XIV

Those trim skiffs unknown of yore–

I condense Coleridge–

That fear no spite of wind or tide!

Phillips joined us. “We’re discussing nautical history, chief.” Being assured that this really was so, Phillips said he was uncertain about the true story of theGolden Hind’sboatswain, but he felt certain about our not reaching Buenos Aires in the morning. If he were not a moral man, he would “bet you, sir, two pence on the point.”

The pilot, a tan-brown moustached little man, came in–not for his black straw hat, but for his oilskins and goloshes. “That’s right,” said Phillips with malevolent sympathy, “that’s right, pilot, always keep your feet thoroughly dry.” The pilot had at least the excuse that it was drizzling outside.

It blew hard and harder all night; and the next morning, Sunday, one thought of the collapse of an English October. About half-past seven we dropped anchor in the “roads” outside our promised port; on all sides bleakly lapping and passing the pea-soup waters of the River Plate. Father Prout’s whimsical haunting old lines pervaded my mind as I stared and warmed myself with pacing up and down:

With deep affection and recollectionI often think of the Shandon bells,Whose sounds so wild would, in days of childhood,Fling round my cradle their magic spells.On this I ponder, where’er I wander,And thus grow fonder, sweet Cork, of thee,With thy bells of Shandon,That sound so grand onThe pleasant waters of the River Lee.

With deep affection and recollection

I often think of the Shandon bells,

Whose sounds so wild would, in days of childhood,

Fling round my cradle their magic spells.

On this I ponder, where’er I wander,

And thus grow fonder, sweet Cork, of thee,

With thy bells of Shandon,

That sound so grand on

The pleasant waters of the River Lee.

Not far from his old loves, how did some of us once for a brief stay, with those whirlpools in Flanders still roaring more hungrily in our destiny, hear other bells ring in enchanting coolness over the gliding boat, borne on the bosom of wooded Blackwater!

But these bleak and turbid waters turned the ringing song to parody, nor did theBonadventure’sbell, a war product, sound particularly grand upon them as those past bells on their importal streams. The outlook and the chilliness made breakfast unusually welcome. The pilot came in, but having no English to speak of (or with) he could not tell us his real views on the weather and such important matters. The chief loudly–for more clarity–pressed him with such questions as “When does your nextStrikebegin?” but he smiled and ate on.

About dinner-time a fine white launch came out to us; and a number of authorities, including some doctors, came aboard. The ship’s company assembled aft like an awkward squad, and the doctors came along the line feeling pulses; a task which they did genially and without strain. That done, and no one being set aside for a further examination, all dispersed. The authorities (a generous allowance of them) proceeded to Hosea’s quarters, no doubt to wind up the morning’s work in comfort. I listenedmeanwhile to Mead, who leaning over above their launch, amused himself with making noisy and scandalous observations upon its crew, their careers and their faces. Why this fury? I really believe it was his way of expressing fraternity.

So there was nothing to do but wait for our new pilot on Monday morning: to play cards with a pack whose age had given each card characteristic markings besides those upon its face; to “yarn.” At tea, Bicker was in his most assiduous narrative mood. “We were in the West Indies in a boat bringing the bumboat woman aboard–well, she started to climb up the rope ladder and this fellow thought he’d lay his hand on her ankle. So he made a move to do so. Just then” (his broad grin grew almost incredibly broad), “the boat gave a roll, and as he had one foot on the gunwale, and one on the rope ladder he fell into the water. Well, he went down past rows and rows of plates, and we looked out for him to come up.–First a hat, his black hat, came up. And then, a newspaper came up”–[Chief(ignored) “To say he wasn’t coming up?”]–and then,hecame up. Stern first. We dragged him on deck, and there he was all spluttering, and then he said as solemn as a judge:

‘That’s the fruits of Blacklegging.’”

This closed the proceedings.

Under the sunset the river’s dingy current began to take on a strange glory, and changed into a tawny golden wilderness moving down to sea. Then presently it was full moon and pale splendours. A great quiet prevailed; but led by the moon, like the tide and the poets, Mead and myself paced the decks for hours recalling the local colour of war apart from fighting.

A most placid morning. The sky ahead was silvered with the smoke of unseen Buenos Aires, the water so gleaming that the flat coast lined with trees, to starboard, appeared to be midway suspended between one mother-of-pearl heaven and another. The new pilot arrived in this early tranquillity, and the ship resumed her way up the channel marked out by buoys of several shapes.

The sun increased in power all too fast. I stood on the bridge to hear the pilot and the mates giving their directions: we came to a couple of tugs told off to escort theBonadventurein. Ropes leapt aboard us, tossed up in the adroitest way and caught as cleverly by our sailors; the bigger cables were attached to them, drawn aboard the tugs and made fast; and so we went on with tugboats fore and aft. The peculiar beauty of the morning mist over Buenos Aires soon began to thin away and disclose great buildings. And now we were almost at our journey’s end; and in hurrying ease, drew past fishing boats and small sailing craft into the harbour mouth. On our port side, on a sort of palisade running out into the estuary, a host of sea-eagles perched yelping, their lean black bodies sharply designed in the white light. Their motto I took to be: Multitude and solitude. Beyond their grand stand appeared a green grove of downward foliage, the gaudy precinct ofwhat, I was informed by the wireless operator, who began to act the guide-book, was a destructor for the frozen meat industry. He went on to specify the number of animals daily converted and to give other details which interested him, as an ex-wielder of the pole-axe; but my attention was distracted by the ships swinging into an approach crowded with dredgers and their ugly barges swilling mud, with motor-boats and lighters and as it looked to me every sort of medium for water traffic, bright and drab, proud and lowly in a confusion.

