To see you promenade the deckGives me a pain in my ruddy neck.
To see you promenade the deck
Gives me a pain in my ruddy neck.
Sparks had been unwise, again, in mentioning his pleasure in the slaughterer’s trade, and past experience. Mead did not miss the opportunity.
If the blood of sheep could make you glowCome and dare to make mine flow.I am no hero out for gore,I had the wind up in the war.
If the blood of sheep could make you glow
Come and dare to make mine flow.
I am no hero out for gore,
I had the wind up in the war.
Names and menaces came fast and furious.
... Flowers there’ll be which you won’t smell,You swob, you’ll learn a lot in hell.Had I been called half these thingsSome one or I’d be wearing wings.
... Flowers there’ll be which you won’t smell,
You swob, you’ll learn a lot in hell.
Had I been called half these things
Some one or I’d be wearing wings.
This effusion, laboriously printed inCapitalsso that its effect on the recipient should be the more demoralizing, headedThe Answer, and signed in characteristic fashionNulli Secundus, was to have been handed to its theme in the saloon. Eventually, Mead rejected that as perhaps contrary to tradition, and handed it in at the porthole aforesaid; but its object, the arranging of “a little bout,” was not achieved.
A literary epoch began. Bicker, our authentic poet, and not an opportunist like Mead, had been proposing a magazine for some little time past. On a Saturday afternoon, he decided to produce the first number for the Sunday following. The circulation was to be six: there being no aids aboard such as the clay or hectograph, each copy had to be written by hand throughout. Into this labour I, with the editor’s satirical comments upon my profession, was at once pressed. Material in prose and verse was given to me, and filled three foolscap pages in a close handwriting. I copied out these contributions, which scarcely stood the test of a second reading, six times: and was rewarded with a vile headache. I hoped the magazine would succeed, but only once. Bicker, like a born editor, copied out his portion without feeling any the worse, and his appreciation of the fare which he was providing grew with every copy.
The final details, however, delayed the appearance of theOptimistuntil Sunday afternoon. Bicker said in self-protection that no Sunday paper is available in the provinces before breakfast. When theOptimistwas published, there was no question of its being welcomed. It was of the familiar kind, which seems to satisfy enough readers to satisfy its promoters. A fable in a dialect generally considered a skilful parody of the Old Testament, “Things we want to know,”reports of the football season at Buenos Aires, Answers to Correspondents, a poetical libel beginning “It is an ancient Mariner,” and much besides, principally from the editor’s pen, formed the bulk of it. There were columns devoted to Amusements, and Advertisements of the principal business heads aboard. A copy made its way aft to the bosun and his sea-dogs–the gentlemen who were announced in it as the Chain Lightning Gang. Sitting on the poop in Sunday neatness, they gave it a good reception. The bosun himself had been ill, but was better after reading it.
With some copies a supplement was issued, and collectors will not need to be advised to acquire these rarities. This supplement was a page of drawings, by Mead, of common objects at Buenos Aires. The obese laundress, Mme. Maria Maggi, was perhaps conspicuous among these (on another page a report was printed that she had died, leaving £300,000 to her lean charioteer). The watchman, with a label giving one of his typical blasphemies, “Got-a-d— b—” this, that, and the other, was seen at full length. The altercation between the manager of the wharf (attached to a balloon letteredYou.are.using.my.Buckets. I.am.the.Bandoliero) and Meacock, smoking as always and nevertheless replyingYou.Big.Stiffore rotundo, was chronicled. And considering who the artist was, and his recent poem, it was not surprising to find a malevolent caricature of one still with us.
One afternoon, sleeping within my cabin, I heard the mate altering the ship’s course with “Hard a starboard” and so on, and feeling this to be out of the ordinary I went out to see why. A mile off there was something in the sea, which the apprentices declared to be a small boat with a flag flying. I felt the lightof adventure breaking in upon the murky tramp. But as we drew nearer, the castaway proved to be nothing more than a buoy, and visions of picking up a modern Crusoe faded suddenly. The ship was put back to her course.
The breeze ahead grew stronger, and in the early morning, the sky being quite grey, a slate-grey sea was running in sizable crests and valleys and tossing the spray high aboard. “The devil’s in the wind already.” “And the bread.” The cook’s reputation was gone at a blow. He, like a wicket-keeper, did well without any notice taken; lapsed a moment, and every one was barking. It seemed he had been unfortunate in the yeast supplied him. There were sallies of wit: “Now’s the time to pave the alley,” “Pass the holystone,” over this doughy circumstance. For some time, in the words of the Cambridge prize poet, the bread “was not better, he was much the same,” and ship’s biscuits became unexpectedly favourite. They were stiff but excellent eating; would have rejoiced the soul of my late general, the noted “Admiral” H., alias “Monty,” alias “The Schoolmaster,” and other aliases. Can he ever be forgotten for those diurnal and immortal questions of his, “Did your men have porridge this morning?” and “Why did you not order your cook to give your men duff to-day?” It wanted little imagination to picture him under his gold oak leaves nibbling with dignity at a ship’s biscuit and saying, “Very good, Harrison, uncommonly tasty–I shall recommend them to Division.”
The sea presently under a brightened sky grew to a rare intensity of blue, that was at its most radiant in the overswirl of water sheered by the bows. Gallantenough theBonadventurelooked in the marvellous expanse, having by dint of much early-morning swilling and swabbing thrown the worst of her nighted colour off; but almost every day I heard bad wishes to the designer of her, though on the score of utility, not the pleasure of the eye. My fancy of a full-rigged ship bowing over these rich seas was usually corrected with reference to “wind-bags”–not folks like me, but ships.
