The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck, Richard Astro Page A

fifty years without evidence of our murder trait, under whatever system of justice or economic security, then we may have a contrasting habit pattern to examine. So far there is no such situation. So far the murder trait of our species is as regular and observable as our various sexual habits.

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    In the time before our departure for the Gulf we sat on the pier and watched the sardine purse-seiners riding among the floating grapefruit rinds. A breakwater is usually a dirty place, as though the tampering with the shore line is obscene and impractical to the cleansing action of the sea. And we talked to our prospective crew. Tex, our engineer, was caught in the ways of the harbor. He was born in the Panhandle of Texas and early he grew to love Diesel engines. They are so simple and powerful, blocks of pure logic in shining metal. They appealed to some sense of neat thinking in Tex. He might be sentimental and illogical in some things, but he liked his engines to be true and logical. By an accident, possibly alcoholic, he came to the Coast in an old Ford and sat down beside the Bay, and there he discovered a wonderful thing. Here, combined in one, were the best Diesels to be found anywhere, and boats. He never recovered from his shocked pleasure. He could never leave the sea again, for nowhere else could he find these two perfect things in one. He is a sure man with an engine. When he goes below he is identified with his engine. He moves about, not seeing, not looking, but knowing. No matter how tired or how deeply asleep he may be, one miss of the engine jerks him to his feet and into the engine-room before he is awake, and we truly believe that a burned bearing or a cracked shaft gives him sharp pains in his stomach.

    We talked to Tony, the master and part owner of the Western Flyer, and our satisfaction with him as master increased constantly. He had the brooding, dark, Slavic eyes and the hawk nose of the Dalmatian. He rarely talked or laughed. He was tall and lean and very strong. He had a great contempt for forms. Under way, he liked to wear a tweed coat and an old felt hat, as though to say, “I keep the sea in my head, not on my back like a Goddamn yachts-man.” Tony has one great passion; he loves rightness and he hates wrongness. He thinks speculation a complete waste of time. To our sorrow, and some financial loss, we discovered that Tony never spoke unless he was right. It was useless to bet with him and impossible to argue with him. If he had not been right, he would never have opened his mouth. But once knowing and saying a truth, he became infuriated at the untruth which naturally enough was set against it. Inaccuracy was like an outrageous injustice to him, and when confronted with it, he was likely to shout and to lose his temper. But he did not personally triumph when his point was proven. An ideal judge, hating larceny, feels no triumph when he sentences a thief, and Tony, when he has nailed a true thing down and routed a wrong thing, feels good, but not righteous. He retires grumbling a little sadly at the stupidity of a world which can conceive a wrongness or for one moment defend one. He loves the leadline because it tells a truth on its markers; he loves the Navy charts; and until he went into the Gulf he admired the Coast Pilot. The Coast Pilot was not wrong, but things had changed since its correction, and Tony is uneasy in the face of variables. The whole relational thinking of modern physics was an obscenity to him and he refused to have anything to do with it. Parallels and compasses and the good Navy maps were things you could trust. A circle is true and a direction is set forever, a shining golden line across the mind. Later, in the mirage of the Gulf where visual distance is a highly variable matter, we wondered whether Tony’s certainties were ever tipped. It did not seem so. His qualities made him a good master. He took no chances he could avoid, for his boat and his life and ours were no