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diff --git a/32371-8.txt b/32371-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..de9c270 --- /dev/null +++ b/32371-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5219 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Bonadventure, by Edmund Blunden + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Bonadventure + A Random Journal of an Atlantic Holiday + +Author: Edmund Blunden + +Release Date: May 14, 2010 [EBook #32371] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BONADVENTURE *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.fadedpage.net + + + + + +THE BONADVENTURE + + + + + THE WAGGONER + and other poems by + Edmund Blunden + + JOHN CLARE + Poems chiefly from MSS. + selected and edited with + a biographical note by + Edmund Blunden + and + Alan Porter + + THE SHEPHERD + and other poems of + Peace and War by + Edmund Blunden + awarded the + Hawthornden Prize, 1922 + Third Edition + + + + +THE BONADVENTURE + +A Random Journal of an Atlantic Holiday + +By EDMUND BLUNDEN + + "There ships divide their wat'ry way, + And flocks of scaly monsters play; + There dwells the huge Leviathan, + And foams and sports in spite of man." + + Isaac Watts. + +LONDON + +RICHARD COBDEN-SANDERSON + +17 THAVIES INN + + + + +Copyright 1922 + +Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner, Frome and London + + + + + To + H.W.M. + THIS + "ROUND TRIP" + + + + +AUTHOR'S NOTE + +A few facts are perhaps needed in this place. The autumn of 1921 found me +in bad health, which seemed to me to be gaining ground. The Editors for +whom it is my privilege to work were of that mind too, and suggested a sea +voyage. I am one of that large class who can afford little more than +voyages in ships which are hauled over on chains; but this was allowed +for in every possible way by my Editors, in consequence of whose active +generosity and that of the owners to whom my case was made known, I +suddenly found myself bound for the River Plate. I can but say that when +my friends expressed their envy I was well able to understand their +feelings and my good luck. + +For the rest, this little book is not intended for anything beyond +the statement on the title page. I am sorry myself that there are no +adventures of the blood-curdling sort in it; but I could not go out of +my way, nor do tramps find time, it seems, for propitiating cannibals. +Of unrehearsed effects on voyages, indeed, my belief is that it is +possible sometimes to have too much. Eastward of Madagascar, we read, lies +Tromelin Island--a sandbank a mile long. In 1761 the _Utile_ was wrecked +there, and eighty blacks were left behind; all died except seven of the +women, who clung to life for fifteen years, nourished on shell fish +and brackish water, until Captain Tromelin landed and saved them. Now I +cannot feel sorry that I was not one of that party. + +There is, naturally, some slender disguise of names and so forth through +my journal. There may be, it occurs, a S.S. _Bonadventure_ at the present +day; if it is so, this is not the ship. My grateful recollections of +Captain Hosea, his officers and crew apply to those gentlemen indeed, +but they do not sign on by the names which I have for this occasion +invented. Thus their own example leads me; how much oftener was I +hailed as "Skylark" and "Jonah" than as + + EDMUND BLUNDEN. + + + + + London, + December 23, 1921. + +Dear Blunden,-- + +There you are, outward bound and southward ho! Here am I, with the +newsboys outside shouting the latest imbecility to the murk, trying to get +warm and happy by considering a dull electric heater and the faded +memory of another ship (she went downstairs in the war) which, years ago, +on a December morning, passed through the lock gates at Swansea for Para +and all, while I stood by her rail sorry for the people who had not my +luck. Now it is your turn. Make the most of it. It will do something +to take away the taste of Stuff Trench. You will find me, when you come +home, still over the electric stove listening to the newsboys. I shall +call for wine, and you must tell me all about the Fortunate Isles. I am +sure they are still there, and that you will see them. + + O, a Cardiff ship sails down the river + (Blow, boys, blow!) + Her masts and yards they shine like silver + (Blow, my bully boys, blow!) + +Sing up, Blunden! And don't forget to take soap, towels and matches. Do +you smoke a pipe? You'll wish presently you knew how to do it, if you have +misspent your time and never learned. But I suppose eighteenth-century +literature and the baby have absorbed all your energies. A pipe is only +fit for the idle-minded. + +There's another thing. Don't forget that the ship's master is a greater +man than a colonel. You know colonels, don't you? (All right, all right!) +Well, make no mistake about it, master mariners, as a rule, are different. +It is long odds that your new master will know his job. If you are nice to +him, he may even confess to a taste for your poetry; ships' masters are +like pie, I have found, to little lost children like ourselves who know +nothing about ships, but they are perfectly frightful towards those +who know all about ships, and know it all wrong. + +A happy Christmas and a lucky New Year. + + Yours ever, + H. M. TOMLINSON. + + + + +I + + +On the eleventh of January my uncertainty was ended by the apparition (and +in the village of Staizley it is no less) of a girl with a telegram. Her +walk of three miles or thereabouts, from our nearest telegraph office, +brought her to my gate at three in the afternoon; and with her customary +awed speechlessness she gave me her message. It was from "Kingfisher," the +decoded entity of which was the great shipping owner to whom I owed my +arrangements; and in response I hastily attempted to leave a semblance +of order behind me and to seem unexcited. My luggage, no cumbrous +affair, had already been packed. By six, the trap of an ingenious +neighbour, who lives by all sorts of traps, was heard at the gate, and +Mary and myself got in. Determined protest, not at my departure, but +at the apparent departure of her mother, was now raised by the youngest +among us. My comforting promises were ignored, and the infant's cries +redoubled. Nevertheless, off we went. + +The evening had been pouring out, with the vigour of an elemental +Whistler, sleet and hail, and now though the wind was down our drive +lay through fields half whitened with the storm; and the air was livid +with the clouded moon and as cold as the ebbing light. With its multitude +of pollards, its desolate great fields, its chilling breaths, the +countryside might have been Flanders. This aspect seemed incidentally +to demonstrate the wisdom of going elsewhere for a month or two. + +We now came into Slowe, discussing all the time our past, present and +future; the chief result of the discussion was the placing of my +unanswered letters at Mary's disposal. The town of Slowe was at peace. +Its station wore the familiar air of having nothing to do with the coarse +noise of traffic. Here Mary spent some moments in melancholy visions of +my funeral at sea. She hoped these were wrong, and I, beginning to be +affected also, hoped so equally. + +"Good-bye" to Mary! The curve of the track carried her out of sight, +and, imagining with resolution that the carriage was comfortably warm, I +resigned myself to the journey to Liverpool Street. By way of passing the +time, I fell back upon my habit of considering how the Latin poets might +render the words, upon which few Englishmen have not been reared: + + "The use of this rack for heavy and bulky packages...." + +But though the sentiment which they convey is salutary, and though +such metrical gifts as "graviora" and "viatores" instantly suggested +themselves, the task once again defeated me. + +Some such deadening pastime (Tennyson advises it) was necessary. There +are many stations between Slowe and Liverpool Street, and the train, the +last of the day between those places, stopped at each one. Arrived in +London, and shivering with cold, I sought out my relations; reported with +a certain amount of pride, which evoked no corresponding admiration at +such a late hour, my impending voyage, and was rewarded with a bed. + + + + +II + + +My instructions were to present myself next morning, without fail, at +the shipping offices of Messrs. Wright, Style and Storey, in Cardiff. +Mary's double accordingly hurried me through my breakfast and led the +way to Paddington. I urged myself to realize that I was going upon +holiday; but, it cannot be withheld, the thought of this particular +pleasure had a serious tinge. Paddington itself, to such an islander as +I am, had some of the credit of this. To me, that large terminus is, as a +jumping-off position, less human than, for example, Victoria. From +Paddington, with its Western propaganda, it may well seem that humanity +is travelling out into the round world's imagined corners; but Victoria, +with its lesser range in sight, leaves a quieter speculation. From +Brighton there is no such press of mammoth liners? Even when the +destination was the B.E.F., it was comforting to me to set out from +Victoria, whence the way led through a compact, placid, formerly +uninternational, still un-Atlantic quarter. A Society for the Suppression +of Astronomers has been mooted by the lazy-minded. I am not sure that +geographers should not be included. Distances, no doubt, are as essential +to romance as to Copley Fielding's water-colours; but they can rouse in +some of us troubling thoughts, which, summed up, say "Leave us alone!" +Such thoughts had disturbed me when, with farewells from Bess, I retired +to the sporting columns of my newspaper, and the train moved out. + +In compensation for my experience of the previous evening, the journey +went quickly by. A sunny morning, blue and still, lit up the country. +So fine was the day, and the country, with its ancient timber, its +mole-hilled pastures, its feeding horses and cheerful rooks, appeared so +mellow, that the wisdom of leaving it behind was not so conspicuous as, +the night before, it had been. Cardiff. I knew nothing about it, except +as "Cardiff." I entrusted myself, therefore, to a taxi-driver, who +claimed to know more, even to the whereabouts of the shipping office +to which I was bound. After meanderings and advice from the police and +the public, he made amends for his inaccuracy by setting me down at +the foot of a gloomy staircase leading to the rooms of Messrs. Wright, +Style and Storey. + +And now for a few moments I was in trouble. Thinking that the telegram +which warranted my calling at this Cardiff office of the London Company +would best explain my intrusion, I handed it over the fateful counter. +The clerk took it, assumed a serious air, avoided looking at me, and +referred to a superior. I was puzzled. More so, the superior. A murderer, +concerned in the atrocity at Bournemouth, was at that time untraced, +and I fancy that the official had the mystery in his mind at this point. +At any rate, eyeing the wire with doubt for some time, he suddenly +advanced towards me and put the question, in stern accents: "Who are you?" + +Who are you? + +I feel sure that my explanation was unbusinesslike, but he presently +divined the truth. Word of my movement had not been sent him from London. +He withdrew to the telephone or time-table; then restoring to me my +sibylline leaf, told me to go to Barry Docks, where I should find the +_Bonadventure_, recognizable by a white S painted on the funnel, lying +at Tip Eleven or Twelve, and to go aboard and report myself to the +captain. I went, fearing lest the captain likewise might know as little +in advance about the trembling suspect before him. + +Urchins scrambled for my luggage at the Barry Docks Station, an hour +or so later, and the two victors hurried it along to Tip Eleven. These +coal-tips overhead and the shipping alongside, with knots of workmen +passing masked in coal-dust, engaged my mind as we went, and before I +was fully aware of it we were aboard a vessel which the boys recognized as +the _Bonadventure_. I paid the carriers, who went away at speed, and +asked a wooden-faced seaman, who seemed to be alone, where I could find +the captain. He at once cut short my search by the