Then there came rain, drizzling on doggedly hour after hour. The drops hung on the railings like autumn dews on meadow fences. One of the effects of such weather was that the cat, who had been induced after all to make the trip, was driven to look about for a quiet, sheltered corner, and having found one, was driven to look again. Finally she chose the chart-room and settled upon the chart. South America was sodden with rain and black with paw-marks when the second mate looked in, and that cat, black or not, would have passed over, but for her being shortly to become a mother. That fact also accounted for her worried expression, voice, and manner, which I had misread as symptoms of sea-sickness.
And still the dull and rainy sky. When I went out one morning, the mate leaned over the bridge rail and said, “You’re the blooming Jonah! Now look at that damn’d smoke.” I looked at the customary coaly vapour flying aft, but was unenlightened. “You Jonah,” he went on, “you’ve brought this wind, and it’s carrying the cinders all over my new paint.” Now, I suspected the cat was the cause of the trouble; but my guilt was urged by the chief also, as a current of a mile an hour was setting us back.
Not only the mariners of theBonadventurelived in suspense, awaiting the football results.
“That fellow was funny this morning.”
“Yes, you could see the excitement in his lamp.”
“What was this?”
“Why, about four the So-and-so passed us, and the mate on watch signalled us: ‘Do you know the result of Tottenham v. Cardiff City?’ So we sent back that Cardiff had won but we didn’t know the score. This fellow sent back: ‘Oh, well done, Cardiff!’ but he was that excited, he could scarcely hit out a letter right. His first message had been–well, beautifully sent; now his lamp was all over the place.”
“We could almost see him dancing about the bridge!”
Spragg, the assistant steward, sometimes came to swab my cabin. He had been in a battalion of the 38th Division, when my own Division relieved them in January 1917 on the Canal Bank at Ypres; and he had been like myself a witness and a part of the mammoth preparations of that summer, which ended in such terrible failure. His manner and humorous way of telling tales beside which the “Pit and Pendulum” appears to me an idle piece of pleasantry, unspeakably brought back the queer times and places which we had both seen. I saw him in my mind’s eye, keen and frank, standing behind his kit with “headquarters company”–those amiable wits–at Elverdinghe Château (Von Kluck’s rumoured country seat, for it was never in my time bombarded); or with pick or shovel stooping along in the Indian file of dark forms towards that vaunted, flimsy breastwork, Pioneer Trench at Festubert.
But still my share of Mead’s watch was my best recreation. Our talk was disturbed but little; perhaps by the signals of some ship passing by, or by some unusual noise, such as one evening we heard with a slight shock. A succession of rifle-shots, it sounded; and the cause was evidently some great fish departing by leaps and bounds from the approach of that greater one theBonadventure. The interruption over, he would go on with plans for a future in Malay. “This life,” he would say, “is killing me.” He was quite as healthy, mind and body, as any man aboard. I liked his occasional rhapsodies, in which the smell of burning sandalwood and of cotton trees, the clearings in sinister forests with the jewelled birds, the rough huts, the dark ladies with the hibiscus flowers in their hair, and the lone white settler (ex-digger Mead) thinking his thoughts in the evening, all played their part. He wished the world back in 1860; it had outdistanced him.
It blew from the north-east strong against us always, and we were travelling more slowly. The sun returned, however, among those ethereal white clouds which to perfection fulfil the poet’s word “Pavilions”; we ran on into a dark sea ridged and rilled with glintering silver, yet seemed never to reach it, remaining in a bright blue race of waters scattered, port and starboard, with white wreaths, waters leaping from the heavy flanks of the ship in a seethe of gossamer atoms and glass-green cascade.
The immediate scene was one of painters and paint-pots, and linen flying on the lines. “This wind’s playing hell with my curls,” said one or two. The matter with me was, that my room was almost untenable. I opened the port at my peril; to do so was to entertain billows of coal-dust from the bunkers below. White paint, the order of the day, whether flat white or white enamel, made progress about the ship by an amateur dangerous, too.
The apparition of the steward under the evening lamps dressed in a smock–he was of ample make–and brandishing a paint-brush, was generally enjoyed. In fact, several spectators came to take a careful look at one who was too often denominated “the mouldy-headed old b—.”
A more tenuous apparition was heard of, as we ran north. Whether a hoax or not, I do not know.My first information of it came in the form of a drawing by the apprentice Tich, showing the ship’s bell being struck by a hand who never was on land or sea, and the apprentice Lamb leaving his hold of the wheel in horror, and even Mead shaking all over and gaping. A poem appended said that the facts were what the picture made out. TheBonadventurewas so new a ship–her old name, showing her war origin, still stood on the bells and the blue prints in the chart-room and elsewhere–that there seemed every likelihood against the story being the truth. I asked Mead, and he told me what he maintained to be true.
On the first watch, the voyage before this, he had gone into the wheel-house for a word with the apprentice at the wheel. A shadow, indistinct, yet leaving impressed on his recollection a human shape, slipped suddenly past the wheel-house windows, softly rang the bell once, and swiftly departed. The frightened boy drops the wheel, lets the ship swing round completely out of her course: Mead runs out, but there is nothing to be seen. He sends for the two A.B.’s who might have come up on the bridge, but they say that they have not done so, nor indeed would they come without object. The firemen, if they have to communicate with the bridge, never come higher than the stairway to the bridge deck, and it proved that no one of them had been there. By the wheel-house clock, it was noticed that the precise time of the visitation was 10.15, an hour not hitherto regarded by ghosts, I believe, as preferable to midnight.
