his native village and the discourses of
the black-coated gentleman connected with the Mission to Fishermen and
Seamen, whose yawl-rigged boat darting through rain-squalls amongst the
coasters wind-bound in Falmouth Bay, was part of those precious pictures
of his youthful days that lingered in his memory. "As clever a sky-pilot
as you could wish to see," he would say with conviction, "and the best
man to handle a boat in any weather I ever did meet!" Such were the
agencies that had roughly shaped his young soul before he went away to
see the world in a southern-going ship--before he went, ignorant and
happy, heavy of hand, pure in heart, profane in speech, to give himself
up to the great sea that took his life and gave him his fortune. When
thinking of his rise in the world--commander of ships, then shipowner,
then a man of much capital, respected wherever he went, Lingard in a
word, the Rajah Laut--he was amazed and awed by his fate, that seemed to
his ill-informed mind the most wondrous known in the annals of men.
His experience appeared to him immense and conclusive, teaching him the
lesson of the simplicity of life. In life--as in seamanship--there were
only two ways of doing a thing: the right way and the wrong way. Common
sense and experience taught a man the way that was right. The other
was for lubbers and fools, and led, in seamanship, to loss of spars and
sails or shipwreck; in life, to loss of money and consideration, or
to an unlucky knock on the head. He did not consider it his duty to
be angry with rascals. He was only angry with things he could not
understand, but for the weaknesses of humanity he could find a
contemptuous tolerance. It being manifest that he was wise and
lucky--otherwise how could he have been as successful in life as he had
been?--he had an inclination to set right the lives of other people,
just as he could hardly refrain--in defiance of nautical etiquette--from
interfering with his chief officer when the crew was sending up a new
topmast, or generally when busy about, what he called, "a heavy job." He
was meddlesome with perfect modesty; if he knew a thing or two there was
no merit in it. "Hard knocks taught me wisdom, my boy," he used to say,
"and you had better take the advice of a man who has been a fool in his
time. Have another." And "my boy" as a rule took the cool drink, the
advice, and the consequent help which Lingard felt himself bound in
honour to give, so as to back up his