Christopher Morley - Where the Blue Begins

“Yours?” said Gissing, looking at a group of three puppies with droll Scottish faces. “Aye,” said the Captain.

“I've three of my own,” said Gissing, with a private pang of homesickness. The skipper's cosy quarters were the most truly domestic he had seen since the evening he first fled from responsibility.

Captain Scottie was surprised. Certainly this eccentric stranger in the badly damaged wedding garments had not given the impression of a family head. Just then the steward entered with a decanter of Benedictine and small glasses.

“Brew days and bonny!” said the Captain, raising his crystal.

“Secure amidst perils!” replied Gissing courteously. It was the phrase engraved upon the ship's notepaper, on which he had been writing, and it had impressed itself on his mind.

“You said you had been a General Manager.”

Gissing told, with some vivacity, of his experiences in the world of trade. The Captain poured another small liqueur.

“They're fine halesome liquor,” he said.

“Sincerely yours,” said Gissing, nodding over the glass. He was beginning to feel quite at home in the navigating quarters of the ship, and hoped the potato-peeling might be postponed as long as possible.

“How far had you got in your essay?” asked the Captain.

“Not very far, I fear. I was beginning by laying down a few psychological fundamentals.”

“Excellent! Will you read it to me?”

Gissing went to get his manuscript, and read it aloud. The Captain listened attentively, puffing clouds of smoke.

“I am sorry this is such a short voyage,” he said when Gissing finished. “You have approached the matter from an entirely naif and instinctive standpoint, and it will take some time to show you your errors. Before I demolish your arguments I should like to turn them over in my mind. I will reduce my ideas to writing and then read them to you.”

“I should like nothing better,” said Gissing. “And I can think over the subject more carefully while I peel the potatoes.”

“Nonsense,” said the Captain. “I do not often get a chance to discuss theology. I will tell you my idea. You spoke of your experience as General Manager, when you had charge of a thousand employees. One of the things we need on this ship is a staff-captain, to take over the management of the personnel. That would permit me to concentrate entirely on navigation. In a vessel of this size it is wrong that the master should have to carry the entire responsibility.”

He rang for the steward.

“My compliments to Mr. Pointer, and tell him to come here.”

Mr. Pointer appeared shortly in oilskins, saluted, and gazed fixedly at his superior, with one foot raised upon the brass door-sill.

“Mr. Pointer,” said Captain Scottie, “I have appointed Captain Gissing staff-captain. Take orders from him as you would from me. He will have complete charge of the ship's discipline.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Mr. Pointer, stood a moment intently to see if there were further orders, saluted again, and withdrew.

“Now you had better turn in,” said the skipper. “Of course you must wear uniform. I'll send the tailor up to you at once. He can remodel one of my suits overnight. The trousers will have to be lengthened.”

On the chart-room sofa, Gissing dozed and waked and dozed again. On the bridge near by he heard the steady tread of feet, the mysterious words of the officer on watch passing the course to his relief. Bells rang with sharp double clang. Through the open port he could hear the alternate boom and hiss of the sea under the bows. With the stately lift and lean of the ship there mingled a faint driving vibration.

The first morning in any new environment is always the most exciting. Gissing was already awake, and watching the novel sight of a patch of sunshine sliding to and fro on the deck of the chart-room, when there was a gentle tap at the door. The Captain's steward entered, carrying a handsome uniform.

“Six bells, sir,” he said. “Your bath is laid on.”

Gissing was not very sure just what time it was, but the steward held out a dressing gown for him to slip on, so he took the hint, and followed him to the Captain's private bathroom where he plunged gaily into warm salt water. He was hardly dressed before breakfast was laid for him in the chart-room. It was a breakfast greatly to his liking — porridge, scrambled eggs, grilled kidneys and bacon, coffee, toast, and marmalade. Evidently the hardships of sea life had been greatly exaggerated by fiction writers.

He was a trifle bashful about appearing on the bridge in his blue and brass formality, and waited a while thinking Captain Scottie might come. But no one disturbed him, so by and bye he went out. It was a brisk morning with a fresh breeze and plenty of whitecaps. Dancing rainbows hovered about the bow when an occasional explosion of spray burst up into sunlight. Mr. Pointer was on the bridge, still gazing steadily into the distance. He saluted Gissing, but said nothing. The quartermaster at the wheel also saluted in silence. A seaman wiping down the paintwork on the deckhouse saluted. Gissing returned these gestures punctiliously, and began to pace the bridge from side to side. He soon grew accustomed to the varying slant of the deck, and felt that his footing showed a nautical assurance.

Now for the first time he enjoyed an untrammelled horizon on all sides. The sea, he observed, was not really blue — not at any rate the blue he had supposed. Where it seethed flatly along the hull, laced with swirls of milky foam, it was almost black. Farther away, it was green, or darkly violet. A ladder led to the top of the charthouse, and from this commanding height the whole body of the ship lay below him. How alive she seemed, how full of personality! The strong funnels, the tall masts that moved so delicately against the pale open sky, the distant stern that now dipped low in a comfortable hollow, and now soared and threshed onward with a swimming thrust, the whole vital organism spoke to the eye and the imagination. In the centre of this vast circle she moved, royal and serene. She was more beautiful than the element she rode on, for perhaps there was something meaningless in that pure vacant round of sea and sky. Once its immense azure was grasped and noted, it brought nothing to the mind. Reason was indignant to conceive it, sloping endlessly away.

The placid, beautifully planned routine of shipboard passed on its accustomed course, and he began to suspect that his staff-captaincy was a sinecure. Down below he could see the passengers briskly promenading, or drowsing under their rugs. On the hurricane deck, aft, a sailor was chalking a shuffleboard court. It occurred to him that all this might become monotonous unless he found some actual part in it. Just then Captain Scottie appeared on the bridge, took a quick look round, and joined him on top of the charthouse.

“Good morning!” he said. “You won't think me rude if you don't see much of me? Thinking about those ideas of yours, I have come upon some rather puzzling stuff. I must work the whole thing out more clearly. Your suggestion that Conscience points the way to an integration of personality into a higher type of divinity, seems to me off the track; but I haven't quite downed it yet. I'm going to shut myself up to-day and consider the matter. I leave you in charge.”

“I shall be perfectly happy,” said Gissing. “Please don't worry about me.”

“You suggest that all the conditions of life at sea, our mastery of the forces of Nature, and so on, seem to show that we have perfect freedom of will, and adapt everything to our desires. I believe just the contrary. The forces of Nature compel us to approach them in their own way, otherwise we are shipwrecked. It is in the conditions of Nature that this ship should reach port in eight days, otherwise we should get nowhere. We do it because it is our destiny.”