The transition of a great nation from barbarism to an elementary form of culture is always interesting. So, too, is the same transition in the case of a "great profession." In 1840, when the propulsion of ships by means of a steam-driven screw opened a new era in maritime history, the "practical man" in the engineering trade was an uneducated savage. Possessing no trade union, no voice in Parliament, no means of educating himself in the intricate theory of the machinery he helped to build, the mechanic of sixty years ago was regarded by those above him in the social scale merely as a "hand." When, therefore, steamships became common, and men were needed to operate and care for the propelling mechanism, they were naturally drawn from the ranks of mechanics who were employed in the works to construct it. Stokers were enlisted, in a similar way, from those working on land-boilers. Here, then, were two new cla.s.ses of seamen, corresponding very largely to the officers and sailors of a sailing-ship. To the unbia.s.sed judgment, it went without saying that the engineer on watch would take rank with the navigating officer on watch; but the old school of mariners, the school whose ideas of progress are crystallised for all time in the historic report of certain Admiralty Lords that "steam power would never be of any practical use in Her Majesty's Navy," thought differently. In their opinion, the engineer was the same as a stoker, and from that day almost to this the deck-officer who served his time in a sailing-ship secretly regards the engineers of his steamer as upstarts more or less, whose position and pay are a gross encroachment upon his own more ancient privileges.

A little consideration will show that there was some reason for this feeling in the beginning. In the case of the Royal Navy, the aggravation was particularly acute. The deck-officers, then as now, were sons of gentlemen, were members of an ancient and honourable service, a service included among that select quaternity, to be outside of which was to be a nonent.i.ty--the Navy, the Army, the Church, and the Bar. The naval officer, then as now, did not soil his hands, wore a sword, and was swathed in an inextricable meshwork of red tape, service codes, and High Toryism. He had his own peculiar notions of studying a profession, looked askance at the new-fangled method of driving a ship, honestly thinking, with Ruskin, that a "floating kettle" was a direct contravention of the laws of G.o.d.

Imagine, then, the aristocratic consternation of these honourable gentlemen when the care and maintenance of propelling machinery, auxiliary mechanism, and also guns and gun-mountings, were gradually transferred to a body of men of low social extraction, uncultured and unpolished land-lubbers and civilians! Only within the last twenty years have naval engineer officers, now drawn from the same social strata as the navigating officers, won official recognition of their importance in the _personnel_ of a ship.

In the case of the engineers of the Mercantile Marine the struggle has been the same, though by no means so bitter or so sustained. The reasons for this are two.

In the first place, the navigating officers of a merchantman are merely the employees of civilians--the shipowners. In the second place, the Board of Trade, by compelling shipowners to carry a certain number of navigators and engineers holding certificates of competency, have placed them on one professional level. Nevertheless, the animosity between the mates and the shrewd, greasy, sea-going engineer was keen enough, sharpened no doubt by the preponderating wages of the latter. Again, the former's habits of deference and mute obedience to the master, at once navigator, agent, and magistrate of the ship, were not readily a.s.similated by the engineer, whose democratic consciousness was just then rising into being, and whose mechanical instincts were outraged by the sailor's ignorant indifference to the knowledge and unremitting vigilance demanded by the machinery in his care.

