Golfing Round the World
Chapter VIII Keep Your Eye on the Ball
Life on shipboard was very pleasant at this time. If it was occasionally overwarm ashore, the climate at sea was absolutely perfect. Time after time, while gloom and murk or terrific thunder and lightning appeared to prevail over the coasts, we, at sea, would pass by in brilliant sunshine, while the cool clear breezes played about the deck. A large tarpaulin swimming tank had been rigged up on the foredeck, and I would not ask for a more delightful sensation than the midnight day. Floating drowsily in the warm sea water amid the phosphorescence and gazing at the stars is an ideal introduction to sound and cool slumber.
I should like to recapture the sense of carefree 'well content' that came to me in those equatorial seas. I did not keep a diary of my wanderings in the ordinary way, but occasionally, before turning in, I would go in off the deep end with pencil and notebook and perpetrate this sort of thing:-
"Plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose. be it the Red, the Arabian, the Sapphire, the Purple or the Pink, this sea which is proverbially capricious and like woman, 'souvent varie' remains ever a flat disc of infinite gradations of colour, and we rest consistently in its centre, always moving towards its edge, that ever receding rim, which keeps ever the same distance away. Of course is never the same. Watch the mermaids and the sea elves. The former will only come in the moonlight: you can see them in the ship's wake trying to catch the fireflies for their stitchery: but the elves come out whenever the sun calls them from the deep and they will dance in the turquoise patches when the zephyrs play their tunes, while nearby the sea angels keep watch and ward. You can hear them whispering and murmuring ever night and day amid the drone and humming of the giant turbines, in the caseless, yet infinitely soothing swash and shush of the creaming foaming waves. Then the afreets in the blue whisk up their tails quite suddenly, and with their long grey cloaks obscure the sun, but how iridesce as that fiery old monarch shoots beam after beam, chasing and chivvying the dusky monsters to their caverns beyond the horizon."
It is a curious thing that in a railway train I can become deeply absorbed in a book and give not a thought to the passing scene, full of interest and beauty as it may happen to be: but at sea I have no desire to read. It is a matter for astonishment that an element, so restless as the sea, can create a state of mind so ineffably peaceful and serene. Doubtless a similar capriciousness on the part of woman, is the cause of many happy marriages.
We were now heading for Java, with the high and bold Sumatran Ridge on the porthand and the mainland of the Australian continent a few days steaming on our starboard bow.
We saw a climax in sunsets on the evening we left Emmahaven, a black and blood red panorama of the heavens on fire. I have heard it said by artists that there is no such thing as black in Nature, and I am not prepared to challenge their accuracy, but I think a Sumatran sunset would shake their confidence in this belief.
Connoisseurs of what may be called firmamental art will appreciate my meaning when I allege that a Skyscape is unseizable. You may look at a landscape by McWhirter or a seascape by Wyllie and you do not need to refer to the catalogue to identify it as Glencoe or the Solent, in each case the artist has caught the spirit of his subject and fixed its character on canvas. But you cannot look at even so superlative a work as a Turner and say definitely "Oh yes, that's the sunset we saw at Brighton or Milwaukee". I now live on the very part of the Cheshire coast where Turner is said to have painted some of his most wonderful pictures. All that I can say is, that we do not have sundowns that we used to, the reality is sublimely beautiful, but it never is and never could be what Turner's conception made it be out to be.
Now the character of that Sumatran climax of the Death of Day was so stupendous as to be memorable and indelibly fixed upon the tablets of the mind. If I were asked by some kindly friend who took that much interest in my opinion "What impressed you most on your voyage round the world?"
I should unhesitatingly reply "The going down of the Sun into the Sea".
The very next evening we enjoyed the verisimilitude of the Carollian phantasy of the sun and moon vying each other in splendour, in the inimitable "Walrus and the Carpenter" with the difference that the scene occurred not at midnight but at sundown. It was in the fairy sea of the Straits of Sunda. In our wake were the opalescent waters of the Indian Ocean, canopied by the whole gamut of colours from to ultra violet to ruby red. Far out to port over a clear, calm and lucent sea were the dark Sumatran mountains whereon forked lightning flashed incessantly. Nearer on the starboard hand was the clear cut outline of the purple hills of Java: while directly ahead the burnished brilliance of a full moon rose over the towering cone of Krakatoa, and cast its silver radiance over the intervening waters.