tone in which he +observed, "The captain! He's having his dinner at the present." I was +rebuked, and stood by. (I had still to witness the multitudes who want to +find the captain of a ship in port.) + +I took a look at the ship, but felt lost as I did so. She was large, and +of vague shape. I could not determine where she began and where she left +off. A pall of coal covered everything. Heaps of cinders, which a casual +glance described as of some seniority, lay against the deck railing. I saw +hut-like structures about me where I stood, amidships, as the boys had +said; but I feared to explore. At times some one with a plate or a jug +was seen stooping swiftly through their doorways--evidence indeed of the +captain's dinner-hour. Inaction, nevertheless, grew unpromising; and at +last I asked an officer, as I rightly thought him, who had come out +to keep an eye on several blasphemous and strongly individual beings +with large spades, whether I might see the captain. When he heard my +business, he quickly took me to him. I found myself speaking to a quiet, +smiling, and enviably robust man who, to my relief, was not mystified +by my arrival. He set me at my ease, told me that I should sign on as +a member of the crew to-morrow, and allowed me to stay on the ship +meanwhile. I was glad of this, being weary of quests for the time being. + +Not quite at home, as may be gathered, I went out on deck, and watched the +tips in action; admired the mimic thunder--first the abrupt and rending, +shattering crash, then the antistrophe of continued rollings--which each +truckful of coal makes as it is tumbled into the shoot and thereby into +the ship's holds. Truck after truck was drawn up, the pin knocked away +from the end board and the coal hurled, its dusky clouds fuming out, +into the ship: its atmosphere did not seem to strain or irritate the +breathing organs of those worthies with the spades, and the pipes, +whose vague labouring silhouettes enlivened the gloom. Engines plied +constantly beside the docks with long trains of coal. As if expressing +itself, one emitted a peculiar twofold groan. All this, of course, +ancient history, but I was new to it. It seemed like the beginnings of +wisdom. + +But the world of iron and smoke could not warm my body as well as it did +my mind, and while I was brooding over the increasing bite in the air of +that January afternoon, the officer whom I was to know soon as the mate, a +young man of clear-cut features and tranquil manner, told me to make use +of the saloon. I sat there reading, when another introduction took place. +The steward, a weighty old man remarkable at first sight for his brown +skull-cap, came in to say he had fitted me up with a cabin. Following him +up a staircase, I took over this dugout-like dwelling with no small +satisfaction. It was to be my home, he said, for three or four months +on this South American run. I unpacked, and washed away the unearned, and +unsuspected, film of coal-dust which was to characterize my home for the +same length of time. + +Tea came, and I was mildly puzzled again, when the steward's assistant +asked me to choose between a bloater, cold meat, and so on. I was deciding +on something slenderer, when I realized that tea included supper, and +applied for a kipper. The captain's wife kept conversation alive. The +topic, I remember, was the lamented custom which once permitted captains' +wives to make "the round trip" with their husbands. + +The coal still rattled into the holds every moment or two, and the same +process was going on all round us. The water was bright in the moon, +and the reflections of the lamps fastened high over the ships swum like +golden serpents in the ripples. In such a light, to such a watcher, +there seemed no end to the serried framework and the cordage to the +giant sea travellers of steel. The constant clanging and whistling and +crash spoke to the work of the machines, an occasional shout to the +guiding energies of the men. + + + + +III + + +The shipping office itself left no clear impression upon me, the next +morning, when I attended the business of signing on; but the visit +gave me my first view of the crew of the _Bonadventure_, which was +welcome. Many of them were coloured men, as ever, dressed in eye-catching +smartness. I reflected on the extent to which the market of boots of two +colours must depend on these firemen. Among the others, a Cornishman of +odd automatic gait, whose small head balanced a squarish black hat, +moved about with an inconsequence suggestive of some clever comedian. He +gave, however, no evidence of humorous abilities. The wooden-faced +man, to whom I have referred, answered the call of "Cook." Sitting on +the bench in the corner, I felt a curious stare upon me, and looking +across the room, saw its owner, a tough customer by the expression he +wore. For some peculiarity of conduct, this sailor was the next evening +removed from the _Bonadventure_ by the police, with no passive resistance, +as I vaguely heard. The police recovered. + +Two youths sat by me, their good nature showing itself in their talk. They +painted my near future. The heat we should soon be feeling, 130 in the +shade; the troubled Biscay, where "seven seas meet, which causes a great +upheaval," chequered the vista. The function of crossing the Line was +described as bygone, even in its less inconvenient traditions, such as +giving the greenhorn binoculars through which a (hair) "Line" was plain +enough. + +My name was called, and I went to the front. The captain conferred with +the clerk. For technical purposes, as I supposed, I was put down "purser." +The rank was given, but not the talents. + +Now, the hour of the _Bonadventure's_ sailing being imminent, the +ship's officers who had been away were returning. The chief engineer, +obviously regarded as a wise man; the second mate, full of stories; the +wireless operator, youthful and brilliantined, appeared at the cabin +table. The captain's wife drew up matrimonial plans for the third mate, +who was not beyond blushing over his late tea--the not impossible, but +improbable, She was evidently a recognized memory of Hamburg. The +captain was striving to get at the facts when a doctor came in, summoned +to see an apprentice; and he left his meal to hear the diagnosis. +Reappearing, he said, "The only bit of luck we've had. The boy's got +appendicitis." This was not euphemism; what might have happened had +the ship left before the boy's illness was known for what it was, both +to boy and authorities, he went on to hint. This piece of recognition +was due to the mate. + +We were not leaving that evening, though loading ceased. I walked into +Barry, and found its cinematograph programme somewhat worse than is +the average. This, and the change of the weather from keen to mizzling, +persuaded me back to my cabin for the rest of the evening; and after the +night's rest, broken sometimes by sounds of "mighty workings," I looked +through my porthole to discover that the ship had left the tips. She +was now lying, under a cloudy, showery sky, well out to the middle of +the water, and the buildings round the Docks Station, dwarfed somewhat +by the large sign of "WARD, BUTCHER," were in sight. We should soon be +away. + +The solidity of ship's breakfast was an early fact among those I was +gleaning. Yesterday, an ample steak, with potatoes--and onions--had +been set before me, after the preparatory porridge; this day, two tough +sausages, with potatoes--and onions--were provided. Yet I fell to with +an appetite, and only hoped I should feel as able in the days to come. + +The inert morning seemed suited to the curious quiet of the ship. +That quiet was, however, disturbed in undertone. The incessant tramp of +feet and sometimes the banging of gear were echoing. The final period, +in the main "all serene," could not be without its thousand and one +adjustments; though the holds, trimmed, I suppose, even to the steward's +satisfaction--he had been in high choler the night before at the attempted +delivery of meat to a store just made inaccessible by the delivery of +coal--now were covered with tarpaulins. I had time to meditate, and the +cold air recommended my cabin as the place. + +To the Plate and back again, in a cargo ship! (To the Somme and back +again--that had seemed less surprising.) The voyage, no doubt, would be +more arduous than that in the leave-boat from Boulogne to Folkestone. +Would my resolution be equal to the greater strain on the system? I +suspected that the first few days might find me groaning within myself; +asking why I had left my draughty study, which was at least stationary? +what I had found amiss with the array of books for review--pleasant, +unjustly despised labour? Landlord, insurance agent, general dealer, +rags-and-bones, watch-and clock-repairer, bricklayer come to fix the +chimney, carpenter to take measurements for far-off bookshelves, secretary +of football for subscriptions, and many another familiar--in the middle +of an attempt to answer the question, "What is Poetry?"--should I be +considering them as unhonoured privileges? Repent, repent. + +From the mild exercise, and a book, I was aroused by the brown skull-cap +of the steward, who in some pain of feature uttered round the door a +solemn "Well, I declare!" I had disregarded his bell--Jim had rung it; he +had rung it--for dinner. + +There were friendly visitors afterwards. I was wished a good voyage, and +a better room--one more artistic, I think, was in the speaker's mind. +But comfort was cordially anticipated. The ship was not one of the older +sort that roll. The captain, too, said that his ship did not roll. The +shore captain grinned, but said nothing, except that, if I had been over +to France, I should find the voyage just the same. It was the captain's +turn to grin. Next, the second mate came, book in hand, and entered the +name of my next-of-kin. + +During the afternoon the funnel of the _Bonadventure_ had sent forth +smoke, and the hooter, hoots; the cold increased, and, having heard +that we were to go out at about six, for all my apprehensions I felt +eager for that hour. The surroundings were gloomy. The _Bonadventure_ +lay in a row of coal-carrying steamers, with something grim about their +iron flatness; the _Phryne_, _Marie Nielsen_, _Sandvik_, many another, +their cold colours reminding me of the huge blue-painted unexploded +shell which once I ventured to help remove from a trench at Givenchy. +The grey-green pool swilled sulkily about them: and the red bricks in +the background offered no relief to an unprogressive eye. Sooty, hard +and bleak, the scene itself urged my impatience to be gone. + +A call announced the arrival of the pilot; and, at ten minutes to six, +in obedience to a process of which I gathered little, the ship began to +move gently out of the dock. The shouts of the pilot on the bridge, his +"Hard-a-port," his "Hard-a-starboard," were taken up from the forepart +of the ship, where a number of substantial figures were at work with +winch and cable. The _Bonadventure_ was guided with nice gradation into +a channel not much exceeding her own width; on the quay beside men +were shouting and scampering; the wireless clerk leaning over against all +gravity grabbed a bag of "mail" from one of them; and out we passed. +The wind livened. The lights of the town slowly dwindled behind us. +Into the channel close after the _Bonadventure_ came the green lamp of +another ship. Soon the _Bonadventure_ was definitely, at a growing +speed, running down the Bristol Channel, under a veiled sky through +which the moon always seemed about to emerge, and among the scattered +lights of other ships going into Barry, or waiting in readiness to go in. + +The thing had never occurred to me before, and I may be pardoned for +reflecting, while I stood watching, in a manner somewhat grandiose. The +energy of Man, maker of cathedrals, high-roads, aqueducts, railroads, was +passing before me; and this one manifestation of it seemed perhaps the +most surprising. The millions of times that this restless creature Man +had weighed his anchor and in cockle-shell or galleon or clipper or tramp +set out to ferry over the seas at his own sweet will! This matter was +now put in a more prosaic light by the wireless clerk, who, beckoning +me to