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The Mirror of the Sea-Part10_JOSEPH CONRAD (1857-1924)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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out scientifically bower, stream, and kedge exactly where I

believed they would do most good. On that occasion the bitter



taste of a stranding was not for my mouth. That experience came

later, and it was only then that I understood the loneliness of the



man in charge.

It's the captain who puts the ship ashore; it's we who get her off.



XXII.

It seems to me that no man born and truthful to himself could



declare that he ever saw the sea looking young as the earth looks

young in spring. But some of us, regarding the ocean with



understanding and affection, have seen it looking old, as if the

immemorial ages had been stirred up from the undisturbed bottom of



ooze. For it is a gale of wind that makes the sea look old.

From a distance of years, looking at the remembered aspects of the



storms lived through, it is that impression which disengages itself

clearly from the great body of impressions left by many years of



intimate contact.

If you would know the age of the earth, look upon the sea in a



storm. The grayness of the whole immense surface, the wind furrows

upon the faces of the waves, the great masses of foam, tossed about



and waving, like matted white locks, give to the sea in a gale an

appearance of hoary age, lustreless, dull, without gleams, as



though it had been created before light itself.

Looking back after much love and much trouble, the instinct of



primitive man, who seeks to personify the forces of Nature for his

affection and for his fear, is awakened again in the breast of one



civilized beyond that stage even in his infancy. One seems to have

known gales as enemies, and even as enemies one embraces them in



that affectionate regret which clings to the past.

Gales have their personalities, and, after all, perhaps it is not



strange; for, when all is said and done, they are adversaries whose

wiles you must defeat, whose violence you must resist, and yet with



whom you must live in the intimacies of nights and days.

Here speaks the man of masts and sails, to whom the sea is not a



navigable element, but an intimatecompanion. The length of

passages, the growing sense of solitude, the close dependence upon



the very forces that, friendly to-day, without changing their

nature, by the mere putting forth of their might, become dangerous



to-morrow, make for that sense of fellowship which modern seamen,

good men as they are, cannot hope to know. And, besides, your



modern ship which is a steamship makes her passages on other

principles than yielding to the weather and humouring the sea. She



receives smashing blows, but she advances; it is a slogging fight,

and not a scientificcampaign. The machinery, the steel, the fire,



the steam, have stepped in between the man and the sea. A modern

fleet of ships does not so much make use of the sea as exploit a



highway. The modern ship is not the sport of the waves. Let us

say that each of her voyages is a triumphant progress; and yet it



is a question whether it is not a more subtle and more human

triumph to be the sport of the waves and yet survive, achieving



your end.

In his own time a man is always very modern. Whether the seamen of



three hundred years hence will have the faculty of sympathy it is

impossible to say. An incorrigible mankind hardens its heart in



the progress of its own perfectability. How will they feel on

seeing the illustrations to the sea novels of our day, or of our



yesterday? It is impossible to guess. But the seaman of the last

generation, brought into sympathy with the caravels of ancient time



by his sailing-ship, their lineal descendant, cannot look upon

those lumbering forms navigating the naive seas of ancient woodcuts



without a feeling of surprise, of affectionate derision, envy, and

admiration. For those things, whose unmanageableness, even when



represented on paper, makes one gasp with a sort of amused horror,

were manned by men who are his direct professional ancestors.



No; the seamen of three hundred years hence will probably be




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