It was really considerate of the captain making a break in a dull, damp Sunday afternoon—the horn went booming, and up we all jumped in the smoking-room with some idea that someone had gone overboard, and up on deck came the lascars grinning, a jolly string of colour, and away forward they trotted and climbed into the forward life-boats from the deck above us. It was very smartly done, but I would like to have seen if their feet could reach the stretchers or their hands the oars; the boats were not swung out, but everything seemed ready. I think my friend the bo'sun must have had an inkling they were needed for he was working about the davits and falls earlier in the afternoon. In the words of the poet, Gilbert,
"It is little I know,
Of the ways of men of the sea,
But I'll eat my hand if I (don't) understand"
this part of their business; practice on a whaler tends to perfection at getting away in the boats, and at getting on board again too, if you are hungry—and faith if it isn't snowing it is fun!
To night the air is damp and warm from the S.E., and we smell Spain—true bill—several of us noticed the aromatic smell. Scents at sea carry great distances. "I know a man" who smelt burning wood or heather, 250 nautical miles from land, and said so and was laughed at; but he laughed last, for two or three days after his vessel beat up to some islands, from which towered a vast column of brown and white smoke from burning peat, and this floated south on a frosty northerly breeze, and the chart showed the smoke was dead to windward at the time he spoke.
CHAPTER III
Monday—a rolling tumbling sea, soft grey and white, and misty-wet decks with shimmering reflections—a day when even a great liner such as this feels a little shut off from the outside world, for the mist comes down on the edge of the horizon and hedges us in. If I ever paint Orpheus or the Sirens, I will use such a grey wet effect. I think of these old navigators in their small vessels, getting the thick and the thin, just as we do to-day in our own sailing craft; getting well dusted at times, with the salt thick on their cheeks and decks. Taking it all round, the sea is rather a minor chord; so that these Burlington House pictures of the Argo and The Heroes, in orange and rose on a wine-red sea are not convincing. When my patron comes home I will humbly suggest Orpheus singing at the stem, a following wind, a great bellying sail behind, and all around wet air and splashing grey sea, the stem ploughing it up silver and white and green, and away aft under the bend of the sail there would be Jason and the steersman, possibly Medea, with the curl out of her hair, and perhaps just a touch of the golden fleece, just a fleck of pale yellow to enliven the minor tints! Round the bows there would be men listening to the song, watching the stem pound into the green hollows—now, I remember! I have seen this—I'd forgotten. But the Orpheus was in faded blue dungarees, and played a fiddle, and leaned against a rusty, red capstan—saw it from the jib-boom of the Mjolna[2]—fishing bonita—looked back, and there they all were, the same to-day as they were in olden days, I expect, men and boys, salt and sun-bitten sea-farers, lolling on the cat-heads and anchors. A joy of the World, that is—from your perch out on the jib-boom to watch a ship with its cloud of white sails surging after you.
[2] Norse for Thors hammer.
The Sirens too would paint in this weather; they look quite dry in pictures, they would look better wet—I'd have them glittering wet and joyous, and a fit carvel built boat and crew, and brown sloping sails, three reefs down, making a fine passage clear on to them, just as the steersman might wish with no bindings or wax in ears at all, but all at the Sirens' service.