Part 4
One day when she was discharging in London there came alongside an old seaman, weather-worn and hungry-looking. Something in the build of the old ship caught his eye, and with quivering lips and twitching hands he climbed on board. Round about the deck he quested until, half hidden by a huge pile of lumber, he found the bell and read on it, “Lion, London, 1842.” Then he sat down and covered his face with his hands. Presently he arose and sought the grimy mate purposefully. At an incredibly low wage he obtained the berth of cook,--it was either that or starve, although now he had found his old ship, he felt that he would go for nothing rather than miss another voyage in her. Soon after they sailed for the “fall voyage” to Quebec, making a successful run over, much to the delight of the ancient cook, who was never weary of telling any one who would listen of the feats of sailing performed by the _Lion_ when he was quartermaster of her “way back in the fifties.” Urged by greed, for he was part-owner, and under no fear of the law, the skipper piled upon her such a deck-load of deals that she no longer resembled a ship, she was only comparable to a vast timber stack with three masts. She was hardly clear of Newfoundland on her homeward passage, when one of the most terrible gales of all that terrible winter set in. Snow and sleet and frost-fog, a blinding white whirl of withering cold, assailed her, paralysing the hapless handful of men who vainly strove on their lofty platform to do their duty, exposed fully to all the wrath of that icy tempest. One after one the worn-out sails, like autumn leaves, were stripped from yard and stay; day after day saw the perishing mariners die. The sea froze upon her where it fell, so that now she resembled an iceberg; and though the remnant of the crew tried many times to get at the fastenings of the chains that secured the deck-load so as to send it adrift, they could not. At last only one man was left alive, and he, strangely enough, was the old cook. And while still the gale was at its height, he suddenly seemed to renew all his lost strength. Buckling tight his belt with firm fingers, a new light gleaming in his eyes, he strode aft and seized the long-disused wheel. Standing erect and alert he conned her gravely, getting her well before the wind. Onward she fled, as if knowing the touch of an old friend. Gradually the lean fingers stiffened, the fire died out of the eyes, until, just as the last feeble drops in that brave old heart froze solid, the _Lion_ dashed into a mountainous berg and all her shattered timbers fell apart. Lovely and pleasant had she been in her life, and in her death she was no danger to her wandering sisters.
THE FLOOR OF THE SEA
Who is there among us that has ever seen a lake, a pond, or a river-bed laid dry that has not felt an almost childish interest and curiosity in the aspect of a portion of earth’s surface hitherto concealed from our gaze? The feeling is probably universal, arising from the natural desire to penetrate the unknown, and also from a primitive anxiety to know what sort of an abode the inhabitants of the water possess, since we almost always consider the water-folk to live as do the birds, really on land with the water for an atmosphere. But if this curiosity be so general with regard to the petty depths mentioned above, how greatly is it increased in respect of the recesses of the sea. For there is truly the great unknown, the undiscoverable country of which, in spite of the constant efforts of deep-sea expeditions, we know next to nothing. Here imagination may (and does) run riot, attempting the impossible task of reproducing to our minds the state of things in the lightless, silent depths where life, according to our ideas of it, is impossible,--the true valley of the shadow of death.
Suppose that it were possible for some convulsion of Nature to lay bare, let us say, the entire bed of the North Atlantic Ocean. With one bound the fancy leaps at the prospect of a rediscovery of the lost continent, the fabled Atlantis whose wonders have had so powerful an effect upon the imaginations of mankind. Should we be able to roam through those stupendous halls, climb those towering temple heights reared by the giants of an elder world, or gaze with stupefied wonder upon the majestic ruins of cities to which Babylon or Palmyra with all their mountainous edifices were but as a suburban townlet! Who knows? Yet maybe the natural wonders apparent in the foundations of such soaring masses as the Azores, the Cape Verde Islands, or the Canaries; or, greater still, the altitude of such remote and lonely pinnacles as those of the St. Paul’s Rocks, would strike us as more marvellous yet. To thread the cool intricacies of the “still vext Bermoothes” at their basements and seek out the caves where the sea-monsters dwell who never saw the light of day, to wander at will among the windings of that strange maze of reefs that cramp up the outpouring of the beneficent Gulf Stream and make it issue from its source with that turbulent energy that carries it, laden with blessings, to our shores; what a pilgrimage that would be! Imagine the vision of that great chain of islands which we call the West Indies soaring up from the vast plain 6000 feet below, with all the diversity of form and colour belonging to the lovely homes of the coral insects, who build ceaselessly for themselves, yet all unconsciously rear stable abodes for mankind.
