XII

Gillespie extolled the Scots. His hardihood left nothing else to talk about. The steward brisked about with the morning dishes. Jimmy, in a way that was new to him, noticed that the odour of the coffee had the effect of a clarion, of a hymn of praise. It smelt better than it tasted. The mornings were good. And this the Bay of Biscay, too! The seas were actually chanting. A stray beam of shine from the skylight swayed leisurely to and fro across the tablecloth; the water-bottle was in its track and answered the light by decorating the table linen with the spectrum. A rum thing, but as soon as you approached the matter of the resounding ballads and the tall tales, it was like this. On the whole, Colet thought he preferred it as it was. Look at Gillespie, that bold seaman! Or Hale, whose downcast thoughts seemed absorbed into the emptiness of his plate! Easygoing and friendly. No deeps of evil and heroism there. Hale hardly ever spoke but his words then certainly hinted that he knew what he was talking about. Gillespie continued to admonish Sinclair about the Scots, and the chief officer was smiling derisively.

“Where would you have been without them? Answer that now. Talk of your Shakespeare! Aye, he wasn’t so bad. Not so bad. But there’s Burns. There’s a man for ye. Have ye the like of him? And who did all that was worth doing, marine engines, the best ships, whisky, now?”

“And macadam, Gillespie. Don’t forget that.”

Jimmy had heard all this before. It was probably as constant at a ship’s mess-table as bloaters. Gillespie’s face was big and comforting, and its bronze made his grey eyes, and his crimped and wiry hair, oddly pale and noticeable; his back was as broad as the mahogany. Sinclair had confided to Colet that the chief engineer could smell in his sleep a minor fault in the engine-room and go to it by divination. Sinclair handsomely confessed now, pulling bread apart, that he would not so strongly object to the Scots if they could talk English.

“Man! I tell ye that Scotch is the original English, anyway.”

“Of course, when we were hairy savages, living on heather tops. Before we learned better manners. I say, Gillespie. Didn’t I ever tell you? There was a Scotchman, an Aberdonian, I sailed with once. He was an engineer, on his first voyage. I had to guess twice before I knew what it was he wished to tell me, but couldn’t pronounce properly. Well, we were coaling out East, and this fellow-countryman of yours was at a hatch with the Chinese Number One. They were rowing. Pidgin-English and your kind of English. You never heard such a shocking noise. The work was getting all balled up. Nothing to do with me, of course, but I strolled along to hear what the trouble was. The young engineer tried to tell me, but the Chink broke in. He was so jolly wild. He pointed at your countryman. ‘Look!’ he said. ‘No speakee English. No speakee Chinee. All same bloody Scotchman.’ ”

Sinclair went out of the room triumphant while Gillespie was considering a shot at him. The captain took no part in the discussion. “He’s a lively young man,” he remarked to the engineer. “You know, Gillespie, I’m told that I’m a Scot, or that I was.”

Thus that day drew insensibly towards noon. The next day was like it, and the day after was separated but by another night. Time was alternate day and night. Their ship was enchanted in the centre of a vast and empty world. It was the dot and focus of a radiant vacuity; and it was a handhold when about them was nothing but stars and the dirge of the abyss. It laboured, it beat down without ceasing glassy upheavals into fields of hissing white, but it could never escape to that dark and distant line where the wall of heaven stood about them. They were alone. The romance of the sea had flown off, perhaps, on the wings of the clippers, and was lost. It was not there. But the sea and the sky were unaware of any loss. They were beautiful, but were aloof from the desires and anxieties of man. The deck was orange and crimson with rust. Even iron-rust, when it was seen in the right place, accorded with a mind in which perturbation was lessening. Jimmy had a word with Sinclair about that rust. Sinclair surveyed it, and advised Colet that it would do him more good to take a chipping hammer to it. What was more, it would have to be done. The black funnel and the yellow masts leaned this way and that, and sometimes swung in a half-circle.

A coast appeared, late one afternoon. It was illusive, but it must have been land. The shape of earth there, Colet saw, had the luminous indistinction of a pale blue flower in sunlight; those strips of orange would be its beaches. The sky over the inland hills of violet was a clear height of greenish ether. They were lost, very likely. They had strayed to a younger and brighter planet. An opposite coast formed with a scatter of white specks down by the sea. The captain stood with Colet on the starboard side of the bridge. “There’s Tangier,” said Hale.

Names. Bare names. They were no nearer the reality than ever. The only reality was their present ship and its men. Hale and that spellbound seaman inside the wheelhouse were solid. They were there. But beyond them was the old vaporous abstraction. Perhaps an Odyssey could begin with every voyage of every ship. But how was a voyager to know that? What would be the alarming signal: “Here you start?” It must all depend on the spectator himself. Perhaps there is no adventurous morning light showing things anew for those who sleep on. But there is no knowing whether one is awake or asleep.

Captain Hale, having indicated the presence of Africa, remained in the same position, leaning on the weather dodger, with his thin brown hands clasped before him. His white shirt cuffs were linked with gold. A neat, precise, and sensible deacon. He was still regarding Tangier in apparent belief. Somebody was playing an accordion in the forecastle.

“How strange,” commented the ship’s master. “I don’t think I’ve heard that tune since one night at the Queen’s Palace of Varieties. You wouldn’t know that music hall. Poplar High Street. I was a youngster then, in a barque in the South Dock. I heard Jenny Hill that night. Before your time, I think. No, you wouldn’t know her. They called her the Vital Spark.” Captain Hale was still considering the portentous loom of Africa, and seemed pleased with it.

Good Lord, thought Jimmy. Here we are, and the men together on the same ship are in different seas, and only appear to be together. They see different things. What would make this world common for us all?

“The Great Macdermott was on the programme that night,” quietly continued Hale.

“We don’t want to fight, but by jingo if we do?”

“Yes. You’ve got him. That’s the fellow.”

“It’s a long time ago.”

“Yesterday, or thereabouts, my boy. Just feel our revolutions.”

Jimmy gave conscious attention to the incessant and energetic throbbing which was the only warning of their progress.

“She’s doing her best,” he reported.

“She is,” said Hale. “Well, that’s how time goes.” He turned to look at their wake. Jimmy turned. The track of their past diminished to infinity on the uneventful sea towards the declining sun.