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There are mornings on land and mornings on the sea, and when the world is a grey wash and a mask of spindrift it is good to be alive upon the sea, high on a topsail-yard, to see the grey return of the glory of the day. The work is often sheer murder, but it is the work of men, and though the skin cracks and the nails bleed, as the bulging, slatting, frantic canvas surges like a cast-iron wave, the thin red-shirted line along the jack-stay does heroic work without meaning it, without one touch of consciousness, without praise, and mostly without even that reward of a “tot” of grog so sweet to the simple-minded sailorman. Ah, yes, to be sure we were heroes, and I too (though now soft and self-conscious) played an Homeric part upon the yard, was bold, and afraid, and “funked” it with any god-smitten, panic-driven half-god by Scamander’s banks, or the windy walls of Troy. Now I know what it was, and can see the grey wash of ocean, and the grey wash of white-faced morning with the great seas driving against the rising day, even as the rollers of the Atlantic surge against the base of a high berg. Little good men at home, fat men, rotund, easy souls, or those who are neither good, nor fat, nor easy, may stare and imagine yet not come near the reality when the wind booms and the sea rises, and the great concave of night sky flattens and presses down upon the driven ship, and men strive to escape doom and yet care not, and work till they are blind, and then drop down into the scant shelter of the deck, where the icy wind seems warm after the strife and bellowing up aloft. Heroes? To be sure we were heroes. What is being shot at a mile off, or a hundred yards off, to being shot at by the very heavens while one hangs over the gaping trenches of the sea? There is not an old shellback alive who has clung between angry heaven and the grey-green pastures of the deep but deserves a Victoria Cross for unconscious, dutiful, grumbling, growling valour. He might justly call every scanty dollar he earns a medal. For he has often fought in the Pacific, or by the Horn, or off the windy Cape. To recall the thick tempest at midnight, when the wind harps thunder on the stretched rigging, is to be a man again. If I blow their trumpet, the trumpet of the old sea-dogs, these scallawags, these Vikings, what matter if I seem to blow my own, having been their companion one campaign or two upon the deep? That “Me” is dead, I know, and can only be resurgent in memory, and will never laugh or feel afraid again when the slatting canvas jars one’s very teeth. Yet to remember (as I can remember) how one wild night on the Southern Pacific grew into morning gives me back youth and morning again when I cared nothing for death, since death was as far off, as impossible, ay, as absurd, as Fame itself.

It had blown hard all day, and an hour after midnight our scanty band, some ten of us (mostly Cockneys like myself), stood upon the foot-ropes of the lower fore-topsail. There should have been twenty, but to be undermanned has been English fashion since Agincourt. Growl we ever so loudly where could more be found? The work was to be done by ten, one more even was not to be asked for. If the task seemed possible, why, it was possible, and when we scrambled to that narrow line of battle in the dark it seemed as easy as most things at sea, where the difficult is done hourly. Risks are nothing there; to risk nothing would be to risk destruction and to incur the bitter reproach of having shipped “not to go aloft.” Each man to his fellow on the yard was a shadow and a pale blot of a face; each voice was a windy whisper, a bellow blown down into silence. As the ship ran, and lifted, and pitched and trembled, her narrow wedge shape was a blot beneath us: on each side of her white foam marked the hissing, hungry sea. But, with the sail surging before us in its gear like a mad balloon, who noted aught but the sail? I leant out upon my taut bulge of living canvas, beat it with the flat of my hand, and being the youngest waited for the word to “leech” it or “skin” it up. Being tall I was not at the extremity of the yard arm; my fellow fore-topman and a little squat man from the lower Thames stood outside me. My mate and the man inside were my world. The others I saw and heard not. The word came along the yard from the bunt to “leech” it up, and we leant over and caught the leech and pulled it on the yard. Now the fight began, but the beginning of it was easy sparring, and though the wind blew heavy, and each minute we had to remember death when she checked her roll with a jerk, the weather leech came up easy and we chuckled, each being glad. And in half an hour, or an hour, we were half masters of the wind, or as much of it as gave the sail life, after many small defeats. And then (whose fault of fingers for not being steel hooks, who shall say?) the wind, having got reinforcements, tore the victory from us and away went the sail once more free and thundering in the dark. The word was passed again, the indomitable word by the indomitable bo’sun at the bunt, this time to “skin” it up, and each man clawed out again at the flat booming canvas, clawed at it with his crooked fingers as wrestlers claw for hold behind each others’ backs. A wrinkle gave hold, we nipped it, and then the ironic devil in the gale shrieked with laughter and snatched even so small an advantage from us. We knew the “old man” and the mate were cursing us down below. Did they curse us, or the weather, or the owners, or our English Agincourt trick once more? What did it matter to us, beaten and unbeaten, as we rested for a moment and then again stretched out bleeding fingers for some little advantage, knowing well that when such a gale blew victory was only possible when by constant trials the chance came of each being given good or fair handhold at once. Then came a shriek of wind and a blown-out lull and a wrinkle lapsed into a fold. We shouted “Now!” left hold of the jack-stay, and with feet outstretched grabbed slack canvas and hung on as another squall came singing like shrapnel across the peaks of the leaping sea. “Hold on now, hold on!” so sang all of us, and we cursed each other furiously. “Oh, oh, you miserable devil, hang on or it’s lost again!” We cursed ourselves, felt our muscles crack, our nails shred, our skin peel and stretch and sting, and yet (thanks to our noble selves) we only lost an inch. Once more–“Now, now up, you dogs!” and that’s the long-lost, long-waited, sudden, surprising clock of dawn yonder. We have been two hours here, and once more the sail leaps up and comes down. Here, two hours, two compressed swift hours, two compacted eternities measured in gasps and half the work is done unless we weaken and let up and let go.