Part 3

A friend who lives on Long Island says in a letter: “A tall Cunarder putting out to sea gives me a keener thrill than anything the Polo Grounds or the Metropolitan Opera can show.” No doubt; for he is not a sailor but a man of letters. It is proper that to him the sight of a distant ship, outward bound, should be more appealing than anything he would see at the Opera House. He knows those operas, which are like nothing on earth except operas; but the tall ship, as he calls it, standing out into windy space, rarefied by overwhelming light, to him is Argo; but to a sailor Argo is a legend and nothing on earth, for he is moved by that sort of thing only when he sees it in opera. The ship may look as unsubstantial and legendary as she likes; she may, because she is outward bound, suggest to a man of letters the happy release he will never get from all his contracts with publishers and house-agents; but she is as hard, and is conditioned by as much that is inexorable, as a money-lender’s mortgage.

But what a poster an artist can make of her! No artist, however gifted, could do that with a publisher’s contract or a mortgage. So a ship, after all, whatever nautical and engineering science may do with her, aided by the tastes and habits of millionaires, and the rules and regulations of many committees of exacting experts, must be a symbol which still suggests to men in bondage an undiscovered golden shore, or fleece, of which they will continue to dream, as they dream irrationally of peace while never ceasing to fashion war.

So long as men who must stay ashore are thrilled when they see a liner going out, or do no more on a half-holiday than idle about the docks and speculate around the queer foreign names and ports of registry that show on steamers’ counters, or sit on a beach and throw stones into the water, we may still hope to change the ugly look of things. There is precious little sustenance of hope in whatever keeps us industrious, but there is a chance for us whenever we cease work and sink into idle stargazing.

Stuck on a corner of the morning railway station, where we cannot miss it though usually we have not the time to stop and look at it, is a large poster inviting us to See the Midnight Sun. It shows a liner, and she is heading towards an Arctic glory as bright as any boy’s dream of a great achievement. But it is not stuck there for boys to look at it, though they do. It is meant for those who have been so practical and level-headed in a longish life that they can afford a yachting cruise to the Arctic Circle. Doubtless, therefore, they make those cruises. I can account for that poster in no other way. It is one of the strangest and most significant facts in industrial society. All very well for some of us to read--wasting time as wantonly as if we had a dozen lives to play with--every volume on Arctic travel we can reach, knowing as we read that we shall never even cross the Pentland Firth.

But that station poster is addressed to those who are supposed never to dream, for they have attained to Threadneedle Street. What do they want with the Midnight Sun? Haven’t they got the “Morning Post”? But there you are. Even now they feel they have missed something, and whatever it is they will go to the Arctic to look for it. Cannot they find it in Threadneedle Street? Apparently not. That poster on a suburban station, though I cannot afford to miss the train to examine it for useful details, is like a faint promising hail from a time not yet come. Man is still in his early youth. He may come back from an Arctic holiday some day, or a recreation in China, push over Threadneedle Street with a laugh, and begin anew.

Men of letters who gaze longingly after departing ships, and men of business who are in those ships without the excuse of business, are proof enough that their many inventions, so far, have not got them what they wanted. For London is not quite the loveliness we meant to make it, and we know it. The ruthless place dismays us. In our repulsion from it we say it ought to be called Dementia, and invent golf and the week-end cottage to revive the soul it deadens without recompense. All to no purpose. There is nothing for it but to destroy London and rebuild it nearer to the heart’s desire or else to escape from it, if we can; though no guarding dragon of a grim prison was ever such a sleepless, cunning, and ugly-tempered brute as the machine we have made with our own hands. No wonder it pays to decorate the walls of the capital with romantic but seditious pictures of palms, midnight suns, coasts of illusion and ships outward bound. Nothing could so plainly indicate our revolt from the affairs we must somehow pretend to venerate.

It is not the sea itself, not all that salt water, which we find attractive. Most of us, I suppose, are a little nervous of the sea. No matter what its smiles may be like, we doubt its friendliness. It is about as friendly as the volcano which is benign because it does not feel like blowing up. What draws us to the sea is the light over it. Try listening, in perfect safety, to combers breaking among the reefs on a dark night, and then say whether you enjoy the voice of great waters. No, it is the wonder of light without bounds which draws us to the docks to overcome the distractions and discomforts of departure. We see there is wide freedom in the world, after all, if only we had the will to take it. And unfailingly we make strange landfalls during an escape, coasts of illusion if you like, and under incredible skies, but sufficient to shake our old conviction of those realities we had supposed we were obliged to accept. There are other worlds.