It would be an awful country to view, this suddenly exposed floor of the sea. A barren land of weird outline, of almost unimaginable complexity of contour, but without any beauty such as is bestowed upon the dry earth by the kindly sun. For its beauty depends upon the sea, whose prolific waters are peopled with life so abundantly that even the teeming earth is barren as compared with the ocean. But at its greatest depths all the researches that man has been able to prosecute go to prove that there is little life. The most that goes on there is a steady accumulation of the dead husks of once living organisms settling slowly down to form who knows what new granites, marbles, porphyries, against the time when another race on a reorganised earth shall need them. Here there is nothing fanciful, for if we know anything at all of prehistoric times, it is that what is now high land, not to say merely dry land, was once lying cold and dormant at the bottom of the sea being prepared throughout who can say what unrealisable periods of time for the use and enjoyment of its present lords. Not until we leave the rayless gloom, the incalculable pressures and universal cold of those tremendous depths, do we find the sea-floor beginning to abound with life. It may even be doubted whether anything of man’s handiwork, such as there is about a ship foundering in mid-ocean, would ever reach in a recognisable form the bottom of the sea at a depth of more than 2000 fathoms. There is an idea, popularly current among seafarers, that sunken ships in the deep sea only go down a certain distance, no matter what their build or how ponderous their cargo. Having reached a certain stratum, they then drift about, slowly disintegrating, derelicts of the depths, swarming with strange denizens, the shadowy fleets of the lost and loved and mourned. In time, of course, as the great solvent gets in its work they disappear, becoming part of their surroundings, but not for hundreds of years, during which they pass and repass at the will of the under-currents that everywhere keep the whole body of water in the ocean from becoming stagnant and death-dealing to adjacent shores. A weird fancy truly, but surely not more strange than the silent depths about which it is formulated.
In his marvellously penetrative way, Kipling has touched this theme while singing the “Song of the English”:--
“The wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar-- Down to the dark, the utter dark, where the blind white sea-snakes are. There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep, On the great grey level plains of ooze where the shell-burred cables creep.
Here in the womb of the world--here on the tie-ribs of earth, Words, and the words of men, flicker and flutter and beat-- Warning, sorrow and gain, salutation and mirth-- For a Power troubles the Still that has neither voice nor feet.”
Surely the imagination must be dead indeed that does not throb responsive to the thought of that latter-day workmanship of wire and rubber descending at the will of man into the vast void, and running its direct course over mountain ranges, across sudden abysses of lower depth, through the turbulence of up-bursting submarine torrents where long-pent-up rivers compel the superincumbent ocean to admit their saltless waters; until from continent to continent the connection is made, and man holds converse with man at his ease as though distance were not. Recent investigations go to prove that chief among the causes that make for destruction of those communicating cables are the upheavals of lost rivers. In spite of the protection that scientific invention has provided for the central core of conducting wire, these irresistible outbursts of undersea torrents rend and destroy it, causing endless labour of replacement by the never-resting cable-ships. But this is only one of the many deeply interesting features of oceanography, a science of comparatively recent growth, but full of gigantic possibilities for the future knowledge of this planet. The researches of the _Challenger_ expedition, embodied in fifty portly volumes, afford a vast mass of material for discussion, and yet it is evident that what they reveal is but the merest tentative dipping into the great mysterious land that lies hidden far below the level surface of the inscrutable sea.