The waterway divides. To our left, a channel lies under giant steel bridges. Our course is not there: we are piloted towards a dock for passenger and cargo ships, and entering it in a hot glare, and colouring that almost sears, of sky and water and paint, we make our berth, wallowing once over the water’s breadth to the anger of lesser navigators, who go by in their boats bawling at the bridge in general. The handsome passenger boats with their great paddle-wheels and their red awnings lie opposite our plebeian resting-place: beside a grimy wharf, where small cranes and coal carts seem to multiply.

Of an expectant company there on Wilson’s Wharf, the chief feature was by immediate common consent recognized in an old lady in a heliotrope dress, tightly girdled–and she was of mountainous shape. The demure inch of petticoat revealed below the hem of her well-hitched skirt was not overlooked. Beside this beldame, a long thin youth, a very reed straw by comparison, puffed at a cherry cigarette-holder, vacantly but fixedly eyed the ship and seemed to await her instructions. A laundry cart, with an insufficient animal in the shafts, stood behind themand showed what they too stood for, emblems peculiar.

Scarcely had theBonadventurecome to rest before a swarm of anxious sallow ruffians were aboard for the “ship’s orders.” The rooms of Hosea himself were not free from their invasion; not free that is, for a moment. Their intruding faces caused him to roar in the most frightful fashion; at which, hesitating as if before an injustice, they got out, but still hung about the gangways. When, presently, he went ashore to pay his official respects to the ship’s agents, we saw a trail of these indefatigables close on his heels, and on his return he said that four of them had followed him all the way. I now perceived quite plainly why, when I a stranger appeared aboard theBonadventureat Barry Dock and desired to find the captain, there was no eager answer to my query. Tailors, bootmakers (one with a motor-tyre or a piece of one over his shoulder), engineers and I don’t know who else formed the polysyllabic cordon.

Meanwhile, theBonadventurewas hauled in close to the edge of the quay, and a gang of dock hands came on deck bearing ropes and pulley blocks. The ship’s derricks having been lifted, these made the first preparations for discharging the cargo. The hatches were laid open, and the planks covering them pitched aside much as though they were so many walking-sticks. I was not the only one deluded by this despatch into thinking our discharge likely to be over in a few days.

Buenos Aires; a tremendous town, a “southern Paris,” a New-World epitome. So much, so little I knew of it. It lay here, its heart not a half-hour’swalk from our mooring. But the vastness of the rumoured hive, the heat, I daresay indolence too, prevented me from taking this first opportunity for walking into the strange streets. It was excessively hot, and that settled the matter. There was plenty to watch on the river and alongside: it would have been odd, if it had not proved so. So, swollen somewhat with the feeling that I was now a considerable seafarer, and not unpleased to be mistaken for one by the miscellaneous visitors who had by this examined the decks and accommodation–all doors locked–somewhat fruitlessly, but still loitered, I stayed idle.

Trenches will recur to their old inhabitants. The small coal in the yards here stood walled in with a breastwork of sandbags, built with tolerable skill upon the old familiar pattern of headers and stretchers and as I happened to be remarking upon this fact to the wireless man, interrupting his propaganda about a strike in which he personally would resist to the last, a little launch chanced past with the nameYpreson her bows.

She was but one of an endless to and fro of small craft. The tall and airy passenger boats, at intervals, came by in brilliance. When there was a pause in this coming and going, and nothing more happening on the water than the snapping of the small yellow catfish at bread floating below the ship, I still felt a quiet and languid gratitude for the novelty of being where I was.

That gratitude was to be tempered soon. The plague of the mosquitoes of the docks had been painted dark enough for me during the days of approach; and when I got to bed, the threatenedinvasion had begun. Determining not to consider the question at all, I read deep in my pocket copy of Young’sNight Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality, as in worse quarters many a time, and duly went to sleep like a philosopher.

Could this be Saint Valentine’s Day? Here in a dreary looking dock with a surplus of sun but a seeming lack of oxygen, and only a sort of amphibious race as company? Newspapers were at any rate valentine enough. They were read with real care, football results being perhaps the consolation most sought.

Hosea showed me the way into the town. We turned out over the docks, out at last from a kingdom of coal-dust, over a swing bridge; took a tram, and were soon at the shipping agents’ offices. He spent some time in earnest conference here, and the visit ended with a visit to other agents’ offices, and that again with an adjournment with a serene member of the staff to a bar. In this excellent place, my ignorance of a kind of drink, saffron in colour and with a piece of pineapple submerged, was soon dispelled. The collection of olives, biscuits, monkey-nuts and flakes of fried potato which the waiter brought with the drinks was to me unexpected. We went, with our good-natured guide, to lunch in a huge hotel. Gaining the top of the building by the lift, we sat at a table near the windows of a luxurious room filled with luxurious people, and had the pleasure of looking as we ate over the less celestial roofs of the town to the calm flood of the River Plate beyond. Distance lent enchantment to this view also. The conditionswere good for eating, our friend’s romantic tales apart.

