’He heard me out with his head on one side,
and I had another glimpse through a rent in the mist
in which he moved and had his being. The dim
candle spluttered within the ball of glass, and that
was all I had to see him by; at his back was the dark
night with the clear stars, whose distant glitter
disposed in retreating planes lured the eye into the
depths of a greater darkness; and yet a mysterious
light seemed to show me his boyish head, as if in
that moment the youth within him had, for a moment,
glowed and expired. “You are an awful good
sort to listen like this,” he said. “It
does me good. You don’t know what it is
to me. You don’t” . . . words seemed
to fail him. It was a distinct glimpse. He
was a youngster of the sort you like to see about
you; of the sort you like to imagine yourself to have
been; of the sort whose appearance claims the fellowship
of these illusions you had thought gone out, extinct,
cold, and which, as if rekindled at the approach of
another flame, give a flutter deep, deep down somewhere,
give a flutter of light . . . of heat! .
. .
Yes; I had a glimpse of him then . . . and it was not
the last of that kind. . . . “You don’t
know what it is for a fellow in my position to be
believed—make a clean breast of it to an
elder man. It is so difficult—so awfully
unfair—so hard to understand.”
’The mists were closing again. I don’t
know how old I appeared to him—and how
much wise. Not half as old as I felt just then;
not half as uselessly wise as I knew myself to be.
Surely in no other craft as in that of the sea do
the hearts of those already launched to sink or swim
go out so much to the youth on the brink, looking with
shining eyes upon that glitter of the vast surface
which is only a reflection of his own glances full
of fire. There is such magnificent vagueness in
the expectations that had driven each of us to sea,
such a glorious indefiniteness, such a beautiful greed
of adventures that are their own and only reward.
What we get—well, we won’t talk of
that; but can one of us restrain a smile? In
no other kind of life is the illusion more wide of
reality—in no other is the beginning all
illusion—the disenchantment more swift—the
subjugation more complete. Hadn’t we all
commenced with the same desire, ended with the same
knowledge, carried the memory of the same cherished
glamour through the sordid days of imprecation?
What wonder that when some heavy prod gets home the
bond is found to be close; that besides the fellowship
of the craft there is felt the strength of a wider
feeling—the feeling that binds a man to
a child. He was there before me, believing that
age and wisdom can find a remedy against the pain
of truth, giving me a glimpse of himself as a young
fellow in a scrape that is the very devil of a scrape,
the sort of scrape greybeards wag at solemnly while
they hide a smile. And he had been deliberating