That veteran man of science, Sir John Murray, has in a recent paper (_Royal Geographical Society’s Journal_, October 1899) published his presidential address to the geographical section of the British Association at Dover, and even to the ordinary non-scientific reader his wonderful _résumé_ of what has been done in the way of exploring the ocean’s depths must be as entrancing as a fairy tale. The mere mention of such a chasm as that existing in the South Pacific between the Kermadecs and the Friendly Islands, where a depth of 5155 fathoms, or 530 feet more than five geographical miles, has been found, strikes the lay mind with awe. Mount Everest, that stupendous Himalayan peak whose summit soars far above the utmost efforts of even the most devoted mountaineers, a virgin fastness mocking man’s soaring ambition, if sunk in the ocean at the spot just mentioned would disappear until its highest point was 2000 feet below the surface. Yet out of that abyss rises the volcanic mass of Sunday Island in the Kermadecs, whose crater is probably 2000 feet above the sea-level. But in no less than forty-three areas visited by the _Challenger_, depths of over 3000 fathoms have been found, and their total area is estimated at 7,152,000 square miles, or about 7 per cent. of the total water-surface of the globe. Within these deeps are found many lower deeps, strangely enough generally in comparatively close proximity to land, such as the Tuscarora Deep, near Japan, one in the Banda Sea, that is to say, in the heart of the East India Archipelago, &c. Down, down into these mysterious waters the ingenious sounding-machine runs, taking out its four miles and upwards of pianoforte wire until the sudden stoppage of the swift descent marks the dial on deck with the exact number of fathoms reached. And yet so vast is the ocean bed that none can say with any certainty that far greater depths may not yet be found than any that have hitherto been recorded, amazing as they are.
The character of the ocean floor at all these vast depths as revealed by the sounding-tube bringing specimens to the surface is identical--red clay--which strikes the fancy queerly as being according to most ancient legends the substance out of which our first ancestor was builded, and from whence he derived his name. Mingled with this primordial ooze is found the débris of once living forms, many of them of extinct species, or species at any rate that have never come under modern man’s observation except as fossils. The whole story, however, demands far more space than can here be allowed, but one more instance must be given of the wonders of the sea-bed in conclusion. Let a violent storm displace any considerable body of warm surface water, and lo! to take its place up rises an equal volume of cold under layers that have been resting far below the influence of the sun. Like a pestilential miasma these chill waves seize upon the myriads of the sea-folk and they die. The tale of death is incalculable, but one example is mentioned by Sir John Murray of a case of this kind off the eastern coast of North America in the spring of 1882, when a layer of dead fish and other marine animals six feet in thickness was believed to cover the ocean floor for many miles.
SHAKESPEARE AND THE SEA
Quite recently it was suggested by the writer of an article in the _Spectator_ that Shakespeare was now but little read,--that while his works were quoted from as much as ever, the quotations were obtained at second hand, and that it would be hard to find to-day any reader who had waded through all that wonderful collection of plays and poems. This is surely not a carefully made statement. If there were any amount of truth in it, we might well regard such a state of things as only one degree less deplorable than that people should have ceased to read the Bible. For next to the Bible there can be no such collection of writings available wherein may be found food for every mind. Even the sailor, critical as he always is of allusions to the technicalities of his calling that appear in literature, is arrested by the truth of Shakespeare’s references to the sea and seafaring, while he cannot but wonder at their copiousness in the work of a thorough landsman. Of course, in this respect it is necessary to remember that Elizabethan England spoke a language which was far more frequently studded with sea-terms than that which we speak ashore to-day. With all our vast commerce and our utter dependence upon the sea for our very life; its romance, its expressions take little hold of the immense majority of the people. Therein we differ widely from Americans. In every walk of life, from Maine to Mexico, from Philadelphia to San Francisco, the American people salt their speech with terms borrowed from the sailor, as they do also with other terms used by Shakespeare, and often considered by Shakespeare’s countrymen of the present day, quite wrongly, to be slang.