We departed from this commendable place, and, there being still engagements for Hosea with the shipping agents, we went there. Emerging, he had to go to the British Consulate. We hired a taxi. The traffic of Buenos Aires, or practice and precept differ, was free from irksome restrictions of speed; and we were whirled over the cobblestones and tramlines and round trams, horsemen, wagons, rival cars and everything else in a breath-taking rush. “I get in these things,” said Hosea, “saying to myself, If I don’t come out of this alive, then I shan’t.” We got out alive. The Consul’s workshop (it was perhaps known by a more dignified name) was in a scrubby street; and the young man in charge had my sympathy. However, it was not my fault that he was being slowly roasted.

That call left Hosea at liberty to explore the town. We walked on and on, looking at the shops, and be it acknowledged at the beauties who went by, until we arrived at the small park over which the Museum rises to that southern sun, ornate and massy. Here we entered to spend the afternoon among a few visitors and as many official incumbents. We entered solemnly resolved to find a Palace of Art–Hosea putting away from him all his connection with ships and the worries of that next necessity, the “charter party.”

Plaster casts and original statuary were plentiful in the Museum. The eye of the weary mariners rested none too long upon these. The multitude of paintings, however, were considered gently and methodically: Hosea would stand before the weakesttrying to comprehend the artist’s intention, and to claim something in his daub as a virtue. Sometimes he would put on his eyeglass to survey the subject. To me, there seemed no such quality here–I speak as a scribe, without authority–as there was quantity.

There have been many energetic and accomplished administerings of paint, but to what purpose? The eternal allegory, demanding one nude figure or more, and justifying by the general level Hosea’s praise of a well-known picture called “September Morning,” or sweetened description of evening, with its cows coming home under its warped moon, its ploughman in a vague acre, and the rest. Was this the southern genius?

One or two modern pictures here revealed a strength and idiosyncrasy beyond almost all the rest. A portrait of six youths, drawn with fierce intensity of colour and of line, expressing distinctions of character in subtle vital sharpness, long detained me. Another untypical picture, as recent as the last, was based upon a rustic festival or ritual with which I of course was unacquainted; but the epic lives of peasant men and women in their long combat with the stern giver of grain were legible in the strange georgic faces and the mysterious melancholy glory of their assembly.

–Seemed listening to the earth,Their ancient mother, for some comfort yet.

–Seemed listening to the earth,

Their ancient mother, for some comfort yet.

Among the many harmless little pieces representing vases of flowers, woodland melody, and other conventions, I caught sight of a portrait of a young girl (“My lady at her casement” type) drawn with mild ability. The signature, very large and clear, was

Ch. Chaplin.

On referring to the minute brass plate beneath so innocent a vanity, we learned that Charles Chaplin, 1825-1891, was a painter of the “French School.” Pictures must run in the family.

The first afternoon, Hosea and myself could find no specimen of an English artist among the multitude: but returning another day to make certain (and once again we had the gallery more or less to ourselves) we found a small and typical study by Wilkie, and a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Before this last, a work of the loftiest morality–in its subject I mean–and of a colouring delicately fine, Hosea stood in enthusiasm. “I’m not sure,” he said, and once again drew an impression before proceeding, “that that isn’t the finest thing we’ve seen.” The spectacle of King Arthur in his bronze near the exit, in his bronze but somehow devoid of his grandeur, ended our artistic adventures. The business of criticism, no doubt, is to keep cool: but this we had scarcely been able to do. I should have given up early, but for the determination of Hosea; and even he began to feel the scorching heat above the æsthetic calm.

The ship’s football was brought out in the evening, and on a patch of waste ground alongside, flanked by thickets of rank weed, and ankle-deep in sand and coal-dust, we enjoyed ourselves most strenuously. There were one or two real drawbacks. A vigorous and unwary kick was apt to send the ball into the river, and to recover it meant clambering up and down the slanting wall of the wharf, which was coated with black grease, fishing with a pole, anxiously watchingthe currents, and quickly becoming as black and greasy as the masonry. And on the other hand, there was here a depôt of large drain-pipes, which might equally receive the erratic ball; then arose the questions: Whereabouts in the pipes had it bounced? Would the drain-pipe on which you were standing really roll from under you and bring down a dozen others? Meanwhile the watchman of the depôt would be there uttering untranslated dissatisfaction with the whole affair.

We had not been in the South Basin many minutes when the chaplain of The Missions to Seamen was among us with his witty stories and, I believe, his put-and-take teetotum. At any rate, the latter became as well recognized a part of his equipment as his quips. At his invitation, I went several times to the Mission, which was quite the rendezvous for the crews of British ships in the port. Its concert room, its billiard room and other comfortable places were generally very lively, the two chaplains apparently possessing an inexhaustible reserve of cheerfulness. English ladies too came there to brighten the evenings, to sing and join in at cards and conversation; their generosity, I believe, furnished the other refreshments of these evenings.

