Wonderful Sailors

BY MOTH.

WE belong to an age of Progress, and most of us arc proud of it. But it has been observed in the paSt that Progress is frequently attended by evils which to sonic extent counteract its benefits. I could give you many examples of this. The one which occurs to me most readily is that if some fool had not invented the Printing Press. I should not have to write this article. A still more striking illuStration of what I mean is to' be fotind in the conditions governing Ocean Travel.

At one time it was a matter of some difficulty, and even danger, to travel by sea from one continent to another. People were always having a shot at it, of course. No doubt they pretended to enjoy the element of uncertainty which played so prominent and (to our minds) so Unat- tractive a part in Ocean Travel. " Oh, I expect we shall get there," they used to say, with airy fatalism. Some- tithes they did get there. Sometimes they got somewhere else, by mistake. Occasionally, even, they came back.

But it all took a very long time, and even the most successful journey was attended by numerous incon- veniences, such as scurvy, privateers, and the wrong sort of wind. Six months out of Plymouth, the average travel diary usually began to read something like this :

" To-day ate ye lest rata. Sim Orogsby cleans out of his wittea and Lath disembowelled we second(' Mato. Some doe say that we shall reach ye Newe Fotmde Londe by Oandlemasse : but others, No, that it will be some other place, and not near so soone. . . . Wynd continues gentle, but of an adverse !dude. Our good Shyp goeth alowlie backwards. . . "

But all that is different now, thanks to Progress. The hardships and the dangers have gone ; strenuous and partially successful attempts are being made to eliminate the tedium which has taken their place. I remember a remark I once heard on board the s.s. ' Bubonic ' (that is not her real name, worse luck ; but she is a fine large ship of some sixty million, or it may be thousand tons, and she had just broken the record for the Atlantic crossing). We were sitting in one of the lounges. Its furniture and decorations, intended to evoke the Second Empire at the height, of its glory, served only to suggest rich women at the wrong time of year. We were waiting for the cinema show to begin. Twenty or thirty passionate-looking citizens of minor European Powers were playing jazz in a corner. My neighbour, a big kind lady with a mauve face, was answering the question of a friend.

" Oh, no," she said. " Why, I don't even reckon to miss a meal. George and I are wonderful sailors."

And, if they were sailors at all, they were indeed wonderful sailors. So were we all. Some of us never saw the sea at all, all the way from America to England. None of us saw the ship we were in. We could remember vaguely being hurried up a covered gangway, somewhere in Brooklyn, into the bowels of a large steel cliff, which turned out to be full of people going through the old nautical ceremony of Thanking each other for The Flowers. At Southampton we were destined to have a second, and final, glimpse of this steel cliff. But. we never saw the whole ship, and few of us could have told you how many funnels she had, or how many decks, or whether from the Byzantine Swimming Pool it was fore you had to go, or aft, to get to the Tudor Hall and Beauty Parlour. We laid, in fact, thanks to our illustrated history books, "a far more vivid and accurate impression of the Golden Hind ' than of the s.s. Bubonic.'

But this, no doubt, was as it should be. 'For it is the unacknowledged aim of those who cater for the modern

traveller to conceal from him the fact that he is travelling —to avert the impact of an unfamiliar experience. Hence comfort anglais : hence the fact that there is no surer way of recommending 'an hotel than by saying that " it

really wasn't like staying in a foreign place at all " : no surer way of enticing people into an aeroplane than by saying that " after a bit you hardly notice that you are in the air."

So it is unfair to criticize these Floating Caravanserais (as they are called) because they are not really ships at

all, as far as the passengers are concerned. Our ancestors, in their caravels which Were so very apt not even to float, were infinitely Wnrse off than we are. To the faii7 minded, indeed, Ocean Travel under modern conditiOns offers only one loop-hole for attack. There is only one respect in which the Ancient Mariner was one up on you

and me—only one horror, unknown to him and to his peers, Which Progress, on her errand of mercy, has brought with her. I refer to the Last Night' On Board. The Last Night On Board is an occasion for joy ; but not for public rejoicing. The voyage is almost over ; except by a stroke of phenomenally bad luck, you will never see any of your fellow-passengers again. It is this thought that fills you with acute but un-Christian pleasure. Your feelings are not such as should, or can, be expressed in the promiscuous junketings of a Gala Dinner. But a Gala Dinner is what you get.

Johnson said that he would alwayi prefer a gaol to a ship, because in a gaol you found greater security, " and commonly better company." The last few days have convinced you that he was right. How you hate the other passengers ! The Handsome Man, always a little late for dinner, with a book under his arm and a faraway look in his eyes : the strident American child, who beat you with such contemptuous ease in the Semi-Finals of the Shuffleboard Tournament : the Gay Lady, who always seemed to be on her way to the batIMOOm : the Rotarian, who christened her the Ship's Siren : the International Crook, who had such bad teeth : the un- distinguished, indistinguishable middle-aged ladies, always prostrate, always pale green, always with a novel by Mr. Warwick Deeping open on their laps : the Hearty Man, who could not be stopped from telling you, again and again, what it felt like to be torpedoed . How you hate them all !

It is an unworthy hatred, and you know it. Secretly you feel ashamed, and so lively is your relief at the pro- spect of never seeing any of them again that you might conceivably get over this loathing—might at any rate transmute it into some less ignoble feeling—in the hour of release.

But the Last Night On Board precludes all possibility of this. The atmosphere is one of reunion, not of fare- well. People who have managed to avoid speaking tn, cads other all the way across the Atlantic now pull crackers and exchange paper hats. Coloured paper (a substance calculated to inflame the worst passions of the Anglo-Saxon) is much in evidence. Streainers—the harbingers of a horrid geniality—fly across the dining saloon and land in your soup. Your food reaches you cold, and in the intervals of signing menus you have' no time to cat it. Very soon you will be called upon to cross, your arms, to seize your neighbours' hands, and, in this un- happy compromise between the arts of contortionist and prima donna, to sing " Auld Lang Syne." .

It is a Melancholy reflection that, whatever develop- ments are effected in the comfort and security Of Ocean Travel, only the most startling acceleration in its speed can save us Irons the horrors I have described. As long as the duration of the voyage exceeds .twetity-four hours, there must always be a Last Night On. Board.. -You eannoi get away from that, Progress or no Progress.