VI

My journeys have all been the fault of books, though Lamb would never have called them that. They were volumes which were a substitute for literature when the season was dry. A reader once complained to me, and with justice, that as a literary feuilletonist I betrayed no pure literary predilections. “You never devote your page,” he said fretfully, “to the influence of the Pleiades. You never refer to 18th century literature. You never look back on names familiar to all who read Latin. What is interesting to truly curious and bookish people might not exist for you. I wonder, for example, if Nahum Tate were mentioned in a conversation, whether you would be able to say what it meant.”

Well, not exactly that. I fear my readiness for the challenge would not pass the test. All that would happen to me would be a recollection of white walls, bright but severe, on which are scattered black memorial tablets, one of them with a ship over it carved in alabaster. An interior as cool and quiet as a mausoleum. There are shadows moving on the luminous white; June trees are murmuring outside. There is a smell of clothes preserved till Sunday in camphor and in sandalwood boxes. A big venerable man is perched high in a rich and glowing mahogany box, whose lifted chin, jutting saliently from white sideboard whiskers, has a dent in its centre; he is talking, with his eyes shut, to one he calls Gard, and I listen to him with deep interest, for once that old man served with John Company, which to a minor figure in his congregation seems miraculous. Then we all stand, and sing the words of a poet strangely named Tate & Brady. Would anyone wish me to quote the words, in proof? Certainly not. There is no need. When we come out of that building there is a stone awry on the grass by the door, commemorating one who was a “Master-Mariner, of Plymouth,” and a verse can be just deciphered on it, which reads:

Thou, as a gallant bark from Albion’s coast, The storms all weathered and the ocean crost, Sinks into port in some well-favoured isle, Where billows never roar, and brighter seasons smile.

The learned literary critics may be as wise as they please, but there is no undoing the early circumstances which have made some names in literature of significance to us, and have put other names, perhaps even greater, forever in the dark. Our literary predilections were cast at our birth. So much depends, too, on where we heard a name first, and what was about the book when we read it. That is the reason why my correspondent’s letter is not irrelevant here, for it caught me out. It gave away the game. It showed me that I could never be a critic of letters. When his complaint came to me, some books for review were beside me. But what was I doing? Sitting in the shade, looking absently at a dazzling summer afternoon just beyond the chair, for I had just read with close attention this fragment in English:

From three to nine miles north-eastward of the northern part of Sangi is a group of islands named Nipa, Bukit, Poa, and Liang, respectively, and about nine miles farther eastward is a chain of six islets and two detached reefs, which extend about nine miles in a north-northeast and opposite directions. From Inis islet, the southernmost of this chain, a reef of rocks extends some distance southward, and it should be given a good berth. All the above islets are covered with coconut trees, but very little is known about them.

Then there followed, for over three hundred closely printed pages, references to many outlandish names, probably occult, such as Busu Busu (“good drinking water may be obtained from a spring at the foot of the hill behind the missionary’s house”), Berri Berri Road, Rau Strait (“it has not been surveyed and is dangerous”), Tanjong Salawai, Pulo Gunong Api (I know enough to say that that means the island of the mountain of fire), Gisi and Pakal, Ceram Laut (“is high and hilly, and had on it, in 1898, a remarkable tree, 428 feet over the sea, which makes a good mark”), Suruake of the Goram Islands (“the inhabitants are quarrelsome and warlike ... anchorage off Wiseleat village, on the north side, in 24 fathoms, at over one mile from the shore and 130 yards from the steep to reef, with a hawser to the latter to prevent driving”). I had been idling with that book, with the work of the latest enterprising novelists waiting beside me for my immediate attention, all the morning, and still could not let it go. Then came the querulous letter pointing out my indifference to the English literature of the 18th century; which in one respect was unjust, for if once I got going on Gulliver I might soon be in prison for sedition. Yet the rebuke was well merited. I would sooner read any volume of Directions for Pilots than the Latin poets. (And I should like to ask whether Ceram Laut has not been sighted since 1898). On the whole, I would much rather sit in a cabin of a ship which had just made fast again, and listen to the men who had brought her home, than read the best modern fiction. I should feel nearer to the centre of life. Never mind the name of the book which had made that a finer day for me. You will not find it in the circulating libraries; but it has an official rote, initialled, and is guaranteed by the Hydrographic Office, Admiralty; so there must be something in it. The volume, in fact, is mysterious only in the queer effect it has upon me. I dare not commend it for general reading, but I myself would sooner peruse it than the essays of Addison because I get more out of it. I should like to describe, in some detail, the place where I bought it, the man who sold it to me, what he said about it, and the seclusions of the Java and Arafura Seas where, far from all contact with English literature, I afterwards examined it. One sunrise, by the aid of this very book, I knew what I saw ahead on the horizon was Pulo Gunong Api.