Next door to the Mission, a dingy annexe to a sort of grocery, labelled the “British Bar,” was not neglected. Talk and beer and smoke prevailed here until midnight and afterwards: indeed, I had scarcely sat down before a vast mate from some other ship had challenged me to name a better Test Match captain than Mr. Fender. Other patrons of the Oval soon took up the cry, but I resisted for the rest of the session.

The discharge of coal began, a monotonous process however considered; down in the hold one saw through the busy dust a small but growing mine-crater done in coal, at the foot of which were lying, stooping, chattering, the nearly naked figures of the labourers. Negroes they looked down there, but were white unofficially. They shovelled now from this side, now from that into a great iron bucket: above, at a sign, the man with his lever set the winch working and the derrick hoisted the bucket up and over, then down into the lighter that lay alongside. And so with intervals through the day. Then at night, the dock’s aboriginal mosquitoes came forth; as the mate said, like a German band, all the most agonizing shades of musical audacity emanating from them. They drove not only me but old hands out on deck at night, where a chilly autumn wind was blowing, which drove us indoors again. But as the light grew, our tormentors lessened. The sun ariseth, and they get them away together, and lay them down in their dens.

To avoid these visitors as much as possible, I refrained from exploring the town over tiringly during the day, and went off with Mead in his shore suit after the evening’s football on the dust-patch: and stayed as late as meanderings in the town could make it. We certainly departed from the usual haunts of sailors the first night; went on and on, until even the adventurous Mead had to say: “This is rather a depraved kind of street.” And more, there was something in the air–some way off, we heard the interrupted fire of (what roused imagination converted into) a machine gun. The slatternly folk sitting, with white gleams of face or dress in the shadows,by their doors; the herds of unaccustomed faces in the large threadbare bars; the many groups of folk standing expectantly about the street, and our own alien solitude–all gave this sensation of disquiet. In a manner enjoying it, we proceeded, past an orator roaring out in fine fury to a small but intent crowd, and presently found ourselves in a large square with its many lamps, its glossy cars stealing swiftly by or waiting on the rank, its fountains playing like mists among deep green of trees.

Magnificent, and nearly empty, was the café into which we went; brilliant its interior; attached to the gilded columns, how eloquent of drinking as a fine art, its scoreboards announcing the many specialities! We stayed until midnight. Then, having roughly found out our way home, we set out for the docks, and, pausing to divine the sense of a poster giving details of a “Radical” demonstration for the next day, saw the police come hurrying up to a gathering of people round the next bar door. One of the police as he passed us at speed caught his toe against a stone and with his sword and fine feathers came down flat on the pavement. The gathering at the bar door were so absorbed in their topic that no one looked, much less laughed at his loud discomfiture.

Sometimes I found an occasion to leave theBonadventurein her noisy dishabille, during the day. There was one walk with the wireless operator to a smaller tramp in a distant dock, aboard which somewhat shapelier ship than theBonadventurehe had an acquaintance. Walking over the irregular cobbles and among the railway lines of the wharves in the heat was a sufficient exercise. We left our ship carpeted with coal-dust; passed cattle pounds, grain elevatorsglaring white, and on the opposite side steamers in process of being loaded or discharged; went along a rail track where the grains which had lain longest had sprung up in unavailing green, and under chutes where sacks of corn were sliding down to the holds of ships. The mate of thePrimrosewhom we had come to see was thoroughly happy, and resembled almost to a hair my sergeant observer of years before. Putting on a record–his gramophone was actually in order–and offering cigars, he produced an extraordinary picture of his ship, in needlework. The ancient art of the sampler had passed to him. He seemed, I noticed,ofhis ship: its mahogany-lined saloon and more domestic style were congenial with his paterfamilias air and “Not to-day, thank you” mildness to various business callers. The wireless operator, also, seemed to be less interested in the regulations of his calling and more in photographs of ships and sailors. With these kind spirits in my mind, I was somewhat preoccupied as we walked back the way we came among the pigeons and the dock labourers stretched out under every railway truck and crane for their siesta.

Then there were one or two more rounds of the town with Hosea, chiefly in the busiest neighbourhood. I began to know the tall statue of Columbus as a landmark. All the morning, perhaps, Hosea would be going from one office to another, seeking to define the ship’s future and to hasten her discharge, while I kicked my heels in entrances under the suspicious eyes of the janitors. Kindness was readier in the frowsy offices of the ship’s chandlers; whence the delectably dressed youth the firm’s son soon led the way to a table and vermouth in the Avenida de Mayo.We went again, with a new companion, to the Florida restaurant for our lunch: but the new companion and myself having been contemporary in the Ypres salient, our excessive reminiscences began to pall upon the long-suffering Hosea. One day Hosea entrusted to me, for transport to the ship, the sailors’ wages in notes, and the letters. He was staying ashore, and did not fancy the prospect of carrying so much money about with him. Neither did I; but it is hard to say whether the responsibility for the pay overshadowed that for the letters. I was pleased to climb aboard theBonadventurewith both, after passing through the knock-off rush from the docks. But I seemed to be blamed for not bringing letters for every one; such is the lot of the volunteer.

