I

I lie still, with eyes closed, for a few moments before rising, listening to the drumming of the rain on the deck overhead, and the gurgle of the scupper-pipes outside in the alleyway. I sort out drowsily the familiar vibrations: the faint, delicate rhythm of the dynamo, the hammer of a pump, the leisurely rumble and hiss of the refrigerator. Suddenly a hideous jar close at hand: the Fourth Engineer is making tea in the galley, and has dropped the poker. I look sideways at my watch. It is now five minutes to two. I decide to get up and dress.

I reflect on the fact that to-day is the anniversary of our departure from a home port. For a year, with but one or two days of rest, we have been dressing at five minutes to two. For a year the Armée d’Orient has been fed with frozen meat from our insulated holds. I recall a sentence in a recent letter from an officer on the Western front. It seems to put the matter succinctly. “War,” he says, “is like trade; only indirectly interesting.” And again, lower down, he remarks, “It isn’t the horror of war that makes a man tired, or even the danger and bloodshed; it is the infernal monotony of it.”

So I suppose we have no corner in monotony! I finish dressing (it is now five minutes past two, but no matter), and go into the mess-room for a cup of tea. The Fourth Engineer is there, also my colleague whom I am relieving, and the Third Officer in pajamas. This last person is suffering from insomnia, which is not surprising, since he drinks strong tea at 10:30 P. M. He is now drinking strong tea at 2 A. M., on the principle of poison counteracting poison, I suppose. Anyhow, he does nothing all day, so it doesn’t matter.

The Fourth Engineer is a hospitable soul and makes me toast. He is on duty all night in the main engine-room. He is a lanky, immature, good-tempered youth, with nice eyes. He knows I like toast. In return, I am looking the other way when the cook gives him a pocketful of eggs out of the cold-storage rooms. I like him. He laughs easily and bears no malice. Like most East Anglians, he has a subtle refinement of mind that will stand him in good stead through life. Among the dour north countrymen who throng the ship, he is almost feminine.

While I eat my toast, I listen to their conversation. It does not amount to much. How could it? We have been together a year. We are, occasionally, rather tired of each other. We are each painfully conscious of the other’s faults. Most subjects of which we know anything have been bled white of all interest. There are neither mysteries to attract nor revelations to anticipate. “The End of the War” and “When the Ship will go Home” are taboo. Most of us take refuge in light badinage. Others, like the Third Officer and his colleagues, play bridge for three hours every night. Some study languages and musical instruments; but there are not many of these. Some drink secretly, and are reported later as “sick.” Most of us, however, do simply nothing. We sit, or stand, or walk or lie, with one dull thought in our minds, one vague image before our eyes—the thought, the image, of Release.

It is an unusual state of mind. I had almost written “a curious psychological phenomenon,” but I am anxious to make the reader understand, and plain words are best. It is, I say, an unusual state of mind. From the Commander to the scullion, from the Chief Engineer to the coal-passer, we have all gradually arrived at a mood which is all the more passionate because it is inarticulate. With every other outlet dammed, our whole spiritual life is forced along one narrow channel of intense desire. We want to go home. It sounds childish, but that is because the reader does not understand. When he has read through this essay, I hope he will understand. I mean him to.

I drink my tea and eat my toast, and having given Thomas a saucer of milk, I go on duty. Thomas is a large black cat, who shares my vigil. Allons donc!

I go aft to the refrigerating-room along a covered alleyway, which none the less leaks; and Thomas, who follows, makes little runs to avoid the drips. It is raining as it can rain only in the Balkans. There is something Scottish about this rain, something dour, persistent, and irritating; and this old obsolete banana boat, converted into a cold-storage, leaks in every seam of her boat-deck, which is all warped by the blazing suns of a Balkan summer. We skip in, Thomas and I, in where there is light and warmth and comfortable noises, and, in our various fashions, carry on.

It is no part of these reflections to treat of refrigeration. That, being part of modern war, is uninteresting. My oiler, a faded Irishman with a bad leg, does most of the work. I note the log on the desk, thumb the compressor rods, take a few thermometer readings, feel the crank bearings of the engine, and feel bored. Thomas, after watching a couple of cockroaches who persist in risking their lives along the edge of the evaporator-casing, settles down to snooze on the vise-bench. For a time I envy him. I want to sleep again myself. I sit down near the desk, and, sharply alert as to the machine, I permit the rest of me, my soul and body let us say, to take forty winks. I leave the explanation to competent psychologists. It can be done. I need no Psychical Research Society to tell me that my soul and my intellect are differentiate entities. I know it, because I have kept six-hour watches, because I have been on night duty, because—because of many private reasons, of which it is not seemly that I should speak. Suffice it.

For an hour I sit with folded arms, while the machine pursues its leisurely never-ending race; while the brine-pump lifts first one leg and then the other, gingerly, as though in deep snow; while the electric fans revolve noiselessly in their corners; while the faded Irishman moves uneasily from side to side as he ministers to the needs of the machine. Subconsciously I am aware of all that goes on. So much for the experience and flair born of a dozen years at sea.

And, to tell the truth, this is the most hopeless time of the day. I once saw a picture, well known, no doubt: A Hopeless Dawn. My experience is, that all dawns are hopeless, to those who have to witness them. The legend of the early palæolithic ancestor who spent a night of terror after seeing the sun sink out of sight, and who leaped for joy at the dawning, is too thin. He is no ancestor of mine. For me the period comprised between the hour of two and four is one of unrelieved vacuity. The minutes, the very seconds, seem to deliberate. When, after what seems a long quarter of an hour, I look again at the clock, that white-faced, impassive umpire has registered exactly three minutes. Well, it is three minutes past three. I get up abruptly, startling the faded Irishman who is standing near me, smoking a dirty pipe and thinking of Heaven knows what, and go outside into the open air. And outside in the open air is Salonika.