XXI.
That is why your "strandings" are for the most part so unexpected.
In fact, they are all unexpected, except those heralded by some
short glimpse of the danger, full of agitation and excitement, like
an awakening from a dream of incredible folly.
The land suddenly at night looms up right over your bows, or
perhaps the cry of "Broken water ahead!" is raised, and some long
mistake, some complicated edifice of self-delusion, over-
confidence, and wrong reasoning is brought down in a fatal shock,
and the heart-searing experience of your ship's keel scraping and
scrunching over, say, a coral reef. It is a sound, for its size,
far more terrific to your soul than that of a world coming
violently to an end. But out of that chaos your belief in your own
prudence and sagacity reasserts itself. You ask yourself, Where on
earth did I get to? How on earth did I get there? with a
conviction that it could not be your own act, that there has been
at work some mysterious conspiracy of accident; that the charts are
all wrong, and if the charts are not wrong, that land and sea have
changed their places; that your misfortune shall for ever remain
inexplicable, since you have lived always with the sense of your
trust, the last thing on closing your eyes, the first on opening
them, as if your mind had kept firm hold of your responsibility
during the hours of sleep.
You contemplate mentally your mischance, till little by little your
mood changes, cold doubt steals into the very marrow of your bones,
you see the inexplicable fact in another light. That is the time
when you ask yourself, How on earth could I have been fool enough
to get there? And you are ready to renounce all belief in your
good sense, in your knowledge, in your fidelity, in what you
thought till then was the best in you, giving you the daily bread
of life and the moral support of other men's confidence.
The ship is lost or not lost. Once stranded, you have to do your
best by her. She may be saved by your efforts, by your resource
and fortitude bearing up against the heavy weight of guilt and
failure. And there are justifiable strandings in fogs, on
uncharted seas, on dangerous shores, through treacherous tides.
But, saved or not saved, there remains with her commander a
distinct sense of loss, a flavour in the mouth of the real, abiding
danger that lurks in all the forms of human existence. It is an
acquisition, too, that feeling. A man may be the better for it,
but he will not be the same. Damocles has seen the sword suspended
by a hair over his head, and though a good man need not be made
less valuable by such a knowledge, the feast shall not henceforth
have the same flavour.
Years ago I was concerned as chief mate in a case of stranding
which was not fatal to the ship. We went to work for ten hours on
end, laying out anchors in readiness to heave off at high water.
While I was still busy about the decks forward I heard the steward
at my elbow saying: "The captain asks whether you mean to come in,
sir, and have something to eat to-day."
I went into the cuddy. My captain sat at the head of the table
like a statue. There was a strange motionlessness of everything in
that pretty little cabin. The swing-table which for seventy odd
days had been always on the move, if ever so little, hung quite
still above the soup-tureen. Nothing could have altered the rich
colour of my commander's complexion, laid on generously by wind and
sea; but between the two tufts of fair hair above his ears, his
skull, generally suffused with the hue of blood, shone dead white,
like a dome of ivory. And he looked strangely untidy. I perceived
he had not shaved himself that day; and yet the wildest motion of
the ship in the most stormy latitudes we had passed through, never
made him miss one single morning ever since we left the Channel.
The fact must be that a commander cannot possibly shave himself
when his ship is aground. I have commanded ships myself, but I
don't know; I have never tried to shave in my life.
He did not offer to help me or himself till I had coughed markedly
several times. I talked to him professionally in a cheery tone,
and ended with the confident assertion:
"We shall get her off before midnight, sir."
He smiled faintly without looking up, and muttered as if to
himself:
"Yes, yes; the captain put the ship ashore and we got her off."
Then, raising his head, he attacked grumpily the steward, a lanky,
anxious youth with a long, pale face and two big front teeth.
"What makes this soup so bitter? I am surprised the mate can
swallow the beastly stuff. I'm sure the cook's ladled some salt
water into it by mistake."
The charge was so outrageous that the steward for all answer only
dropped his eyelids bashfully.
There was nothing the matter with the soup. I had a second
helping. My heart was warm with hours of hard work at the head of
a willing crew. I was elated with having handled heavy anchors,
cables, boats without the slightest hitch; pleased with having laid
out scientifically bower, stream, and kedge exactly where I
believed they would do most good. On that occasion the bitter
taste of a stranding was not for my mouth. That experience came
later, and it was only then that I understood the loneliness of the
man in charge.
It's the captain who puts the ship ashore; it's we who get her off.
