To the Ends of the Earth (18 page)

It must be the influence of Captain Anderson; or perhaps they ignore me from a refinement of manners, a delicacy of feeling—but though I salute our ladies and gentlemen from the waist when I see them up there on the
quarterdeck
, they seldom acknowledge the salutation! Yet now, truth to tell, and for the past three days there has been nothing to salute—no waist to walk on since it is awash with sea water. I find myself not sick as I was before—I am become a proper sailor! Mr Talbot, however, is sick indeed. I asked Phillips what was the matter and the man replied with an evident sarcasm—
belike it was summat he ate!
I did dare to cross the lobby softly and knock, but there was no reply. Daring still further I lifted the latch and entered. The young man lay asleep, a week's beard on his lips and chin and cheeks—I scarce dare put down here the impression his slumbering countenance made on me—it was the face of
ONE
who suffered for us all—and as I bent over him in some irresistible compulsion I do not deceive myself but there was the sweet aroma of holiness itself upon his breath! I did not think myself worthy of his lips but pressed my own reverently on the one hand that lay outside the coverlet. Such is the power of goodness that I withdrew as from an altar!

The weather has cleared again. Once more I take my walks in the waist and the ladies and gentlemen theirs on the quarterdeck. Yet I find myself a good sailor and was about in the open before other people!

The air in my cabin is hot and humid. Indeed, we are
approaching the hottest region of the world. Here I sit at my writing-flap in shirt and unmentionables and indite this letter, if letter it be, which is in some sort my only friend. I must confess to a shyness still before the ladies since the captain gave me my great
set-down
. Mr Talbot, I hear, improves and has been visible for some days, but with a diffidence before my cloth and indeed it may be with some desire to spare me embarrassment, he holds aloof.

Since writing that, I have walked again in the waist. It is now a mild and sheltered place. Walking there I have come to the opinion of our brave sailors which landsmen have ever held of them! I have observed these common people closely. These are the good fellows whose duty it is to steer our ship, to haul on the ropes and do strange things with our sails in positions which must surely be perilous, so high they go! Their service is a continual round and necessary, I must suppose, to the progress of the vessel. They are for ever cleaning and scraping and painting. They create marvellous structures from the very substance of rope itself! I had not known what can be done with rope! I had seen here and there on land
ingenuities
of wood-carving in imitation of rope; here I saw rope carved into the imitation of wood! Some of the people do indeed carve in wood or in the shells of coconuts or in bone or perhaps ivory. Some are making the models of ships such as we see displayed in the windows of shops or inns or alehouses near seaports. They seem to be people of infinite ingenuity.

All this I watch with complacency from far off in the shelter of the wooden wall with its stairways that lead up to where the
privileged
passengers live. Up there is silence, or the low murmur of conversation or the harsh sound of a shouted order. But forward, beyond the white line, the people work and sing and keep time to the fiddle
when they play—for like children, they play, dancing innocently to the sound of the fiddle. It is as if the
childhood
of the world were upon them. All this has thrown me into some perplexity. The ship is crowded at the front end. There is a small group of soldiers in uniform, there are a few emigrants, the women seeming common as the men. But when I ignore all but the ship's people, I find
them
objects of astonishment to me. They cannot, for the most part, read or write. They know nothing of what our officers know. But these fine, manly fellows have a
complete
—what shall I call it? “Civilization” it is not, for they have no city. Society it might be, save that in some ways they are
joined
to the superior officers, and there are classes of men between the one and the other—warrant officers they are called!—and there appear to be grades of authority among the sailors themselves. What are they then, these beings at once so free and so dependent? They are
seamen
, and I begin to understand the word. You may observe them when they are released from duty to stand with arms linked or placed about each other's shoulders. They sleep sometimes on the scrubbed planking of the deck, one it may be, with his head pillowed on another's breast! The innocent pleasures of friendship—in which I, alas, have as
yet
so little experience—the joy of kindly association or even that bond between two persons which, Holy Writ directs us, passes the love of women, must be the cement that holds their company together. It has indeed seemed to me from what I have jestingly
represented
as “my kingdom” that the life of the front end of the vessel is sometimes to be preferred to the vicious
system
of control which obtains
aft of the mizzen
or even
aft of the main
! (The precision of these two phrases I owe to my servant Phillips.) Alas that my calling and the degree in society consequent on it should set me so firmly where I no longer desire to be!

We have had a spell of bad weather—not very bad, but sufficient to keep most of our ladies in their cabins. Mr Talbot keeps his. My servant assures me that the young man is not seasick, yet I have heard strange sounds
emanating
from behind his locked door. I had the temerity to offer my services and was both disconcerted and
concerned
to wring from the poor young gentleman the admission that he was wrestling with his soul in prayer! Far, far be it from me to blame him—no, no, I would not do so! But the sounds were those of
enthusiasm
! I much fear that the young man for all his rank has fallen victim to one of the extremer systems against which our Church has set her face! I must and will help him! But that can only be when he is himself again and moves among us with his customed ease. These attacks of a too passionate devotion are to be feared more than the fevers to which the inhabitants of these climes are subject. He is a
layman
; and it shall be my pleasant duty to bring him back to that decent moderation in religion which is, if I may coin a phrase, the genius of the Church of England!

He has reappeared; and avoids me, perhaps in an embarrassment at having been detected at his too
protracted
devotions; I will let him be for the moment and pray for him while we move day by day, I hope, towards a mutual understanding. I saluted him from far off this morning as he walked on the quarterdeck but he affected to take no notice. Noble young man! He who has been so ready to help others will not deign, on his own behalf, to ask for help!

