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 would
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 wherein 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 moustache, 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 lightheaded 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 door-keeper 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 would not mind really

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 Giuliano (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
certain conditions of weather, season, locality, &c. &c.--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. Directly I had grappled with the