a place out of the wind, informed me that at a charge he could, +as soon as the _Bonadventure_ was out of touch of land, transmit any +message I had for home. With this youngster I tried to speak on his own +province, in which I had made some elementary excursions in Flanders +times: but this intrusion upon his mysteries appeared to affect him, +and I learned only that the modern wireless was different. + +The doleful tolling of a bell, later on, with its suggestion of the +Inchcape Rock, reached me in my bunk, where, noticing the oscillations +of the ship, I had early withdrawn. + + + + +IV + + +My theory of repentance during the first few days at sea was to be fact. +At the start, I seemed to myself to be perfectly steady. The breeze +blew cold; I thought it even pleasant; and without over-exercise, I took +my last views of English coasts, and watched ships ahead of us blackly +smudging a vaporous sky. I attended dinner, and began to swell with vanity. + +By this time the ship was rolling (after all yesterday's kind assurances). +There was no mistake about it: and my vanity and observation were at once +cut short by a surprise attack of sea-sickness. A dismal cowardice +came on me. The wind seemed changing, or perhaps--I inquired but +little--the course of the ship; the effect needed no inquiry. Time and +again, lowering my _morale_ at each arrival, the seas beat in a great +crash upon the ship's sides, and, with the attendant tilt, the scarcely +less welcome seethe of the waters flowing down the decks would follow. +The ship seemed to be provided with cogs, on which she was raised and +lowered with horrible deliberate jolts over a half-circle: then again, +the big wave would jump in with a punch like some giant Fitzsimmons. +My experience was growing. The sunshine died off the porthole; the +breeze was half a gale already, droning and whining louder and louder; +and I felt that my breaking-in was to be thorough enough. + +Captain Hosea found time, now and then, to look at his passenger. We +kept up eloquent discourse, though I was handicapped. The origin of +species and the riddle of the universe are topics on which much enlivening +debate may occur, and certainly did then; but the floor of the debating +society should be made steady and not to lift and lean and recover with a +monstrous jerk as a point is being approached. "It's fierce," said he, +referring to the idea of infinite abyss. I could agree from the smaller +one which I myself seemed to be probing. + +Sleep was not easy during these early hours of my holiday. I spent an +awkward night or two, listening to rattlings of all sorts, the +battering-ram shocks of the seas, and the thump of the engines, +watching the sweat on the rivets of my roof roll like the bubble in a +spirit-level, and my towel float out to an apparent unperpendicular +side to side. In this state of things I easily came to know the features +of my cabin, described on the door-key as "spare cabin port." Amidships it +was, between the wireless operator's premises and the captain's. The +porthole faced the poop, and more immediately, the ship's squat +funnel. Beneath the porthole, a padded seat was fixed; and I had on +one length of the room a disused radiator, a chest of drawers and a +washstand with mirror, where, despite a ventilator above, light rarely +seemed to come. On the opposite length there was a tall malodorous +cupboard and two bunk beds, of which I chose the lower one from sound +instinct at the beginning, keeping to it from force of habit afterwards. +Such was my dwelling; but I must not fail to mention the electric light +and fan. The place was painted white, but its past use as a store had +variegated it. + +The steward likewise visited me here, and sympathized. The old fellow +talked to me much as if I had known him all my life; he being known well +enough, indeed, to the company for whom he was going to sea in his old +age. A scarred nose distinguished him for a time. He complained, with +a sort of personal visualization of the sea's boorishness, that while +attending to some stores he had been blown off a case into a barrel of +flour. + +Having therefore spent the best part of my first two days at sea in +my cabin, which offered no great variety in itself, I was much pleased +to find myself able to arise, manfully, the third day. But I avoided +breakfast. The morning looked inviting, the black funnel gleaming even +richly in the sun, so presently I took the air. First, I had found some +difficulty in shaving, even with a safety razor; but it was accomplished. + +We were still in the Bay of Biscay, and the _Bonadventure_ had not done +lurching and wallowing. To my naïve eye, the sea was in considerable +commotion. Like ever-changing rocky coasts, the horizon rose and fell. As +unsteady as that, the day left behind its sunny comfort and brought +clouds and chillier air. I saw the navigators passing on their business, +but I could not emulate their equipoise; I attached myself to a rail +or fixture to watch them, this one coiling a rope, that trailing a +coco-nut mat in the sea--a capital cleanser; to watch the gulls also, +so easily keeping up with the plunging brows, amid all their side-shows of +wheeling and darting flights. Inured, I presently joined in at dinner in +the saloon; ate, and had no serious trouble. A framework, which was +described as a "fiddle," covered the table and checked the more mobile +crockery; but it could not prevent an accident in the steward's own +department, which caused his tone of private feud with Neptune to sound +clearly in the apostrophe, "Break 'em all, then, so we shall have none +for the fine weather." But fine weather was expected now. + + + + +V + + +My prospect brightened with the weather. "Things are looking bad," +observed the chief engineer with an anxious glance at me. "Why?" I said +more anxiously. "There's three teaspoons missing," he answered, satisfied +at having played his joke. The morning, though the wind blew hard +against us, was sunny and cheerful; the light blue sky flying here and +there the streamer of a shining cloud, the moon going down ahead of us, +the drove of gulls still pleasing themselves in glistening whims of flight +among the waves. Warmer it was, but not yet warm enough for me: and going +out on the deck I often sheltered behind the cabins with fingers as of +old turning waxen for want of blood. I found the ancient sea a new +pleasure in its aspects: I liked to see the wave-tops suddenly become +crystalline with a clear green glow. Such a greenness immediately +associated itself with, and, I even thought, comprehended, the curious +emanation of the old mermaid stories. It is a light wherein the sudden +arising of a supernatural might seem natural. + +Aboard, less remote interests revealed themselves. The cook, that lean +aproned figure, walked slowly between the stores and his stronghold +the galley, carrying perhaps a couple of large onions; and the smell +of cooking might rise above that of the Atlantic. The tawny firemen +emptied their buckets of cinders in long series through the iron chute +over the side; or found, by request, work for an oilcan round the funnel. +Everything said, in its manner, "No blind hurry, no delay." + +Hosea invited me to his ampler room for daily conversations over the +friendly glass; we talked much, but not about the sea. His active mind, +after searching through the files of recent newspapers saved up during his +stay in port, had many an opinion on affairs less adjacent; and he had a +curious miscellany of reading at his service. Sir Edwin Arnold was one +of his few poets, and for him he spoke out most generously. Here I was +obliged to watch my behaviour. As a person engaged in literature, I +could not precisely admit the ignorance of the _Light of Asia_ which I +have always enjoyed; and I wished I had read it. The conversation should +have run upon the sharks, the hula hula, typhoon and the submarine +barrage, by rights; not upon the history in blank verse of the founder +of Buddhism. It was some relief to find Hosea turning to Tennyson, whose +works he had upon his desk. Shakespeare, he said, he had been advised +by old captains to leave alone until he had turned forty. + +From his book cupboard he lent me several books, of which I only failed +to master one. This was _The Lone Star Ranger_, by Zane Grey; a fiction in +which beauty was reached through blood, but not in this world. Far more +romantic was a large official treatise styled _North Atlantic Directory_, +reading which, I determined never again to leave any book about ships +and the sea in the threepenny tub. + +Meals, the important thing in the trenches, began to impress me as +furnishing the incidents of seafaring life. They seldom came too soon. +Their atmosphere puzzled me in a minor way, until I was acclimatized +to the habits of the saloon. Little would be said at them for a long +time; then some one would quietly mention some occurrence of technical +bearings in the first place, and so educed, a few anecdotes would follow. +Phillips, the chief engineer, with his seasoned air and dry ironical +ease of speech, was perhaps the narrator of the saloon. I remember his +first tale that I heard: it was simple, yet picturesque. "Once we were +running in the banana trade. We went to Labrador for some fish. The +captain was putting in to Cape Sidney, and he didn't like the look of +some of the lights. So he went down to the bottle and got blotto. The +second mate--a little Greek, he was--was on the bridge, and he found +the captain was blotto, and he'd never been to Cape Sidney before, +and he was worried out of his wits. So he came down and asked me what +he should do. 'I can't tell you,' I said. 'But if I were you, I should +bring her round in circles outside here until daylight comes.' And there +he stayed, steering round in circles all night." + +The ship was reckoned, by those in higher authority, to do ten knots +to the hour, but for a week or so her average was no more than eight. +This circumstance was never far away from our table-talk. The playful +interrogative "Ten?" would welcome Phillips to his place at dinner, as +the second mate handed him the slip giving the results of the midday +observations. + +As the ship's officers and the sailors became better used to me, and +I to them, my voyage began to assume its intended holiday character. The +southward progress of the _Bonadventure_, disappoint her chief engineer +as she might, was felt in the improving weather; and as sea weather was +still a new world to me, I was never for long without some variation of +amusement. The colours of the rainbow in the waves leaping up at the +ship's side and in the veils of spray that they flung to the whisking +wind were soon reflecting themselves in my remembrance. On dark blue +ridge of surly water and on snowy coronal, the broken arc of the rainbow +was for ever flickering, just beyond the uncertain shadow of the ship. +The lively wind, meanwhile, as if by a sudden stronger impulse, would +whirl the green toppling seas over the lower deck, and the light cold +spray as high as the bridge. Here, I thought, was a lyric indeed; and +so, it looked, thought the gulls that disported about the ships, and +the shoals that, I fancied, like those of any small stream, would be up to +enjoy the sun. + +Swabbing was going on aboard at a great pace. The boatswain, a sort +of combined walrus and carpenter, seldom allowed his swabbers and his +hosepipe to rest. The flow of dirty water from the cabin roofs made the +deck dangerous ground. So perish all accumulated dust! The _Bonadventure_ +began to look clean, even resplendent. + +When Hosea joined the merchant service, he tells me, old hands would +often make a disparaging comment upon the decline of sailing days. "I'm +giving up going to sea. I'm going in steamers." True, in the very names of +the old sails, up to their skyscrapers and their moonrakers, there +lingers yet the elemental dignity of the earlier sort of argosy. Even +the same metaphorical fountain of description seems to have ceased to +flow with the falling asleep of the famous clippers: and I doubt whether +the author of _London River_, that rich reverie, kindred with an essay +which has weathered a hundred years' storms--Charles Lamb's _South-Sea +House_--would write of the sea