weight of his first cargo in a ship he did not personally know
before.

Ships do want humouring. They want humouring in handling; and if
you mean to handle them well, they must have been humoured in the

distribution of the weight which you ask them to carry through the
good and evil fortune of a passage. Your ship is a tender

creature, whose idiosyncrasies must be attended to if you mean her
to come with credit to herself and you through the rough-and-tumble

of her life.
XV.

So seemed to think the new captain, who arrived the day after we
had finished loading, on the very eve of the day of sailing. I

first beheld him on the quay, a complete stranger to me, obviously
not a Hollander, in a black bowler and a short drab overcoat,

ridiculously out of tone with the winter aspect of the waste-lands,
bordered by the brown fronts of houses with their roofs dripping

with melting snow.
This stranger was walking up and down absorbed in the marked

contemplation of the ship's fore and aft trim; but when I saw him
squat on his heels in the slush at the very edge of the quay to

peer at the draught of water under her counter, I said to myself,
"This is the captain." And presently I descried his luggage coming

along - a real sailor's chest, carried by means of rope-beckets
between two men, with a couple of leather portmanteaus and a roll

of charts sheeted in canvas piled upon the lid. The sudden,
spontaneous agility with which he bounded aboard right off the rail

afforded me the first glimpse of his real character. Without
further preliminaries than a friendly nod, he addressed me: "You

have got her pretty well in her fore and aft trim. Now, what about
your weights?"

I told him I had managed to keep the weight sufficiently well up,
as I thought, one-third of the whole being in the upper part "above

the beams," as the technical expression has it. He whistled
"Phew!" scrutinizing me from head to foot. A sort of smiling

vexation was visible on his ruddy face.
"Well, we shall have a lively time of it this passage, I bet," he

said.
He knew. It turned out he had been chief mate of her for the two

preceding voyages; and I was already familiar with his handwriting
in the old log-books I had been perusing in my cabin with a natural

curiosity, looking up the records of my new ship's luck, of her
behaviour, of the good times she had had, and of the troubles she

had escaped.
He was right in his prophecy. On our passage from Amsterdam to

Samarang with a general cargo, of which, alas! only one-third in
weight was stowed "above the beams," we had a lively time of it.

It was lively, but not joyful. There was not even a single moment
of comfort in it, because no seaman can feel comfortable in body or

mind when he has made his ship uneasy.
To travel along with a cranky ship for ninety days or so is no

doubt a nerve-trying experience; but in this case what was wrong
with our craft was this: that by my system of loading she had been

made much too stable.
Neither before nor since have I felt a ship roll so abruptly, so

violently, so heavily. Once she began, you felt that she would
never stop, and this hopelesssensation, characterizing the motion

of ships whose centre of gravity is brought down too low in
loading, made everyone on board weary of keeping on his feet. I

remember once over-hearing one of the hands say: "By Heavens,
Jack! I feel as if I didn't mind how soon I let myself go, and let

the blamed hooker knock my brains out if she likes." The captain
used to remark frequently: "Ah, yes; I dare say one-third weight

above beams would have been quite enough for most ships. But then,
you see, there's no two of them alike on the seas, and she's an

uncommonly ticklish jade to load."
Down south, running before the gales of high latitudes, she made

our life a burden to us. There were days when nothing would keep
even on the swing-tables, when there was no position where you

could fix yourself so as not to feel a constantstrain upon all the
muscles of your body. She rolled and rolled with an awful

dislodging jerk and that dizzily fast sweep of her masts on every
swing. It was a wonder that the men sent aloft were not flung off

the yards, the yards not flung off the masts, the masts not flung
overboard. The captain in his armchair, holding on grimly at the

head of the table, with the soup-tureen rolling on one side of the
cabin and the steward sprawling on the other, would observe,

looking at me: "That's your one-third above the beams. The only
thing that surprises me is that the sticks have stuck to her all

this time."
Ultimately some of the minor spars did go - nothing important:

spanker-booms and such-like - because at times the frightful
impetus of her rolling would part a fourfold tackle of new three-

inch Manilla line as if it were weaker than pack-thread.
It was only poetic justice that the chief mate who had made a

mistake - perhaps a half-excusable one - about the distribution of
his ship's cargo should pay the penalty. A piece of one of the

minor spars that did carry away flew against the chief mate's back,
and sent him sliding on his face for quite a considerable distance

along the main deck. Thereupon followed various and unpleasant
consequences of a physical order - "queer symptoms," as the

captain, who treated them, used to say; inexplicable periods of
powerlessness, sudden accesses of mysterious pain; and the patient

agreed fully with the regretful mutters of his very attentive
captain wishing that it had been a straightforward broken leg.

Even the Dutch doctor who took the case up in Samarang offered no
scientific explanation. All he said was: "Ah, friend, you are

young yet; it may be very serious for your whole life. You must
leave your ship; you must quite silent be for three months - quite

silent."
Of course, he meant the chief mate to keep quiet - to lay up, as a

matter of fact. His manner was impressive enough, if his English
was childishly imperfect when compared with the fluency of Mr.

Hudig, the figure at the other end of that passage, and memorable
enough in its way. In a great airy ward of a Far Eastern hospital,

lying on my back, I had plenty of leisure to remember the dreadful
cold and snow of Amsterdam, while looking at the fronds of the

palm-trees tossing and rustling at the height of the window. I
could remember the elated feeling and the soul-gripping cold of

those tramway journeys taken into town to put what in diplomatic
language is called pressure upon the good Hudig, with his warm

fire, his armchair, his big cigar, and the never-failing suggestion
in his good-natured voice: "I suppose in the end it is you they

will appoint captain before the ship sails?" It may have been his
extreme good-nature, the serious, unsmiling good-nature of a fat,

swarthy man with coal-black moustache and steady eyes; but he might
have been a bit of a diplomatist, too. His enticing suggestions I

used to repel modestly by the assurance that it was extremely
unlikely, as I had not enough experience. "You know very well how

to go about business matters," he used to say, with a sort of
affected moodiness clouding his serene round face. I wonder

whether he ever laughed to himself after I had left the office. I
dare say he never did, because I understand that diplomatists, in

and out of the career, take themselves and their tricks with an
exemplary seriousness.

But he had nearly persuaded me that I was fit in every way to be
trusted with a command. There came three months of mental worry,

hard rolling, remorse, and physical pain to drive home the lesson
of insufficient experience.

Yes, your ship wants to be humoured with knowledge. You must treat
with an understanding consideration the mysteries of her feminine

nature, and then she will stand by you faithfully in the unceasing