“A man whom both the waters and the wind, in that vast tennis-court have made the ball for them to play upon, entreats you pity him.”—PERICLES.
IT was during a voyage to Margate, many summers ago—before steam was—that the little episode occurred which I am going to relate, by way of text, to some observations on the ocean.
The importance of the Mariner’s Compass to the sailor is as well known universally as the utility of the little one-eyed instrument, for which Whitechapel is so famous, to the tailor: but its mode of action, and the manner of its application, must be far less generally understood. Whether the plougher of the deep mends his checked shirts with the Needle, or sews the canvas into sails with it, or uses it, after a battle, to extract the splinters from his hard tarry hand, are speculations likely enough to be entertained by the plougher of the land; at least by those clod-compelling turners of the furrows, mid-county born and bred, who, despite of their predilection for such naval ballads as Tom Bowling and Jack Junk, have never set their simple eyes on ship or sailor, or the sea which they subdue. To many Londoners even, who jostle the tar in the streets, and behold tier after tier of masted vessels from their lower Bridge,—who have perchance stood and stared at the Compass itself in some shop-window of Leadenhall, or the still more maritime Minories, the Card with its Card-inal Points, is an undeciphered hieroglyphic. It did not violently surprise me, therefore, to see a simple-looking creature of this latter class go and take a long wondering look into the binnacle, like a child peeping at the tortoise in an Italian’s show-box; and doubtless, to his callow apprehension, the veering Guide was as much a thing of life and instinct as the outlandish reptile to the urchin. It was not until after a tedious poring at it—long enough, if there were any truth in animal magnetism, for the Needle and the Man to have understood one another by mutual sympathy—that the wonderer made up to the steersman, and begged for an elucidation of the marine mystery. Fortunately for the querist, the helmsman, along with all the characteristic good-nature of his fraternity, had none of the coyness, as to the secrets of the craft, with which the ripe sailor is apt to treat the raw voyager; perhaps not without cause. The nautical truths, masonic, may deserve to be obtained by degrees of probation: in the present case the unreserved communication of occult knowledge led to anything but a satisfactory result. No one could take more pains—call them pleasures rather—than the honest man at the wheel, to explain the use and properties of the Compass: he boxed it again and again for the benefit of the gaping neophyte; a benevolent smile, and the twinkling of his blue eyes, declaring that he felt amply repaid by the supposed proficiency of his pupil,—when, all of a sudden, his well-earned pride was dashed to the deck by the pupil’s turning away on his heel, with a hunch of his shoulders, a blank look, and a dissatisfied grunt, exclaiming,
“Well, arter all, I don’t see how the turning round of that ’ere little needle can move about the rudder!”
I should have been no Christian man, but a brute beast, had I not sympathised with the feelings of the steersman. Contempt took the lead. All “the dismal hiss of universal scorn,” ascribed to Milton’s devils, seemed condensed into his whistle. Next came Resentment, wishing back the Cockney-Tailor to his shop-board, sitting on his own needle—and then came Pity, inducing the milder reflection,
“I wonder the poor gentleman’s friends allows him to go about by himself!”
I doubt whether the force of contempt and pity could further go: and yet—to confess a truth—shall I?—dare I?—say, that to the intense sea-ignorance which incurred the scorn, anger, and compassion of our Palinurus, I look back with ENVY?
Methinks, every British Heart of Oak recoils, and every British head of the same material shakes itself, at such an avowal! Every lip that ever helped to chorus Rule Britannia, curls itself up—noses which never sniffed sea-weed tacitly snub me,—eyes which never glimpsed the ocean avert themselves in disgust. I am bespattered with salt-water oaths and tobacco-juice. The Thames Yacht Clubs, on the strength of having learned to bellow “Elm a-lee!”—“Ard-hup!” and “Oist-away!” agree to run me down. The very clerks of the Navy Pay Office propose to seize me up to the dingy fresh-water Neptune in their fore-court. Captain Basil Hall swears, on his best anchor-button, to keel-haul me daily, for six months, in “the element which never tires.” The last of the Dibdins asks for my card. Campbell flares up with the “Meteor Flag of England,” and vows to knock me down with its staff;—nay, our Sailor King himself repudiates me, as a subject, for not relishing his High Seas!
It can’t be helped. When one is confessing, there is no place under the sun like the Ocean for “making a clean breast of it:”—and am not I here staggering and tumbling—soberly tipsy—aboard a lubberly Dutch-built hull, becalmed in a heavy swell—dreaming, when I can sleep, that I am a barrel-churn, revolving with my inside full of half-turned cream or incipient butter;—and finding, when I awake, that dreams do not go so altogether by contraries?