But a grumpy recluse cannot worry his subordinates: whereas the man in whom the sense of duty is strong (or, perhaps, only the sense of self-importance), and who persists in airing on deck his moroseness all day - and perhaps half the night - becomes a 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.