And more. Still imagining that some practical joker was at work, Mead brought a big stick with him on his watch. This was no remedy. The ghost appeared again, at much the same hour, on severalnights; it was remarked, mostly when the apprentice who first saw it had the wheel. Trying to stop so strange a bell-ringer, Mead was met by a sharp flap of wind, from a dead still night, and the glimmering shadow was gone to the air. All this happened north of the line.
This was Mead’s story, but the boy’s seemed to support it; and when in the shadows of the bridge deck, earnestly and without trimming, he told it me, it seemed very true. I glanced about me occasionally after hearing it.
The wind continued, but the heat was becoming intense. Painting went on like the wind. The derricks received a terra-cotta coat and their trellis work looked an amenity, against the general whiteness. The fervour for redecoration even affected me: was not my hutch to share the common lot? But, though the walls needed it, the matter was postponed, on account of the limited accommodation.
The newspaper was to appear again, but its circulation was being cut down. One copy only would now have to serve the public. It was passed to me, and my aid with paragraphs requested. I could not regret the reduction made in the number, even though if that one copy was lost,
We knew not where was that Promethean torchThat could its light relumine.
We knew not where was that Promethean torch
That could its light relumine.
Bicker, the editor, instead of reviewing his admired literature in his journal, lengthened breakfast by doing so thereviva voce. He was all for Bœotian situations, and, on occasion, his cold re-dishing was tactfully ended by a relief conversation on religion, the keynote of which was in the unironically meantremark: “He was darned religious, but he was a darned good man.” I began to know a certain captain, from talk during the voyage, almost by sight; one who “went in for Sunday Schools, and put on a crown of glory as soon as he reached Wales,” but once away again, it appears that “he fell.”
Another matter for the columns of theOptimistwas obtruded upon the breakfast table. It was a conundrum:
West was the wind, and West steered we,West was the land. How could that be?
West was the wind, and West steered we,
West was the land. How could that be?
The answer, apart from such evasions as “You were entering port,” was that West was the name of the helmsman. It was understood that the poem went on in this strain, but the chief’s protest came in time.
The cat (last heard of in disgrace), which was under the especial care of the mess-room boy, was no doubt pleased hereabouts by our reaching the regions of flying-fishes; but nevertheless continued, on the gospel truth of Kelly, to take a chair in the engineer’s mess at the critical hours of twelve and five. I myself saw her there at twelve once or twice, judging the time, no doubt, by the parade of table-cloth and cutlery.
Without any abatement of the stuffy heat inside our cabins, we ran into a rainy area. The sea was overcast, and the showers splashed us well. Meanwhile, the wind had veered round more to the east, and besides bringing the grey vapours of rain tumultuously towards us thence, set the spray flying over the lower decks and kept us on the roll. Blowing on the beam, however, it seemed to please Phillips,ever anxious about the hourly ten knots, which seemed too high an expectation. Squalls threatened; it was a tropical April mood. The rolling influenced my sleep, in which I fancied myself manipulating the airiest pleasure-boats, overcrowded with passengers who refused to sit down, on an angry flooded river.
The peaceful disposition of the four apprentices began to weigh upon Mead’s mind. A very happy and orderly set they were, although the currentOptimistcontained an illustrated article on the bosun’s tyranny, as:
“Yousetake them two derricks for’ard.”
“Yousejes’ pick up that ventilator, you flat-nosed son of a sea-cook.”
The drawings of the well-known walrus head under the antique, unique grey (néwhite) one-sided sugar-loaf hat, were admirable. But to proceed. The four boys were of the best behaviour, occasionally, indeed, laughing or playing mouth-organs at unpopular hours, or even after the nightly exit of the cook making flap-jacks, otherwise pancakes, from his properties in the galley. When I joined Mead on his watch, one Sunday evening, he began to “wonder what the boys are coming to.” They were not like the boys of his time. He delved into his own apprentice autobiography, and rediscovered an era, a blissful era of whirling fists, blood, and booby traps.
A day followed remarkable for the weather. A swell caused the ship to roll with a will all day, but, as was expected in the doldrums, the wind slackened. After a few hours of this lull, there was a piping and groaning through all the scanty rigging that the steamer owned, and from farther out to sea thegrey obscurity of violent rainstorm, much as it had done on our way south, bore down upon us. Soon the ship was cloaked close in a cloud of rain pale as snow, which flecked the icy-looking sea, veined white alongside us, with dark speckling bubbles. Then it was time to sound the whistle, and its doleful groan went out again and again (the wind still varying its note from a drone to a howl) until the fiercer sting of the rain was spent, and distance began to grow ahead of the ship. This storm lacked thunder and lightning; and yet, when Sparks invited me to listen to his “lovely X-s,” there was a continuous and furious rolling uproar in the phones. Then, as strange again, as if at a nod that din came to a sudden stop, leaving in the phones a lucid calm in which ship-signals rang out clear.
At sunset of a day which washed off the new paint as soon as (in the intervals) it had been put on, a thin red fringe glowed along the horizon, making me long for green hills and white spires; at night, the stars from Southern Cross to Charles’s Waggon were gleaming, but the sea lay profoundly black, and upon it all round us came and went glory after glory of water-fire. The next day, however, it rained in the same dismal style, and the sun’s eclipse and the passing of Fernando Noronha were but little heeded. I was called a Jonah by every one.