It is in this fashion that a cla.s.s of men like my Chief have developed. Born of the lower middle cla.s.s, the artisan cla.s.s, apprenticed to their trade at twelve or thirteen years of age, and, on going to sea, suddenly finding themselves in possession of a definite uniform and rank with a fixed watch and routine, their natural instinct leads them to do their utmost to "live up" to their new dignity. In course of time, after a certain minimum of sea service, and an unbroken record of efficiency and good behaviour, the Board of Trade examiner affixes his stamp on the finished product, and the youth ventures on matrimony and indulges in dreams of rising in the world. His travelling has given his mind a certain shallow breadth of outlook; he will discuss Italian art with you, although his knowledge of Italy is confined to the low parts of Genoa and Naples, with perhaps a visit to the Campo Santo of the former. He has acquired the reading habit, perforce, at sea, though his authors would be considered dubious by the educated; and a smattering of some other language, generally Spanish, is, in his own opinion, good reason for holding himself above the common mechanic ash.o.r.e. His salary as a chief engineer enables his wife to keep a servant and buy superior garments; he puts money by, and in the course of time solidifies his position as a genuine bourgeois. In the meantime he exhales Smiles. He believes in Rising in the World. He would blot out a perfectly inoffensive, if ign.o.ble, ancestry, and he would also, if he could, make friends with English Grammar. But how can I hope for his success in the latter struggle when the books he borrows from my little store are returned uncut. Possibly the colourless eyes, which survey me over the _retrousse_ nose and deceptive moustache, are capable of gathering wisdom from the uncut fields of learning. And yet, and yet, have I not unintentionally surprised him in his cabin devouring "The Unwritten Commandment" or "The Lady's Realm," while my Aristophanes is on the settee? I do not blame a sea-going engineer for disliking Aristophanes. Many agricultural labourers would find him uninforming.

But why borrow him and simulate a cultured interest in his plays?

My friend, I think, abhors blatant uxoriousness. So do I. And I fear the Most Wonderful Man on Earth is blatantly uxorious. I honour him for a certain sadness in his voice when he speaks of unrequited love.

But his constant reference to Ibsen's _motif_ in the "Wild Duck,"

though it fails in its primary object of convincing me that he is familiar with Ibsen's plays, does in truth tell me that some fair one gave him sleepless nights.

Of course, this amusing a.s.sumption would not stand a single hour in a cultured circle. Some periodicals of the day foster the fallacy in many an unfortunate mind that to read about a book is really quite as good as actually to read it. Their readers are led to infer that learning is quite a spare-time affair. I once a.s.sured a victim of this delusion that in true culture there was no threepence-in-the-shilling discount; and he wrinkles his brows yet, I believe, wondering what I meant. How many years of close study, my friend, are required to enable one to stroll through a second-hand book-shop, pick up the _one_ treasure from the shelves, and walk out again?

It may be, perchance, that I labour this trait in the character of one who would be great but for his disabilities. Which thought recalls to my mind a suspicion that intermittently haunts me--that, living as we do here on this ocean tramp, "thrown together," as the phrase goes, so constantly, faults in another man grow more and more apparent; social abrasions which would be smoothed down and forgotten ash.o.r.e are roughened at each fresh encounter, until the man is hidden behind one flaming sin. Especially is this to be expected when mind and body are worn, the one with responsibility, the other with rough toil. Who am I that I should claim cultured intercourse from these heroes? Have I not shared their agony and b.l.o.o.d.y sweat in times of storm and stress?

Have I not seen this same wearer of elevators in his engine-room, a blood-stained handkerchief across his head where he has been "smashed," the sweat running from his blackened features, watching his engines with an agony no young mother ever knew?

What of the time when our main steam pipe burst in the Irish Sea in a fog? Read in the Chief Mate's log an entry, "_Delayed 2 hrs. 40 min., break-down in engine-room._" Simple, isn't it? But behind those brief words lies a small h.e.l.l for the Chief Engineer. Behind them lies two hours and forty minutes' frenzied toil in the heat of the boiler-tops, where the arched bunkers keep the air stifling; two hours and forty minutes' work with tools that race and slither to the rolling of the ship, with bolts that burn and blister, with steam that knows no master when she's loose. Literature? Art? Old friend, these G.o.ds seem very impotent sometimes. They seem impotent, as when, for instance, my first gauge-gla.s.s burst. Pacing up and down in front of my engines, there is a hiss and a roar, and one of my firemen rushes into the engine-room, his right hand clasping the left shoulder convulsively.

