A Poor Man's House Part 13

Going on, I walked for some distance beneath a semi-arch of the wind-bowed lichenous thorns that grow upon the cliff-edge.

Without any warning--maybe there was a little hum in the air--a leafless bough, like a withered arm with its sinews ragged out, bent over across my path. The sea gulls screamed and screeched; they flocked out from the cliff-ledges, and with still wings they towered up into the sky. Every twig and leaf began to play a diabolic symphony. Where the hedge ended I was blown back upon my heels.--It was more than half a gale of wind from the south-east.

The horizon was become clear; jagged like a saw. Divergent strings, marvellously interlaced on the water, streamed in with the wind, broadened into ribands fluttering over green-grey patches. The whole sea trembled, as if life were being breathed into it. White spots, curling wavelets, dotted it; then broke abroad as white-horses in full mad landward career. The whistle in the gra.s.s rose louder and shriller; the boughs bent further and let fly their autumn foliage horizontally into the wind; the gulls screeched wildly and more wildly; the chafing of the surf below took possession of the air....

[Sidenote: _UNCLE JAKE ON FOOLS_]

I saw the dinghy put about and run for sh.o.r.e.

When I got back, Uncle Jake was still watching.

"Ah!" he said. "Ah! Ah! I don't like they centre-keel boats wi' b.u.mes [booms]. They'm all right for fine weather, but.... Ah! They'm goin' to gybe if they ain't careful. There! Did 'ee see? Why don't they ease their sheet off more? If the wind catches thic sail the wrong side....

Did 'ee see that? Thic b.u.me was all but coming over. Gybe, gybe, yu fules! Yu'm capsized if yu du, wi' thic heavy b.u.me. Look'se! Have 'em got their drop-keel up, I wonder? Not they! They thinks that's the same as extra ballast. 'Twon't make no difference if a sea takes charge of 'em. Ah! did 'ee see the leach o' the sail flutter? Nearly over! Let 'em gybe, if they'm set on it. 'Twill upset they.--O-ho! They'm goin'

to haul down an' row for it. Best thing the likes o' they can du. They calls me an ol' fule for joggin' along in my ol' craft while they has drop-keels and b.u.mes, all the latest. I've a-know'd thees yer sea for fifty year an' more, an' I say, I tell thee, that two oars be better than two reefs any day. Le'but the seas take charge o' one o' they boats running afore the wind.... All up! They spins like a top, an'

gybes.... 'Tis all up! Howsbe-ever, they'm saafe now, if they don't sheer broadside coming ash.o.r.e. But _they_ won't learn their lesson; not they. They maakes fun o' us as knows.

"There! the wind be softening now. I've a-know'd they thunder-puffs come down on 'ee like a hurricane. If they lasted long.... 'Tis blowin'

out in the Channel still. The horizon's black--see? 'Twill back, an'

blow from the nor'east to-night, in here, but 'twill be east to south-east in the Channel, an' wi' thees flood tide runnin' up against it, yu'll see the say make!"

23

It did blow during the night; it must have been rough out in the Channel; then the wind dropped to a light breeze. But before ever Tony and myself were out of doors we heard the heave and thump of the long easterly swell.

We hauled the _c.o.c.k Robin_ down to the water's edge, put in five bags of ballast ("Doesn't look 's if it's blow'd itself out," said Tony) and a spare oar--and stood and looked.

"Be it wuth it?" he questioned.

"Not much wind now, is there?"

"Can the two o'us shove off in thees yer swell? Can ee see any o' the other boats shoving down?"

"No...."

"There won't be much frighting to-day, for sure. Must make the day gude if us can. Yer's a calm. Jump in quick. Shove! Shove, casn'! Row. Lemme take an oar. Keep her head on. _Pull_--thic west'ard oar!"

[Sidenote: _PLUCK--_]

We were fairly afloat outside the surf-line, both of us very red in the face. We upsailed--and away. After a few minutes' worry, deciding whether the mainsail and mizzen without the foresail would be enough, on a sea so much bigger than the wind, and looking for the _c.o.c.k Robin's_ chronic leak, the bouncing, tumbling and splas.h.i.+ng, the heave up and the mighty rushes down, put us both in high spirits. We decided to hoist the foresail after all. "Let her bury her head if her wants to!"

Accordingly, I went for'ard to hook the foresail's tack to the b.u.mkin [short iron bowsprit]. The thimble was too small. As I sat on the bow and leaned out over, my hand all but dipped into the waves. A stream of water did once run up my sleeve. Looking round and seeing Tony smile, I yelled back aft: "What be smiling 'bout, Tony?" He replied: "I was a-gloryin' in yer pluck."