There was a feeling (based on observation) aboard theBonadventurethat the discharge of the ship was not being carried out with all possible speed, owing to the prevailing mysterious influences of the offices in the town. Delays were many. This augury of a long sojourn in our present berth depressed many of us: I had already observed, or judged, that whatever the earlier mariners may have thought of seafaring, the modern sailor’s idea in sailing is to get back home as early as possible. We soon heard that four days of public holiday, the Carnival, would be added to our term. It was evident that one must make the best of it, and be thankful on those days when some actual progress was made.

Mosquitoes, as I have said, were a great subject here. We had opportunities to study them. WithMacbethin hand as a convenient weapon., I nightly reduced the horde, but these

Stubborn spearsmen still made goodThe dark impenetrable wood.

Stubborn spearsmen still made good

The dark impenetrable wood.

The heat grew sickly sometimes at night, and the cabins were black with flies and mosquitoes alike. To sleep there was to be slowly suffocated, let alone the folly of sleeping among man-eaters. An outdoor faith was forced upon me, and yet the deck was no real enclosure from the enemy: the faith would endat four or so in the morning, a time of day to which I was becoming as accustomed as of old, and when the riverside gave off a smell which I remembered noticing in the trench regions east of Béthune. Then, still hopeful, I would face my cabin and soon after swathing myself in the brief sheets of the bunk would be asleep. That interim unrecognized, here I was awake again in a world where chisels chip paint and steam-driven machines tip tons of coal. The great buckets were now being strung over to railway vans, which were shunted duly by a small engine. Winches clattered and wrenched, the clanking engine bustled almost ludicrously up and down the wharf, and all seemed in a great hurry, but the hurry was only on the surface. The yellow river, the coal-dust, the glaring sun, the dockside streets and warehouses and of course the eternal mosquito began to play upon me. My body was in pain from the innumerable bites and want of rest, and generally I was in as low spirits as I could be.

The ship was daily haunted by newsboys, fruit-sellers, and others. The news was difficult to discover from the queer columns of short cabled messages, and yet we never sent the newsboy away unless, perhaps, our only means was in English coppers. Sixpences he (not unwisely) was willing to take. The fruit-sellers gave better value for sixpence, even though their open panniers seemed always liable to the predatory paws of the water police. The shoemaker with his motor tyre put pieces of it upon my shoes, grunting out a satisfaction with the job which I hardly shared. A thin gentleman with furs, puzzle boxes, and other cheap-jack gear was not much called upon though called at.

Two Englishmen came also, sellers of furs; one, of my own Division in France. They were very warm in their praise of Buenos Aires, and besides bringing good furs with them they brought good spirits.

Football flourished. In red-hot sunlight, we met the team of another ship. Grim determination was in the game and its afterthoughts; and by a happy accident my foot scored the first goal of our victory. It was counted unto me for righteousness. The form of address “Passenger” acquired a respectful significance. There was immediately arranged a return match. But

Antres et vous fontaines!

The hart desireth the waterbrooks; and so did we. Again, on such a summer afternoon, we went at it, upon the field we had hired for the ordeal. This time we lost, but still the blood of the team was up; theBonadventure’sfair name was in jeopardy. Again there was immediately arranged a return match for the following evening. We lost, and it was hotter still. This nevertheless cooled the ardour of the footballers, and did not finally ruin the reputation of S.S.Bonadventure.

The evening form of this game continued upon the original ground, but my connection, like Mead’s, soon declined. The main cause was that the ball, or Ball–its importance aboard requires the capital letter–flew off one evening as usual into the dock, but there by some conspiracy of wind and current sailed along at a merry rate until it was carried under the framework of piers upon which the coal wharf was built–a noisome place, a labyrinth of woodwork. Ifit stayed here, it was generally out of sight and beyond reach; if it was swirled out, it would go on out, into the middle stream, and doubtless into the Atlantic. We groped along the filthy piles of the tunnel, and the darkness was imminent; when the ball suddenly appeared, decidedly going out into the middle stream. At this crisis, Mead with a war-cry plumped into the evil-looking water and brought off a notable rescue.

Cricket would have seemed the more seasonable sport. Twice Mead and myself joined the Mission XI for grand matches in the suburbs, and said to ourselves, “In the midst of football we are in cricket”; but twice we met with disappointment, the rain choosing the wrong days altogether.

I had naturally observed silence over my journalistic life of the remote past, but one evening at the British Bar I was asked, was it not true that I was a relation of Kipling? and at the Mission “your book” was several times alluded to. It was, I think, taken for granted that being a penman I should bewriting upmy adventures, as though I were on a voyage to Betelgueux or Sirius. I was asked to recite some of my poems, also, by a lady, but I was churl enough to ask her pardon on that score. She evidently felt this the basest ingratitude. “Why? Why not give us a recitation? I’m sure you can.” I tried to explain that my attempts were frequently, almost invariably, of a meditative cast of mind, not suitable for the platform. At this she sniffed and I felt that my explanation was disgraceful in the highest degree.

