Where the Blue Begins Part 12

Gissing saw that this would never do. Unless he could keep the master disturbed by philosophic doubts, Scottie would expect to resume command of the ship.

"Well," he said, "I've been thinking about it, too. I believe I went a bit too far. But what do you think about this? Do you believe that Conscience is inherited or acquired? You sea how important that is. If Conscience is a kind of automatic oracle, infallible and perfect, what becomes of free will? And if, on the other hand, Conscience is only a laboriously trained perception of moral and social utilities, where does your deity come in?"

Gissing was aware that this dilemma would not hold water very long, and was painfully impromptu; but it hit the Captain amidships.

"By Jove," he said, "that's terrible, isn't it? It's no use trying to carry on until I've got that under the hatch. Look here, would you mind, just as a favour, keep things going while I wrestle with that question?--I know it's asking a lot, but perhaps--"

"It's quite all right," Gissing replied. "Naturally you want to work these things out."

The Captain started to leave the bridge, but by old seafaring habit he cast a keen glance at the sky. He saw the bright string of code flags fluttering. He seemed startled.

"Are you signalling any one?" he asked.

"No one in particular. I thought it looked better to have a few flags about."

"I daresay you're right. But better take them down if you speak a ship.

They're rather confusing."

"Confusing? I thought they were just to brighten things up."

"You have two different signals up. They read, Bubonic plague, give me a wide berth. Am coming to your a.s.sistance."

Toward dinner time, when Gissing had left the wheel and was humming a tune as he walked the bridge, the steward came to him.

"The Captain's compliments, sir, and would you take his place in the saloon to-night? He says he's very busy writing, sir, and would take it as a favour."

Gissing was always obliging. There was just a hint of conscious sternness in his manner as he entered the Pomerania's beautiful dining saloon, for he wished the pa.s.sengers to realize that their lives depended upon his prudence and sea-lore. Twice during the meal he instructed the steward to bring him the latest barometer reading; and after the dessert he scribbled a note on the back of a menu-card and had it sent to the Chief Engineer. It said:--

Dear Chief: Please keep up a good head of steam to-night. I am expecting dirty weather.

MR. GISSING,

(Staff-Captain)

What the Chief said when he received the message is not included in the story.

But the same social aplomb that had made Gissing successful as a floorwalker now came to his rescue as mariner. The pa.s.sengers at the Captain's table were amazed at his genial charm. His anecdotes of sea life were heartily applauded. After dinner he circulated gracefully in the ladies' lounge, and took coffee there surrounded by a chattering bevy. He organized a little impromptu concert in the music room, and when that was well started, slipped away to the smoke-room. Here he found a pool being organized as to the exact day and hour when the Pomerania would reach port. Appealed to for his opinion, he advised caution. On all sides he was in demand, for dancing, for bridge, for a recitation. At length he slipped away, pleading that he must keep himself fit in case of fog. The pa.s.sengers were loud in his praise, a.s.serting that they had never met so agreeable a sea-captain. One elderly lady said she remembered crossing with him in the old Caninia, years ago, and that he was just the same then.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

And so the voyage went on. Gissing was quite content to do a two-hour trick at the wheel both morning and afternoon, and worked out some new principles of steering which gave him pleasure. In the first place, he noticed that the shuffle-board and quoit players, on the boat deck aft, were occasionally annoyed by cinders from the stacks, so he made it a general plan to steer so that the smoke blew at right angles to the ship's course. As the wind was prevailingly west, this meant that his general trend was southerly. Whenever he saw another vessel, a ma.s.s of floating sea-weed, a porpoise, or even a sea-gull, he steered directly for it, and pa.s.sed as close as possible, to have a good look at it. Even Mr. Pointer admitted (in the mates' mess) that he had never experienced so eventful a voyage. To keep the quartermasters from being idle, Gissing had them knit him a rope hammock to be slung in the chart-room.

He felt that this would be more nautical than a plush settee.

There was a marvellous sense of power in standing at the wheel and feeling the great hull reply to his touch. Occasionally Captain Scottie would emerge from his cabin, look round with a faint surprise, and come to the bridge to see what was happening. Mr. Pointer would salute mutely, and continue to study the skyline with indignant absorption.

The Captain would approach the wheel, where Gissing was deep in thought.

Rubbing his hands, the Captain would say heartily, "Well, I think I've got it all clear now."

Gissing sighed.

"What is it?" the Captain inquired anxiously.

"I'm bothered about the subconscious. They tell us nowadays that it's the subconscious mind that is really important. The more mental operations we can turn over to the subconscious realm, the happier we will be, and the more efficient. Morality, theology, and everything really worth while, as I understand it, spring from the subconscious."

The Captain's look of cheer would vanish.

"Maybe there's something in that."

"If so," Gissing continued, "then perhaps consciousness is entirely spurious. It seems to me that before we can get anywhere at all, we've got to draw the line between the conscious and the subconscious.

What bothers me is, am I conscious of having a subconscious, or not?

Sometimes I think I am, and then again I'm doubtful. But if I'm aware of my subconscious, then it isn't a genuine subconscious, and the whole thing's just another delusion--"

The Captain would knit his weather-beaten brow and again retire anxiously to his quarters, after begging Gissing to be generous and carry on a while longer. Occasionally, pacing the starboard bridge-deck, sacred to captains, Gissing would glance through the port and see the metaphysical commander bent over sheets of foolscap and thickly wreathed in pipe-smoke.