A mollyhawk, that evening, created some excitement. He first spent some time in flying on an oval course round the ship, for his recreation, it looked. His beautiful curves must have pleased him as they did me, for he persuaded (or so it appeared) another mollyhawk to make the circuit with him. Meacock and myself heard one of these strike against the wirelessaerial, and thought that it would have scared them away; but no, a few minutes later we heard a croaking and a flapping while we stood in the lee of the wheel-house, and there was a mollyhawk. He had struck some low rope or fixture. He was prevented by his webbed feet from rising again, and I had fears for his future which were by no means necessary; for Meacock followed him, an awkward but speedy walker, down to the lower bridge deck, and, fearing the swift white stabbing bill, waiting his chance, suddenly caught at his nearest wing and launched him into the air. If his speed could show it, that bird was relieved.
This incident was a welcome verification of some of the saloon’s bird anecdotes; and though it was nearly dark and the bird was only aboard for two or three minutes, his release was watched by a very good gathering, representative of engineers, firemen, the galley, sailors, and apprentices.
Whilst thou by art the silly Fish dost kill,
Perchance the Devils Hook sticks in thy Gill.
Flavel’s New Compass for Sea-men, 1674.
I must have made a good many references here and there to the steward, old Mouldytop, and it occurs to me that he deserves a paragraph to himself. Of this ship, whom her most faithful lovers called a dirty ship, with her short funnel pouring a greasy smoke over her graceless body when even coal-dust rested–of this grimy tramp, playing a sufficient part in the world’s daily life, rolling and lurching up and down oceans with fuel or foodstuff, thousands of tons at a time, it may be safely said that the steward was the feature. In theOptimistit was evident that he as an inspiration excluded almost every other. In the round of day and night, should he himself be unseen for a time, his voice would generally claim your notice; if conversation took on dark and prophetic tones, it was, for a ducat, some restatement of the ancient’s wickedness, and a realization of the strength of his position against all the world. For behind Mouldytop was the power of Hosea.
The steward was built somehow after the shape of a buoy. It was Ireland, and not Scotland, that his ancestors had left; but there was a doubt about his own dialect. It was, and it was not, plain English.His bulbous, melancholy face was topped with grey hairs, but those he hid under his faded brown skull-cap. Forty-nine years, one understood, had Mouldytop been at sea; and before that, the veil of mystery was thin enough to show him in his first stage, a batman in the Army. This fact led him to deprecate modern warfare, “It’s all science, Mister,” and those who fought it; he claimed to have been bloodedfightingin some corner of the desert with spear-brandishing multitudes. At the same time, he reserved his reminiscences; for the refined insult, “You old soldier,” needed no encouragement.
He seldom grew cheerful. I suppose that he was happiest when some one (no doubt with serpent tongue) asked how his cold was. Then, his roar softened into a resigned murmur, as he recorded that it was as bad as ever; that six bottles of his own medicine taken regularly had not cured him. This was a pleasure that he shared with the author of one of the most melodious English songs, and it seems to be prophetic of his appearance–
Welcome, folded arms and fixed eyes,A sigh that piercing mortifies,A look that’s fastened to the ground,A tongue chained up without a sound,
Welcome, folded arms and fixed eyes,
A sigh that piercing mortifies,
A look that’s fastened to the ground,
A tongue chained up without a sound,
as of his imaginative affections in his sombre cell–
A midnight bell, a parting groan!These are the sounds we feed upon;Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley,Nothing’s so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.
A midnight bell, a parting groan!
These are the sounds we feed upon;
Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley,
Nothing’s so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.
Let but a sailor apply to him at the wrong hour–or even the right hour–for tobacco, and his indispositionwas gone in a second; his tongue was unchained. The busy mockers grinned. “He’d tell Davy Jones he’d been to sea before him.”
In the Argentine ports he was in excellent voice. Did a native shoemaker come aboard with his repair outfit, or a seller of fruit with his panniers, and did any one propose to deal with these “Dagoes,” out skipped our old friend, bellowing: “Too much, man; what,” (crescendo) “d’ye think we pick up money in the streets?–I wouldn’t have your blasted country for all the blasted money there is in it.” The charges, I am bound to add, fell down quickly, while the old watchman standing by observed with a respectful grin, “You a good man!”
The advance of age was a sore point with Mouldytop. Consequently, it was one that was brought to his notice as often as it could be effective. One evening, some one told him he was too old to play football. “Too old, mister?” he bawled; “Too old!–why, give me that blasted ball,” and he stood there in a prodigious rage, his eyes flashing, his fists knotting. “Too old!”–His calenture ceased suddenly; there was a tug on his fishing line. Up came a yellow catfish. Never have I perceived a livelier disgust than the look showed which he cast upon this victim. It seemed to blame the catfish personally for not being a rock salmon.
So Mouldytop regarded animated nature; which regarded him as a man whose duties implied opportunities. “I’m a poor man, mister.”–“The old son of a gun says he’s a poor man. You old liar, you’ve got streets of houses, you know you have.”
Some one who knew him at home was strongly of opinion that he was less terrible by his own fireside:that there was a fellow creature under whose guidance he roared like any sucking dove. It might be. Indeed, it was my impression that it could hardly be otherwise. I thought I noticed a certain caution even in his attitude to the large-bosomed laundrywoman who took the ship’s orders at Buenos Aires; and his comment onhercharges had been of the weakest.
We crossed the line at six in the morning, and in drizzling rain. There was not much comment, except upon the rain; the good thing about the damp cloudy weather was that we were spared the more furious heat, though the atmosphere had been oily and sultry. With the steamy clouds swarming about us I could picture a past life hereabouts which might justly have aroused man’s wrath; the sailing days, when to take advantage of whatever brief breeze might visit the sleepy doldrums, the sailors had to be constantly running aloft in the drenching mist, and afterwards lay down in their sweating glory-holes, in their soaked clothes, week after week.
