There were never lacking participants, either. No matter if the tap-room was quite deserted by candidates when the bargain was concluded, the appearance of the beer and tobacco always found them present—drawn thither, I suppose, by some mysterious influence. Another peculiar thing about that place was that men with money did not frequent it—sailor men, that is to say. It had its own customers among the workers of Thames Street, but they never intruded upon the apartment sacred to the shipping interest.
It was all very sordid and pitiful, a side path of seafaring that must have lent itself to many abuses, through which many a poor misguided lad got away to sea, and found no place for repentance until too late. I have only mentioned it here, because in speaking of the boy I am painfully reminded of the great number of miserable little sea-drudges who are still to be found in these vessels, leading the hardest of lives, and uncared for by any one. They are worthy of all sympathy, being so helpless, so unable to raise themselves. Their environment is as bad as it can well be, for, whether ashore or afloat, the company they are in is usually of a very bad kind. Now and then, of course, such a vessel will have a good, steady seaman, who has an interest in her, for a skipper. A man like that will often carry his wife, and will endeavour to keep a respectable crew with him voyage after voyage. And as likely as not he will take an interest in the boy, and try to make something of him.
Here, as far as the sailor personnel of merchant ships is concerned, my task ends. Several times during its performance I have felt that perhaps I should have done better to begin with the boy and end with the skipper, as being the more natural way. But I hope that what I have done, as well as the way in which it has been done, will be acceptable to shore-folks, for whom it is written. Sailors do not require any information of the kind.
And now for a few words on behalf of the men of iron who toil below.
THE ENGINEER.
These concluding chapters should be written by an engineer; for no sailor, whatever his position may have been, is fully competent to judge of the work performed by the handlers of marine engines. Much less is he able to appreciate the position of those toiling helots of civilization, the firemen and trimmers. The benefits of steam are vast and undeniable; but it is not good to forget that the service of steam to-day means a truly awful burden of labour and risk laid upon a large army of civilized men. I believe I shall carry with me the assent of every one who knows anything about the facts when I say that of all modern occupations there is not one so terribly exhausting, so full of peril, as that of the servants of the marine engine at work. The marvel of marvels to me is that men can be found to undertake the task so readily. And if this be true of the Merchant Service, as I hold it is, plain unvarnished truth, it is doubly true of the same work, or what answers to the same description of work, in the Royal Navy. For there the manifold complications of ship-propelling machinery are immensely more intricate, the conditions under which the men labour are far more arduous, and, in addition, there is always the fighting risk superadded.
But I must not stray into the fighting line of engineering—I have said, perhaps, more than enough on that subject recently. Nevertheless, I honestly believe that I have only been able to put in the tamest and most colourless way what I feel about these men. When I say that such a chapter as this should be written by an engineer, I mean that only an expert in the wonderful profession can fully appreciate the difficulties and dangers thereof. Outsiders may, as I do, admire and wonder, but we cannot fully enter into these things as an engineer can. The country badly needs a writer on engineering matters who knows his business thoroughly, and at the same time is able to tell the people who don't know, what marine engineering means. No amount of sympathy and admiration can make up for lack of expert knowledge, yet, as far as it is possible, I feel constrained to draw the attention of my countrymen to the work of the men who, far below the water-line, amid the clanging chorus of their gigantic slaves, bend watchful brows to their mighty task; who for the four hours of their watch on deck (see how the sailor crops up), no, their watch below at work, know not one moment's respite. Vigilance unremitting is theirs; the price of effective manipulation must be paid, for no eastern Afrit was ever more jealous of the power over him held by the enunciator of the master-word than is the high-pressure marine engine of the governance of the engineer.