My father, poor man, was not so fortunate. He began before long to pay a heavy price in bodily affliction for all the stress and excitement of the past few days. For a full fortnight the most virulent type of sea-sickness had him in its horrid grip. I have since seen many other folk in evil case from similar causes, but none so vitally affected by the complaint as my father was, and never one who bore it with more patient courtesy than he did. Not in the cruellest paroxysm did he lose either his self-respect, or his consideration for me, and for others. The mere mention of this fell complaint excites mirth in the minds of the majority; but rarely can a man or woman be found whose self-control is proof against its attacks; and I take pleasure in remembering my father's admirable demeanour throughout his ordeal. In the steerage he had hardly survived it, I think. Here, with decent privacy, no single complaint passed his lips; and there was not a day, hardly an hour, I believe, in which he ceased to take thought for his small son's comfort and wellbeing. His courtesy was no skin-deep pose with my father. No doubt we are all much cleverer and more enlightened nowadays, but--however, that is one of the lines of thought which it is quite unnecessary for me to pursue here.
I was quite absurdly proud of my father, I remember, when, at length, he made his first appearance on the poop, leaning on my shoulder, his own shoulders covered by the soft rug we called the 'Hobson rug,' because, years before, a friend of that name had bequeathed it to us, after a visit to the house near Russell Square. In all the time that came afterwards, I am not sure that my father's constitution ever fully regained the tone it lost during our first fortnight aboard the Ariadne. But, if his health had suffered a set-back, his manner had not; that distinction of bearing in him which always impressed me, in which I took such pride, seemed to me now more than ever marked.
Child though I was, I am assured that this characteristic of my father's had a very real existence, and was not at all the creation of my boyish fancy. From my very earliest days I had heard it commented upon by landladies and servants, and, too, in remarks casually overheard from neighbours and strangers. Now, among our fellow-passengers on board the Ariadne, I heard many similar comments.
Looking back from this distance I find it somewhat puzzling that in my father's personality there should have been combined so much of real charm, dignity, and distinction, with so marked a distaste for the society of his fellows. Here was a man who seemed able always to inspire interest and admiration when he did go among his equals (or those not his equals, for that matter), who yet preferred wherever possible to avoid every form of social intercourse. By nature he seemed peculiarly fitted to make his mark in society; by inclination and habit, more especially in later life, it would seem he shunned society as the plague itself. Withal, there was not the faintest suggestion of moroseness about him, and when circumstances did lead him into converse with others he always conveyed an impression of pleased interest. This product of his exceptional courtesy and considerateness must have puzzled many people, taken in conjunction with his invariable avoidance of intercourse wherever that could be managed with politeness. Far more than any monetary or more practical consideration, it was, I am certain, this desire of my father's to get away from people which had led to our migration.
'People interrupt one so horribly,' was a remark he frequently made to me.
V
Folk whose experience of sea travel is confined to the passengers' quarters on board modern steamships of high tonnage can have but a shadowy conception of what a three months' passage round the Cape means, when it is made in a 1200 ton sailing vessel. I can pretend to no technical knowledge of ships and seafaring; but it is always with something of condescension in my mental attitude that I set foot on board a steamship, or hear praise of one of the palatial modern 'smoke-stacks.' It was thus I remember that the Ariadne's seamen spoke of steamships.
I suppose room could almost be found for the Ariadne in the saloons of some of the twentieth-century Atlantic greyhounds. But I will wager that the whole fleet of them could not show a tithe of her grace and spirited beauty in a sea-way. And, be it noted, they would not be so extravagantly far ahead of the Ariadne even in point of speed, say, between the Cape and Australia, when, in running her easting down with a living gale on her quarter, she spurned the foam from her streaming sides to the tune of a steady fourteen to fifteen knots in an hour; 'snoring along,' as seamen say, with all her cordage taut as harp-strings, and her clouds of canvas soaring heavenward tier on tier, strained to the extreme limit of the fabric's endurance.
From talk with my father, I knew the Ariadne of mythology, and so the sight of the patent log-line trailing in the creamy turmoil of our wake used always to suggest imaginings to me, as I leaned gazing over our poop rail, of a modern Theseus being rescued by this line of ours from the labyrinthine caverns of some submarine Minotaur.
Aye, she was a brave ship, and these were brave days of continuously stirring interest to the lad fresh from Putney and its Academy for the Sons of Gentlemen; or, as I should probably say, from one of its academies. I do not recall that life itself, the great spectacle, had at this period any interest for me, as such. My musings had not carried me so far. But the things and people about me, the play of the elements, and the unceasing and ever-varying activities of the ship's working, appealed to me as his love to a lover, filling my every hour with waiting claims, each to my ardour more instant and peremptory than its fellow.