The painting epidemic was not abated. Meacock and Mead camped out while they made their rooms as white as ivory. Mead looked charming in a round white cap, which he said a V.A.D. had given him. The steward, with his experience of every sort of ship under the sun, had developed an artistic eye: and, perhaps to relieve the whiteness, he decided upon a dado for the saloon, which hitherto had been from ceiling to floor done in white enamel. The dado was to be grained, in imitation of an actual wainscot. He began his solemn task, applying by way of groundwork a brimstone yellow and other sickly yellows which disturbed us at meals.
Meacock and Phillips varied these days with a discussionof firemen, whether white or coloured firemen were the more difficult to manage? Phillips was for his Africans, the excellent selection aboard at present forming a contrast with his memories of ne’er-do-wells, “doctors, remittance-men and all sorts,” of English birth. Meacock was soon hard at work describing with amusing mimicry a refractory negro, one of a number of Somalis who, hearing of labour troubles in England, did their best to be paid off in Africa. If they had succeeded, the ship would have been without firemen for her return voyage; so their efforts were resisted. The particular genius played the hand of “suicidal tendency.” Choosing a time when there were several people about the deck, he climbed somewhat slowly up the bulwarks and prepared with gestures to leap over the side. Meacock was a spectator of this piece of acting. The actor was pulled back with some violence, and “about half-past four we got the handcuffs on him. We would have had to turn the cook out of his room aft to lock this fellow up, but I didn’t want to do that, so I fastened him up with the handcuffs round a stanchion in the poop. I said, ‘And the rats will probably eat you before the morning’; and I really did expect to find him eaten by the morning; for there were some monsters in the poop.
“Next day, he began saying ‘Sick.’–‘Sick? Where are you sick?’–‘Sick all over.’ I had enough of this after a bit, and went and got the strongest black draught I’ve yet known. He didn’t want to drink it, and I said to him, ‘Now drink this up as quick as you can.’ And so he did. After that, whenever I looked in at the poop, this fellow would start waving his arms and hollering out. In fact, he wasmad; every time I got near him, he was mad. That black draught was not popular, I think. When we got to Cuxhaven, the medical authority put this man through a careful examination. ‘He’s no more mad,’ he said, ‘than you or I. He’s got a slight touch of rheumatics in the arm. But,’ he said, ‘when you get to Hamburg, you can satisfy yourself by sending this man to the asylum.’ We did. Two days–and he was back.”
Meacock’s laconic phrases were accompanied with grimaces which told the tale to perfection.
The atmosphere had grown so literary that Mead now took pencil and paper with him to his day watch as a matter of course. The pages of theOptimistwere beginning to look somewhat laboured. He determined to infuse a new vein. So a series of vividly coloured hoaxes came into existence, the first of which, a harem story, was too much in its full bloom for the editor’s acceptance. Not surprised, and not dejected, Mead offered “The Pirate,” and it duly appeared. These fictions ended, as did their successors, with a disillusionment:
“And then what happened?”“The film broke.”
“And then what happened?”
“The film broke.”
It was about the period of hoaxes–April 1 arrived. Bicker appeared at my cabin, where I was reading. “Meacock wants to see you.” I went. Bicker triumphed, and went his way convinced that he could beat the intellectual at his own game, as theOptimisthad already shown him he could.
A brighter sky and cooler wind came on. We were soon expected at Saint Vincent. The new moon and calmer waters brought one evening of strange waterybeauty. Towards his setting the sun had hidden himself in black clouds, whence he threw a silver light over sea spaces where sea and sky were meeting: he sank, and left the heavens like green havens, with these clouds slowly sailing through their utmost peace. The change soon came; the head wind brought pale grey turbulent days, with the ship playing at rocking-horses; over the head wind and rousing sea, the healthy sun at length dawned on the Sunday of our arrival at Saint Vincent. Sunday, without the voice of church bells or the sight of people going to worship, seemed no Sunday despite its idle hours: at least, the mood sometimes took me so.
The third engineer was acquiring no mean name as a cutter of hair, and I felt the cold after I had been to his open-air chair, near the engine-room staircase. While I sat to him, a characteristic of the mess-room boy was borne on the air from the chief’s room. It was his habit of replying hastily to any observation, “Yes, yes,” and this time the chief’s voice was heard: “Curse you, John, for a blasted nuisance.” “Yes, yes, sir.”
As the sun was stooping under the sea once more, land grew into sight far ahead; mountain or cloud? The mountainous coast was mocked indeed by great continents of cloud above, of its own grey hue. The wind blew hard, but at ten o’clock we were running in under the rocky pinnacles of Saint Vincent, against the blustering wind and the black racing sea. A light or two, chiefly from other steamers, told something of the port. The crescent moon, cloaked in a circling golden mist, was now near setting. We anchored and spent the night in quiet.
A mile or so from our anchorage, in the morning’sclear air, huddled the pink unsightly little town. At distance the heights of rock looked as unsubstantial as Prospero’s magic; the clouds that swam over them and across their steeps might have been solid, so phantasmal were those rocks. Not so with the stony masses overpeering the town; those in their iron-brown nakedness had the aspect of eternal immobility. The air was cold and lucent; the water halcyon blue. Several tramps with rusty black and red, and a sailing ship or two, lay around theBonadventure; barges of a rough old make clustered closer in to shore.
The invasion by natives began early. A dozen boats were tossing on the waves alongside, with woolly heads and upward eyes seeking what or whom they might devour, and quiet-footed rogues here and there on the decks were trying to sell matches, cigarettes, and red bead handbags. To their attempts, the politest answer was “No good.” “No caree?” Nobody seemed to care. Some of our firemen whose homes were here had gone ashore, with the air of men allowing their old haunts to share their glory.