Which was very pleasant to hear--for a moment.

My position on the bow of the boat was absolutely safe, and I knew it.

There was no risk at all, except of a bruise or a wetting. My toe was firmly hooked under the for'ard thwart, and short of my leg breaking, I could not have lost my hold. Besides, even had I fallen overboard, I could easily have swum round while Tony 'bouted the boat. Tony was deceived. There was no pluck.

His words set me thinking, and I had to recognise, rather bitterly, that what I call pluck did not form a great part of my birthright. I find myself too apprehensive by nature; imagine horrid possibilities too keenly; and indeed would far rather hurt myself than think about doing so. I suppose I have a certain amount of courage, for I am usually successful in making myself do what I funk; but I like doing it none the better for that. And up to the present, I have not failed badly in tight corners. On the contrary, I find (like most nervy people) that actual danger, once arrived, is curiously exhilarating; that it makes one cooler and sharper, even happy. One has faced the worst in imagination, and the reality is play beside it.

[Sidenote: _AND COURAGE_]

In the dictionary, _courage_ is defined as 'The quality which enables men to meet danger without fear.' _Pluck_ is merely defined as courage.

There is, or ought to be, an essential difference between the meaning of the two words. Courage is a premeditated matter, into which the will enters, whilst pluck is an unpremeditated expression of the personality, an innate quality which, so to speak, does not need to be set in operation by the will. Courage rises to the occasion; pluck is found ready for it. Would it not, therefore, be more correct to say that _pluck_ is the quality which enables men to meet danger without fear: and that _courage_ is the quality which enables men to meet danger with fear overcome? The greatest courage might go farther than the greatest pluck, but for occasions on which either can be used, pluck, the more spontaneous, is also the superior. Most of us are irregularly, erratically plucky; one man with horses, who funks the sea; another man at sea who is afraid of horses. One man who fears live fists may think nothing of watching by the dead. Another who stands up pluckily in a fight, refuses to go near a corpse. One of the pluckiest men I know 'don't like dogs.' Pluck runs in streaks, but courage, to whatever degree a man possesses it, runs through him from top to bottom.

All the churches in the world may talk about sin and virtue, and make most admirable and subtle distinctions. We know very well in our hearts that pluck and courage are the great twin virtues, and that cowardice is the fundamental sin. The perfectly plucky and courageous man would never sin meanly; he would have no need to do so. He, and not the beefy brute or the intellectual paragon, would be Superman. The Christ, it often seems to me, keeps his hold on the world, and will keep it, not because he was G.o.d-man or man-G.o.d, not because he was born normally or abnormally, not because he redeemed mankind or didn't, not because he provided a refuge for souls on their beam-ends, but because, of all the great historic and legendary figures, he is the one who convinces us that he was never afraid. In him, as we picture him, courage and pluck were the same thing, and perfect.

But the present point is, or points are: How many men whose pluck and courage I have admired so much, have deceived me as I deceived Tony?

And what combination of pluck and courage is it which enables these fishermen to follow their constantly dangerous occupation with equable mind; which, indeed, enables so many working men to follow their dangerous trades? For it is one thing to approach danger by way of sport, and another to work for a livelihood _in_ danger.

One's a.n.a.lytics fail. It is, however, stupid merely to say, "Ah, they are inured to it. Familiarity has bred contempt." Seafaring men realise the dangers of the sea a good deal better than anyone else. Familiarity with the sea does not breed contempt; the older the seaman the more careful he is. I have met old seamen, heroes in their day, whom one would almost call nervous on the water. And in any case, what a state of mind it is--to be _inured_ to danger! to be on familiar terms with the possibility of death! to be able to flout, to play with, to live on, that which all men fear!

24

[Sidenote: _LUs...o...b.._]

I have been up the coast to have dinner and a chat with my old coastguard friend, Ned Lus...o...b.., the man who taught me knots and splices during the night watches when I was a visitor here years ago.

To go to his house now is very pleasant. For a long time after their first baby died on the day they entered a new house, before even the beds were up, it seemed as if Mrs Lus...o...b.., a gentle, delicate woman, 'with the deuce of a will of her own,' Lus...o...b.. says, was going to decline and die too. The new baby, which was to have killed her, has put new life into her instead. They are touchingly proud of it, and very happy altogether. I do like to see married couples happy.

Lus...o...b.. himself is rather an extraordinary man; short, vivacious and solid; full of generous impulses, yet very well able to look after his own interests. It was he who dared the neighbourhood, and caused his wife to invite often to their house a crippled girl that had been raped by a scoundrel and then given the cold-shoulder by everyone else.

