The love that is given to ships is profoundly different from the love men feel for every other work of their hands - the love they bear to their houses, for instance - because it is untainted by the pride of possession.The pride of skill, the pride of responsibility, the pride of endurance there may be, but otherwise it is a disinterested sentiment.No seaman ever cherished a ship, even if she belonged to him, merely because of the profit she put in his pocket.No one, I think, ever did; for a ship-owner, even of the best, has always been outside the pale of that sentiment embracing in a feeling of intimate, equal fellowship the ship and the man, backing each other against the implacable, if sometimes dissembled, hostility of their world of waters.The sea - this truth must be confessed - has no generosity.No display of manly qualities - courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness - has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.The ocean has the conscienceless temper of a savage autocrat spoiled by much adulation.He cannot brook the slightest appearance of defiance, and has remained the irreconcilable enemy of ships and men ever since ships and men had the unheard of audacity to go afloat together in the face of his frown.From that day he has gone on swallowing up fleets and men without his resentment being glutted by the number of victims - by so many wrecked ships and wrecked lives.To-day, as ever, he is ready to beguile and betray, to smash and to drown the incorrigible optimism of men who, backed by the fidelity of ships, are trying to wrest from him the fortune of their house, the dominion of their world, or only a dole of food for their hunger.If not always in the hot mood to smash, he is always stealthily ready for a drowning.The most amazing wonder of the deep is its unfathomable cruelty.
I felt its dread for the first time in mid-Atlantic one day, many years ago, when we took off the crew of a Danish brig homeward bound from the West Indies.A thin, silvery mist softened the calm and majestic splendour of light without shadows - seemed to render the sky less remote and the ocean less immense.It was one of the days, when the might of the sea appears indeed lovable, like the nature of a strong man in moments of quiet intimacy.At sunrise we had made out a black speck to the westward, apparently suspended high up in the void behind a stirring, shimmering veil of silvery blue gauze that seemed at times to stir and float in the breeze which fanned us slowly along.The peace of that enchanting forenoon was so profound, so untroubled, that it seemed that every word pronounced loudly on our deck would penetrate to the very heart of that infinite mystery born from the conjunction of water and sky.We did not raise our voices."A water-logged derelict, Ithink, sir," said the second officer quietly, coming down from aloft with the binoculars in their case slung across his shoulders;and our captain, without a word, signed to the helmsman to steer for the black speck.Presently we made out a low, jagged stump sticking up forward - all that remained of her departed masts.
The captain was expatiating in a low conversational tone to the chief mate upon the danger of these derelicts, and upon his dread of coming upon them at night, when suddenly a man forward screamed out, "There's people on board of her, sir! I see them!" in a most extraordinary voice - a voice never heard before in our ship; the amazing voice of a stranger.It gave the signal for a sudden tumult of shouts.The watch below ran up the forecastle head in a body, the cook dashed out of the galley.Everybody saw the poor fellows now.They were there! And all at once our ship, which had the well-earned name of being without a rival for speed in light winds, seemed to us to have lost the power of motion, as if the sea, becoming viscous, had clung to her sides.And yet she moved.
Immensity, the inseparable companion of a ship's life, chose that day to breathe upon her as gently as a sleeping child.The clamour of our excitement had died out, and our living ship, famous for never losing steerage way as long as there was air enough to float a feather, stole, without a ripple, silent and white as a ghost, towards her mutilated and wounded sister, come upon at the point of death in the sunlit haze of a calm day at sea.
With the binoculars glued to his eyes, the captain said in a quavering tone: "They are waving to us with something aft there."He put down the glasses on the skylight brusquely, and began to walk about the poop."A shirt or a flag," he ejaculated irritably.
"Can't make it out...Some damn rag or other!" He took a few more turns on the poop, glancing down over the rail now and then to see how fast we were moving.His nervous footsteps rang sharply in the quiet of the ship, where the other men, all looking the same way, had forgotten themselves in a staring immobility."This will never do!" he cried out suddenly."Lower the boats at once! Down with them!"Before I jumped into mine he took me aside, as being an inexperienced junior, for a word of warning:
"You look out as you come alongside that she doesn't take you down with her.You understand?"He murmured this confidentially, so that none of the men at the falls should overhear, and I was shocked."Heavens! as if in such an emergency one stopped to think of danger!" I exclaimed to myself mentally, in scorn of such cold-blooded caution.
It takes many lessons to make a real seaman, and I got my rebuke at once.My experienced commander seemed in one searching glance to read my thoughts on my ingenuous face.
