"
("The Mate's Wife," by J. Runciman.)
Suffering--monotonous, ceaseless suffering; gallant endurance; sordid
filth; unnamed agonies; gnawing, petty pains; cold--and the chance of
death. That was the round of life that Lewis Ferrier gazed upon until a
day came that will be remembered, as Flodden Field was in Scotland, as
Gettysburg is in America, as January 19th, 1881, is in Yarmouth. Ferrier
had stuck to his terrible routine work, and, as Sir Everard Romfrey
observes: "To stick to work _after_ the great effort's over--that's what
shows the man." The man never flinched, though he had tasks that might
have wearied brain and heart by their sheer nastiness; the healer must
have no nerves.
A little break in the monotony came at last, and Mr. Ferrier and Mr. T.
Lennard had an experience which neither will forget on this side of the
grave. Contrary to the fashion of mere novelists, who are not dreamers
and who consequently cannot see the end of things, I tell you that both
men were kept alive, but they had something to endure.
The day had been fairly pleasant considering the time of year, and our
friends were kept busy in running from vessel to vessel, looking after
men with slight ailments. There was no snow, but some heavy banks hung
in the sky away to the eastward. When the sun sank, the west was almost
clear, and Tom and Lewis were electrified by the most extraordinary
sunset that either had ever seen. The variety of colour was not great;
all the open spaces of the sky were pallid green, and all the wisps of
cloud were leprous blue: it was the intensity of the hues that made the
sight so overpowering, for the spaces of green shone with a clear
glitter exactly like the quality of colours which you see on Crookes's
tubes when a powerful electric current is passed through.
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