In what is perhaps the most splendidly picturesque effort of Shakespeare’s genius, “The Tempest,” he hurls us at the outset into the hurly-burly of a storm at sea with all the terror-striking details attendant upon the embaying of a ship in such weather. She is a passenger ship, too, and the passengers behave as landsmen might be expected to do in such a situation. The Master (not Captain be it noted, for there are no Captains in the merchant-service) calls the boatswain. Here arises a difficulty for a modern sailor. Where was the mate? We cannot say that the office was not known, although Shakespeare nowhere alludes to such an officer; but this much is certain, that for one person who would understand who was meant by the mate ten would appreciate the mention of the boatswain’s name, and that alone would justify its use in poetry. In this short colloquy between the Master and boatswain we have the very spirit of sea service. An immediate reply to the Master’s hail, and an inquiry in a phrase now only used by the vulgar, bring the assurance “Good”; but it is at once followed by “Speak to the mariners, fall to’t yarely, or we run ourselves aground; bestir, bestir.” Having given his orders the Master goes--he has other matters to attend to--and the boatswain heartens up his crew in true nautical fashion, his language being almost identical with that used to-day. His “aside” is true sailor,--“Blow till thou burst thy wind, if [we have] room enough.” This essentially nautical feeling, that given a good ship and plenty of sea-room there is nothing to fear, is alluded to again and again in Shakespeare. He has the very spirit of it. Then come the meddlesome passengers, hampering the hard-pressed officer with their questioning and advice!--until, exasperated beyond courtesy, he bursts out: “You mar our labour. Keep your cabins. You do assist the storm.” Bidden to remember whom he has on board, he gives them more of his mind, winding up by again addressing his crew with “cheerly good hearts,” and as a parting shot to his hinderers, “Out of our way, I say.”
But the weather grows worse; they must needs strike the topmast and heave-to under the main-course (mainsail), a manœuvre which, usual enough with Elizabethan ships, would never be attempted now. Under the same circumstances the lower main-topsail would be used, the mainsail having been furled long before because of its unwieldy size. Still the passengers annoy, now with abuse, which is answered by an appeal to their reason and an invitation to them to take hold and work. For the need presses. She is on a lee shore, and in spite of the fury of the gale sail must be made. “Set her two courses [mainsail and foresail], off to sea again, lay her off.” And now the sailors despair and speak of prayer, their cries met scornfully by the valiant boatswain with “What, must our mouths be cold?” Then follows that wonderful sea-picture beginning Scene 2, which remains unapproachable for vigour and truth. A little further on comes the old sea-superstition of the rats quitting a foredoomed ship, and in Ariel’s report a spirited account of what must have been suggested to Shakespeare by stories of the appearance of “corposants” or St. Elmo’s fire, usually accompanying a storm of this kind. And in answer to Prospero’s question, “Who was so firm?” &c., Ariel bears incidental tribute to the mariners,--“All, but mariners, plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel,” those same mariners who are afterwards found, their vessel safely anchored, asleep under hatches, their dangerous toil at an end.
In the “Twelfth Night” there are many salt-water allusions no less happy, beginning with the bright picture of Antonio presented by the Captain (of a war-ship?) breasting the sea upon a floating mast. Again in Act I., Scene 6, Viola answers Malvolio’s uncalled-for rudeness, “Will you hoist sail, sir?” with the ready idiom, “No, good _swabber_, I am to hull [to heave-to] here a little longer.” In Act V., Scene 1, the Duke speaks of Antonio as Captain of a “bawbling vessel--for shallow draught, and bulk, unprizable”; in modern terms, a small privateer that played such havoc with the enemy’s fleet that “very envy and the tongue of loss cried fame and honour on him.” Surely Shakespeare must have had Drake in his mind when he wrote this.
