ity,
having served in a ship twenty-five years old with rotten boilers and
perishing frames. And all unwittingly he became reminiscent and
drifted into the story of a gale in the Bristol Channel with the empty
ship rolling till she showed her bilge keels, the propeller with its
boss awash thrashing the sea with lunatic rage, and then the three of
us swaying and sweating on the boiler-tops, a broken main-steam pipe
lying under our feet. And it had to be done, for the tide and the
current were taking us up to Lundy, where half-tide rocks would soon
cook our goose, as the saying is. And as he grew absorbed in the tale
the author observed out of the corner of his eye that the Head
Examiner's pen paused and then was gently laid down, a new expression
of alertness, as though about to deliver judgment, came over the
finely cut features. And presently, as it was explained how an iron
collar was made and clamped about the broken pipe, and long bolts made
to pass into the solid flanges of the valve below, to haul the pipe
into its socket and hold it there by main force until we could get in,
the Head Examiner turned in his chair, and nodded as he touched his
beard lightly with one finger. It was about four in the morning when
the job was finished, the author recalled, and he came up on to the
wet deck, with low clouds flying past and Lundy an ominous shadow
behind, while the dawn lifted beyond the Welsh Mountains and the
jolly, homely lights of Swansea shone clear ahead. And as he paused
and remarked that the repair proved to be effective, he saw something
else in the face of the man watching him, something not seen before,
something not very easy to describe. But it may be said to have marked
another step in his career. Call it character, and the perception of
it. Something, as the reader will see, that is only emerging in the
pages of this book. Something harsh and strong-fibred, nurtured upon
coarse food and the inexorable discipline of the sea. Something that
is the enemy of sloth and lies and the soft languors of love. Indeed,
what the author has finally to say after all may be comprised in
this--that out of his experience, which has been to a certain degree
varied, he has come to the conviction that this same character, the
achievement and acceptance of it, stands out as the one desirable and
indispensable thing in the world, and neither fame nor wealth nor love
can furnish any adequate substitute for it.

S. S. _Turrialb