To the Ends of the Earth by William Golding Read Free Book Online

but I felt they might have a justifiable faith in some of the older officers! And then—their attitudes! The woman watched, the half-plucked hen in her lap. Two fellows who were carrying a sick girl up from below—why, even they stood and watched as if someone had said hist , while their burden lay helplessly between them. Then the girl, too, turned her head and watched where they watched. There was a moving and endearing pathos about their attention, as in a dog that watches a conversation it cannot possibly understand. I am not, as your lordship must be aware, a friend to those who approve the outrageous follies of democracy in this and the last century . But at the moment when I saw a number of our sailors in a posture of such intense regard I came as near as ever I have done to seeing such concepts as “duty”, “privilege”, and “authority” in a new light. They movedout of books, out of the schoolroom and university into the broader scenes of daily life. Indeed, until I saw these fellows like Milton’s hungry sheep that “look up”, I had not considered the nature of my own ambitions nor looked for the justification of them that was here presented to me. Forgive me for boring your lordship with my discovery of what you yourself must know so well.
    How noble was the prospect! Our vessel was urged forward under the force of sufficient but not excessive wind, the billows sparkled, the white clouds were diversedly mirrored in the deep— et cetera . The sun resisted without apparent effort our naval broadside! I went down the ladder and walked back towards where our navigators were breaking from their rank and descending from the quarterdeck . Mr Smiles, the sailing master, is old, but not as old as Mr Davies, our senior midshipman, who is nearly as old as the ship! He descended not merely the ladder to the level of the waist where I was but the next one down as well—going away with a slow and broken motion for all the world like a stage apparition returning to the tomb. After leave obtained, Mr Willis, my young acquaintance, brought his companion to me with some ceremony. Mr Tommy Taylor must be a clear two years younger than Mr Willis but has the spirit and well-knit frame that his elder lacks. Mr Taylor is from a naval family. He explained at once that Mr Willis was weak in his attic and needed retiling. I was to come to him, Mr Taylor, if I wished to find out about navigation, since Mr Willis would soon have me on the rocks. Only the day before, he had informed Mr Deverel that at the latitude of sixty degrees north, a degree of longitude would be reduced to half a nautical mile. On Mr Deverel asking him— evidently a wag, Mr Deverel—what it would be reduced to at sixty degrees south, Mr Willis had replied that he had not got as far as that in the book. The memory of thesecataclysmic errors sent Mr Taylor into a long peal of laughter which Mr Willis did not appear to resent. He is devoted to his young friend evidently, admires him and shows him off to the best advantage. Behold me, then, pacing to and fro between the break of the afterdeck and the mainmast, a young acolyte on either side; the younger one on my starboard hand , full of excitement, information , opinion, gusto; the other, silent, but smiling with open mouth and nodding at his young friend’s expressions of opinion on any subject under and, indeed, including the sun!
    It was from these two young hopefuls that I learnt a little about our passengers—I mean of course those who have been accommodated aft. There is the Pike family, devoted to each other, all four. There is of course , one Mr Prettiman, known to us all. There is, I learn from precocious Mr Taylor, in the cabin between my own hutch and the dining saloon, a portrait-painter and his wife with their daughter—a young lady characterized by the aforesaid young gentleman as “a regular snorter”! I found this to be Mr Taylor’s utmost in the description of female charm. Your