James Runciman

“ JANUARY IN THE NORTH SEA!
A bitter morning, with light, powdery snow spotting here and there a livid background; grey seas travelling fast, and a looming snow-cloud gradually drooping down. The gulls are mad with hunger, and a cloud of them skirl harshly over the taffrail of a stout smack that forges fast through the bleak sea. The smack is coated with ice from the mast-head to the water's edge; there is not much of a sea, but when a wave does throw a jet of water over the craft it freezes like magic, and adds yet another layer to a heap which is making the deck resemble a miniature glacier. ”

“ The hamper of ropes that clung round the mainmast seemed to gibber like a man in fever as the gale threaded the mazes; the hollow down-draught from the foresail cried in boding tones; it seemed like some malignant elf calling "Woe to you! Woe for ever! Darkness is coming, and I and Death await you with cold arms." Every timber complained with whining iteration, and the boom of the full, falling seas tolled as a bell tolls that beats out the last minutes of a mortal's life. The Cockney poet sings—
"A cheer for the hard, glad weather,
The quiver and beat of the sea!" ”

“ No. A shudder of the torn nerves told the young man what it was. He slid desperately over and made his clutch; the great backwash seemed as though it would tear his arm out of the socket, but he hung on, and presently a lucky lift enabled him to haul Larmor on board! All this passed in a few lying instants, but centuries—- aeons—could not count its length in the anguish-stricken human soul.
I once knew a sailor who was washed through a port in a Biscay gale; the return sea flung him on board again. ”

“ Nay, the Seadog of Cowes is no man to be the prey of womanish tremors; he goes gaily like a true Mariner to confront the elements. The boat is ready, and four gallant salts are resting on their oars; the Seadog steps recklessly on board and looks at the weather. Ha! there is a sea of at least two inches high running, and that frail boat must traverse that wild space. No matter! The man who would blench at even two hundred yards of water, with waves even three inches high is totally, unworthy of the name of a British Seadog! ”

“ I am as grateful as our brave souls on the sea for all that has been done, but I incontinently ask for more, and I entreat those to whom money is as nothing to give the Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen its hospital ship, for every fleet that scours the trawling grounds, but especially a fast or steam cruiser—a Robert Cassall—so that the wounded fisherman, in the hour of his need and his utter helplessness, may be as sure of relief as are the Wapping labourer or the Mortlake bargeman. ”

“ Lewis was struck by the men's extraordinary isolation of mind; you may not understand his thought now, but, when you visit the North Sea, the meaning will flash on you. Isolation—that is the word; the men know little of the world; they are infantine without being petty; they have no curiosity about the passage of events on shore, and their solid world is represented by an area of 70 feet by 18. They are always amusing, always suggestive, and always superhumanly ignorant of the commonest concerns that affect the lives of ordinary men. ”

“ She's splendid before wind and sea, and I can save her that way; if we stop as we are, I fear we drown. I've seen so many years of it that I don't so much mind, but having you is a terrible thing. Hishht, a sea's coming!—I can tell by the lull."
Then the two landsmen cowered involuntarily, and looked in each other's eyes with a wild surmise, for a shock came which made the vessel quiver like a tuning-fork in every fibre; the very pannikins on the cabin floor rattled, and all the things in the pantry went like rapidly chattering teeth. ”

“ On the deck of the smack that has the flag a powerful young man is standing, and by his side—by all that is astounding—is an enormous man with an enormous beard and a voice that booms through the Arctic stillness. That is our new scene.
I am not going to play at mystery, for you know as well as I do that the young man named in that gloomy overture was Lewis Ferrier, and that his companion was good Tom Lennard;—though what brought the giant out into the frozen desolation I shall not say just yet. ”

“ The gentlemen who vary my slumbers by howling "The Rollicking Rams" in eight different keys at four in the morning would call the ship's company of that schooner soft. There are opinions and opinions. At any rate the hours passed softly away until the yacht ran clean into the thick of the fleet, and the merry, eldritch exchange of salutes began.
The second breeze had been worse than the first, and many men had gone; but the smacksmen, by a special mercy, have no time for morbid brooding. They will risk their lives with the most incredible dauntlessness to save a comrade. ”

