CHAPTER XVIII
ON THE "TRAMP" STEAMER
From Calcutta Oswald sails without definite destination. The ship's prospective course is unknown. This "tramp" steamer has an oddly assorted cargo. Her officers and crew are a motley mixture of different nationalities. Cabin and steerage passengers hail from many parts of earth.
Oswald learns that there is little prospect of touching at any Indian or English port. The trip will be of uncertain duration, lasting many months, possibly more than a year.
The first day's sail is characteristic. There are fair skies, balmy breezes, smooth seas, followed by clouds, squalls, churning waves, and tempest.
In noisiest turbulence of typhoon wrath this reserved Englishman sways and tosses with the ship's motion, raptly listening to low-pitched, soft-keyed voice rising above the storm.
What is ocean's tumult to this long-range undertone?
Outriding storm fury, the steamer for needed repairs anchors off Indian shore, whence she continues her eccentric course.
Long days, late into the night, are passed by Oswald sitting on and walking the decks. This homeless wanderer on havenless seas recks little of log-book or transit. Unlike sure-winged passage-bird, he knows not his journey's issue. So perverse have been fate's courses that this high-strung, assertive mariner hesitates to direct life's drifting argosy. There are looks of indecision, tense resolve, and helpless perplexity. Eagerly scanning the arched blue, he notes stellar assurance. Hushed as by cradle-song, every harassing emotion subsides.
Some odd, inquisitive conceits grow out of these moods. Gazing from steamer deck into lighted canopy he soliloquizes: "What vigils are those old guards commissioned to keep over this sail? Even if cares of universe now absorb divine solicitude, has there not been, in long ages of the eternal past, ample time to assign watchers over a few afloat on ocean's fickle domain? May not that kindly indulgent Sense, missing no carrion note of clamorous raven-cry, quicken at stress of higher life-forms pulsing with infinite longings of a human soul?"