Two lighters, coppered below, bearded with dark green weed, blundered alongside with bags of coal, and soon the gangs, a grimy and ragged collection, were getting the bags aboard, and the winch grumbling away. Yet it was now made known that we were not to pick up much coal here, but to proceed to Las Palmas for the bulk of our wants. This was unfortunate for the firemen who had gone home. All too soon the blue peter at half-mast and the blowing of the hooter recalled them.
Now, too, it was rumoured that our port of discharge was to be Emden, in Hanover: but of sucharrangements it became more difficult to feel assurance.
At midday we left. The most valued effect of our call at Saint Vincent was the receipt of some giant flying-fishes, which we got, one apiece, at tea. It was only by virtue of perseverance that a man could consume his ration. They were good, if dry.
If I were a Bewick, I have in mind a little tailpiece for this chapter. It would display, for the careful eye, the hatless Kelly filleting a flying fish, against the bunker hatch, for his friend the cat, who should be gazing up with cupboard love at her unshaven protector. The direction of the wind, in true Bewick style, should be implied in a sprinkling of coal-dust settling on the new paint of the “House.”
Glittering bright, northern weather outside. “Channel weather,” as it was described at breakfast. Whatever it might be, I was Jonah; fine, Jonah bringing a head wind; wet, Jonah bringing the wet; the ship rolling, it was Jonah’s additional weight on the port side that was doing it; and so on. The suggestion arose that the villain should be offered to the first whale sighted; but “We should have more respect for the whale,” said Phillips. Nor could I be sure that I was not blamed for all finger marks on the new paint. Meacock had been the eye-witness of one crime of mine of the sort. “If you touch that new enamel, your name’s mud”–and then theBonadventureobliged with a lurch sideways which left the impression of my hand in a most prominent place.
A more serious disgrace even befel me. Bicker and Meacock involved me in an argument, which was very quickly twisted into the direct question. “Who was England’s greatest man?” Some wretched ghost whispered Shakespeare, and Shakespeare I named. There was derision. Shakespeare! Nelson was the man. I was obliged to stick to my choice. “We’re talking about fellows thatDIDsomething for their country,” said Meacock, and I gave up. Bicker was once agaiain excelsisat this evidence of his superior understanding, which heseemed about to back up with physical argument. The shade of Nelson was vindicated; and then, I was informed that the second greatest man was Kitchener. I asked with innocent ignorance what he had effected of particular significance to our own lives? A photograph was produced of the earlier, more Achillean Kitchener, by way of settlingthatpoint.
Meeting Kelly in the galley one evening as I went along to make my cocoa, I was detained to hear of the wonders of Hamburg; and to watch Tich making a Cornish cake with ingredients mysteriously come by. Kelly was also of opinion that Hamburg’s high place among towns was due to a dancing saloon, where birthday suits were the fashion. “Flash society,” he said with admiration. I was sorry to hear that in the argument over great men I had missed the sight of one whale. Thus it is with the conversationally inclined: pursuing minnows of our opinion, we miss the leviathans of fact.
Days of reviving fine weather and swaying sea in hills and hollows, flinging proud manes of spray aloft for the sun to gild with rainbows again and again, gave place to one of skies generally overcast. Cold blues and greens came and went above us; the wind blew bleak over a steely sea. Land came into view on the port beam. Above it the clouds hung in dim phantasmagoria; a gleam of silver white below announced the coast, and, now sparkling, now dull, the lie of the land presented itself to our gaze. And this was Grand Canary. The mountain’s sides seemed chequered with forest; at its bases white villages glistened; and further on, a conical peak and headlands grew on the eye.
The sea had lately been crowded with porpoises,acre upon acre; and here another vast assembly crossed our track. To a credulous eye, as they leapt along, they might have painted the image of several sea serpents writhing through the waves. Above them wheeled a flock of gulls, intent I supposed on fishing.
The cathedral of Las Palmas appeared in mirage; then theBonadventurerounded the coast until the town came clearly before us. It was to the harbour just beyond the town that we were making. As we approached, boats came rowing ferociously towards us. One crew threw hooks carrying ropes over our bulwarks, and sent a man aboard. His skill would have done a spider credit; but to no purpose did he exert it, for the hooks were thrown back and the invader held prisoner on the bridge during Hosea’s pleasure. When we anchored, a fleet of boats sprang up around us, the chances of any individual one, of course, for the privilege of supplying us with a bum-boatman being smallish. Not long afterwards, the ship was swarming with miscellaneous merchants, and merchandise. Bananas, monkeys, canaries, cigarettes, cigars, photographs (chiefly improper), wicker chairs, matches, field glasses, parakeets and other useful articles were pressed upon every one aboard who could possibly be tackled. Some of the canaries were heard whistling loud and long, and yet Kelly found that the bird which he bought, a seeming musician, was mute.
No cabin was left unguarded. It was pointed out that one gentleman offered plain proof of knavery; on his right foot he wore an English boot, on the left a tennis shoe. They were all tarred with the same brush: “Worse than Port Said.” I do not thinkthey found much opportunity to enhance the reputation at our expense.
A tug, theGando, immediately re-named theCan-do, brought out our lighters of coal. At that signal, an interesting enterprise moved nearer to us. When bags are being slung over from hold to hold, a good deal of coal is dropped into the water; and so the enterprise consisted in a small barge, with the men, and material, for sending down divers to rescue the estrays. The diver was a huge fellow, curiously wearing a red tam-o’-shanter. He of course went down in a diving suit to survey the ocean; when he thrust his muzzle out of the water again, up would come at the same time his two bushel baskets; and as these were almost full of coal, presumably that department of salvage had its rewards.
