XI.
Indeed, it is less than nothing, and I have seen, when the great
soul of the world turned over with a heavy sigh, a perfectly new,
extra-stout foresail vanish like a bit of some airy stuff much
lighter than gossamer. Then was the time for the tall spars to
stand fast in the great uproar. The machinery must do its work
even if the soul of the world has gone mad.
The modern steamship advances upon a still and overshadowed sea
with a pulsating tremor of her frame, an occasional clang in her
depths, as if she had an iron heart in her iron body; with a
thudding rhythm in her progress and the regular beat of her
propeller, heard afar in the night with an august and plodding
sound as of the march of an inevitable future. But in a gale, the
silent machinery of a sailing-ship would catch not only the power,
but the wild and exulting voice of the world's soul. Whether she
ran with her tall spars swinging, or breasted it with her tall
spars lying over, there was always that wild song, deep like a
chant, for a bass to the shrill pipe of the wind played on the sea-
tops, with a punctuating crash, now and then, of a breaking wave.
At times the weird effects of that invisible orchestra would get
upon a man's nerves till he wished himself deaf.
And this recollection of a personal wish, experienced upon several
oceans, where the soul of the world has plenty of room to turn over
with a mighty sigh, brings me to the remark that in order to take a
proper care of a ship's spars it is just as well for a seaman to
have nothing the matter with his ears. Such is the intimacy with
which a seaman had to live with his ship of yesterday that his
senses were like her senses, that the stress upon his body made him
judge of the strain upon the ship's masts.
I had been some time at sea before I became aware of the fact that
hearing plays a perceptible part in gauging the force of the wind.
It was at night. The ship was one of those iron wool-clippers that
the Clyde had floated out in swarms upon the world during the
seventh decade of the last century. It was a fine period in ship-
building, and also, I might say, a period of over-masting. The
spars rigged up on the narrow hulls were indeed tall then, and the
ship of which I think, with her coloured-glass skylight ends
bearing the motto, "Let Glasgow Flourish," was certainly one of the
most heavily-sparred specimens. She was built for hard driving,
and unquestionably she got all the driving she could stand. Our
captain was a man famous for the quick passages he had been used to
make in the old Tweed, a ship famous the world over for her speed.
The Tweed had been a wooden vessel, and he brought the tradition of
quick passages with him into the iron clipper. I was the junior in
her, a third mate, keeping watch with the chief officer; and it was
just during one of the night watches in a strong, freshening breeze
that I overheard two men in a sheltered nook of the main deck
exchanging these informing remarks. Said one:
"Should think 'twas time some of them light sails were coming off
her."
And the other, an older man, uttered grumpily: "No fear! not while
the chief mate's on deck. He's that deaf he can't tell how much
wind there is."
And, indeed, poor P-, quite young, and a smart seaman, was very
hard of hearing. At the same time, he had the name of being the
very devil of a fellow for carrying on sail on a ship. He was
wonderfully clever at concealing his deafness, and, as to carrying
on heavily, though he was a fearless man, I don't think that he
ever meant to take undue risks. I can never forget his naive sort
of astonishment when remonstrated with for what appeared a most
dare-devil performance. The only person, of course, that could
remonstrate with telling effect was our captain, himself a man of
dare-devil tradition; and really, for me, who knew under whom I was
serving, those were impressive scenes. Captain S- had a great name
for sailor-like qualities--the sort of name that compelled my
youthful admiration. To this day I preserve his memory, for,
indeed, it was he in a sense who completed my training. It was
often a stormy process, but let that pass. I am sure he meant
well, and I am certain that never, not even at the time, could I
bear him malice for his extraordinary gift of incisive criticism.
And to hear HIM make a fuss about too much sail on the ship seemed
one of those incredible experiences that take place only in one's
dreams.
It generally happened in this way: Night, clouds racing overhead,
wind howling, royals set, and the ship rushing on in the dark, an
immense white sheet of foam level with the lee rail. Mr. P-, in
charge of the deck, hooked on to the windward mizzen rigging in a
state of perfect serenity; myself, the third mate, also hooked on
somewhere to windward of the slanting poop, in a state of the
utmost preparedness to jump at the very first hint of some sort of
order, but otherwise in a perfectly acquiescent state of mind.
Suddenly, out of the companion would appear a tall, dark figure,
bareheaded, with a short white beard of a perpendicular cut, very
visible in the dark--Captain S-, disturbed in his reading down
below by the frightful bounding and lurching of the ship. Leaning
very much against the precipitous incline of the deck, he would
take a turn or two, perfectly silent, hang on by the compass for a
while, take another couple of turns, and suddenly burst out:
"What are you trying to do with the ship?"
And Mr. P-, who was not good at catching what was shouted in the
wind, would say interrogatively:
"Yes, sir?"
Then in the increasing gale of the sea there would be a little
private ship's storm going on in which you could detect strong
language, pronounced in a tone of passion and exculpatory
protestations uttered with every possible inflection of injured
innocence.
"By Heavens, Mr. P-! I used to carry on sail in my time, but--"
And the rest would be lost to me in a stormy gust of wind.
Then, in a lull, P-'s protesting innocence would become audible:
"She seems to stand it very well."
And then another burst of an indignant voice:
"Any fool can carry sail on a ship--"
And so on and so on, the ship meanwhile rushing on her way with a
heavier list, a noisier splutter, a more threatening hiss of the
white, almost blinding, sheet of foam to leeward. For the best of
it was that Captain S- seemed constitutionally incapable of giving
his officers a definite order to shorten sail; and so that
extraordinarily vague row would go on till at last it dawned upon
them both, in some particularly alarming gust, that it was time to
do something. There is nothing like the fearful inclination of
your tall spars overloaded with canvas to bring a deaf man and an
angry one to their senses.