VII

Someone stumbled down the bridge ladder for which I was making. I could see nothing, but I heard the voice of the chief mate. He was annoyed with himself. Since nightfall our steamer had been without body, except the place where one stood. With a steady look it was just possible to find faith in the substance of the alleyway where the two of us paused to gossip, for its white paint might have been the adherence to the ship of the faintest trace of the day which had gone. Somewhere ahead of us a promontory of Africa reached almost to our course. Our course was laid just to miss it. We were keeping watch for its light. But if the void at the world’s end had been under our prow we should not have known it. It was a dark night. An iron door in the alleyway clanged open with an explosion of light. The light projected solidly overside, with an Arab fireman brightly encased in it, who was emptying sacks of ash.

Before daybreak the roar of our cable woke me. When I peered through the cabin port I thought we had anchored in the midst of a cluster of stars. That was Oran. I should see Africa in the morning. When we left Barry Dock with coal the weather was like the punishment for sin; but tomorrow we should see a white town in the sun, the descendants of the Salee rovers, and Africa--Africa for the first time.

Those first impressions! Quite often our first impression of a place is also our last, and it depends solely upon the weather and the food. This is not doing justice to the world. We shall never learn enough to do justice to our world unless there is something in this talk of transmigration and metamorphosis. I might, for instance, have written down Oran as a mere continuation of the coast of Wales, because next morning the captain and I landed at a jetty, wearing oilskins. This was Africa’s coral strand--how quaint it is, the way the romantic use the facts!--and the grandchildren of the Sallee rovers were carrying coal in baskets, from which black liquid poured down their bodies. To judge by their appearance of bowed and complete submission, every drop of pirate blood had been washed out of them long ago.

There might have been mountains behind the town, though it was hard to see them. Something seemed to be there, but it was thin and smeared. Africa, so far as I could see it that morning, was the office of a shipping agent, where we gossiped of steamers and men we knew, looked at maps on the walls, and wondered what the agent’s fading photographs represented. Then we caught an electric tram, which took us to an hotel in a French town, a town well-ordered and righteously commercial, and garrisoned by French soldiers in cherry-colored bloomers; for this was years ago. The bedroom had a tiled floor, but no fireplace, because the house was built on the theory that we were in Africa, and by getting under a red bale of eiderdown one managed to keep from perishing.

Well, Oran chose to show itself the next morning. You could see then that Wales was very far to the north. Winter, perhaps, had found out in the night that it was in the wrong place. It had gone home. It was not worth while returning to the ship, so I stayed ashore.

The best moments of a traveller are not likely to be divined from the list of the ship’s ports of call. They are inconsequential. It is no good looking for them. They do not seem to be native to any particular spot on earth. They have no relation to the chart. It is impossible to define every one of their elements, and, worse luck, they are not rewards for endurance and patience. You do not go to them. They surprise you as you pass. Nor should they serve as material for travel narrative unless you would make your report delusive, for they have no geographical bearings. Nobody is likely to find them again. It is no good talking about them. Yet without them travel would be worse than the job of the urban dust collector. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and there is no telling how and in what place the happy incidence of light and understanding will come.