After much criticized anxiety about winches and blocks and guys, our stevedore gangs began their work at good speed. I was again dressed up in a borrowed boiler suit for the duties of tallyman. The weather became burning hot. The coal-dust flew round in copious whirlpool. After an hour I was full of discomfort, and not to be distinguished from any of the coal heavers. Work continued in such hearty fashion that I gathered that it was piece work. The foreman was another giant, with such a belly on him that whenever he gesticulated–that was often–stamping his foot and brandishing his hands, that belly really and truly quaked. His voice was not a success. He would have roared like thunder, but only a feeble croaking left his snapping jaws.
By six our bunker coals had been put aboard, I discarded my honourable discomfort, my mask of grime, and my piratical appearance. The dealersin Constantinople canaries and cork soles withdrew. About the harbour of La Luz, the lights came out in the houses and aboard the shipping; the masts and yards stood out calm against a quiet coloured evening, the water rippled with no skirmish nor much voice to our sides. Beyond the towns, the mountains gloomed with the dreams of romantic journeys.
An hour or so afterwards, the welcome though broken melody of the anchor’s uprising heralded our departure. It had been a colourable interlude. I remember it best by a circular handed out by “Gumersindo Alejandro, Bumboat Business.” It ran through the rigmarole of desirable articles, a few of which I have named above, and concluded
“and all kinds of silks suitablefor presents and use.”
“and all kinds of silks suitablefor presents and use.”
A harsh description of presents? Perhaps.
By some mystical means, the mates had charmed away from our Las Palmas visitors at small cost or none an unusual supply of cigars and cigarettes. These brightened up the melancholy purser, who was now approaching the end of his employment. There were still, however, many things to amuse his leisure. How often the table talk had come to the subject of hell and its occupants! The latter seemed to be–after the landlubbers–shipowners, ship’s chandlers, ship’s tailors, and Customs men. Curious pictures were projected of notorious shipowners of the past, now compelled to wield the shovel next to the firemen late of their employ. As to the unfortunate Customs officials, witness A and B.
A. “... Yes, he quite got pally with this Customs fellow—?”
B (older than A, hastily interrupting): “I wouldn’t trust any Customs fellow, not if he’d got a pair of b— wings on.”
TheOptimistwent on its way with the weeks. Mead added “The Vamp” to his cabinet of tales of mystery; but the strain of discovering subjects apart from the steward and the galley was clearly growing. The prominence of food and meal times upon a tramp was described in a ballad published about this time.
Thoughts of a Romantic.
Ten thousand miles from land are we,Hark how the wild winds pipe!What grand reflection swells in me?This morning we’ll have tripe.For ever and evermoreThese billows rage and swell;O may I, through their angry roar,Not miss the breakfast bell.Here octopi, here great white whales,Here krakens haunt the Main;Mad mermaids sing–my courage fails–Here comes Harriet Lane.[2]There, far far down, what jewels lie,What corals, red enoughTo make this sauce[3]seem pale, which IAm wolfing with my duff!To think that one lone ship should thusRide o’er the greedy seas!Alas! what will become of usNow we’ve run out of cheese?[4]
Ten thousand miles from land are we,
Hark how the wild winds pipe!
What grand reflection swells in me?
This morning we’ll have tripe.
For ever and evermore
These billows rage and swell;
O may I, through their angry roar,
Not miss the breakfast bell.
Here octopi, here great white whales,
Here krakens haunt the Main;
Mad mermaids sing–my courage fails–
Here comes Harriet Lane.[2]
There, far far down, what jewels lie,
What corals, red enough
To make this sauce[3]seem pale, which I
Am wolfing with my duff!
To think that one lone ship should thus
Ride o’er the greedy seas!
Alas! what will become of us
Now we’ve run out of cheese?[4]
The northern spring came into the air. Scraps of the casual verse of one English poet who never tired of the year afield started up in memory now, where the pondered solemn music of others had no reverberation; and so for the rest of my voyage. The sea for a time grew intensely calm, the swell seeming to swim along under a mantle of pearl or quicksilver. The undulating surface stretched to the horizon, unbroken anywhere by restless foam; and over this calm lay the golden track to the setting sun. When presently a breeze ruffled this strange sleep, it was as though shoals of tiny fishes had everywhere risen to the surface; and in one or two places, those bubbling, flickering shoals were actual and not imaginary.
As if schooled by misfortune, Sparks now posted up in the port alleyway a statement of football results and tables; so that many bosoms aboard needed no longer to feel a heaving anxiety. A turtle lazily floated by, watched by many who could have welcomed him on deck; a whale passed, shouldering and spouting the brine; and shortly, as the midnight moon had portended, the dark green sea began to run in hilly ridges, sometimes sluicing the decks, and tilting theBonadventureto one side or the other. Grey rain-squalls flew over us now and then; but, considering our near approach to the redoubtable Bay, we were in excellent weather. The mate, however, was not one to take chances; and certain barrels, an anvil and a few other heavy movables were shifted from the windward side of the engines.
The steward and his adjutant had now little time certain in which to reform my room, so they fell upon it with paint brushes and “flat white” in vigorous style; it had been my hope to be allowed this labour, but I remembered my “Tom Sawyer,” where painting as a recreation was so truly valued. Mouldytop was seldom seen in these days without his pot andbrush; he went at it from dawn to midnight and then did overtime. My room was turned into a whited sepulchre, which is better than a sooted one, but as it was a sort of receptacle for coal-dust, which was coal grease withal, even when port, ventilator and door were all closed, it was to be feared,tamen usque recurret, it would be black again in a week.
