. One didn't speak to them. One saw them going along the decks, to
and fro, characteristic figures with rolled-up pigtails, very dirty when
coming off duty and very clean-faced when going on duty. They never
looked at anybody, and one never had occasion to address them directly.
Their appearances in the light of day were very regular, and yet somewhat
ghostlike in their detachment and silence.

But of the white crews of British ships and almost exclusively British in
blood and descent, the immediate predecessors of the men whose worth the
nation has discovered for itself to-day, I have had a thorough
experience. At first amongst them, then with them, I have shared all the
conditions of their very special life. For it was very special. In my
early days, starting out on a voyage was like being launched into
Eternity. I say advisedly Eternity instead of Space, because of the
boundless silence which swallowed up one for eighty days--for one hundred
days--for even yet more days of an existence without echoes and whispers.
Like Eternity itself! For one can't conceive a vocal Eternity. An
enormous silence, in which there was nothing to connect one with the
Universe but the incessant wheeling about of the sun and other celestial
bodies, the alternation of light and shadow, eternally chasing each other
over the sky. The time of the earth, though most carefully recorded by
the half-hourly bells, did not count in reality.

It was a special life, and the men were a very special kind of men. By
this I don't mean to say they were more complex than the generality of
mankind. Neither were they very much simpler. I have already admitted
that man is a marvellous creature, and no doubt those particular men were
marvellous enough in their way. But in their collective capacity they
can be best defined as men who lived under the command to do well, or
perish utterly. I have written of them with all the truth that was in
me, and with an the impartiality of which I was capable. Let me not be
misunderstood in this statement. Affection can be very exacting, and can
easily miss fairness on the critical side. I have looked upon them with
a jealous eye, expecting perhaps even more than it was strictly fair to
expect. And no wonder--since I had elected to be one of them very
deliberately, very completely, without any looking back or looking
elsewhere. The circumstances were such as to give me the feeling of
complete identificatio