if assembled there for an exhibition, not of a great industry, but

of a great art. Their colours were gray, black, dark green, with a
narrow strip of yellow moulding defining their sheer, or with a row

of painted ports decking in warlikedecoration their robust flanks
of cargo-carriers that would know no triumph but of speed in

carrying a burden, no glory other than of a long service, no
victory but that of an endless, obscure contest with the sea. The

great empty hulls with swept holds, just out of dry-dock, with
their paint glistening freshly, sat high-sided with ponderous

dignity alongside the wooden jetties, looking more like unmovable
buildings than things meant to go afloat; others, half loaded, far

on the way to recover the true sea-physiognomy of a ship brought
down to her load-line, looked more accessible. Their less steeply

slanting gangways seemed to invite the strolling sailors in search
of a berth to walk on board and try "for a chance" with the chief

mate, the guardian of a ship's efficiency. As if anxious to remain
unperceived amongst their overtopping sisters, two or three

"finished" ships floated low, with an air of straining at the leash
of their level headfasts, exposing to view their cleared decks and

covered hatches, prepared to drop stern first out of the labouring
ranks, displaying the true comeliness of form which only her proper

sea-trim gives to a ship. And for a good quarter of a mile, from
the dockyard gate to the farthest corner, where the old housed-in

hulk, the President (drill-ship, then, of the Naval Reserve), used
to lie with her frigate side rubbing against the stone of the quay,

above all these hulls, ready and unready, a hundred and fifty lofty
masts, more or less, held out the web of their rigging like an

immense net, in whose close mesh, black against the sky, the heavy
yards seemed to be entangled and suspended.

It was a sight. The humblest craft that floats makes its appeal to
a seaman by the faithfulness of her life; and this was the place

where one beheld the aristocracy of ships. It was a noble
gathering of the fairest and the swiftest, each bearing at the bow

the carved emblem of her name, as in a gallery of plaster-casts,
figures of women with mural crowns, women with flowing robes, with

gold fillets on their hair or blue scarves round their waists,
stretching out rounded arms as if to point the way; heads of men

helmeted or bare; full lengths of warriors, of kings, of statesmen,
of lords and princesses, all white from top to toe; with here and

there a dusky turbaned figure, bedizened in many colours, of some
Eastern sultan or hero, all inclined forward under the slant of

mighty bowsprits as if eager to begin another run of 11,000 miles
in their leaning attitudes. These were the fine figure-heads of

the finest ships afloat. But why, unless for the love of the life
those effigies shared with us in their wandering impassivity,

should one try to reproduce in words an impression" target="_blank" title="n.印刷；印象；效果">impression of whose
fidelity there can be no critic and no judge, since such an

exhibition of the art of shipbuilding and the art of figure-head
carving as was seen from year's end to year's end in the open-air

gallery of the New South Dock no man's eye shall behold again? All
that patient, pale company of queens and princesses, of kings and

warriors, of allegorical women, of heroines and statesmen and
heathen gods, crowned, helmeted, bare-headed, has run for good off

the sea stretching to the last above the tumbling foam their fair,
rounded arms; holding out their spears, swords, shields, tridents

in the same unwearied, striving forward pose. And nothing remains
but lingering perhaps in the memory of a few men, the sound of

their names, vanished a long time ago from the first page of the
great London dailies; from big posters in railway-stations and the

doors of shipping offices; from the minds of sailors, dockmasters,
pilots, and tugmen; from the hail of gruff voices and the flutter

of signal flags exchanged between ships closing upon each other and
drawing apart in the open immensity of the sea.

The elderly, respectableseaman, withdrawing his gaze from that
multitude of spars, gave me a glance to make sure of our fellowship

in the craft and mystery of the sea. We had met casually, and had
got into contact as I had stopped near him, my attention being

caught by the same peculiarity he was looking at in the rigging of
an obviously" target="_blank" title="ad.明显地；显而易见地">obviously new ship, a ship with her reputation all to make yet

in the talk of the seamen who were to share their life with her.
Her name was already on their lips. I had heard it uttered between

two thick, red-necked fellows of the semi-nautical type at the
Fenchurch Street Railway-station, where, in those days, the

everyday male crowd was attired in jerseys and pilot-cloth mostly,
and had the air of being more conversant with the times of high-

water than with the times of the trains. I had noticed that new
ship's name on the first page of my morning paper. I had stared at

the unfamiliar grouping of its letters, blue on white ground, on
the advertisement-boards, whenever the train came to a standstill

alongside one of the shabby, wooden, wharf-like platforms of the
dock railway-line. She had been named, with proper observances, on

the day she came off the stocks, no doubt, but she was very far yet
from "having a name." Untried, ignorant of the ways of the sea,

she had been thrustamongst that renowned company of ships to load
for her maidenvoyage. There was nothing to vouch for her

soundness and the worth of her character, but the reputation of the
building-yard whence she was launched headlong into the world of

waters. She looked modest to me. I imagined her diffident, lying
very quiet, with her side nestling shyly against the wharf to which

she was made fast with very new lines, intimidated by the company
of her tried and experienced sisters already familiar with all the

violences of the ocean and the exacting love of men. They had had
more long voyages to make their names in than she had known weeks

of carefully tended life, for a new ship receives as much attention
as if she were a young bride. Even crabbed old dock-masters look

at her with benevolent eyes. In her shyness at the threshold of a
laborious and uncertain life, where so much is expected of a ship,

she could not have been better heartened and comforted, had she
only been able to hear and understand, than by the tone of deep

conviction in which my elderly, respectableseamanrepeated the
first part of his saying, "Ships are all right . . ."

His civility prevented him from repeating the other, the bitter
part. It had occurred to him that it was perhaps indelicate to

insist. He had recognised in me a ship's officer, very possibly
looking for a berth like himself, and so far a comrade, but still a

man belonging to that sparsely-peopled after-end of a ship, where a
great part of her reputation as a "good ship," in seaman's

parlance, is made or marred.
"Can you say that of all ships without exception?" I asked, being

in an idle mood, because, if an obvious ship's officer, I was not,
as a matter of fact, down at the docks to "look for a berth," an

occupation as engrossing as gambling, and as little favourable to
the free exchange of ideas, besides being destructive of the kindly

temper needed for casualintercourse with one's fellow-creatures.
"You can always put up with 'em," opined the respectableseaman

judicially.
He was not averse from talking, either. If he had come down to the

dock to look for a berth, he did not seem oppressed by anxiety as
to his chances. He had the serenity of a man whose estimable

character is fortunately expressed by his personal appearance in an
unobtrusive, yet convincing, manner which no chief officer in want

of hands could resist. And, true enough, I learnedpresently that
the mate of the Hyperion had "taken down" his name for quarter-

master. "We sign on Friday, and join next day for the morning
tide," he remarked, in a deliberate, careless tone, which

contrasted strongly with his evidentreadiness to stand there
yarning for an hour or so with an utter stranger.

"Hyperion," I said. "I don't remember ever seeing that ship
anywhere. What sort of a name has she got?"

It appeared from his discursive answer that she had not much of a
name one way or another. She was not very fast. It took no fool,

though, to steer her straight, he believed. Some years ago he had
seen her in Calcutta, and he remembered being told by somebody

then, that on her passage up the river she had carried away both
her hawse-pipes. But that might have been the pilot's fault. Just

now, yarning with the apprentices on board, he had heard that this
very voyage, brought up in the Downs, outward bound, she broke her

sheer, struck adrift, and lost an anchor and chain. But that might