He has been cut to the bone with a piece of the flying gla.s.s. Men of thirty years' sea-time tell me they never have got used to a gla.s.s failing. And then the fight with the water and steam in the darkness, the frenzied groping for the wires to shut the c.o.c.ks, the ceaseless roar of water and steam! A look at the engines, an adjustment of the feed-valves, lest the water get low while I am fitting a new gla.s.s, and then to work. How glad one is when one sees that luminous ring, which denotes the water-level, rise "two-thirds gla.s.s" once more! And how far from the fine arts is he whose life is one long succession of incidents like these? Can they blame us if we look indulgently upon mere writers and painters? Surely, when the books are opened and the last log is read, when the overlooker calls our names and reads out the indictment "_Lacking culture_," we may stand up manfully and answer as clearly as we can, "Lord, we had our business in great waters."

XII

In such wise, I imagine, will George the Fourth reply. He is an admirable foil to the Most Wonderful Man on Earth. He regales you with no false sentiment; he is five feet ten in his socks, and he is clamorously indignant when you suggest that he will one day "get married." He considers love to be "d.a.m.ned foolishness," and despises "womanisers." He likes "tarts," has one in most ports of the Atlantic sea-board, and even writes to a certain Mexican enchantress, who lives in a nice little room over a nice little shop in a nice little street in the nice little town of Vera Cruz. What does he write? Frankly I don't know. What does he say, when he has dressed himself in dazzling white raiment and goes ash.o.r.e in Surabaya or Singapore, and sits down to tea with j.a.panese girls whose eyes are swollen with belladonna and whose touch communicates fire? How can I answer?

"George," I say, "what would your mother think?"

George is not communicative. He flicks ash from his cigarette and picks up a month-old _Reynolds's_. And that is a sufficient answer to my accusations, though he does not realize it. I, at any rate, have not the face to upbraid a lonely youth, without home or girl friends from one year's end to another, when in that same _Reynolds's_ I see page after page of "cases." If these people swerve, if they break the tables of the law every week, surely George the Fourth may hold up his head. You see, in Geordie-land, in the ports of Tyne and Wear, where George the Fourth was bred, there are many engineers who have been out in steamers working up and down the China coast, who have had nice little homes in Hankow, Hong-Kong, or Shanghai, with j.a.panese wives all complete. Then when the charter was up, and the steamer came home, these practical men left homes and wives behind them, and all was just as before. That is George's dream. "China or Burma coast-trade. That's the job for me when I get ma tickut." It is useless for a stern moralist like me to argue, because I feel certain that, being what he is, he would be entirely wise and right.

What an utter futility is marriage to a sea-going engineer! Here is my friend McGorren, a hard-working and Christian man. He is chief of a boat in the Burmese oil trade. His wife is dead; he has three children, who are being brought up with their cousins in North London.

McGorren has been out East two years. It will be another two years before he can come home. Where is the morality of this? He has no home. His little ones grow up strangers to him; they are mothered by a stranger. He is voteless, yet subject to income tax. He can have no friendships, no society, no rational enjoyment save reading. Nothing!

And what is his return? Four hundred a year and all found. I look into the frank eyes of George the Fourth and I am mute. In no philosophy, in no "Conduct of Life," in no "Lesson for the Day" which I have read can I discover any consolation or sane rule of living for such as he.

Is not this a terrible gap in Ruskin, Emerson, and Co.? I take up the first and I ask George to listen. He is perfectly willing, because, he says with reverence, I am "a scholar," and I have read to him before.

"... There _must_ be work done by the arms, or none of us could live.

There _must_ be work done by the brains, or the life we get would not be worth having. And the same men cannot do both. There is rough work to be done, and rough men must do it; there is gentle work to be done, and gentlemen must do it; and it is physically impossible that one cla.s.s should do, or divide, the work of the other. And it is of no use to try to conceal this sorrowful fact by fine words, and to talk to the workman about the honourableness of manual labour and the dignity of humanity. Rough work, honourable or not, takes the life out of us; and the man who has been heaving clay out of a ditch all day, or driving an express train against the north wind all night, or holding a collier's helm in a gale on a lee sh.o.r.e, or whirling white-hot metal at a furnace mouth, is not the same man at the end of his day, or night, as one who has been sitting in a quiet room, with everything comfortable about him, reading books, or cla.s.sing b.u.t.terflies, or painting pictures."