Who does not remember Shylock’s contemptuous summing-up of Antonio’s means and their probable loss?--“Ships are but boards, sailors but men, there be land rats and water rats, water thieves and land thieves--I mean, pirates; and then there is the peril of waters, winds, and rocks” (Act I., Scene 3). In this same play, too, we have those terrible quicksands, the Goodwins, sketched for us in half-a-dozen lines: “Where the carcases of many a tall ship lie buried” (Act III., Scene 1); and in the last scene of the last act Antonio says his “ships are safely come to _road_,” an expression briny as the sea itself.
In the “Comedy of Errors,” Act I., Scene 1, we have a phrase that should have been coined by an ancient Greek sailor-poet: “The always-wind-obeying deep”; and a little lower down the page a touch of sea-lore that would of itself suffice to stamp the writer as a man of intimate knowledge of nautical ways: “A small spare mast, such as seafaring men provide for storms.” Who told Shakespeare of the custom of sailors to carry spare spars for jury-masts?
In “Macbeth,” the first witch sings of the winds and the compass card, and promises that her enemy’s husband shall suffer all the torments of the tempest-tossed sailor without actual shipwreck. She also shows a pilot’s thumb “wrack’d, as homeward he did come.” Who in these days of universal reading needs reminding of the allusion to the ship-boy’s sleep in Act III., Scene 1, of “Henry IV.,” a contrast of the most powerful and convincing kind, powerful alike in its poetry and its truth to the facts of Nature? Especially noticeable is the line where Shakespeare speaks of the spindrift: “And in the visitation of the winds who take the ruffian billows by the top, curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them with deaf’ning clamours in the slippery clouds.”
“King Henry VI.,” Act V., Scene 1, has this line full of knowledge of sea usage: “Than bear so low a sail, to strike to thee.” Here is a plain allusion to the ancient custom whereby all ships of any other nation, as well as all merchant ships, were compelled to lower their sails in courtesy to British ships of war. The picture given in “Richard III.,” Act I., Scene 4, of the sea-bed does not call for so much wonder, for the condition of that secret place of the sea must have had peculiar fascination for such a mind as Shakespeare’s. Set in those few lines he has given us a vision of the deeps of the sea that is final.
A wonderful passage is to be found in “Cymbeline,” Act III., Scene 1, that seems to have been strangely neglected, where the Queen tells Cymbeline to remember--
“The natural bravery of your isle; which stands As Neptune’s park, ribbed and palèd in With rocks unscaleable and roaring waters; With sands that will not bear your enemies’ boats, But suck them up to the top-mast.”
And again, in the same scene, Cloten speaks of the Romans finding us in our “salt-water girdle.”
But no play of Shakespeare’s, except “The Tempest,” smacks so smartly of the brine as “Pericles,” the story of that much enduring Prince of Tyre whose nautical mishaps are made to have such a miraculously happy ending. In Act II., Scene 1, enter Pericles, wet, invoking Heaven that the sea having manifested its sovereignty over man, may grant him one last boon,--a peaceful death. To him appear three fishermen characteristically engaged in handling their nets, bullying one another, and discussing the latest wreck. And here we get a bit of sea-lore that all sailors deeply appreciate. “_3rd Fish._ Nay, master, said not I as much, when I saw the porpus how he bounced and tumbled? they say, they are half fish, half flesh; a plague on them! they ne’er come but I look to be wash’d.” Few indeed are the sailors even in these steamship days who have not heard that the excited leaping of porpoises presages a storm. The whole scene well deserves quotation, especially the true description of the whale (rorqual) “driving the poor fry before him and at last devours them all at a mouthful.” Space presses, however, and it will be much better for those interested to read for themselves. Act III., Scene 1, brings before us a companion picture to that in the opening of “The Tempest,” perhaps even more vivid; where the terrible travail of the elements is agonisingly contrasted with the birth-wail of an infant, and the passing of the hapless Princess. Beautiful indeed is the rough but honest heartening offered by the labouring sailors, broken off by the sea-command to--
“_1st Sailor._ Slack the bolins there; thou wilt not, wilt thou? Blow and split thyself.
_2nd Sailor._ But sea-room, an’ the brine and cloudy billow kiss the moon, I care not.”