to-day in his translucent classical +revivings: + + "The model of this Russian ship was as memorable as a Greek statue." + +And yet, once or twice already, I was indistinctly aware of an antique +look about the ship forward, with her dark beak and all her shrouds and +spars and winches; as I watched her at twilight ploughing a grey sea +and still driving afield towards a horizon of sad vapours, braided with +the sunset's waning red, and, from time to time until darkness settled, +creviced with a primrose gleam, calm, clear and sweet amid its shadows. + + + + +VI + + +A swell running in its long undulations accompanied us until we had +passed Madeira, beyond its horizons. Mugs of tea slid suddenly and +swiftly across the saloon table; complaints were made at every meal, +and the mate hinted, with dreadful implications for my benefit, that a +special memorandum would be presented to Father Neptune, expected on board +shortly. Other hints of the passenger's future trials were made. We +were bound for the Plate, but we might be sent thence to Australia. That +addition, as a possibility, to my holiday perturbed me somewhat; I +envisaged the bailiffs in at home before I got back. + +The second mate, Bicker, and the third mate, Mead, invited me to see +their observations and their watches. Bicker, a fine audacious spirit, +dark-haired, dark-eyed, four-or-five-and-twenty years old, had my +company in the afternoon, the days being warm and inviting. The typical +scene below the bridge was of Mead in his singlet rigging up a line, +whereon towels, socks and other properties were soon in the sun; while +mattresses aired over the cargo-hatch tarpaulin. Other toil at this hour, +save that of the engines and the man at the wheel, was not noticeable. +The boatswain and his wrinkled party, who actually did leave a sea-salt +impression in their stocking-turbans and greasy rags and roomy sea-boots, +had left the midships white, and had changed their ground for hose and +scrubber to the neighbourhood of the engines and the galley; but the +afternoons heard them not. An occasional whistle from the bridge would +summon hurrying feet up the ladder; the striking of the bell made Time's +pace perceived. Bicker would sometimes interrupt his large stories to +show me, or to try to show me, remote or tiny curiosities floating past +the ship. Perhaps a shoal of young porpoises bobbing along portended a +slight squall, its approach yielding those ever remarkable lights +that mark broken rain, lily-of-the-valley green, and on the waters a +silver glitter, while a shadow drooped over all. The third mate's +drying-ground was speedily cleared at these times. + +Mead's watch occupied the four hours before noon, and the four before +midnight. At noon he would join with Bicker in "Shooting old Sol," a +process which, with its turning-up of pages packed with figures, reminded +me of old trouble in a famous mathematical school of severe traditions, +where hung on the walls a symbolic picture--a youth swimming for dear +life from a gigantic shark. In the evening I would find Mead on the +bridge, uttering to himself as likely as not his talismanic motto: _Quo +Fata Vocant_. He was a rover; from China he had gone to Australia to join +the Army in 1914; thence had seen Gallipoli, Egypt, and, I believe, +Palestine; went into the Navy with a commission after that; and now had +returned to the life in which he had been apprenticed a dozen years +before. As these evening colloquies with Mead became a rule with me, +and as it was Mead whom I came to know better than anyone else, other +matters relating to him will be found in their places. + +There was no lack of good spirits aboard. Reminiscences of a humorous +tinge came up in almost every conversation; and conversation was an +earnest and frequent affair. Indeed, there was observable a certain +rivalry (as with those who supply the fashionable memoirs of the past +twenty or thirty years), who should remember the most: and each speaker +showed a vigorous faith in his own tale, which he scarcely extended +to his predecessor's. The mate, the clear-headed Meacock, with his +blunt serenity--embodying qualities in which I could not help seeing +the English seaman of the centuries--was eloquent one evening about +examiners. Examinations lie thick in the navigator's early way. He +recalled one well-known figure of these inquisitions, who, at a time +when no dinner interval was allowed to the candidates, used to bring out +frying-pan, steak and the rest, and tantalize every one by cooking himself +his dinner. (I wondered if this suggestion might be passed on to the +Universities.) Another original, Meacock went on, warming himself with the +recollection, had a preference for ordinary, that is seafaring, words. + +_Examiner._ If I carry this barometer up a mountain, what happens? + +_Candidate._ The mercury in the barometer subsides. + +_Examiner (purple with disgust)._ You silly idiot, if you were sitting +on a table and I knocked you off, would _you_ subside? + +Bicker was about to put in a reminiscence of his at this point, but +Meacock was already giving another instance of this examiner's zeal for +pure English. + +_Examiner (producing a piece of wood)._ What colour's this? + +_Candidate._ Chocolate. + +_Examiner (purple once more)._ Chocolate! Chocolate be dam'd. Chocolate's +something to eat--What COLOUR is it? + +The chief engineer, seeing me somewhat handicapped by temperament from +wandering about as inquisitively as I ought to have done, came up one +afternoon to take me into "_his_ little slice of the ship." I am sorry +to think how vague my imagination and how inactive my gratitude had been +up to that first descent down the iron stairways and crossings to the +engine-room. The stifling air and the throbbing roar, of course, kept +my notions vague, but the degree of vagueness was not so disgraceful as +it had been. He pointed out all things to one comprehending scarcely +anything, except a chalk legend on the wall which ran: + + Aston Villa + Celtic + Manchester U, + +and so on, which I noticed for myself. The ruling passion--(passion at +the referee's ruling, says the cynic). + +I was aware, meanwhile, of vast steel rods and arms in violent motion, +named severally by the chief in a mighty voice, which nevertheless +was too much of a whisper for me. The gangways round them, it was easier +to learn, were narrow and greasy. The cool skill with which an engineer +was anointing these whirling forms, his hand dapping mothlike with the +tapering can above them, was enough to amaze me. Under a strange +construction like a kiln, by way of a low red door, we went into the +vault where the dusky, glowing and actually grinning firemen were +tending the furnaces. (It happens all day, every day in thousands of +ships!) Above, we had looked in at a dark hole--I rightly thought, over +the boilers--and breathed for a moment a most parching element, so that +the heat of the stokehold did not frighten me. The chief introduced me +to the third engineer, Williams--we roared out cordially; and then he +inducted me to the mysteries aft, where, along the shaft which revolves +the propeller, a specially greasy passage runs. Here, as throughout this +cavernous region--I remembered Hedge Street Tunnels, which to the +initiated will be a sufficient allusion--might not E. A. Poe, to-day, +have set a story to rival the _Cask of Amontillado_? I suggested it to +the chief, but he saw no adventurous, unusual quality in his tunnel. Right +aft appeared a long vertical ladder, ascending to a manhole--a safety +appliance, he explained it, of the war, but to me it resembled a danger +appliance. + +Having gone as far as we could, we turned back to the engine-room. I was +now accustomed enough to notice that the sultry air of the place was +occasionally tempered by a draught of the cooler kind. But I found it hard +to realize how man could tolerate surroundings so trying as these in +order to earn a wage which in a comfortable employment would be nothing +out of the way. I pictured myself as an engineer on a steamer. I feared +that, in time, the approach of each watch of four hours down among the +machinery, fume, sweat and thunder would become a formidable problem. +"Use" no doubt explained the nonchalance of pallid Williams as he groped +with his slush-lamp to his work. But I thought of the war, when, after +a while, useful "use" began to desert the soldier and to leave him on +tenterhooks worse than the apprehensions of the unused. + +We were climbing upstairs again--up from the underworld of battle +headquarters? + +I had appreciated the handful of cotton waste which the chief had given +me at the first: and now went off to read poems. The man to whom this +"divelish yron yngine"--if I do not misquote Spenser--is given for control +(and is controlled), returned to his outstanding labour--that of filing +part of a curious patent electric torch which the captain had asked him to +restore to life. + + + + +VII + + +The _Bonadventure_ entered the tropics, calm, hot, blue expanse. I do +not know why, but our passing into that zone was for me contemporary +with an access of wild and vivid dreams. These were odd enough to cause +me to record what remained of them in the morning, and as they still seem +prominent in my recollections of my sea-going, I make a note of some of +them. Now, it was no other than the great Lord Byron, pursuing me with a +knife, applauded by two ladies. The basis of actuality, at least, was +there. Now I was taking my way along weedy rivers, which at first +were the innocent shallow streams I once met and knew in Kent. But as the +dream progressed a Byronic change came over it; and these streams grew +more and more foul with weeds and grotesque in stagnation, until I +realized as if with an awakening that they were full of tremendous fish, +pike perhaps, often perch, and hybrids of many colours and streakings. +These fish lay watching, stretched from one bank to the other; their +number, my loneliness, their immensity, my fixity conspired to frighten me +unspeakably. + +At other times the river was in flood, and I, as before, compelled by +the secret of the matter to walk along its towpath, in danger of its +torrents; the path itself became unknown, or lay between two huge channels +choking with muddy torrents. Ever expecting the worst, I was suddenly +at an ancient mill, watching + + Slow Lethe without coil, + Softly, like a stream of oil + +gliding under the footbridge. This was sickly phantasm, the very waters +breathing decay. The scene swiftly changed. Paddington! and you, dear +old friend C., racing with me across the metals to catch a train, and---- +Then C. is in his grave again, and I am in a trap outside my old home; +a stranger stands in the road, cuts his throat; I look on, smile, and +shudder, for he races after the trap with his knife; but I outstare his +Malayan eyes, and he gives up the chase. By way of respite, I now walked +at leisure into a bookshop, and my hand fell upon rarities indeed. _The +Church_, by Leigh Hunt--I had never seen that before! "We don't have +much time for dinner," said the bookseller, and I took the hint and +went out. + +And there were other familiar scenes in this phase of nightly alienation. +On occasion, though I awoke several times from a haunting, I fell asleep +again to return to it. Half-nonsense as these dreams were, there was a +persistent force about them. Here was the battalion, expecting to be +attacked. Its nerves, and mine, were restive. The attack broke out +farther up the line, and we got off with a reaction almost as unwelcome +as a battle. Or I was in a town behind the line, into which a number of +very small round gas-shells were falling; then, in the cattle-truck for +the front; presently, in the wild scenery of great hills and deep curving +ravines which I seemed to know so well. (The entrenched ridges in the +unnatural light of the flares looked monstrous once.) I was company +commander; we were to be relieved; and, God, what had I done? Begun to +bring my men out before the other crowd had come up! The mound would +be lost, I should be "for it." The company must be halted in the open; +and so we waited for the relief. It never came. + +Still the dreams came: the war continued. S. S. was with me, walking up +a big cobbled