Entertainment was not lacking there at the Mission. It was a hearty place. One evening Tich, the pride of theBonadventure, who in his uniform cut a mostsplendid figure, went into the ring and laid about him magnificently. Or there might be a concert, local talent obliging. A passenger ship’s varieties drew a large attendance both from the ships and the shore; there was much funny man, much jazz band, much conjuring, much sentimental singing–in fact plenty of everything which is expected at popular concerts, and every one departed with reflected pride. Mead and myself, however, quarrelled over the amount which I subscribed to the whip-round. It was that or nothing–I had but one coin; and its removal robbed us of our wonted refreshment. We walked somewhat moodily down the road to the docks, unsoothed by their thick coarse greenery, which the night filled with the incessant buzzing of crickets and a loud piping whistle perhaps from a sort of cricket also, while here and there a fire-fly went along with his glow-worm light.

We tried the cinematograph’s recreations, once or twice. How strong is habit! We could not settle down to these performances of single films; nor to the box-like halls. A cowboy film of eight acts comes back to my recollection from those evenings. It was full of miracles. The operator believed, like the hero, in lightning speed. The hero on horseback was far too speedy for the villain who dragged off the heroine into his car and did his best to break records. These heroes will one day assume the proportions, in the dark world, of the pleiosaurus in natural history.

But we had our reward. In a more expensive theatre, we foundThe Kid. We had come out to see a much trumpeted film of a bullfight–Mead for one set of reasons, I for another; but it was ofyesterday, and we had no difficulty in consoling ourselves. One Chaplin, we acknowledged, was better than many toreadors.

And then, we had a glimpse of the Carnival. In our wonted quarter of the town, that where the seafaring man mostly rested, it took the form of some processions of hobbledehoys and urchins, beating as their kind do on drums and things like drums. The next evening we took the same dreary cobblestone walk as usual, but did not limit ourselves to that. We took a tram, indeed, to more fashionable haunts and at last came into the great Avenida and all its garish illuminations; its paper ribbons were as multi-coloured as the lights, and, flung from the upper storeys of the hotels, in some places they were thick enough to form a fantastic and absurd cascade. Here the Carnival was in mid sprout. We got what we came for–a diversion.

The pavements, broader here than in the generality of the streets we knew, were chock-a-block with folks, the cafés overflowing, the towering hotels gleaming with bright dresses on every balcony, and all this was the accompaniment of the gorgeous procession that moved slowly along the highway. Its vehicles of every kind, but their kind hidden from passing observation by their curtains and festoons of flowers, trooped along in the unreal glare. Here, ladies of most aristocratic air came by, with the blackest of masks above the whitest of countenances; there was a girl in the dress of a bull-fighter, driving her own light carriage; next, a set of laughing “gipsies” apparently advertising a brand of cigarettes; then, a collection of men with Cyrano disguises and attempting Cyrano humour to the gods–

All these and more came flocking.

But the privilege of gazing unrebuked upon the profusion of beauty, upon raven hair and great deep-burning eyes, upon the pale cheeks of wintry moons, the privilege of hearing the disjointed music of the fu-fu bands and the verbal crackers of harlequins of the moment, was not without its points of misery. The pavements represented a scrum on the largest scale, in the forefront of one battering ram whereof Mead and myself were securely wedged in for an hour or two. In this state of things, the usual individual turned round to ask Mead “who he was pushing?”–the sense of his remarks being obvious though couched in another tongue. Unable to move the arms, and scarcely free to flicker the eyelashes, we were borne compressedly and gradually on, until at last we were beyond the main pleasure-ground; by this time even Mead had had enough of pleasures which we had noticed others than Englishmen taking seriously. We took our ease in our inn, and reflected.

The newspapers reported that the Carnival was declining year by year. Perhaps the reporter, like ourselves, had corns and was caught in the scrimmage.

I borrowed a Shakespeare from the second chaplain at the Mission to escape from what seemed the dullness of our stay in South Basin, Buenos Aires. Mead had taken over my own copy of the Tragedies, and by this time had most ofHamletandMacbethby heart, so that our conversation frequently ran by tags. Of Bicker we saw little. Highly favoured, he would depart on most afternoons to the English suburb, where he had friends; and it was impossible not to regard him, as he regarded himself, as a man of superior rank, who had personal friends in this town. Once or twice in the evenings, nevertheless, he came with us to our accustomed table in that convenient but inglorious place the British Bar; and while there, he did his best to annoy one of the waiters with the oft-repeated slur, “Yah, Patagonio,” or “You b— Patagonian Indian,” or “Patagonio no bonio.” The fellow bore it at first with grinning patience; but one evening suddenly danced with fury, and rushing out summoned the greasy little proprietor, who came in scowling and snarling, took stock of us–and went out again. The alleged Patagonian was after this understood to be meditating a fearful revenge.

At evening sometimes the autumn sun, going down, a golden ball, behind the great buildings, and dimmed with a calm transition in the distance of that timeof day, removed my mind entirely from these and similar matters. An incomplete state of recollection, the more delightful to me from the strangeness of my temporary lodging, a presence felt but understood, a trouble in the pool whose surface bore the evidence of neither windwave’s running V nor bubble subtly appearing, took hold of me. Unable to remain aware of this confused echo long, without endeavouring to resolve it into communicable notes, I would soon find myself counting up memories as plainly as the fellow on the other side of the water was tallying the brown hides discharged into river barges by the paddle-wheeler. It was this verging upon a vision, unknown but longed for, and this inevitable falling back to known fact, which perhaps depressed me and made the time pass all too slowly here.

