"Conrad, Joseph - The Mirror Of The Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (Conrad Joseph)

grievous infliction. He walks the poop darting gloomy glances, as
though he wished to poison the sea, and snaps your head off
savagely whenever you happen to blunder within earshot. And these
vagaries are the harder to bear patiently, as becomes a man and an
officer, because no sailor is really good-tempered during the first
few days of a voyage. There are regrets, memories, the instinctive
longing for the departed idleness, the instinctive hate of all
work. Besides, things have a knack of going wrong at the start,
especially in the matter of irritating trifles. And there is the
abiding thought of a whole year of more or less hard life before
one, because there was hardly a southern-going voyage in the
yesterday of the sea which meant anything less than a twelvemonth.
Yes; it needed a few days after the taking of your departure for a
ship's company to shake down into their places, and for the
soothing deep-water ship routine to establish its beneficent sway.

It is a great doctor for sore hearts and sore heads, too, your
ship's routine, which I have seen soothe - at least for a time -
the most turbulent of spirits. There is health in it, and peace,
and satisfaction of the accomplished round; for each day of the
ship's life seems to close a circle within the wide ring of the sea
horizon. It borrows a certain dignity of sameness from the
majestic monotony of the sea. He who loves the sea loves also the
ship's routine.

Nowhere else than upon the sea do the days, weeks and months fall
away quicker into the past. They seem to be left astern as easily
as the light air-bubbles in the swirls of the ship's wake, and
vanish into a great silence in which your ship moves on with a sort
of magical effect. They pass away, the days, the weeks, the
months. Nothing but a gale can disturb the orderly life of the
ship; and the spell of unshaken monotony that seems to have fallen
upon the very voices of her men is broken only by the near prospect
of a Landfall.

Then is the spirit of the ship's commander stirred strongly again.
But it is not moved to seek seclusion, and to remain, hidden and
inert, shut up in a small cabin with the solace of a good bodily
appetite. When about to make the land, the spirit of the ship's
commander is tormented by an unconquerable restlessness. It seems
unable to abide for many seconds together in the holy of holies of
the captain's state-room; it will out on deck and gaze ahead,
through straining eyes, as the appointed moment comes nearer. It
is kept vigorously upon the stretch of excessive vigilance.
Meantime the body of the ship's commander is being enfeebled by
want of appetite; at least, such is my experience, though
"enfeebled" is perhaps not exactly the word. I might say, rather,
that it is spiritualized by a disregard for food, sleep, and all
the ordinary comforts, such as they are, of sea life. In one or
two cases I have known that detachment from the grosser needs of