road, muddy as ever, towards the front. On every side lay +exhausted men, not caring whether they were in the mud or not. I was +not quite sure, but was not this Poperinghe Station? At that station +was--I hope is--an hotel, bearing the legend, "Bifsteck à Toute Heure"; +was this gaudy-looking place, perhaps, the same? At all events, S. S. +said, "Let's go and have a port." We did, and the drink appears to have +gone to my head, for I now found myself alone, walking across a large +common or pasture. Here Mary and another woman went by, but I could not +at the moment recognize them. There, beyond the common with its dry +tussocks, stood a town, flanked by mountains, which I knew to be--Barry. +A cathedral or abbey of white stone rose in gigantic strength into the +sunlight. This place, I soliloquized, so near the line, and yet not +shelled! But I was not to escape. I proceeded. The screen alongside was +blown down. Better slink along these hedges at the double! It was the +support line. Some large splinter-proof dugouts came into sight, and +some officers, who told me about an attack. We were going over. I +recognized my destined end. + +However, I woke up alive, having again suffered more from fear and the +atmosphere of it--in projection--in a few seconds, than I was ever +conscious of suffering in a day of the actual war. With weary and aching +head, whether these fantasies were to blame or not, I looked out to +ask the wireless expert if there had been a storm in the night. He +grinned, and going farther I saw outside a sea of pale glow not a great +deal more disturbed than a looking-glass. + +The ashen whiteness soon gave place to a deep blue, and our entry into +the tropics became plainer and plainer, the sea fluttering with the +sun's blaze. This was unfamiliar also, to be roasting on the water in +January. The pith-helmet season began. The third mate could not claim +a pith helmet, but he displayed what none of the others could, as he sat +washing on the step of the alleyway--a marvellous red and blue serpent +tattooed on his arm, by the very Chinaman, he said, who had tattooed King +George. It was, I still think, a superfine serpent. + +Washing, or "dobing," was not Mead's sole recreation. Literature, and +even poetry, with limitations, had its power over him. Suspecting me of +critical curiosity about his favourite poets, he directly approached the +matter. Rudyard Kipling and "A Sentimental Bloke" were satisfactory, but +he couldn't bear the others who gave their views on love. Lawrence Hope +had done one or two good things--but the rest, as Keats, Ella Wheeler +Wilcox, and so forth, might as well be cut out. His approval of Kipling +was confirmed by Meacock's saying in the saloon, where books and authors +were a favourite pabulum, "H'm--the third mate seems to be getting very +interested in Kipling. He brought me a paper with all he could remember +of _IF_ written out on it, and asked me if I could supply any of the rest." + +This literary halo aroused Bicker, who was already known to me as the +ship's poet, and had unfortunately left his MSS. at home. He now urged +his claims. "The gardener called me Poet when I was about seven or eight, +and I often get called that now." The chief, chuckling, brought off his +little joke. "I suppose that's what drove you to sea." + +In connection, no doubt, with poetry, that strange device, the mate looked +back to a ship in which he once served, and which was chartered to carry +the largest whale ever caught in Japanese waters to New York for the +New York Museum. By whale, he said he meant the skeleton, of course; +but it had been sketchily cleaned, "and when we got her to New York," +he said with a comical frown, "nobody could get near the hatches": and, +finding the sequence easy, he added that there was often some peculiar +cargo on that New York-Hong Kong run--take for instance those rows of +dead Chinamen in the 'tween-deck homeward bound. + +The face of the sky often held me delighted. There is nothing, I think, of +dullness about this world's weather; and its hues and tones may still be +a sufficient testing theme for the greatest artists with pen or pencil. +To express the sunset uprising of clouds, many of them in semblance of +towering ships under full sail, many more like creatures mistily seen in +endless pastures, was an attempt in which my own vocabulary scarcely +lasted a moment. One evening, the nonpareil of its race, especially +"burned the mind." + +At first the blue temple was hung with plumes of cloud, golden feathers. +When these at last were grey, a rosy flush swiftly came along them, like a +thought, and passed. It seemed as though the night had come, when the +loitering tinges of the rose in a few seconds grew unutterably red, and +the spectacle was that of an aerial lattice or trellis among the clouds, +overgrown with the heavenly original of all roses. "In Xanadu----" From +brightness the amassed cloud-bloom still increased to brightness: then +suddenly the flames turned to ember. Even now again a ghost of themselves +glowed, until all was gone, and Sirius entered upon his tenancy of +another glory, and Orion and Canopus, casting a hoar-frost glimmer ahead +of the riding ship. + +Hosea agreed this was a remarkable sunset; then took me off to the +friendly tot and talk in his room. He loved to discuss all sorts of theory +in art and religion, of which he might have been, with a slight change +of circumstance in his boyhood, a student and enthusiast: meanwhile, the +sailor in him would be rummaging through the makings of a curiosity shop +which crowded his official desk, besides the manifests and ship's +articles--his watches, knives, coins and notes of twenty countries, +photographs of friends all over the world. + + + + +VIII + + +The flying-fishes could have dispensed with the _Bonadventure_. During +the night, sixteen or so had come aboard, to be seized by the apprentices +for breakfast; I saw with surprise how one had been driven and wedged +between the steam-pipes. In looks, when they were out of their element, +despite their large mild eyes, their long "wings" closed into a sort of +spur, being light spines webbed with a filmy skin, despite too the +purple-blue glowing from the dark back, they did not seem remarkable. But +under the hot and shining morning, where the _Bonadventure's_ sheering +bows alarmed the shoals into flight, they were seen more justly. In ones +and twos and crescents and troops they skimmed away, sometimes with their +dark backs and white undersides appearing as fishes, sometimes in the sun +nothing more than volleys of light-curved silvery darts. They turned in +the air at sharp angles without apparently losing their speed, which +was such that often one heard the water hiss as they entered it again. + +The morning that they first came in numbers, it happened that the salt +fish for breakfast was relieved by reminiscences. + +"You reminded me of Captain Shank just now, chief." + +"Indeed--why?" + +"When you ran your hand along the table for the treacle.... He used to +think the treacle was put aboard for him. He told the second mate off for +eating too much of it--said it wasn't really for his use. After that we +all began to eat the stuff like blazes." + +"You must have had some funny captains in this line." + +"He was. He'd come up sometimes on the bridge and sit down in the wheel +and start making noises to himself. He'd sit there with his old chin +drooping and say, '... I knew it.... Haw, haw.... The silly old b----.... +Bless my soul....' for twenty minutes. I'd go away from the wheel for +fear of laughing out--and then he'd go somewhere else and do it." + +"Davy Jones got him at the finish, didn't he?" + +"--And a dam'd fine ship too." + +"It was her maiden trip." + +"What happened to her?" + +"Ran ashore." + +"Both the boats capsized." + +"She had the most valuable cargo I ever heard of." A pause. + +"Old Shank used to ask for it, though. Once in the Gulf of Mexico he was +down below, and the ship was on the course he'd given. (He never used +to take any notice of deviation.) The second mate heard breakers, you +could hear them quite plain, and not very far off; so he turns the ship +a little, and goes down to tell Shank. Old Shank jumped up and stormed +and stamped, and rushed up on the bridge roaring, '_Am I to be taught +after forty-eight years at sea by a set of b---- schoolboys?_' and had +her put back to the old course again. And then he walked off. You could +hear him snapping his teeth. Presently he stopped. You could see the +breakers now, the phosphorescence of them. '_What's that?_' he whipped +out, '_What's that?_ My God.'" + +"He was one of the white-haired boys in the office, what's more." + +"His officers saved him." + +"Well, one night he gave me a course, and the last thing he said to me +on the bridge was, 'It's up to you to keep her there.' I soon found we +were going to fall on land, and I changed the course. And as it was, we +passed three-quarters of a mile inside the lightship. I went down to his +room and told him. 'Why, you damn'd fool,' he started off; he nearly +went mad. 'But I've hauled her out,' I said, 'I hauled her out.' And +then he yelled, 'Changed her course without orders, did you?' and so on." + +"Well, the office made a pet of him. Some people get away with it." + +"After my trip with him, the whole crew refused to sail with him again. +And the mate went up to Shields to join a new ship. And when he got there, +he found Shank had joined her as skipper!" + +We came into the Doldrums, and I felt none too well. "Cold, worse; heat, +worse," became my diary's keynote. The steward also complained of a +persistent cold. Six bottles--six--of his own medicine since we left Barry +had not cured him. This notable Cardiff Irishman was always pleased to +answer questions about this cold of his, and they became suspiciously +frequent. Then his solemn face would grow still more solemn, his voice +of office would take on a pleasing melancholy, and he would shake his +grey head with dolorous realizations. Nevertheless, his stores being just +below my cabin, I grew accustomed to his morning rejuvenate roarings +from the threshold at the avarice of the modern sailor. It seemed that at +such times he was momentarily free of his illness. + +He, nevertheless, at present, added his good word to the general approval +of the cook. The bread was universally admired, the pea-soup also. This +popularity did not cause any alteration in the melancholy orientalism +of its deserver. He looked forth from his galley with the same wooden +countenance. He was the thinnest man I think I ever saw. + +His macaroni, however, appeared to fall under a general taboo. It was +"eschewed." Bicker, the most assiduous tale-teller, seized it as the +chance for describing an old shipmate's misfortune. It was in Italy: "He +was keen on seeing all the sights, so we asked him if he'd seen the +macaroni plantation. He said he'd like to. We told him to take the +tram out of the town and walk on another mile or so, when he'd see the +trees with macaroni growing on them like lace--natural lace. And he +went. But the best of it was that he'd sent a card home the day before +to say, 'To-morrow I am going to see the macaroni plantation.'" This, +which if true was stranger than fiction, elicited recollections of +fool's-errands in the shipyards ("Run and get a capful of nailholes," +"Ask the storekeeper for a brass hook and a long stay"), which kept +us at table until the steward groaned aloud. + +I led a lazy life. There was not much reason for being active. My +afternoon walk might reach as far as the fo'c'sle, in which lay a +kindly miscellany of wire, hemp and manila ropes in coils, and an aroma of +paint and tar was never absent. The heat, however, seemed intenser in +this house than in the open. Clouds and a little rain soon vanished, +and the sea was one long flame towards the sun. White uniforms were in +vogue. For me, the half-closed eye, with a flying-fish or two sometimes +glittering to awake its notice, in any corner out of the sun, was an +occupation. The unfortunate boatswain and his men were chipping paint, +clanging and banging in the heat; or I would see him perching on the +bulwarks directing some aerial operation, and a sailor seated in the +"bosun's chair" being hauled up the mast. They