IX.
Every passage of a ship of yesterday, whose yards were braced round
eagerly the very moment the pilot, with his pockets full of
letters, had got over the side, was like a race--a race against
time, against an ideal standard of achievement outstripping the
expectations of common men. Like all true art, the general conduct
of a ship and her handling in particular cases had a technique
which could be discussed with delight and pleasure by men who found
in their work, not bread alone, but an outlet for the peculiarities
of their temperament. To get the best and truest effect from the
infinitely varying moods of sky and sea, not pictorially, but in
the spirit of their calling, was their vocation, one and all; and
they recognised this with as much sincerity, and drew as much
inspiration from this reality, as any man who ever put brush to
canvas. The diversity of temperaments was immense amongst those
masters of the fine art.
Some of them were like Royal Academicians of a certain kind. They
never startled you by a touch of originality, by a fresh audacity
of inspiration. They were safe, very safe. They went about
solemnly in the assurance of their consecrated and empty
reputation. Names are odious, but I remember one of them who might
have been their very president, the P.R.A. of the sea-craft. His
weather-beaten and handsome face, his portly presence, his shirt-
fronts and broad cuffs and gold links, his air of bluff
distinction, impressed the humble beholders (stevedores, tally
clerks, tide-waiters) as he walked ashore over the gangway of his
ship lying at the Circular Quay in Sydney. His voice was deep,
hearty, and authoritative--the voice of a very prince amongst
sailors. He did everything with an air which put your attention on
the alert and raised your expectations, but the result somehow was
always on stereotyped lines, unsuggestive, empty of any lesson that
one could lay to heart. He kept his ship in apple-pie order, which
would have been seamanlike enough but for a finicking touch in its
details. His officers affected a superiority over the rest of us,
but the boredom of their souls appeared in their manner of dreary
submission to the fads of their commander. It was only his
apprenticed boys whose irrepressible spirits were not affected by
the solemn and respectable mediocrity of that artist. There were
four of these youngsters: one the son of a doctor, another of a
colonel, the third of a jeweller; the name of the fourth was
Twentyman, and this is all I remember of his parentage. But not
one of them seemed to possess the smallest spark of gratitude in
his composition. Though their commander was a kind man in his way,
and had made a point of introducing them to the best people in the
town in order that they should not fall into the bad company of
boys belonging to other ships, I regret to say that they made faces
at him behind his back, and imitated the dignified carriage of his
head without any concealment whatever.
This master of the fine art was a personage and nothing more; but,
as I have said, there was an infinite diversity of temperament
amongst the masters of the fine art I have known. Some were great
impressionists. They impressed upon you the fear of God and
Immensity--or, in other words, the fear of being drowned with every
circumstance of terrific grandeur. One may think that the locality
of your passing away by means of suffocation in water does not
really matter very much. I am not so sure of that. I am, perhaps,
unduly sensitive, but I confess that the idea of being suddenly
spilt into an infuriated ocean in the midst of darkness and uproar
affected me always with a sensation of shrinking distaste. To be
drowned in a pond, though it might be called an ignominious fate by
the ignorant, is yet a bright and peaceful ending in comparison
with some other endings to one's earthly career which I have
mentally quaked at in the intervals or even in the midst of violent
exertions.
But let that pass. Some of the masters whose influence left a
trace upon my character to this very day, combined a fierceness of
conception with a certitude of execution upon the basis of just
appreciation of means and ends which is the highest quality of the
man of action. And an artist is a man of action, whether he
creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of
a complicated situation.
There were masters, too, I have known, whose very art consisted in
avoiding every conceivable situation. It is needless to say that
they never did great things in their craft; but they were not to be
despised for that. They were modest; they understood their
limitations. Their own masters had not handed the sacred fire into
the keeping of their cold and skilful hands. One of those last I
remember specially, now gone to his rest from that sea which his
temperament must have made a scene of little more than a peaceful
pursuit. Once only did he attempt a stroke of audacity, one early
morning, with a steady breeze, entering a crowded roadstead. But
he was not genuine in this display which might have been art. He
was thinking of his own self; he hankered after the meretricious
glory of a showy performance.
As, rounding a dark, wooded point, bathed in fresh air and
sunshine, we opened to view a crowd of shipping at anchor lying
half a mile ahead of us perhaps, he called me aft from my station
on the forecastle head, and, turning over and over his binoculars
in his brown hands, said: "Do you see that big, heavy ship with
white lower masts? I am going to take up a berth between her and
the shore. Now do you see to it that the men jump smartly at the
first order."
I answered, "Ay, ay, sir," and verily believed that this would be a
fine performance. We dashed on through the fleet in magnificent
style. There must have been many open mouths and following eyes on
board those ships--Dutch, English, with a sprinkling of Americans
and a German or two--who had all hoisted their flags at eight
o'clock as if in honour of our arrival. It would have been a fine
performance if it had come off, but it did not. Through a touch of
self-seeking that modest artist of solid merit became untrue to his
temperament. It was not with him art for art's sake: it was art
for his own sake; and a dismal failure was the penalty he paid for
that greatest of sins. It might have been even heavier, but, as it
happened, we did not run our ship ashore, nor did we knock a large
hole in the big ship whose lower masts were painted white. But it
is a wonder that we did not carry away the cables of both our
anchors, for, as may be imagined, I did not stand upon the order to
"Let go!" that came to me in a quavering, quite unknown voice from
his trembling lips. I let them both go with a celerity which to
this day astonishes my memory. No average merchantman's anchors
have ever been let go with such miraculous smartness. And they
both held. I could have kissed their rough, cold iron palms in
gratitude if they had not been buried in slimy mud under ten
fathoms of water. Ultimately they brought us up with the jibboom
of a Dutch brig poking through our spanker--nothing worse. And a
miss is as good as a mile.
But not in art. Afterwards the master said to me in a shy mumble,
"She wouldn't luff up in time, somehow. What's the matter with
her?" And I made no answer.
Yet the answer was clear. The ship had found out the momentary
weakness of her man. Of all the living creatures upon land and
sea, it is ships alone that cannot be taken in by barren pretences,
that will not put up with bad art from their masters.