The rattle of the cranes, so often interrupted, was all the more welcome; the news of progress began to assume a better look; the incidents of life in dock, from the angry officiousness of the wharf manager, a crude foreigner, to the arrival of passenger boats and the swarm of gay-coloured families to and from them, became worth attention again. Food, so interesting at sea, lately become a burden, was reinstated; boiled eggs for instance were welcomed, after a régime of steaks, by the whole saloon. The whole saloon–no; Bicker, the man about town, refused his with a criticism, likening them to plasticine. With his put-and-take top, the youthful-spirited chaplain came more often, and often expressed his regret that we were soon to be away.

Orders were not yet forthcoming. It was feared, and often urged upon me with reference to my late troubles, that theBonadventurewould be sent up theriver to Rosario. I made a great mistake about Rosario and other possible destinations up the river, their names suggesting ancient Spanish romantic traditions to me: I mentioned my feelings to the assembled saloon. All the romance there, it seemed, was hidden behind a cloud of patriarchal mosquitoes.

The discharge of coal was at last over and done. The day following, Hosea sent for me and told me that the ship would shift at two, and perhaps–for all he knew–straight out to sea. I told him I should not be clinging to the stones of Buenos Aires at that hour.

But it was not our fate to depart altogether that day. Instead of going out into the open water, when at three the pilot and the tugs brought theBonadventureout from her Stygian berth at Wilson’s Wharf and down to the outer port, we now turned into an arm of the docks called Riachuelo. There, between a steel sailing-ship which gave no sign of life and a great black mechanical ferry or transporter, and further–there was no doubt about this–beside a guano works, we were tied up for a time as yet undefined.

The change was, partly on account of the neighbouring industry, “uncertain if for bale or balm.” I felt that we might even miss the lively sight of the passenger boats coming and going, and all their gilded press of friends and acquaintances about the landing-places; their tiers of bright lamps at night rounding the bend between us and the Roads. Perhaps the youths would no longer come by with their ship’s stores of macaroni, their jars of wine and panniers of onions and other vegetables; nor the lighters, with their crews glaring in unwashed andunchallenged independence in the whole world’s face, and their yellow mongrels scampering up and down the decks. The British Bar with the Patagonian Indian and the giant but amicable cockroaches would be too far away. However, we had the prospect of other monotonous distractions if not those. For there were evidence of benefit; green swampy groves, a sort of common with ragged horses at feed, and farther off the irregular line of a landscape not unlike summer’s horizon, gave the eye a pleasant change. Football would now be possible on grass and not a dust-heap. Sailor-town was on the opposite bank–a miscellany of ship’s chandlers’ offices, gin palaces, untidy trams, and nondescript premises.

The gangway was lowered, the donkeyman was seen at once going ashore with his mandoline, and we ourselves of the football persuasion followed with the Football. We returned in time to see the steward’s patience nominally rewarded with a small yellow catfish, who showed the greatest wrath at the trick which had been played on him, stiffening his poisonous fin and actually barking.

The next morning, despite the odour of the guano, was a better one than those in South Basin. For all its mud, the river looked cheerful; its many small craft, as yellow as vermilion or as green as paint could make them, lying quiet or passing by, caught the early sun. Even the dredgers’ barges, with their hue of Thiepval in November, showed the agreeable activities of a new day, and breakfast.

But we were not to be long in Riachuelo. About midday it became known that theBonadventurewas to leave before evening for Bahia Blanca, a three days’ journey to the south. The further orders,what cargo was to be received, and where it was to be delivered, were as yet withheld. Phillips, the chief engineer, was disappointed at this departure–his son would have been able to meet him in town within a day or two. To leave a message for him in charge of the Mission, he proposed that I should go with him in the afternoon, and that I was happy to do.

Meanwhile, awaiting dinner, we strolled along the waterside. It was sultry and glaring. We passed shipping of all sorts and conditions, old junk, discarded masts, boilers eaten through with rust, anchors imbedded in the ground, even a torpedo-boat gone to ruin, nameless; saw an incredibly old man with his beard done in a knot, whittling away at a piece of wood in the sun, tribes of mongrel dogs, and the casual population of the tin town which rambled here drowsy and malodorous, down to the water’s edge. The purple trumpet-like flowers that climbed the ragged woodwork seemed not more gay, nevertheless, than the young men and women who crowded to and from the transporter between this shipping parish and Buenos Aires.