“ The skipper silently dashed aft, flung his arms round Tom Lennard, and pinned him to the mast; Mr. Blair hung on, though he was drifted aft with his feet off the deck until he hung like a totally new description of flying signal; the ladies were drenched by the deluge which rushed down below, and the steward, when he saw the water swashing about over his cabin floor, exclaimed with discreet bitterness on the folly of inviting ladies to witness such a spectacle as a North Sea gale.
Tom observed: "The grandeur is—ah! fahscinating, but it's rather damp grandeur. It's only grandeur fit for heroes. ”

“ A very drastic branch of Lewis Ferrier's education was about to begin.
Dear ladies! Kindly men! You know what the softly-lit, luxurious sick-room is like. The couch is delicious for languorous limbs, the temperature is daintily adjusted, the nurse is deft and silent, and there is no sound to jar on weak nerves. But try to imagine the state of things in the sick-room where Ferrier watched when the second gale came away. The smack had no mainsail to steady her, but the best was done by heaving her to under foresail and mizen. She pitched cruelly and rolled until she must have shown her keel. ”

“ Scarcely one of the North Sea converts has turned out badly, for they usually have the stern stuff of good men in them; they have that manly and passionate gratitude which only the true and honest professor, free from taint of humbug or hypocrisy, can maintain, and I say deliberately that every man of them who is brought to lead a pure, sober, religious life, represents a distinct gain to our best national wealth—a wealth that is far above money.
I know that my dream may be translated into fact, for have we not the early success of the superb hospital smack to reassure us? ”

“ Would any one imagine that a half-inch rope could be made the centre of a column of ice three inches in diameter? Would any one imagine that a small block could be the nucleus of a lump as large as a pumpkin? From stem to stern the vessel was caked in glossy ice, and from her gaffs and booms hung huge icicles like the stalagmites of the Dropping Cave. All the other smacks were in the same plight, and it was quite clear that no fishing could be done for awhile, because every set of trawl-gear was banked in by a slippery, heavy rock. ”

“ Everything to be seen on sea or sky promised a wild night, and the powerful schooner yacht which was charging along over the running seas was already reefed down closely. Light bursts of spray came aboard aft like flying whip-lashes, and the man at the wheel stolidly shook his head as the jets cut him. Right forward a slight sea sometimes came over with a crash, but the vessel was in no trouble, and she looked as if she could hold her own in a much worse breeze. I believe that only poets and landsmen are fond of bad weather ”

“ I needn't tell you that I've made up my mind to assault that pain and squalor and unhappiness, and try to drive them out of the field; I needn't tell you, because the newspapers have done that for me. They always know my business as well as I know it myself. Now it struck me that many men are as ignorant as I was. I know that some people continually go about imagining evil; but there are others who are constantly seeking for chances of doing good, and they jump at their chance the moment they clap eye on it. ”

“ Could it be possible that, in wealthy, Christian England there ever was a time when no man knew or cared about this saddening condition of affairs? The light failed soon, and the boats durst not hang about after the fleet began to sail; but, until the last minute, one long, slow, drizzle of misery seemed to fall like a dreary litany on the surgeon's nerves. The smashed fingers alone were painful to see, but there were other accidents much worse. Every man in the fleet had been compelled to fight desperately for life, and you cannot go through such a battle without risks. ”

“ The Robert Cassall picked up the fleet just when the boarding was at its height, and her arrival caused a wild scene. Work and discipline were forgotten for a while: men set off flares which were absurdly ineffective in daylight; they jumped on the thofts of boats, ran up the rigging, and performed all sorts of clumsy antics out of sheer goodwill, as the beautiful steamer worked slowly along, piling up a soft, snowy scuffle of foam at her forefoot. ”

