He thought nothing of it. “Our ship has plenty of books—part of our gear. Come with me.” He showed me a bookcase for the boys—I had passed the place where it stood scores of times and would never have guessed so much was secreted there. Excepting for some transient volumes of fiction, changed whenever the ship is home again, the books in that case would have shown a country parsonage to have an horizon strangely beyond the parochial confines.
There was the Odyssey, the Oxford Book of English Verse, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Know Your Own Ship, Lubbock’s China Clippers, Green’s Short History, a history of China, Japanese and Malay grammars, volumes on engineering and navigation. Ball’s Wonders of the Heavens, the Oxford Dictionary, Wallace’s Malay Archipelago, books on sea birds, books on marine zoölogy, books enough to keep one hunting along their backs for something else unexpected and good. And in this very place where I had imagined that I was cut off from letters, the captain, casually at breakfast one morning, gave a frank judgment on a recent novel, and his reasons for his opinion were so sparkling and original that I saw at once what is the matter with the professional reviewing of books. In the place where I had guessed that letters were nothing, the significance of the popular reading is such that it would break the heart of a sensational novelist to see it, and might drive him to seek his meat in the more useful mysteries of crochet work.
Port Said Is More West Than East
June 6.—The southwest monsoon has broken. The heat and languor of the Red Sea are being washed from us by the Gulf of Arabia. The decks have been wet and lively to-day. The ship is rolled by quick and abrupt waves heaping along our starboard side. The waters recoil from our bulk, and the sun shining through their translucent summits gives the tumult brief pyramids of beryl. There are acres of noisy snow, and clouds of apple-green foundered deep within inclines of dark glass. Spectra are constant over the forward deck, where the spray towers between us and the sun, and drives inboard. After a nasty lurch I hear more crockery smash below. One of the other two passengers, the young Scots farmer who has left his Ayrshire oats to see whether rubber trees are better, and who had fancied at the first trial that he was a proved sailor, now seems to miss the placidity of his cows. He groans. At first I was a little doubtful about myself, but bluffed the Gulf of Arabia into supposing that it was a mistake to take me for a longshoreman; yet for a mysterious reason, so uncertain is the soul and its uninvited thoughts, I have had “Tipperary” running through my head all this day—music, one would think, which had nothing to do with monsoons; and thoughts of Paris, and the look of the English soldiers of the Mons retreat I met long ago. Why? How are we made? For here I am, with nothing to remind me of Crépy-en-Valois, climbing companion ladders where ascent and descent are checked at times by an invisible force, which holds me firm to the reality of a ship at sea. And yet “Tipperary,” that fond and foolish air, will not leave me. I wish I had the clew to this. After sunset, in a brief wild light, it was a test of the firmness of the mind to be on deck. The clouds, the sea, the horizon, were a great world displaced. The universe with its stars swayed giddily at bonds that threatened to burst at any moment, and away then we should have gone into space. It is darksome to see very heaven itself behaving as though it were working loose from its eternal laws. An anarchic firmament?
June 7.—Bracing myself last night in my cot, from which the ship tried to eject me, I read Kidd’s Science of Power. The captain had commended it to me, saying it was one of the best books he had ever read. Now, would it have been possible before 1914 for a book which describes the theory of mankind’s inborn and unalterable nature as blasphemous nonsense, and condemns civilization based on force, to win so handsome a tribute from such a tough character as our skipper? Kidd declares that it is the psychic condition of a people which matters, and that their outlook on life can be changed in a generation. He says the collective emotion can be charged for war or for peace. That our captain, who had his share of war, should have been moved by such an idea, need not surprise us to-day. Kidd’s theory is proved by our skipper’s own eagerness in this new hope. But the prophets and all the artists who have never served in the House of Rimmon have always held that faith, and have worked in its light. Otherwise they would have cursed God and then have cleared out of this world by a short cut. All the material manifestations of our civilization, which are thought to be from everlasting to everlasting, are nothing but the reflections of our commonest thoughts, and may be changed like lantern slides. The better world will be here as soon as we really want it. It depends on how we look at things. I recall a school anniversary, and a brigadier as the central light to shine on assembled youth. He advised the boys to take no notice of the talk about the brotherhood of man; man always had been a fighting animal; war was a fine training for our most manly qualities; with God’s help we had to prepare for the next war, which was sure to come; all this peace nonsense was eye-wash. It was plain that brigadier felt he was the very man to scrawl upon the virgin minds of children, as indeed our applause assured him he was. But suppose we pose the problem of the education of boys on the same plane of intelligence, though from another angle. Let us imagine the governors of that school had invited a painted lady to address the boys, and that she had assured them that they should laugh at this nonsense of the virtue of man, for man is a lecherous animal and concupiscence brings out all his lusty qualities, and therefore they should prepare for riotous nights because all the talk of honor and a fastidious mind is just eye-wash. What would careful parents think of that? But would the outrage be worse than the brigadier’s?
We have four cadets, and they make the best-looking group of our company. They move about lightly in shorts and singlets as though they were enjoying life in a delightful world. I stand where I can see them unobserved. They reconcile me to great statesmen, brigadiers, Bottomley, and the strong silent men. It is dreadful to think that soon they may lose their jolly life and become serious lumber in the councils of the world, and very highly respected.
June 8.—Rain came like the collapse of the sky at six o’clock this morning. Numerous waterfalls roared from the upper works as the ship rolled. The weather cleared at breakfast time, and immense clouds walled the sea, vague and still, and inclosed us in a glittering clammy heat. Perhaps it was the heat that did it, but certainly the ship’s master revealed himself in another character. Our captain has the bearing and the look of a scholarly cleric. He is an elderly man, with a lean, grave face, though his gray eyes, when they meet yours, have a playful interrogatory irony. Luckily he is clean shaven, so that I may admire a mouth and chin which would become a prelate. His thin nose points downward in gentle deprecation. A few men, under the bo’sun, were at some job this morning on the captain’s bridge, where we have our few staterooms. The bo’sun is a short fellow, with the build of a higher anthropoid. If he began to strangle me I should not resist. I should commend my soul to God. I have not seen him bend iron bars in those paws of his, but I am sure that if a straight bar ever displeases him he will put a crook in it. And he knows his job. He is always waddling about rapidly, glancing right and left with scowling dissatisfaction. There he was this morning on our bridge, where I was enjoying early morning at sea in the tropics while trying to keep clear of the men at work. Our captain stood near me, indifferent to my existence, and apparently oblivious even of the ship and its place in the sun. The bo’sun, growling in his throat, and lifting in indication a brown and hairy paw, was keeping the men active and silent. I don’t know what happened. But the captain turned; he regarded for several seconds in silent disfavor the bo’sun, the men, and their job; then there was a sudden blast from him which made all the figures of those seamen appear to wilt and bend as in a cruel wind. The captain did not raise his voice, but with that deep and sonorous tone which in the peroration from a pulpit shakes the secret fastnesses of wicked souls he stated how things looked to him in similes and with other decorations that increased the heat and my perspiration till I looked around for the nearest ladder out of it.