So Frank got no watch below in the daytime, he got no word of pleasant intercourse from anybody, the men he was compelled to drive hated him with a most virulent hatred, and he was fast degenerating into a mere machine. Worst of all for himself, he felt he got no opportunity at all to practise his navigation or add to his studies, and felt that all he had learnt in the past was slipping away from him. There was another point which he hardly admitted to himself, it seemed like some grim spectre threatening him; he was actually beginning to dislike his profession, which so short a time ago had seemed the one thing in the world to him.
Mr. Wilson, the second mate, was also in parlous case, even worse than Frank, for he had no such deep and enduring love of the sea as Frank had to console him. But having worked his way so painfully upward as far as his present position, it was a bitter reflection to him that he was in the hands of a man who not only had it in his power to destroy his career, but would do this diabolical act without compunction. There are occasions, of course, when to stop a man from going farther in so responsible a life as that of a sea-officer becomes a positive duty to a conscientious man; but when some infernal kink in the brain leads the man in power to abuse that power for the purpose of destroying the career of his junior, who with a little encouragement would become an entirely estimable officer, no words of mine could convey the horror and detestation that I feel at such an act. Most happily, with the passing away of the sailing ship that vile abuse of opportunity is becoming less and less frequent in its incidence, and I hope will soon finally disappear.
Under the incessant grind and constant supervision of the skipper, who, if he spared nobody on board, certainly did not spare himself, the noble Thurifer gradually worked down to the region of the “roaring forties” without any mishap, and this with a crew so drilled that the majority of them could not knot a ropeyarn, and could not go aloft and do something else besides hang on when they got there. It was a triumph, and Captain Forrest’s grim face showed that he realised it to the full as he strode to and fro on his spacious quarter-deck, nothing escaping his keen eye. Yet it was strange that with these splendid qualities so manifest in him he could not, or would not, recognise merit in others, for even his chief officer and coadjutor was never admitted to any terms of intimacy with him. He apparently preferred to reign alone, unbendingly, an absolute monarch, who was self-satisfied, self-contained, self-centred, who could command, and did so supremely well, but had wilfully and deliberately crushed out of himself all the finer feelings of humanity, and apparently would have subjected all who came under him to the same stern rule of a loveless life.
CHAPTER XV
THE BITTER LESSON ENDS
Among his fellow-captains the master of the Thurifer was accounted a lucky man for his wonderfully smart passages and almost complete immunity from accident, the occasional loss of a spar now and then being merely incidental to the making of such passages, and hardly to be called accidents. This voyage, in spite of its inauspicious beginning, was no exception to the rule, for after getting out of the Channel and licking his scratch crew into shape, nothing ever seemed to go wrong again. Luck had but little to do with it, but consummate seamanship had, and the ability and determination which made his men admire while they hated him.
Poor Frank, who in spite of his high courage and dogged perseverance had drunk the bitter cup of unhappiness and loneliness to the dregs, could not help feeling that in one way, at any rate, the captain was rendering him a service, that is, by getting the ship as quickly to port as possible, for although hope was nearly dead within him, he could not help stealing over him now and then a shadow of anticipation that relief might come; but he did fear that it might come too late to save him from what he felt would be the irreparable harm of making him hate the profession he had loved so sincerely. He did not realise that even this cold neglect, overwork, and incessant fault-finding that he had been subjected to had been productive of benefit to others. He had been driven to devote himself during work hours, whenever possible, to assisting the boys to learn as much as he knew himself, and had fired them with emulation, so that they were all in a fair way of becoming good seamen much more rapidly than would otherwise have been the case.
At last, after a splendid passage of eighty-four days from Liverpool, the Thurifer was hove to off the Sandheads to receive her pilot from one of the beautiful brigs which ply about the entrance to the great Hooghly. With her usual good fortune the Thurifer had not even to wait for a tug, for the Court-Hey, at that time the acknowledged chief of the fine Calcutta tug-boats, came steaming past with a big outward-bounder, which she slipped just abreast of the Thurifer, then turned and hooked on to the latter vessel at once.
There is always in the breast of the most case-hardened old sailor a sense of prideful accomplishment upon the completion of a successful passage under sail, a feeling that has been most attenuated, if not entirely destroyed, by the advent of steam. And every man and boy on board the Thurifer seemed by common consent to have forgotten all their grievances in their elation at having made so fine a passage, with the exception of the two men primarily responsible for it, Captain Forrest and Mr. Vincent. Their grim faces never relaxed a line, their haughty unapproachable manner softened not in the least.