We came into a region of ships, tramps like ourselves for the most part, and the less handsome oil-tankers also. Finisterre lighthouse shone kindly upon us. With a fair wind, the concourse of shipping dwindling away somewhat as we went on, we now entered the Bay. Our angles began to be anything but right, but it was much gentler weather than I had any reason to need. Fair as it was for us, save for the cinders that fell in showers amidships, the vessels running in the teeth of the weather were pitching with vigour. Grey and shrouded the sea met us in hills and valleys, with white ridges and flecked with foaming veins; as we went further into the famous corner, theBonadventurecould not but roll and lurch as though she liked it, and the waves were mountainous; yet out there we passed a fishing boat making beautiful weather of it.
The second mate, Bicker, could scarcely get any sleep; but not on any score of weather or discomfort. All his watch below, or most of it, one might see him standing at his sea chest with pen scratching away at the forthcomingOptimist. So sweet is journalism when wooed as a casual mistress. Shall I go on? No.
My trouble was not what to write but what to read. Even Young’sNight Thoughts, buried in annotationsreverent and irreverent, began to grow familiar beyond all reason.Pears’ Cyclopædia,Brown’s Nautical Almanac,The South Indian Ocean Pilot,Phrenology for All, and other borrowed books, were all at much the same stage. This ship was not the one recently reported in the newspapers in which the chief read poetry like a passion, the cook chewed Froude with his morning crust, and the cabin-boy needed the help of Hegel. I forget if those were the actual claims, but in any case that was another ship. About now, an accident happened to my Young. It seemed as if a Poltergeist had visited the spare cabin port during the night, for awaking I found my settee, and theNight Thoughtsthereon, waterlogged. Perhaps the heavy rain had been answerable for this, but I could not see how–my port was closed. Poltergeist had spared my novel, lying next to Young: evidently he thought that already watery enough. Young, immortal, made a surprising recovery.
Now, we were nearing the one country. It needed no drab island of Ushant with its lighthouse to tell me this; for hardly had I put down in my diary “Much milder,” when it became necessary to write “Much colder.” The tumults of the Bay were over and gone, and we were under a dun sky dropping rain which obviously belonged to the English Channel.
We swung round Ushant and became more aware of the ups and downs of navigation; these were less noticeable as we ran on. The prospect, or say circumspect of the day was narrowed in by dismal rainstorm, and once more it was a bleak amusement trying to make out the forms of ships through the foggy veils. The wind moaning, the rain splashing, measured out long hours, till all saddened into nightwith little to notice, save the gulls and divers whom such weather suited well. At any rate we were not unfortunate in our direction. TheHammoniagoing the other way with passengers showed us that by contrast.
The night elapsed, we came abeam of the Isle of Wight, which showed but indistinctly, though the day was cold and steady. Calm indeed lay the green Channel up which theBonadventurewith speed sufficient to please Phillips was making her way. Ships, or their smoky evidences, made the time pass quickly. It was Good Friday, a great day for my childhood in Kent, land of plum-pudding-dogs and monkey-tail trees, a day when I heard, as indeed my elder companions had long foretold, the church bells rung muffled; although I was disappointed in the purple cassocks which, tradition fabled, would be worn by the choir on that day. Lent (and Advent too for that matter) was solemn then and real, outside of churches; and with Good Friday it appeared undeniable that there had been done some thing at which Nature must go in mourning. The three hours’ service, like the watch that rang out the dying year and rang in the new, was in every one’s thought that we met; such ceremony was not for nothing. The melancholy hymns of the season were more than sung verses.
To-day, at least, we had hot-cross buns to our breakfast. So is the Lord remembered in these years of discretion. The sailors had the day to themselves.
Our course lay more or less east, and brought us a succession of glimpses of shining cliffs and misty downs. Off Dover we saw both coasts at once. In 1919 I hoped I had seen the last of that piece ofFrance. Running out of this strait into the North Sea under a shrewish though a moderate wind, we passed a number of fishermen, and what struck my mind with the strangeness almost of the Flying Dutchman, a three-masted barque under full sail, at a distance. It was sunset at the time. She caught the light and bowed upon her journey, a sweet sight, too quickly lost in the dark. Soon we picked up the flash of a lightship off the Dutch shore, and soon after that the cold to which my wanderings had not made me careless sent me inside.
Chilly brightness and blue sky saw us making rapidly over the North Sea, visited by thrushes and linnets, while the water seemed crowded with those clever birds, though so gawky upon the wing, the divers. We crossed the wake of an oil-tank, burning the water almost like the witch’s oils in “The Ancient Mariner,” and scenting the air unlike those abstractions; came to a lightship, where our course was altered; and met the pilot cutter in a calm sea and air vivid with sun and cold about four. The rope ladder went down, the row-boat came alongside, and the pilot was taken up to the bridge. I could not repress odd emotions at thus seeing again “Brother Boche”–he looked a replica of ancient types of my acquaintance–after such a long separation.
The estuary of the Ems received us, a flat sheet of water, with low coastlands only noticed by reason of towers here and there. The tides obliged us to anchor some miles outside Emden at six, and to wait until midnight. The sky darkened and loured into rain. At twelve in a black and gusty night, to the accompaniment of much hooting and shouting, theBonadventuremoved up the river, and in the greyness andchill of daybreak berthed in a quiet basin at Emden.
Through this last movement I had tried to snatch some sleep, but was harassed by the socialism of Bicker and Mead, who considered it but fair that as they were being deprived of their sleep, I should be deprived of mine. They, therefore, visited me at intervals, switched on my fan which was now quite unnecessary, prodded me with toasting-forks, and so saluted the happy morn, like those larks which were now singing and soaring to justify any praise of them that ever was written.