“ I repeat that the Mission is indirectly effecting a national insurance; the men think of England, and of the marvellous army of good English folk who care for them, and they are so much the better citizens. We hear a dolorous howl in Parliament and elsewhere about the dearth of seamen; experts inform us that we could not send out much more than half our fleet if a pinch came, because we have not enough real sailors. Is it not well for us, as Britons, to care as much as we can for our own hardy flesh and blood—the finest pilots, the cleverest seamen, the bravest men in the world? ”

“ Let us go a little farther and complete the work; let us make sure that no poor, maimed seaman shall be without a chance of speedy relief when his hard fate overtakes him on that savage North Sea. The fishers are the forlorn hope in the great Army of Labour; they risk life and limb every day—every moment—in our behoof; surely the luckier children of civilization may remember their hardly entreated brethren? No sentiment is needed in the business, and gush of any sort is altogether hateful. ”

“ Sir James was an apple-faced old gentleman, who had been a miser over his stock of health and strength. He was consequently ruddy, buoyant, strong, and his good spirits were infectious. He delighted in the good things of the world; no one could order a dinner better; no one could better judge a picture; no one had a more pure and hearty liking for pretty faces;—and it must be added, that few men had more worldly wisdom of the kind needed for everyday use. He could fool a humbug to the top of his bent, and he would make use of humbugs, or any other people, to serve his own ends ”

“ And oh! uncle, fancy going out to sea in your own monument, and watching your own wealth working blessedness before your eyes. Why, you will actually have all the pleasures of immortality before you have lost the power of seeing or knowing anything. Oh, uncle dear, think if you can only see one sailor's limbs saved by means of your money! Think of having a hundred living monuments of your goodness walking about in the beautiful world—saved and made whole by you! ”

“ Here and there, far up on the rushing sides of the foaming mountains, stray smacks hung like specks; the schooner shipped very little water now, and Ferrier kept the deck with some difficulty. Events succeeded each other with the terrifying suddenness of shocking dreams, and when the skipper said, "Thank God for a good vessel under us, sir; many a good man has gone to meet his Maker this night," Ferrier had quite a new sensation, which I might almost say approached terror, were I not writing about an absolutely courageous fellow. ”

“ It was very pleasant on the third day that followed the gale; the sky once more took its steel-grey shade, the sharp breezes stole over gentle rollers and covered each sad-coloured bulge with fleeting ripples. That blessed breeze, so pure, so crisp, so potently shot through with magic savours of iodine and ozone, exhilarates the spirits until the most staid of men break at times into schoolboy fun. Do you imagine that religious people are dull, or dowie, as the Scotch say? ”

“ How the North Sea men would envy them and their dower of dauntlessness! The Seadog takes his frugal lunch at the club; he begins with a sole, and no doubt he casts a patronizing thought towards the other Seadogs who trawled for the delicate fish. They are not so like seamen in appearance as is the Cowes Seadog; they do not wear shiny buttons; the polish on their boots is scarcely brilliant; they wear unclean jumpers, and flannel trousers fit to make an aesthetic Seadog faint with emotion of various sorts. ”

“ There is not a gust of this wind that does not move truly according to eternal law; there can be no injustice, for no one can judge the Judge. If I suffer the petty pang of Death while a great purpose is being wrought out, I have no more reason to complain than if I were a child sharply pushed out of the way to let a fireengine pass. The great Purpose is everything, and I am but an instrument—just as this hurricane is an instrument. ”

“ But why should I talk of misery? The word implies a complaint. A hundred smacksmen die to-night. Pitiful! But if this hurricane and all the lesser breezes did not blow, then millions would die who live now in healthy air. If the sea were not lashed up and oxygenated, we should have a stagnant pest-hole like an old rotten fishpond all round the world. England would be like Sierra Leone, and there would soon be no human race. Who talks of kindness and goodness in face of a scene like this? We know nothing. The hundred fishermen die, and the unpoisoned millions live. We are shadows ”