He himself had fallen into a kind of tranced felicity, in which these questions no longer had other than an ingenious interest. His heart was drowned in the engulfing blue. As they made their southing, wind and weather seemed to fall astern, the sun poured with a more golden candour. He stood at the wheel in a tranquil reverie, blithely steering toward some bright belly of cloud that had caught his fancy. Mr. Pointer shook his head when he glanced surrept.i.tiously at the steering recorder, a device that noted graphically every movement of the rudder with a view to promoting economical helmsmanship. Indeed Gissing's course, as logged on the chart, surprised even himself, so that he forbade the officers taking their noon observations. When Mr. Pointer said something about isobars, the staff-captain replied serenely that he did not expect to find any polar bears in these lat.i.tudes.

He had hoped privately for an occasional pirate, and scanned the sea-rim sharply for suspicious topsails. But the ocean, as he remarked, is not crowded. They proceeded, day after day, in a solitary wideness of unblemished colour. The ship, travelling always in the centre of this infinite disk, seemed strangely identified with his own itinerant spirit, watchful at the gist of things, alert at the point which was necessarily, for him, the nub of all existence. He wandered about the Pomerania's sagely ordered pa.s.sages and found her more and more magical.

She went on and on, with some strange urgent vitality of her own.

Through the fiddleys on the boat deck came a hot oily breath and the steady drumming of her burning heart. From outer to hawse-hole, from shaft-tunnel to crow's-nest, he explored and loved her. In the whole of her proud, faithful, obedient fabric he divined honour and exultation.

Poised upon uncertainty, she was sure. The camber of her white-scrubbed decks, the long, clean sheer of her hull, the concave flare of her bows--what was the amazing joy and rightness of these things? And yet the grotesque pa.s.sengers regarded her only as a vehicle, to carry them sedatively to some clamouring dock. Fools! She was more lovely than anything they would ever see again! He yearned to drive her endlessly toward that unreachable perimeter of sky.

On land there had been definite horizons, even if disappointing when reached and examined; but here there was no horizon at all. Every hour it slid and slid over the dark orb of sea. He lost count of time. The tremulous cradling of the Pomerania, steadily climbing the long leagues; her n.o.ble forecastle solemnly lifting against heaven, then descending with grave beauty into a spread of foaming beryl and snowdrift, seemed one with the rhythm of his pulse and heart. Perhaps there had been more than mere ingenuity in his last riddle for the theological skipper.

Truly the subconscious had usurped him. Here he was almost happy, for he was almost unaware of life. It was all blue vacancy and suspension. The sea is the great answer and consoler, for it means either nothing or everything, and so need not tease the brain.

But the pa.s.sengers, though un.o.bservant, began to murmur; especially those who had wagered that the Pomerania would dock on the eighth day.

The world itself, they complained, was created in seven days, and why should so fine a ship take longer to cross a comparatively small ocean?

Urbanely, over coffee and pet.i.te fours, Gissing argued with them. They were well on their way, he protested; and then, as a hypothetical case, he asked why one destination was more worth visiting than another? He even quoted Shakespeare on this point--something about "ports and happy havens"--and succeeded in turning the tide of conversation for a while.

The mention of Shakespeare suggested to some of the ladies that it would be pleasant, now they all knew each other so well, to put on some amateur theatricals. They compromised by playing charades in the saloon.

Another evening Gissing kept them amused by fireworks, which were very lovely against the dark sky. For this purpose he used the emergency rockets, star-sh.e.l.ls and coloured flares, much to the distress of Dane, the quartermaster, who had charge of these supplies.

Little by little, however, the querulous protests of the pa.s.sengers began to weary him. Also, he had been receiving terse memoranda from the Chief Engineer that the coal was getting low in the bunkers and that something must be queer in the navigating department. This seemed very unreasonable. The fixed gaze of Mr. Pointer, perpetually examining the horizon as though he wanted to make sure he would recognize it if they met again, was trying. Even Captain Scottie complained one day that the supply of fresh meat had given out and that the steward had been bringing him tinned beef. Gissing determined upon resolute measures.

He had notice served that on account of possible danger from pirates there would be a general boat drill on the following day--not merely for the crew, but for everyone. He gave a little talk about it in the saloon after dinner, and worked his audience up to quite a pitch of enthusiasm.

This would be better than any amateur theatricals, he insisted. Everyone was to act exactly as though in a sudden calamity. They might make up the boat-parties on the basis of congeniality if they wished; five minutes would be given for reaching the stations, without panic or disorder. They should prepare themselves as though they were actually going to leave a sinking ship.

The pa.s.sengers were delighted with the idea of this novel entertainment.

Every soul on board--with the exception of Captain Scottie, who had locked himself in and refused to be disturbed--was properly advertised of the event.

The following day, fortunately, was clear and calm. At noon Gissing blew the syren, fired a rocket from the bridge, and swung the engine telegraph to STOP. The ship's orchestra, by his orders, struck up a rollicking air. Quickly and without confusion, amid cries of Women and children first! the pa.s.sengers filed to their allotted places. The crew and officers were all at their stations.

Gissing knocked at Captain Scottie's cabin.

"We are taking to the boats," he said.

"Goad!" cried the skipper. "Wull it be a colleesion?"

"All's clear and the davits are outboard," said Gissing. He had been studying the manual of boat handling in one of the nautical volumes in the chart-room.