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.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said Gissing. But the Captain had already departed with a clouded brow.
On the chart-room roof Gissing had discovered an alluring instrument, the exact use of which he did not know. It seemed to be some kind of steering control. The dial was lettered, from left to right, as follows HARD A PORT, PORT, STEADY, COURSE, STEADY, STARBD, HARD A STARBD. At present the handle stood upon the section marked COURSE. After a careful study of the whole seascape, it seemed to Gissing that off to the south the ocean looked more blue and more interesting. After some hesitation he moved the handle to the PORT mark, and waited to see what would happen. To his delight he saw the bow swing slowly round, and the Pomerania's gleaming wake spread behind her in a whitened curve. He descended to the bridge, a little nervous as to what Mr. Pointer might say, but he found the Mate gazing across the water with the same fierce and unwearying attention.
“I have changed the course,” he said.
Mr. Pointer saluted, but said nothing.
Having succeeded so far, Gissing ventured upon another innovation. He had been greatly tempted by the wheel, and envied the stolid quartermaster who was steering. So, assuming an air of calm certainty, he entered the wheelhouse.
“I'll take her for a while,” he said.
“Aye, aye, sir,” said the quartermaster, and surrendered the wheel to him.
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