rested from Saturday noon +until Monday morning. Now, more than ever, the lot of the engineers +and firemen seemed unacceptable. The blaze, the fierce blue sea, and +a flagging breeze became a routine now. The rains of the Doldrums were +not much in evidence; a short shower, flying over the clay-coloured +water, might come towards evening. + +Incidents were few. The sight of the flying-fishes still starting up and +skimming, veering and spurting into a safe distance from the intruder, +was no longer one for my absorbed watch. I woke up, heavy-headed, one +morning to find that Meacock had suspended one of these poor creatures +from my roof; there he hung swaying in the little breeze that there +was, in parched and doleful manner, and ever and anon turning upon me, who +felt much in his condition, his mild and magnificent eye. I threw him out +with sympathy. At night the boobies shrieked round the lights on the +masts, and appeared at morning flying over the water. Once the sleep of +the just was broken by profane language and scuffling in the passage +outside--a rat hunt. Boat drill took its turn one afternoon, the siren +summoning all hands available to their posts. I was questioned about +Colonel Lawrence, at intervals, having seen him in the flesh; and the +publisher of his _Life_ was expected to be named by me. I said that I +believed he himself would write his Memoirs. But this was not the thing. +A book about him by some one who knew how to paint the lily and improve on +possibility was what was sought. I think I could design a satisfactory +coloured cover. + +The morning bucket was a transient happiness. To disturb the "gradual +dusky veil" now unescapable, since the bunkers were now chiefly filled +with coal-dust, was not too simple in a limited space, with limited hot +water. My porthole, looking over those fuming bunkers, had to be shut +at all hours. According to everybody, the _Bonadventure_ was "a dirty +ship"; although it seemed unlikely that a carrier of coal by thousands of +tons should be clean. + +She at least began to please the chief with his coveted "Ten knots"; +and at dinner on the seventeenth day out, he asked whether anyone had +seen a disturbance in the water. The old gentleman was expected. I was +sorry that he did not come, after all, with his "baptism," shave, and +medicine (and I believe other rites), when at about four in the afternoon +the _Bonadventure_ crossed the Equator; but old customs can scarcely be +eternal. The steward's cough mixture was the only medicine I got that +day. Neptuneless, the ship furrowed a sea almost silent, and evening +came on tranquilly among woolpacks of warm-kindled colouring. + + + + +IX + + + Mary, what news?-- + The lands, as I suppose, + Are drenched with sleet or drifted up with snows, + The east wind strips the slates and starves the blood, + Or thaws and rains make life a sea of mud. + You close each door, draw armchairs nigh the fire, + But draughts sneak in and make you draw 'em nigher-- + No matter: still they come: play parlour gales + And whisk about their hyperboreal tails; + Bed's the one hope, and scarcely tried before + Next morning's postman thunders at the door. + + Meanwhile--if I may gently hint--I wear + But scanty clothes, though all the sun will bear; + A red-hot sun smiles on a hot blue sea + And leaves my bunk to laziness and me: + I read, until a lethargy ensues, + Tales of detectives frowning over clues + And last month's papers; then the strain's too strong, + Man wants but little, nor that little long, + The deck-chair in the shadow now appeals, + Until the next hash-hammer rings to meals. + + But not alone in climate may I claim + Advantage; while you feel the slings of fame, + Beset at all hours by the shapes of those + Who volunteer your wants to diagnose, + Who come with merchandise and go with cheques; + No licensed interrupter haunts these decks, + No vans of wares along these highways clatter. + None urges to insure, buy broom or platter. + There is no sheaf of letters every day, + Regretting, and so forth: no minstrel's lay: + Proofs, none: reminders, none--while daily you, + Poor creature, tear your hair and struggle through, + And darken paper till you light the lamps, + And the last shilling disappears in stamps. + + Nor weightier cares you lack, it is decreed; + The clock won't go, the chickens will not feed, + The pump, always a huffy ancient, swears, + "Water? if you wants water, try elsewheres": + The infant wonder, she who must inquire, + Investigates herself into the fire, + The playful snowball whizzes through the pane, + In brief, you try to kick the cat: in vain. + Here no such troubles blot the almanac + For me; no day is marked with red or black: + Events--eventicles--are few, as these, + The sighted school of bobbing porpoises, + The flying-fish when first I saw them leap + And flash like swallows over the blue deep; + The rose-red sunset, or the Sunday duff, + Or--but enumeration cries "Enough." + + There is no Mary in the Atlantic, true, + Nor cellared bookshop to be foraged through. + But as I said, at least I've found the sun + And idle times--even this will soon be done; + A corner where no rags-and-bones apply, + Nor postman comes, nor poultry droop and die. + + + + +X + + +The South-East Trade was blowing fresh next day, if a damp clammy rush of +hot air deserves the term. The threatened heavy rains of the Doldrums had +not come; the heavy heat subdued talk at table. Cloud and sultry steamy +haze had hung about us during the morning; at two or thereabouts the +first land seen by the _Bonadventure_ since her first day's stubborn +entry into the English Channel came into view. My view was at first none +at all; but encouraged by Bicker and with his glasses I could make out +the island of Fernando Noronha, twenty miles away to the south-east. A +tall peak and the high ground about it for a space gave the illusion +of some great cathedral, a Mont St. Michel seen by Cotman faintly +forthshadowed; then, the willing fancy rebuked, I discerned its low +coasts of rock, inhospitable and mist-haunted. + +This singular crag breaking out of the mid-ocean, I knew, was a convict +settlement. "Life sentences" were safely mewed up here. At length we +were abeam of this melancholy place, while the sun seemed to make a show +of its white prison camp, at a distance of twelve or thirteen miles. +It would have been hard not to imagine the despair of men condemned to +such a prison. The peak's stern finger might have struck with awe the +first navigators to approach it. To see the immutable pillar in every +sunset and at every sunrise, surveying all the drudgery, the emblem of +perpetual soullessness, must be an unnerving punishment. The constant +processions of ships, to whom Fernando Noronha is a welcome mark, with +their smoke vanishing swiftly to north or south, could scarcely tantalize +more? + +The rough overhanging pinnacle faded again, and evening fell. Leaning +with the third mate over the bridge canvas, while the moon, now waxing, +riding through the frontiers of a black cloud, cast a dim avenue over +the sea, and from other dishevelled clouds a few quiet drops came down, +was a most peaceful luxury. About the bows the water was lit up by sudden +flashes gone too soon. These travelling lights--akin to the gem of the +glow-worm seen close--were, according to Mead, the Portugee men-of-war +which I had seen by day. No name could be less descriptive. These small +creatures, at night living lamps of green, by day with their glassy red +and blue like the floating petals of some sea-rose, were worthy of some +gentler imagist. When, Mead said, you take them from the water, they +are nothing but a little slime; evanescent as the rainbow on the spray. + +Splendour and fiery heat marked the day still. I had discarded jacket and +socks, enjoying the soothing gush of air about the ankles; otherwise +even reading was made unprofitable by the drug-like heat. The same sky +and seascape, the same condemnations of "a dirty ship" recurred day by +day. "The worst ship I ever sailed on, mister. You turn in washed and +you wake up black." The bath was still an enjoyable interlude, despite +mechanical drawbacks. The bath proper was out of order, owing tosome +deficiency of the water-pipes. At one end, in substitution, you lodged +your bucket in a board with a hole in it. At the other end a crossbar +offered the bather a seat. Much splashing transferred the water from +the bucket to your coal-dust surface; while, there being little air in +the bathroom, you breathed sparingly. Yet how well off was the acrobat +with his sponge, compared with the fireman who just then was taking +bucket after bucket of ashes from the stokehold hoist and tipping them +overboard--a job that was never done until the engines rested in port; +that punctuated our progress, as did the morning hosepipe on the cabins +and the bridge deck. + +Not much was said of the country to which we were going. Englishmen +were definitely unpopular there, said some one; English sailors, on the +slightest pretext, taken off by the police to the "calaboosh." "You +only want to look like an Englishman." "Well, what about trying to look +like a German?" The chief engineer rarely missed a chance to rub in his +politics, and he jumped at this one--"Doesn't the same thing apply at +home?"--with eager irony. + +Ships were discussed and compared at almost every meal. Some, luxurious. + +"But that yacht she was pretty, there's no getting away from it." + +"That was _my_ yacht." + +"They must employ quite a lot of shore labour to keep these yachts from +looking like ships." + +"Well, they couldn't very well make them look like standard ships, if they +wanted to." + +"Oh, I don' know--get the second mate and the chief to co-operate--saw off +the funnel halfway, and throw a few ashes about the decks." + +Some, ideal. + +"She looked just like the model of a ship--and she was spotless." + +Some, not what they ought to be. + +"I looked and saw her name, _The Duke of York_. I thought to myself, I'll +write to him and tell him about the state of his namesake. She looked like +a wreck." + +Some, again, like the _Bonadventure_, standard ships, the hasty +replacements of submarine wastage. The criticism here, of course, had +the severity of domestic familiarity. + +"They have these ships made in one piece at the shipyard. When they want +one, they just cut off a length, and join the ends." + +"Well, I say the man who designed this ship ought to have designed another +and pegged out." + +"Mister, she's a dirty ship." + +I detected--it was not difficult--a vague prejudice against wireless. +The wireless operator was foolish enough to have at his fingers' ends +all the tabular details of shipping companies and their vessels, and to +display this dry knowledge in the middle of his seniors' recollections. +His seafaring experience, it may be mentioned, was altogether recent, +and among the elders he would have done better _not_ to know. It was of +course impersonally aired, this prejudice against wireless. First, there +was the view that as ships had hitherto, beginning with the Ark, gone to +sea without the invention, they could continue to do so. Then, the fact +that wireless might save life admitted, the system current was decried. +It seemed that the merchant ships of over 1,600 tons carried wireless +operators and sets, but that one operator to a ship was the allowance; now +one operator watched eight hours out of the twenty-four, and all were +off duty at the same time. So it was believed. "There's nothing in the +Bible," the critic would urge, "to say a ship mustn't be wrecked when all +the operators are off duty." + +I had expected music--chanteys, or at least accordions--aboard a +merchantman; but very little was that expectation justified. There had +been a gramophone (and step-dancing), but it was out of action after one +evening's protracted use. It was not often, yet, that I had heard even a +whistled scrap; occasionally the coloured firemen would sing in falsetto. + +An epidemic of hair-cutting broke out. Every time I saw the process +going on, the artist was a fresh one; and I was inclined to think that +we are a nation of hair-cutters. Among the practitioners, the cook, +with his usual severe expression, plied a neat pair of scissors. It +was a scene