III
But the sea!
My friend asked me once, of the Mediterranean—Is it really blue? And I replied that I could give him no notion of the colour of it. And that is true. From the real “sea-green” of the shallow North Sea to the turquoise-blue of the Bay; from the grey-white rush of the Irish Sea to the clear-cut emerald of the Clyde Estuary; from the colourless, oily swell of the Equatorial Atlantic to the paraffin-hued rollers of the Tropic of Cancer, the sea varies as human nature itself. To the artist, I imagine, no two square miles are alike, no two sunsets, no two sunrises:
“His sea in no showing the same,
His sea, yet the same in all showing.”
As I climbed the steep side of the almost-empty steamer, lying at the Tyne-main Buoys, a keen, alert, bearded face looked over the gunwale above me. I stepped aboard and spoke to the owner of this face. I said, “Is the Chief aboard?”
“He is not.”
“Is the Captain aboard?”
“He is not.”
“Then who is aboard?”
“The Mate’s aboard.”