From Buenos Aires itself, what but the hastiest impression could I take away with me? Melancholy it was to me to find so little apparent survival of the town as it must have been in its first centuries. My last walk did not altogether revise my picture of bar-tobacconist-bar-tobacconist; of powdered Venuses, over-dressed Adonises; of shops without display, receding obscurely; of cinematograph theatres crudely decorated with notices of rank buckjumping “dramas”; of innumerable tramways, here, there and everywhere; of green sunny courtyards at theend of passages between dismal shuttered façades; of trees with drooping foliage before flat roofs with flimsy chimneys–mere drain-pipes–at the top of high white dead walls; of bonneted policemen with their hands on their swords; of boys teasing horses; of whizzing taxis, and dray-horses fighting for a start on the inimical cobbles; of pavements suitable for tight-rope walkers; of the power of money; of living for the present, or the day after to-morrow; of a straw-hat existence. But I must admit that my scantiest notions of a town refer in temper to the quality of its second-hand bookshops.

So then, the ship being under orders to leave at four, soon after five the port authorities held a sort of roll-call amidships, and the pilots and the tugs arrived. The port authorities consisted of a young officer who looked likely to trip himself up with his beautiful sword, a lanky humorist, with sergeant’s chevrons, at his heels, and one or two other attendants. Soon after these vigilants had gone down the ladder again, theBonadventurebegan to move, and the bags of guano were a tyranny that is overpast. That channel into which I had been pleased to see theBonadventurecome I now watched her leave without remorse. The dredgers fall behind our course, the fishing-boats, and the perches of the sea-eagles. We met a breeze, surprisingly strong, which made even these slothful waters choppy. The sun went out in a colder sky, beyond the outlines of the great chimneys and transporters; and presently a line of dwindling lights, surmounted by one or two more conspicuous, stood for Buenos Aires. Meantime the wind blew hard and loud. When the first pilot went to make his way home, the tug coming up for himwas flung against the sides of the ship two or three times, and he was obliged to jump from his swaying rope ladder, “judging the time.” We ran on, with many red and yellow lights flashing around our track. The taste of coal-dust, let alone the feel of it as a garment, made me wish the wind an early good night.

There were differences of opinion about the precise distance between Buenos Aires and Bahia Blanca, in which it seemed the authority of the steward was not accepted. Travelling light, however, theBonadventureseemed little concerned about fifty miles either way. A current assisted in this turn of speed.

It was enjoyable to be out of sight of land once more, in a morning coolness, with seagulls piping in our wake; although they were yellowish waters that were rolling by. The second pilot went down to the motor boat due to take him home; the blue peter was hauled down when he had gone; and we hurried south. A dove came by, alighted; presumably our course lay at no great distance from the coast: a sail, a smoke-trail here and there dappled the circling scene. The sailors and apprentices set to, cleaning the holds in preparation for a cargo of grain–a black job. Bucketful after bucketful was flung over the side, the wind playfully carrying off the murky clouds. I washed clothes at a safe distance.

It was at this time or near it that an addition to my daily course was made. So long as theBonadventurewas at sea, the ship’s officers received cocoa and sandwiches by way of supper. To this edible privilege I could not imagine that I had the slightest claim, nor in fact was I anxious to be elected; but when the steward out of his magnanimity conferredit upon me I naturally received it with thanks.

The cocoa indeed was not to be lightly considered when ten o’clock found me, as it mostly did, with Mead on his night watch. The first night after we had left the mouth of the Plate, his mind was full of one matter. Before we had been released from Wilson’s Wharf, acting on the advice of the vendor, he had bought a fifth share in a lottery ticket. With this qualification, he began to paint his future in all the colours of £1,166–his possible, or as he wished to be assured, his probable, harvest. A small schooner, in the enchanted atmosphere of his pipe, seemed already to own him master; she would trade for long years of prosperity in South Sea islands, where uncultivated fruits and beauties abound. While we agreed on the plan, the moon went down; multitudes of stars shone out, and meteors at moments ran down the sky. A broad glow to starboard revealed the nearness of the coast. Everything was most still, except perhaps Mead’s spirit. There might be some hitch. But no, he felt his luck was in; he was sure, something told him that he carried the winning number.

The day’s entries in my diary now began thus, or nearly: “Need I say it again–One mosquito, etc., but I killed him; then, one mosquito, etc.” The persistence of these self-satisfied hovering devils was puzzling, for the mornings dawned almost bitterly fresh, and the breeze was always awake. Its direction had now laid, during the night, a carpet of glittering coal-dust along the passage outside the door; and the day being Sunday, which should by all precedent be marked by an increased radiance in the outward as well as in the inward man, it was impossible to keepclean. For the inward man, I once again took refuge in Young’sNight Thoughts, which, despite the disapproval of Mr. Masefield’s Dauber, I will maintain to give room and verge enough to annotate, parody, wilfully miscomprehend, skip, doze, and indulge what trains of thought whether ethical, fanciful, or reminiscent.

A gentler air, a bluer sea, a sandy coast in view. There was something lyrical about the “dirty ship” as with the buoyancy of her cargoless holds she fleeted to the south. Mead, his future resplendent with £1,166 and its South Sea bubble, seemed to feel this rhythmical impulse. Every now and then, in his consultations, he would break forth into singing, but seldom more than a fragment at a time; now it was “Farewell and adieu to you, bright Spanish Ladies”–a grand old tune–now “Six men dancing on the dead man’s chest.” But most, he gave in honour of his native Australia a ballad of a monitory sort with a wild yet sweet refrain. It began

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