which reminded me of old trench life. I thought of a close +support trench opposite Auchy, about the month of June, 1916, where a +sickly programme of sniping by field guns, rifle grenades, "pineapples," +and incredible escapes from them did not prevent my being shorn by the +steadiest of amateurs. With what outward intrepidity I sat there! + +At the captain's request, the cook advanced to cut his hair. That done, he +cut mine. Venturing to talk, I was soon exchanging sallies of the British +Expeditionary Force, for he had been thereof, a tunneller. Of his being +in a countermined shaft at the wrong moment at Vimy, and his luck in +being dragged out by the sergeant-major, he gave some details; but the +first evident attack of mirth to which I had ever seen him give way +came as he mused over rations supplied by the French for a fortnight at +St. Quentin under some temporary arrangement. "Wine, beans, and b---- +horseflesh," he said, _staccato_, and with a dry laugh like the rattling +of beans. "First we'd all get bound up and then we'd all get diarrhoea. +Oh, it was the hell of a go." "There," he said, leaving a little tuft over +my forehead, "you'll still be able to have a couple of quiffs there." + +He was not only cook and hairdresser off duty, I found: he was given to +sketching portraits. I went once or twice to talk with him in the galley, +where the heat was enough to make the famous Lambert himself turn thin. +And his work, he pointed out, was continuous, with his assistant's +services; he had to put up double meals to suit the watches. "But why +do I stick it?" he said, taking a batch of bread from the oven and +standing it on end against the others. "A man can stick shore jobs all +right when there's five mouths depending on him. There's not a lot of +shore jobs now." + +His drawings were done in the little corner where he and his mate had +their bunks. They were pictures of ladies and seamen of his acquaintance; +crude, with lips of a bitter redness, and cheeks faintly pink, staring +and disproportioned, yet done with such pains, such strivings after +"likeness," that when he requested me to help him to a post as artist +to _The Times_, I much wished that I could! I had no sooner made the +acquaintance of the cook's portraits than a poem was bashfully brought +to me by its author, Bicker. I must say that, although his lines had +occasionally been eked out with last resorts, there was a heartiness +about them which I liked; and, going down presently to his cabin, I got +him to show me more. He had already written several rhyming epistles +during the trip, which with the retiring instinct of poets he had left +to blush unseen. So we had aboard among a crew of forty or so a painter of +portraits and a writer of verse. + +We had our philosopher too, Phillips, the chief engineer, veteran of +Khartoum, master of machinery, physician less active but more reliable +than the steward; but above all, the Diogenes--with a slush-lamp. His +philosophy might be no ill store about this time, when in the heat the +pitch melted from the seams of his cabin roof and mottled his bed, as he +put it: a circumstance not yet mentioned in sonnets wooing tardy sleep, +and which of course called upon that nimble sixpence of _Bonadventure_ +conversation, "She _is_ a dirty ship." + + + + +XI + + +A note of a train of thought forced upon me hereabouts may find a place +here, as it was set down. + +(_Feb. 4._) It was nothing more nor less than the appearance at dinner +to-day of a bully stew and a sort of ration lime juice, which drove my +thoughts, always willing to be driven in that direction, towards a +nervous period of 1916, my initiation into trench warfare. The meal +was something of a facsimile; and soon after it, by a coincidence, I +was sitting under the scissors of a volunteer barber much as once after +such a dinner I sat in the alleyway by company headquarters, opposite the +red roofs of Auchy. The _Bonadventure's_ bridge, I meditated as I endured +the shears of a B.E.F. man again, looked not unlike those so-called +"communication trenches" in the Richebourg district, those make-believes; +and, as the steam-valve suddenly made me jump with its thudding volley +of minor explosions, I experienced an echo of the ancient terrors in +those same scantily covered ways when cross-firing machine-guns opened +upon my working-party. + +The lime juice, in the present case, was of a milder disposition than +that to which we were accustomed. Yet there was perceptible in it that +uncivilized strength which proved it to come of the same honest origin. We +were, I must confess--it is not too late--much lacking in our appreciation +of that uncompromising, biting liquid which circulated in the trenches, +carried in jars which should have been, it was felt, carrying rum. In +itself a sort of candid friend, that lime juice lacked advancement +through faults not its own. I mean, there was the chlorinated water, +which for all its virtues was hardly popular, and there was the sugar, +which was half-and-half, associating, very friendly, with tea dust. +Moreover, this same _sugar_, in its nocturnal progress at the bottom of +a sandbag, while its carrier now stepped into an artificial lake and +now lay down for the bullets of Quinque Jimmy to pass by unimpeded, had +acquired an interspersion of hairy particles; as generally did our loaves +of bread, which in some cases might easily be supposed to be wearing +wigs. In this manner, the germ-destroyer, the intrusion of tea dust and +the moulted coat of sandbags, combined to prevent the lime juice, like +crabbed poet, "from being as generally tasted as he deserved to be." + +At Company Headquarters, too, there was often in those easy times a rival +beverage. Here and there a messenger might be sent back to an estaminet +and return to the war with comforts within a couple of hours. + +Yet I myself did my best to cultivate the "lime-juice habit," and to me +it remains an integral part of the interiors, gone but not forgotten, +of many a Rotten Row in the Béthune Sectors. I see its gloomy and +mottled surface, in the aluminium tumbler, besides my platter of "meat and +vegetable" or (as to-day) of bully rehabilitated by the smoky cooks; +and about me the shape of the lean-to dugout rises sufficiently high for +a tall man to enter without going on all fours. Here, is the earth +settee, running round three sides of the table, there, the glory hole in +which, one at a time, we crawl to sleep, with a fine confused bedding of +British Warms and sandbags. The purple typescript of _Comic Cuts_,[4] +in which what imagination and telescope has striven to reveal of the +"other fellow," mind, body and soul, is set in military prose, flaps +neglectedly from its nail. In their furious tints, the ladies of the +late Kirchner beam sweetly upon him who sets put on patrol and him who +returns; while in the convenient niches between the walls and the +corrugated iron roof above, which as a protection might perhaps amount +to the faith of the ostrich, Mills bombs and revolvers and ammunition +nestle. + +There, given the noise of shells travelling over, trench mortar bombs +dropping short, machine guns firing high--or of shells alighting abruptly +on the parados, trench mortar bombs thundering into the next traverse, +machine guns in spitfire temper stripping the top layer of sandbags--the +boyish gay P. would with his subalterns pore over the maps, receive +with sinking heart the ominous "secret and confidential" and "very +secret" messages brought in by those fine youths the runners; fill in, not +without murmurings, those _pro forma's_ which at one time seemed likely to +turn fighting into clerkship, or "censor" those long pages of homely +scrawl in copying pencil which were to keep up yet a day more the spirits +of sweethearts, mothers and wives. + +Thus the particular memories of trenches and our times and seasons in +them, roused by such a light matter as this which has aroused them now, +pass with the greatest emotion before the mind. It is not fashionable +to talk of the war. Is the counsel, then, to follow the Psalmist: + + I said, I will take heed to my ways: that I offend not in my + tongue.... + + I held my tongue, and spake nothing. I kept silence, yea, even + from good words; but it was pain and grief to me. + +One has not to follow him very long in that. + + My heart was hot within me, and while I was thus musing the + fire kindled: and at the last I spake with my tongue. + +One wonders, though, how the Psalmist himself, had he been one of us, +would have found means to communicate his strange undertones of +experience, according to their significance for himself? To whom would it +be of interest, if he described such a particle as St. Vaast Keep on +the Richebourg road, though he saw daily again in some odd way its +sandbagged posts with the fine wood panels from the shell-like house +beside built in?--seen once, for a lifetime. Or Port Arthur, that wreckage +of a brewery near Neuve Chapelle--why should every yard of its flimsy +fortification be coexistent with me? I could lead the hearer through +its observation-posts, its emplacements, its warrens for human beings, +its relics of other days, with practical and geographical accuracy; but +the words would not contain my own sense of the place, which from the +very first I never needed nor endeavoured to put into words. And yet +it is intense and instant. The reflection of the crazy stronghold as it +was, and with what it meant for me, comes in a second when my thoughts +lie that way, and it is but one of a series of equal insistency. It is no +question, this, of looking back on such a past as in any degree +glorious, of shirking the anguish that overcast any adventurous gleam that +these scenes awakened. Their memory is as sombre and as frightening as +they were themselves in their aspect and their annals. + + They come unbidden, + +and when they will come, the mind is led by them as birds are said to be +lured by the serpent's eye. A tune, a breath of sighing air, an odour--and +there goes the foolish ghost back to Flanders. + +Even here, I suppose, in the Atlantic's healthy blue, I am at the mercy of +a coincidence in lime-juice. + +----- + +[Footnote 4: Divisional Intelligence Report.] + + + + +XII + + +Following a roaster of day, with a slack wind astern covering the deck +forward with showers of cinders like shot, I admired the moonlight +and the sweet night air before I turned in to sleep soundly. I woke +thinking I heard the usual swabbing of decks beginning, but this was +incorrect. It was quite dark, and I began to think with gratitude of +a second innings of sleep; but when I looked at my watch it was after +seven. The din of water outside, mingled with the rushing of a mighty +wind, persuaded me to go to the door. In a few moments the storm was +at its height, the sea shrouded in a thick deluge almost to the ship's +side, and its waves beaten down by the rain into pallid foam-veined +inertia. An ashen grey light was about us, but the clouds of rain veiled +the poop from one's eyes amidships, and the siren trumpeted out its +warnings; while sheet-like lightning flamed through the vapours, and +bursts of deeper thunder than I had ever heard followed hard upon them. +The decks were racing with water from overhead covers and stairways, and +in each lifting of the storm the awning over the sailors' quarters aft +could be seen tearing at its tethers. + +This fury soon slackened, and green and blue, pale as yet, returned to +the seas as they leapt away from the bows. Breakfast intervened. Attention +was requested from the storm by the appearance of a new and experimental +kind of ham. + +"Yes. What d'ye think of the ham--tinned boneless smoked ham?" + +"Well, I like it well enough; but it's boneless. If you take the bone away +from ham, you take away the nature of it." + +This ham later on became much esteemed, but the ingenious mind was for +dissembling the fact: "We'd better not give a too enthusiastic report on +it or they'll only give it to the passenger boats" of the same company. + +It was blowing still, from the coast of South America. "Smell the mould?" +asked Hosea, and I did; a strange frightening fragrance, of the earth +earthy, a heavy and swooning smell. It was so strong as to puzzle Bicker +even, in his watch; and its most unpleasant manifestation caused him to +look about for the carcass of a rat on the bridge deck. + +We had come by this time into a highway of ships. The first that passed +us, a small steamer, was not much noticed; nor the next, which passed in +the night. "Her lamp gave a blink and then went out," said Bicker, and +wished he could have emulated a mate of his acquaintance who likewise +signalled to a passer-by in vain. "If you damn'd foreigners can't answer," +he sent out as she came alongside presently, "why the hell don't you +keep out of sight? Good night!" But, on being pressed, he admitted that +the "foreigner" replied: "Thank you. And you're a lady." + +Then, however, another ship belonging to the same company with the +_Bonadventure_ was seen afar through the afternoon. As the two drew +level, ceremony took place. The houseflag was dipped and raised and +dipped again by both; the red ensign was dipped; and the homeward-bound +sounded her monosyllable three times, to which our own whistle replied +in equal number. This, as old-fashioned a courtesy as could be wished, +excited several others aboard the _Bonadventure_ besides the tyro; and +as the chief engineer began his tea, he thus referred to the prevailing +spirit. + +"--Well, so we passed one of _our_ ships again to-day! I was lying in my +hammock asleep, when the mess-room boy came running up, panting out: +'Sir, here's one of our ships!' And I mumbled out something like, 'All +right, John, there's room enough for us to pass, isn't there?' Everybody +was seemingly out on deck, peering up at the mate to see if he had +forgotten the flags; everybody was staring at the funnel with the eye of +expectancy, wondering 'When the hell's that damn'd whistle going?'