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The Mirror of the Sea-Part5_JOSEPH CONRAD (1857-1924)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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down to her water-line; and these very eyes which follow this

writing have counted in their time over a hundred sail becalmed, as



if within a magic ring, not very far from the Azores - ships more

or less tall. There were hardly two of them heading exactly the



same way, as if each had meditated breaking out of the enchanted

circle at a different point of the compass. But the spell of the



calm is a strong magic. The following day still saw them scattered

within sight of each other and heading different ways; but when, at



last, the breeze came with the darkling ripple that ran very blue

on a pale sea, they all went in the same direction together. For



this was the homeward-bound fleet from the far-off ends of the

earth, and a Falmouth fruit-schooner, the smallest of them all, was



heading the flight. One could have imagined her very fair, if not

divinely tall, leaving a scent of lemons and oranges in her wake.



The next day there were very few ships in sight from our mast-heads

- seven at most, perhaps, with a few more distant specks, hull



down, beyond the magic ring of the horizon. The spell of the fair

wind has a subtle power to scatter a white-winged company of ships



looking all the same way, each with its white fillet of tumbling

foam under the bow. It is the calm that brings ships mysteriously



together; it is your wind that is the great separator.

The taller the ship, the further she can be seen; and her white



tallness breathed upon by the wind first proclaims her size. The

tall masts holding aloft the white canvas, spread out like a snare



for catching the invisible power of the air, emerge gradually from

the water, sail after sail, yard after yard, growing big, till,



under the toweringstructure of her machinery, you perceive the

insignificant, tiny speck of her hull.



The tall masts are the pillars supporting the balanced planes that,

motionless and silent, catch from the air the ship's motive-power,



as it were a gift from Heaven vouchsafed to the audacity of man;

and it is the ship's tall spars, stripped and shorn of their white



glory, that incline themselves before the anger of the clouded

heaven.



When they yield to a squall in a gaunt and naked submission, their

tallness is brought best home even to the mind of a seaman. The



man who has looked upon his ship going over too far is made aware

of the preposterous tallness of a ship's spars. It seems



impossible but that those gilt trucks which one had to tilt one's

head back to see, now falling into the lower plane of vision, must



perforce hit the very edge of the horizon. Such an experience

gives you a better impression of the loftiness of your spars than



any amount of running aloft could do. And yet in my time the royal

yards of an average profitable ship were a good way up above her



decks.

No doubt a fair amount of climbing up iron ladders can be achieved



by an active man in a ship's engine-room, but I remember moments

when even to my supple limbs and pride of nimbleness the sailing-



ship's machinery seemed to reach up to the very stars.

For machinery it is, doing its work in perfect silence and with a



motionless grace, that seems to hide a capricious and not always

governable power, taking nothing away from the material stores of



the earth. Not for it the unerring precision of steel moved by

white steam and living by red fire and fed with black coal. The



other seems to draw its strength from the very soul of the world,

its formidable ally, held to obedience by the frailest bonds, like



a fierce ghost captured in a snare of something even finer than

spun silk. For what is the array of the strongest ropes, the



tallest spars and the stoutest canvas against the mightybreath of

the infinite, but thistle stalks, cobwebs and gossamer?



XI.

Indeed, it is less than nothing, and I have seen, when the great






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