XXIV
SHIP’S LOGS

There is a yard by the river-side in London—opposite Lambeth or somewhere thereabouts, I think it must be—where you may come so close in touch with Romance as will set your fancy afire and transport you thousands of miles away upon the far-off seas of the Orient.

You may talk in disbelieving tones of wishing-rings, of seven-leagued boots and magic carpets, counting them as fairy tales, food only for the minds of children; but they are after all only the poetic materialisation of those same subtle things in life which give wings to our own imagination, or bring to eyes tired with reality the gentle sleep of a day dream.

Nearly every one must know the place I write of. It is where they break up into logs the timber of those ships which have had their day—the ships that have ridden fearless and safe through a thousand storms, that have set forth so hopefully into the dim horizon of the unknown and evaded to the last the grim, grasping fingers of the hungry sea.

And there you will see their death masks, those silent figureheads which, for so many nights and so many days with untiring, ever-watchful eyes have faced the mystery of the deep waters unafraid. There is something pathetic—there is something majestic, too—about those expressionless faces. They seem so wooden and so foolish when first you look at them; but as your fancy sets its wings, as your ears become attuned to the inwardness that can be found in all things, however material, you will catch the sound of dim, faint voices that have a thousand tales of the sea to tell, a thousand yarns to spin, a thousand adventures to relate.

Nothing is silent in this world. There is only deafness.

It has always appealed to me as the most noble of human conceptions, that burial of the Viking lord. The grandeur of it is its simplicity. There is a fine spectacular element in it, too, but never a trace of bombast. The modern polished oak coffin with its gaudy brass fittings, the super-ornate hearse, the prancing black stallions, the butchery of a thousand graceful flowers—all this is bombast if you wish. It no more speaks of death than speaks the fat figure of Britannia on the top of the highest circus car of England. Funerals to-day have lost all the grandeur of simplicity. But that riding forth in a burning ship, stretched out with folded hands upon the deck his feet had paced so oft; riding forth towards that far horizon which his eyes had ever scanned, there is a generous nobility in that form of burial. You can imagine no haggling with an undertaker over the funeral about this. Here was no cutting down of the prices, saving a little on the coffin here, there a little on the hearse.

No—this was the Viking’s own ship—the most priceless possession that he had. Can you not see it plainly, with sails set, speeding forth upon its last voyage—the last voyage for both of them? And then, as the lapping, leaping flames catch hold upon the bellied canvas, I can see her settling down in the swinging cradle of the waves. I can see the dense column of smoke mingling with and veiling the tongues of orange flame, until she becomes like a little Altar set out upon a vast sea, offering up its sacrifice of a human soul to the ever-implacable gods.

Now every time you burn a ship’s log you attend a Viking’s burial. In those flames of green and gold, of orange, purple and blue, there is to be found, if you will use but the eyes for it, all the romance, all the spirit and colour of that majestic human sacrifice—the burial of a Viking lord. As you sit through the long evenings, while the rain is beating in sudden, whipping gusts upon the streaming window pane and the drops fall spitting and hissing down the chimney into the fire below, then the burning of a ship’s log is company enough for any one. With every spurt of flame as the tar oozes out from the sodden wood, and the water, still clinging in the tenacious timber, bubbles and boils, you can distinguish but faintly the stirring voice of Romance telling of thrilling enterprise and of great adventure. There are few sailors can spin a yarn so much to your liking. Never was there a pirate ship so fleet or so bold; there were never escapes so miraculous, or battles so stern, as you can see when in those long-drawn evenings you sit alone in the unlighted parlour and watch a ship’s log burning on the fire.

Pay no heed to them when they tell you the green flames come from copper, the blue from lead, the pale purple from potassium. The chemist’s laboratory has its own romance, but it shares nothing in common with the high seas of imagination upon which you are riding now. Let the green flames come from copper! They are the emeralds, the treasure of the Orient to you. Let the blue flames come from lead, the pale purple from potassium! In your eyes as you sit there in that darkened room, with the flame-light flickering upon the ceiling and the shadows creeping near to listen to it all, they are the blue sash around the waist, the purple ’kerchief about the head of the bravest and the most bloodthirsty pirate that ever stepped.

At all times a fire is a companion. Yet set but a ship’s log upon the flames and I warrant you will lose yourself and all about you; lose yourself until the last light flickers, the last red ember falls, and the good ship that has borne you so safely over a thousand seas sinks down into the grey ashes of majestic burial.