Chapter 3 - Page 2

winter off the Cape that year. The relieved helmsmen came
off flapping their arms, or ran stamping hard and blowing into swollen,
red fingers. The watch on deck dodged the sting of cold sprays or,
crouching in sheltered corners, watched dismally the high and merciless
seas boarding the ship time after time in unappeasable fury. Water
tumbled in cataracts over the forecastle doors. You had to dash through
a waterfall to get into your damp bed. The men turned in wet and turned
out stiff to face the redeeming and ruthless exactions of their glorious
and obscure fate. Far aft, and peering watchfully to windward, the
officers could be seen through the mist of squalls. They stood by the
weather-rail, holding on grimly, straight and glistening in their long
coats; and in the disordered plunges of the hard-driven ship, they
appeared high up, attentive, tossing violently above the grey line of a
clouded horizon in motionless attitudes.

They watched the weather and the ship as men on shore watch the
momentous chances of fortune. Captain Allistoun never left the deck,
as though he had been part of the ship's fittings. Now and then the
steward, shivering, but always in shirt sleeves, would struggle towards
him with some hot coffee, half of which the gale blew out of the cup
before it reached the master's lips. He drank what was left gravely in
one long gulp, while heavy sprays pattered loudly on his oilskin coat,
the seas swishing broke about his high boots; and he never took his eyes
off the ship. He kept his gaze riveted upon her as a loving man watches
the unselfish toil of a delicate woman upon the slender thread of whose
existence is hung the whole meaning and joy of the world. We all watched
her. She was beautiful and had a weakness. We loved her no less for
that. We admired her qualities aloud, we boasted of them to one another,
as though they had been our own, and the consciousness of her only fault
we kept buried in the silence of our profound affection. She was born
in the thundering peal of hammers beating upon iron, in black eddies of
smoke, under a grey sky, on the banks of the Clyde. The clamorous and
sombre stream gives birth to things of beauty that float away into the
sunshine of the world to be loved by men. The _Narcissus_ was one of
that perfect brood. Less perfect than many perhaps, but she was ours,
and, consequently, incomparable. We were proud of her. In Bombay,
ignorant landlubbers alluded to her as that "pretty grey ship." Pretty!
A scurvy meed of commendation! We knew she was the most magnificent
sea-boat ever launched. We tried to forget that, like many good
sea-boats, she was at times rather crank. She was exacting. She wanted
care in loading and handling, and no one knew exactly how