that handful of "characters" from various ships to prove that all
these years have not been altogether a dream. There they are,

brief, and monotonous in tone, but as suggestive bits of writing
to me as any inspired page to be found in literature. But then,

you see, I have been called romantic. Well, that can't be
helped. But stay. I seem to remember that I have been called a

realist, also. And as that charge, too, can be made out, let us
try to live up to it, at whatever cost, for a change. With this

end in view, I will confide to you coyly, and only because there
is no one about to see my blushes by the light of the midnight

lamp, that these suggestive bits of quarter-deck appreciation,
one and all, contain the words "strictly sober."

Did I overhear a civil murmur, "That's very gratifying, to be
sure?" Well, yes, it is gratifying--thank you. It is at least

as gratifying to be certified sober as to be certified romantic,
though such certificates would not qualify one for the

secretaryship of a temperance association or for the post of
official troubadour to some lordly democratic institution such as

the London County Council, for instance. The above prosaic
reflection is put down here only in order to prove the general

sobriety of my judgment in mundane affairs. I make a point of it
because a couple of years ago, a certain short story of mine

being published in a French translation, a Parisian critic--I am
almost certain it was M. Gustave Kahn in the "Gil Blas"--giving

me a short notice, summed up his rapid impression of the writer's
quality in the words un puissant reveur. So be it! Who could

cavil at the words of a friendly reader? Yet perhaps not such an
unconditional dreamer as all that. I will make bold to say that

neither at sea nor ashore have I ever lost the sense of
responsibility. There is more than one sort of intoxication.

Even before the most seductive reveries I have remained mindful
of that sobriety of interior life, that asceticism of sentiment,

in which alone the naked form of truth, such as one conceives it,
such as one feels it, can be rendered without shame. It is but a

maudlin and indecent verity that comes out through the strength
of wine. I have tried to be a sober worker all my life--all my

two lives. I did so from taste, no doubt, having an instinctive
horror of losing my sense of full self-possession, but also from

artistic conviction. Yet there are so many pitfalls on each side
of the true path that, having gone some way, and feeling a little

battered and weary, as a middle-aged traveller will from the mere
daily difficulties of the march, I ask myself whether I have kept

always, always faithful to that sobriety where in there is power
and truth and peace.

As to my sea sobriety, that is quite properly certified under the
sign-manual of several trustworthy shipmasters of some standing

in their time. I seem to hear your polite murmur that "Surely
this might have been taken for granted." Well, no. It might not

have been. That August academical body, the Marine Department of
the Board of Trade, takes nothing for granted in the granting of

its learned degrees. By its regulations issued under the first
Merchant Shipping Act, the very word SOBER must be written, or a

whole sackful, a ton, a mountain of the most enthusiastic
appreciation will avail you nothing. The door of the examination

rooms shall remain closed to your tears and entreaties. The most
fanatical advocate of temperance could not be more pitilessly

fierce in his rectitude than the Marine Department of the Board
of Trade. As I have been face to face at various times with all

the examiners of the Port of London in my generation, there can
be no doubt as to the force and the continuity of my

abstemiousness. Three of them were examiners in seamanship, and
it was my fate to be delivered into the hands of each of them at

proper intervals of sea service. The first of all, tall, spare,
with a perfectly white head and mustache, a quiet, kindly manner,

and an air of benign intelligence, must, I am forced to conclude,
have been unfavourably impressed by something in my appearance.

His old, thin hands loosely clasped resting on his crossed legs,
he began by an elementary question, in a mild voice, and went on,

went on. . . . It lasted for hours, for hours. Had I been a
strange microbe with potentialities of deadlymischief to the

Merchant Service I could not have been submitted to a more
microscopic examination. Greatly reassured by his apparent

benevolence, I had been at first very alert in my answers. But
at length the feeling of my brain getting addled crept upon me.

And still the passionless process went on, with a sense of untold
ages having been spent already on mere preliminaries. Then I got

frightened. I was not frightened of being plucked; that
eventuality did not even present itself to my mind. It was

something much more serious and weird. "This ancient person," I
said to myself, terrified, "is so near his grave that he must

have lost all notion of time. He is considering this examination
in terms of eternity. It is all very well for him. His race is

run. But I may find myself coming out of this room into the
world of men a stranger, friendless, forgotten by my very

landlady, even were I able after this endless experience to
remember the way to my hired home." This statement is not so

much of a verbalexaggeration as may be supposed. Some very
queer thoughts passed through my head while I was considering my

answers; thoughts which had nothing to do with seamanship, nor
yet with anything reasonable known to this earth. I verily

believe that at times I was light-headed in a sort of languid
way. At last there fell a silence, and that, too, seemed to last

for ages, while, bending over his desk, the examiner wrote out my
pass-slip slowly with a noiseless pen. He extended the scrap of

paper to me without a word, inclined his white head gravely to my
parting bow. . . .

When I got out of the room I felt limply flat, like a squeezed
lemon, and the doorkeeper in his glass cage, where I stopped to

get my hat and tip him a shilling, said:
"Well! I thought you were never coming out."

"How long have I been in there?" I asked, faintly.
He pulled out his watch.

"He kept you, sir, just under three hours. I don't think this
ever happened with any of the gentlemen before."

It was only when I got out of the building that I began to walk
on air. And the human animal being averse from change and timid

before the unknown, I said to myself that I really would not mind
being examined by the same man on a future occasion. But when

the time of ordeal came round again the doorkeeper let me into
another room, with the now familiar paraphernalia of models of

ships and tackle, a board for signals on the wall, a big, long
table covered with official forms and having an unrigged mast

fixed to the edge. The solitarytenant was unknown to me by
sight, though not by reputation, which was simply execrable.

Short and sturdy, as far as I could judge, clad in an old brown
morning-suit, he sat leaning on his elbow, his hand shading his

eyes, and half averted from the chair I was to occupy on the
other side of the table. He was motionless, mysterious, remote,

enigmatical, with something mournful, too, in the pose, like that
statue of Giugliano (I think) de Medici shading his face on the

tomb by Michael Angelo, though, of course, he was far, far from
being beautiful. He began by trying to make me talk nonsense.

But I had been warned of that fiendish trait, and contradicted
him with great assurance. After a while he left off. So far

good. But his immobility, the thick elbow on the table, the
abrupt, unhappy voice, the shaded and averted face grew more and

more impressive. He kept inscrutably silent for a moment, and
then, placing me in a ship of a certain size, at sea, under

conditions of weather, season, locality, etc.--all very clear and
precise--ordered me to execute a certain manoeuvre. Before I was

half through with it he did some material damage to the ship.