“Noon to-day, Lat. 42.6 N. Long. 11.10 W. Miles by engines since noon yesterday 222. Knots by revolutions 9.2. But the slip is 49.2 per cent. So actual distance 112 miles only, and knots 4.6. Bad going. Wind southly. Engines racing and engineer still at throttle.
“Night, and a full moon tearing past cloud openings. The ship occasionally shows like a pale ghost, the black shadows of the funnel guys and stanchions oscillating on the white paint-work as she rolls. I went into Chief’s cabin, and from its open door—for it was sensibly milder—looked out astern over the way we had come. Up and down, this side and that, went the steamer, and the Great Bear, in a wind clear patch of sky, was dancing on our wake. Polaris was making eccentric orbits round the main masthead light. Then the Skipper came in. He sat gazing astern. The look of his face was enough. It was quite plain he would like to be offended to-night, and attack anybody about anything. Presently he started intently as he looked astern, and jumped from his seat crying the ultimate anathema on the chap at the wheel; and ran out. The Chief glanced astern and laughed. ‘The old man comes in here because it’s uncommon handy for watching the wake. Look at it. Somebody on the bridge writing letters on the ocean. Thinking of his sweetheart, and her name is Sue.’ We gave the Skipper’s voice time to reach the wheelhouse, and then saw the wake visibly tauten out.
“I went aft, balancing like a man learning the tight rope, along the trestle bridge. The moon was still falling precipitously through the broken sky, and areas of the great seas, where the sweeping searchlight of the moon showed monsters shaping and slowly vanishing, were frightful. There were sudden expansions of vivid green lightnings in the north and east. I found the Doctor in the chief mate’s cabin. I sang some songs in a riving minor, accompanied by the mate on an accordion, for the doctor’s amusement, and discovered why sailors always use the accordion, previously a mystery to me. It has a sad and reflective note, suited to men with memories when alone on the ocean. It ought to fit Celtic bards better than the harp. It has a fine expiring moan. The mate gave an imitation of a dying man with it.
“To bed at 11. Tried to read Henry James. My cockroach came out to wave his derisive hands at me. No wonder. The light was very bad, and I was pitched from side to side of the bunk. Nearly thrown out once. I might just as well have attempted to read the Bhagavad-Gita in the original. So I read the last letters from home instead and then fell asleep as a little child.”
There was something of leisure in her movements next morning. I felt sure the glass must be rising at last. The air felt lighter and more expansive. A peep through the port showed me the ceiling had gone up considerably in the night. There was little wind, for the waves, though as great as ever, had lost their white ridges. Their summits were rounded and smooth. We were running south out of it, though the residue of the dreary northern seas was still washing about the decks. It was December yesterday, but April to-day. The engineers’ messroom boy, with bare fat arms, went by the cabin, singing.
At breakfast we heard that Chips, who had retired to his bunk for some days past to mend a leg damaged when the hatches were in danger, had met with a still more serious misfortune. We fell into a mood of silent and respectful compassion. There was nothing to be said. Chips had lost his Victoria Cross. He was an old hero in trouble. The few of us who were British there—true, most of us were Germans, Dutchmen, Scandinavians, and Portuguese—felt we represented The Country. Chips limped about the forecastle with reproach in his face, and we felt we were petty in noticing his face was also dirty, though it certainly was difficult to avoid seeing that too, perhaps because, and this can be said for us, the dirt was of longer standing than the reproach. Then again it is common knowledge that Chips sleeps in straw, having no mattress.
Chips’ story we knew. It had been whispered about the ship. He was at the Siege of Alexandria, and a shell fell near a group of men on his ship. Chips picked it up and dropped it overboard before the fuse was finished. The Doctor and I felt especially responsible, for a reason I cannot easily explain, it is so vague, and we told Chips we would help him in his search for his lost treasure. This took us to Chips’ sea-chest, and amid a group of mask-like faces—for how could foreigners guess what this mattered to us?—we hunted carefully for Chips his aureole. We found—but I suppose even Victoria Cross heroes must dirty their socks. There were other things also. Yet it was out of one of these very other things, which were, I think, shirts, that there dropped, when the Doctor picked up the garment, a little package wrapped in newspaper. Chips, from his berth, gave a cry of joy. The Doctor and I, smiling too, looked upon the old man feeling that we had acted for you all. Chips, secretive with his sacrosanct emblem, was putting the little packet under his coverlet, when a low foreign sailor snatched it from him. The Cross fell to the deck. I recovered it from the feet instantly in a white passion, and chanced to look at it. It confirmed that one, who is named Chips here, was something in the Royal and Ancient Order of Buffaloes.
Coming back from the fo’castle, suddenly I felt as the man of the suburbs does when, bowed with months of black winter and work in a city alley, he is, without any warning, transfigured on his own doorstep one morning. There as before is his familiar shrub, dripping with rain. Yet is it as before? It points a black finger at him. But the finger has a polished green nail.
He is translated. His ears are opened, and there comes for the first time that year the silver whistle of the starlings. A touch of South is in the air. His burden falls.