would talk differently to a coal-heaver and to a professor. But is
this duplicity? I deny it. The truth consists in the genuineness
of the feeling, in the genuine recognition of the two men, so
similar and so different, as your two partners in the hazard of
life. Obviously, a humbug, thinking only of winning his little
race, would stand a chance of profiting by his artifices. Men,
professors or coal-heavers, are easily deceived; they even have an
extraordinary knack of lending themselves to deception, a sort of
curious and inexplicable propensity to allow themselves to be led
by the nose with their eyes open. But a ship is a creature which
we have brought into the world, as it were on purpose to keep us up
to the mark. In her handling a ship will not put up with a mere
pretender, as, for instance, the public will do with Mr. X, the
popular statesman, Mr. Y, the popular scientist, or Mr. Z, the
popular--what shall we say?--anything from a teacher of high
morality to a bagman--who have won their little race. But I would
like (though not accustomed to betting) to wager a large sum that
not one of the few first-rate skippers of racing yachts has ever
been a humbug. It would have been too difficult. The difficulty
arises from the fact that one does not deal with ships in a mob,
but with a ship as an individual. So we may have to do with men.
But in each of us there lurks some particle of the mob spirit, of
the mob temperament. No matter how earnestly we strive against
each other, we remain brothers on the lowest side of our intellect
and in the instability of our feelings. With ships it is not so.
Much as they are to us, they are nothing to each other. Those
sensitive creatures have no ears for our blandishments. It takes
something more than words to cajole them to do our will, to cover
us with glory. Luckily, too, or else there would have been more
shoddy reputations for first-rate seamanship. Ships have no ears,