Something of a sea-lawyer, he is one of the sharpest-brained--I don't say deepest-thinking--men I have ever come across. Hardly educated at all as a boy, he races through books (he read my Cary's _Dante_ in a week), extracts the main gist of them, and is always learning some new thing, from shorthand to cooking, though he has no need to do much but behave himself for a pension. Almost harshly honest, he yet brings out with pride a large edition of Pope that he 'nicked' from the second-hand bookstall of a heathen Chinee at Singapore. That little episode will not make a very big blot, I imagine, on the Book of Judgment. If I remember aright, the British Navy was then occupied in protecting land or concessions that the nation itself had 'nicked' from the heathen.

Lus...o...b..'s opinion on books, men and things, unless it has been borrowed from a newspaper, is always well worth hearing. His light of nature, by which he judges, is exceptionally powerful.

While we were smoking in his front room--furnished with a curious mixture of cheap English things and beautiful Eastern curios--a steward from one of the great liners came in. He began talking about the behaviour in a gale of a rich sn.o.bbish Jew and the behaviour of Jews generally on s.h.i.+pboard, and was inclined to take up the high, superior, patriotic att.i.tude that Jews, not being Englishmen, were necessarily a nuisance in a storm. "Well," said Lus...o...b.., "all I know is, when a man tells me he's never been afraid of anything anywhere, I tells him to his face, 'You'm a d.a.m.n'd liar!' One day, in a pub at Plymouth, there was a man--a bluejacket too--boasting he'd never known what fear was, and I up and asked him, 'Eh, chum? Did you say _Never_?'

"'Never!' he says. 'Never in me life!'

"'You'm a liar then,' says I.

"'We'll see,' says he--goodish-sized chap.

"'You'm a b.l.o.o.d.y liar,' says I, 'and what's more, you ain't truthful.'

"So we squared up there and then, and the bung and his men hyked us out into the street and we was having our sc.r.a.p out when the police came up. He ran! 'Eh, Mr Liar!' I yelled after him. 'Did you say you was never afraid?'

"If I hadn't wasted time doing that, I shouldn't have got caught either. Very nearly landed me in chokey, that did. We was s.h.i.+pmates afterwards, me and that man, and very good friends. He's a warrant officer now."

[Sidenote: _LOWER DECK TO QUARTER-DECK_]

Thence the conversation pa.s.sed naturally to promotion from the ranks.

"I don't believe in it, not as a general rule," said Lus...o...b...

"Officers ought to be officers, and men ought to be men, and a s.h.i.+p's always more comfortable when both keep their places. Rankers as officers are apt to be bullies: that we all know jolly well. And besides that, the likes of us can't keep our kecker up the same as gen'lemen, and therefore I says we ain't fit for the quarter-deck, not yet awhile. Tisn't that the lower deck ain't so brave as the quarter-deck, because it is; only it can't keep it up so long; it gets discouraged like, when 'tis a long job, specially when 'tis one of those waiting-an-doing-nothing jobs. We ain't bred up to it, and our fathers wasn't, and there's no good to be got out of trying to pretend 'tisn't so."

We argued on. Lus...o...b.. would not yield an inch of his position. I can't say offhand how far history bears him out, but I fancy that he is right to this extent: the lower deck has less flexibility of mind. It cannot view a depressing situation from so many sides at once. It is not, for instance, so quick to see the underlying humour of an emergency; not so ready to appreciate the so-called irony of fate. It cannot so easily turn round and laugh at itself and its predicament. So, though the lower deck's courage may be fully as great as, or greater than, that of the upper deck, it is applied more constantly, with less mental diversion, and therefore it tires sooner. Hence, it _may_ not be so effective.

The argument undoubtedly has a true bearing on that sort of promotion which, in the prevailing educational cant, is called giving every poor boy (by free education, scholars.h.i.+ps and other lures) his chance of climbing to the top of the ladder--as if success in life were one great tall ladder instead of many ladders of varying builds and heights. In attempting to justify modern educational policy, its victims are egged on too fast into a field of commercial, intellectual, or emotional stress for which they lack the fundamental grit, or rather for which the fundamental grit they do possess is not adapted, nor can be adapted in a generation. Their spirit, fine and valuable for the old purpose perhaps, is not suited to the new. Therefore, of good workmen _in posse_ we make bad clerks and shopmen _in esse_; of good clerks detestable little bureaucrats or mean-minded commercial men, and so on.