This morning in the waist I have been spectator once again of that ceremony which moves me with a mixture of grief and admiration. A barrel is set on the deck. The seamen stand in line and each is given successively a mug of liquid from the barrel which he drains off after exclaiming, “The King!
GOD
bless him!” I would His
Majesty could have seen it. I know of course that the
liquid
is the devil's brew and I do not swerve one jot or tittle from my previous opinion that strong drink should be prohibited from use by the lower orders. For sure, ale is enough and too much—but let them have it!

Yes here,
here
on the bounding main, under the hot sun and with a whole company of bronzed young fellows bared to the waist—their hands and feet hard with honest and dangerous toil—their stern yet open faces weathered by the storms of every ocean, their luxuriant curls
fluttering
from their foreheads in the breeze—
here
, if there was no overthrowing of my opinion, there was at least a modification and mitigation of it. Watching one young fellow in particular, a narrow-waisted, slim-hipped yet broad-shouldered
Child of Neptune
, I felt that some of what was malignant in the potion was cancelled by where and who was concerned with it. For it was as if these beings, these young men, or some of them at least and one of them in particular, were of the giant breed. I called to mind the legend of Talos, the man of bronze whose artificial frame was filled with liquid fire. It seemed to me that such an evidently fiery liquid as the one (it is
rum
) which a mistaken benevolence and paternalism provides for the sea-service was the proper
ichor
(this was the blood of the Grecian Gods, supposedly) for beings of such semi-divinity, of such truly heroic proportions! Here and there among them the marks of the discipline were evident and they bore these parallel scars with
indifference
and even pride! Some, I verily believe, saw them as marks of distinction! Some, and that not a few, bore on their frames the scars of unquestioned honour—scars of the cutlass, pistol, grape or splinter. None were maimed; or if they were, it was in such a minor degree, a finger, eye or ear perhaps, that the blemish hung on them like a medal. There was one whom I called in my mind my own
particular hero! He had nought but four or five white scratches on the left side of his open and amiable
countenance
as if like Hercules he had struggled with a wild beast! (Hercules, you know, was fabled to have wrestled with the Nemaean Lion.) His feet were bare and his nether limbs—
my
young hero I refer to, rather than the legendary one! His nether garments clung to his lower limbs as if moulded there. I was much taken with the manly grace with which he tossed off his mug of liquor and returned the empty vessel to the top of the barrel. I had an odd fancy. I remembered to have read somewhere in the history of the union that when Mary, Queen of Scots, first came into her kingdom she was entertained at a feast. It was recorded that her throat was so slender and her skin so white that as she swallowed wine the ruby richness of the liquid was visible through it to the
onlookers
! This scene had always exercised a powerful influence over my infant spirits! It was only now that I remembered with what childish pleasure I had supposed my future spouse would exhibit some such particular comeliness of person—in addition of course to the more necessary
beauties
of mind and spirit. But now, with Mr Talbot shy of me, I found myself, in my
kingdom
of lobby, cabin and waist, unexpectedly dethroned and a new monarch
elevated
there! For this young man of bronze with his flaming ichor—and as he drank the liquor down it seemed to me that I heard a furnace roar and with my inward eye saw the fire burst forth—it seemed to me with my
outer
eye that he could be no other than the king! I abdicated freely and yearned to kneel before him. My whole heart went out in a passionate longing to bring this young man to
OUR SAVIOUR
, first and surely richest fruit of the
harvest
I am sent forth to garner! After he retired from the barrel, my eye followed him without my volition. But he went where I, alas, could not go. He ran out along that
fourth mast laid more nearly horizontal, the bowsprit I mean, with its complication of ropes and tackles and chains and booms and sails. I was reminded of the old oak in which you and I were wont to climb. But he (the king) ran out there or up there and stood at the tip of the very thinnest spar and looked down into the sea. His whole body moved easily to counter our slight motion. Only his shoulder leaned against a rope, so that he lounged as he might against a tree! Then he turned, ran back a few paces and
lay down
on the surface of the thicker part of the bowsprit as securely as I might in my bed! Surely there is nothing so splendidly free as a young fellow in the branches of one of His Majesty's
travelling trees
, as I may call them! Or forests, even! There lay the king, then, crowned with curls—but I grow fanciful.

We are in the doldrums. Mr Talbot still avoids me. He has been wandering round the ship and descending into her very bowels as if searching for some private place where, perhaps, he may continue his devotions without hindrance. I fear sadly that my approach was untimely and did more damage than good. I pray for him. What can I do more?

We are motionless. The sea is polished. There is no sky but only a hot whiteness that descends like a curtain on every side, dropping, as it were, even below the horizon and so diminishing the circle of the ocean that is visible to us. The circle itself is of a light and luminescent blue. Now and then some sea creature will shatter the surface and the silence by leaping through it. Yet even when nothing leaps there is a constant shuddering, random twitches and vibrations of the surface, as if the water were not only the home and haunt of all sea creatures but the skin of a living thing, a creature vaster than Leviathan. The heat and dampness combined would be quite
inconceivable
to one who had never left that pleasant valley which was our home. Our own motionlessness—and this I believe you will not find mentioned in the accounts of sea voyages—has increased the effluvias that rise from the waters immediately round us. Yesterday morning there was a slight breeze but we were soon still again. All our people are silent, so that the striking of the ship's bell is a loud and startling sound. Today the effluvias became intolerable from the necessary soiling of the water round us. The boats were hoisted out from the
boom
and the ship towed a little way from the odious place; but now if we do not get any wind it will all be to do again. In my cabin I sit or lie in shirt and breeches and even so find the air hardly to be borne. Our ladies and gentlemen keep their cabin in a like case, lying abed I think, in hope that the weather and the place may pass. Only Mr Talbot roams as if he can find no peace—poor young man! May
GOD
be with him and keep him! I have approached him once but he bowed slightly and distantly. The time is not yet.