Last summer, when walking through a sunken Dorsetshire lane, there was the ghost of an odour I knew, though I could not name it; and at that moment I began to think of a man I met in France early in the war. I climbed the bank to see what was growing above. Bean flowers! Any survivor of the First Hundred Thousand will remember that odour while he lives. The memory of Hesketh Prichard and the smell of bean flowers make for me the same apparition: the white bones of Ypres in the first June of it. Smell is likely to have much to do with a first impression. The Somme battleground, once you were under its threat, I think, was raw marl and smoking rubbish. It doesn’t do, to-day, to walk unexpectedly into the whiff of a place where old rubbish is mouldering in a field on a moist day, not if you are with friends; they may think you are mad; they would not be far wrong, either.

Yes, smell has a lot to do with it. It recalls what the eye registered, put away, and forgot. I shall never forget my first voyage, not while steam tractors are allowed to poison and destroy the streets of London. The gust of hot grease from one of them, as it thunders past, pictures for me what could be seen of the North Sea (December, too!) from the companion hatch of a trawler; a world black and ghast upset out of the sunrise and running down to founder us. The breath of the engine-room puffed up the hatch as she rolled. She had an over-heated bearing somewhere, for the engines had been racing all night; it had been one of those nights at sea. The coaming of the hatch was wet and cold, and the hard wind tasted of iron and salt. The steward was knocking about the coffee cups at the foot of the ladder; but I did not want any. For some unreasonable cause now I do not object to the greasy smell and thunder of steam tractors.

VIII

There should be no itinerary but the course of things. The plan of a journey is made to be broken. Only famous travellers who make daring flights by air to remote coasts to provide aeroplane builders, or manufacturers of synthetic nourishment, with bold advertisements, ever dare to say when we may watch for their return. Let us never challenge the gods, who do not exist, as to-day we all know, yet who may grow peevish if we not only deny their existence, but behave with arrogance, as though to show them that superior man has taken their place.

Reason was only given to us that we might comfort ourselves with it. I remember the smoke-room of a steamer, which was almost deserted, for it was near midnight. Three fellow passengers sat near me, and they were estimating the hour of our arrival in the morning. Their discourse was leisurely and casual, but they were confident; they knew; and with the elaborate and solid worth of that saloon to accommodate even our tobacco smoke, what doubt could there be about human judgments? As to our arrival, we could tell you within about fifteen minutes. I think my fellow-travellers were men of commerce, for they were familiar with the habits of our line and of many other lines; they could judge the hour when we should be home; and they were assured that to relieve humankind of poverty and war would be to invite God’s punishment for unfaithfulness. Then they emptied their glasses and left the place to me and a huge American negro pugilist, who had a fur-lined overcoat and many diamonds, and who spoke to the steward as a gruff man would to a dog.

Our steamer gave the assurance of that astronomical certitude which is inherent in great and impersonal affairs. She held on immensely and with celerity. Sometimes, when one of the screws came out of the water, a loose metal ash-tray on the table forgot itself, became alive and danced, like an escape of the amusement felt by the ship over some secret knowledge she had; hilarity she at once suppressed. The ash-tray became still and apparently ashamed of what it had done. The slow rolling of the steamer was only the maintenance of her poise in a wonderful speed. If your head leaned against the woodwork you could hear the profound murmuring of her energy. We were doing well. No doubt the men who had just gone out were right--at least, about the time of our arrival.

Outside, the promenade deck was vacant. Most of its lights were out. The portal to the room which accommodated our tobacco pipes announced itself to the darkness with a bright red bulb and black lettering. There was an infinity of night. One could not see far into it, but it poured over us in an unending flood. The red bulb seemed rather small after all. There was no sea. There was only an occasional sound and an illusion of fleeting spectres. Going down the muffled stairway to my cabin I met my steward. He warned me that we should be in by seven o’clock. The corridor below was silent, its doors all shut, and another steward was at the end of the empty lane, contemplative, reposeful, the unnecessary watchman of a secure city. The accustomed sounds of the ship, far away and subdued, were the earnest of an inevitable routine and predestination. Almost home now! I switched off the light; began planning the morrow into a well-earned holiday.... And then someone was shaking me with insistence. It was only the steward. The electric light was bright in my eyes.

“Not six yet, surely?”

“Not quite four, sir. But there’s not enough water for her to get in. Better get up now. A tug is expected.”

Here we were then. The engines had done their work. They had stopped. Though it was so early, I could hear people constantly passing along the corridor, and not with their usual leisure. Fussy folk! Plenty of time to shave and put things away! No need to hurry when this was the end of it.