--I +didn't get up for it. I suppose that's equivalent to contempt of court or +high treason." + +The bland face of the sage lighted up with pleasure as he carefully gave +us this impression of his. + +After the storm, the air was thunder-heavy all that day. Great +dragon-flies, and butterflies in sultry brown and red, and that must +have been borne out to sea on the strong breeze, were fluttering over the +decks and the water. At night, there was abundant lightning in the +distance: most of all on the eastern horizon, with its world of +waters, the flashes were of a dusky redness, and of vague mountainous +outline. They came fast and furious, until the moon at last seemed to +overawe such wild carouse, and in good earnest to govern the night; +while in a deep blue darkness, among the folds of white cloud, stars +shone with new clearness. Under this celestial content, the _Bonadventure_ +moved over a gleaming sea. + +Mead, on his watch, was troubled. He sought in his mind a life better +paid and more exciting. Every few moments, he would add some detail aloud +to a scheme for piracy in these waters, which he thought might be made +a profitable occupation. He pictured a coaster, duly registered, running +with ordinary cargo to and fro, but on the lines of a "Q" boat, a sort +of marine wolf in sheep's clothing, armed with torpedo tubes. In all +respects, himself being already chosen as captain, its crew should form +a co-operative society. The pirate should carry a wireless installation +of the noisiest sort. In brief, the whole scheme appealed to him so +warmly that he was ready, apart from details to be arranged, especially +a financier, to put it into practice. Me he would accept as purser, +not so much because I showed any promise as a book-keeper, as that I had +been in an infantry battalion in the Line. + +The ship was slowing down, and the chief was worried. One morning he +offered me employment, "cleaning the tubes. You come round to my place." I +went round at about nine, when the ship's engines were stopped, and found +that he had as ever been amusing himself in his quiet way. He himself, +with the firemen, was now ready to act as the ship's chimney-sweeps. +After a full morning's work, masked in sweat and soot, they came up on +deck again from the job. I did not regret my earlier "disappointment." +Relieved of the clogging soot, the _Bonadventure_ ran with fresh speed, +against a tough head wind. For the first time for some days, one heard +the harsh drumming of the excess of steam escaping through its valve. +The wind drove the water, hereabouts of a jade green colour, into long +waves and their fine manes of spray, upon which the sun made many a +small and fleeting rainbow. With this head wind piping, and the cargo, +it seemed, having shifted lately, the ship had an uncomfortable list to +port and swayed as she went. "Here, you," cried Meacock to me, "your +extra weight on the port side's doing this." "Yes, it's perfectly plain he +is the Jonah of the voyage." + +A dozen big black birds appeared as travelling companions, white-breasted +and easy-going. At a closer view, I found that they were not properly +black but of that dingy russet grey towards which old mushrooms grow. +They seemed never to clap their wings, but sailed as our gulls do on the +wind, wheeling and looping with a leisurely grace, and patrolling the sea +as closely as an owl beats a meadow without wetting a wing-tip. + +Nor was this the only token of our nearing our first destination. +Shore-going suits and boots were out in the sun already. The steward's +usual attitude became that of a priest, as he carried the captain's +suits gingerly here and there. + +But there was still time for trouble. A relapse in the sainted manner +of the old fellow occurred one day at breakfast. The most tremendous +roarings, himself and the offending donkeyman in turn or in chorus, +suddenly broke out, and ended in the steward's ascent with a complaint to +Hosea. Then, one evening, after my quiet enjoyment of the pure blue +sky after a shower, with its Southern Cross and the false cross and other +stars strange to me glittering marvellously keen, I went in to my cabin to +write, when I instantly perceived something in the air. A most pungent +aroma, indeed, had been instilled through the house; and going to inquire +I found Cyrano of Cardiff kneeling on the saloon floor, applying a +special kind of red paint. Properly, he said, it was used for the keels +of ships. I thought too that that was its proper application. + +At dinner, too, events took a serious turn. When I had in previous +days heard spaghetti hailed as Wind-pipes, for instance, I had realized +the phrase as a humorous hyperbole. But now the tinned meat problem +presented itself to me in a more sinister light--I was not so sure! +There before me was a godless lump of briny red fat and stringy appendages +floating more or less in a thick brown liquid which demanded the +spectacles of optimism. A reinforcement of stony beans did not mend the +matter. The meat, as it fell out, wore a portion of skin, remarkable +for prickly excrescences, and hinting that I was about to batten on +the relics of a young porcupine, or at least peculiar pork. Presently +I asked Meacock what sort of flesh this was. He answered: "O Lord, _I_ +don't know--it's--well, I don't think you can get beyond tinned _meat_." + +Another incident affected the administration. An apprentice, whose stature +brought him, beyond the chance of escape, the nickname Little Tich, and +who was generally being bantered by someone or other, was cleaning the +brasswork of the compass in the wheel-house. Meacock went in to take a +bearing. The bearing he got nonplussed him, and he got Mead to try. Mead +also found the needle giving strange evidence. Suddenly it dawned upon +them that its delusion was due to a tremendous dagger worn by the very +small and keenly occupied Tich. + +The _Bonadventure_ maintained her mended pace, and also her awkward +list, which conspired with a strong swell; thus it was that the "fiddle" +so necessary to the safety of cups and plates in the Bay of Biscay +reappeared at this late stage. The nights were beautiful, with their white +moon and moonlight far over the water, their stars, few, and of the +moon's glowing whiteness, the light veilings of cloud blown in silence +about the sky, and little else heard except the subdued measure of the +ship's engines, the lapping repulse of waves from the bows, and the +sharp call of birds ahead and astern. Well might Mead be glad of his +roving temperament, as on his watch we talked and smoked above the +expanse of rimpled water, and looked towards the sword-like lightnings +in the south. + + + + +XIII + + +We came into grey waters, and also into a grey sort of day, overcast and +moody. In the evening the wind was strong from the land, and laden with +that earthy scent which had so surprised me when I first encountered it; +a languid, rich and beguiling perfume, that is tomb-like and unnerving in +its suggestion, rising over us. It made out for me the spirit of Tom +Hood's last song, if it was his last song; the one beginning "Farewell, +life, my senses swim"; its first verse ending "I smell the Mould above the +Rose," and its second, "I smell the Rose above the Mould." + +Hosea engaged me in discussion of Tennyson and Edwin Arnold. He had been +carrying out a lively campaign in his room, where an unwelcome insect +had appeared lately; one would have doubted whether any insect, however +irrepressible, could have existed in the atmosphere of cigar smoke which +he daily thickened in that room of his. But there it was, the bug had been +seen, and the whole room was overhauled. + +This did not in any way deflect him from his evening pursuit of the +abstract. His resolution in following a problem through its own difficult +aspects, combined with his control of the _Bonadventure_, often made me +wonder whether he was typical of his fellow-captains. Though, as he said, +the roaring-bull style of master mariner was almost extinct, I could not +help thinking him singular. + +I woke at about four, following an inquiry into some remote subject, +from a dream of roaring thunderbolts, out of whose red and whizzing track +I was crouching on the lee side of barns and cowsheds. I looked out; +there was a loud wind much like that which brought the storm of the +other Sunday. I went back to bed a little disappointed. This squall left +the makings of a very good breeze blowing and moreover lowered the +temperature. The mate complained of his khaki shorts; the second mate +had had to bring out another blanket, although it was a sunny morning. The +colour of the sea was changing as we went at a striking rate; but +prevailing, in those shallower roads turbid with silt or sand was a +greenness as of horse-chestnut leaves at their prime. Here and there were +dark acres of discoloured water drifting by, contrasting magnificently +with the green and its bright white-crested waves. The afternoon brought +into sight the dim shapes of coastline with those now less familiar things +trees and houses. This advance was welcomed by Mead and the apprentices +who lived in his alleyway with spirited but not spiritual songs. + +The next day, Hosea was very early at the door of the wireless operator's +cabin, endeavouring to get a reply from the ship's agents in Monte +Video, to questions sent some days before. I do not think he succeeded. +There was, however, much buzzing, and I got up to enjoy the time of day. +It was still keen outside--"a nipping and an eager air"--the sky being +blue and the sun unclouded none the less; over the drab green sea, a +seagull or two in their lordly fashions flapping against the wind; to +starboard, in a gentle haze, a view of rugged shore. This point was one +of mountainous eminences, rolling like larger Downs, with white cliffs +or sandy beaches under their light red masses. Other steamers were in our +neighbourhood, on the same course out or home, some bright with new +paint, others scarred and rusty. Probably they were having tripe in +batter for breakfast like ourselves, the prose part of me suggested; and +I felt with gratitude that I must have become a new and better man, +who could now face and even look forward to a food which had hitherto +only interested me as a favourite with C. Lamb. + +The continued cold caused me to return to socks; but I delayed the +reinstatement of the collar, which I had found no such necessity to human +happiness. + +It seemed no time at all before we had passed Flores Island, and Monte +Video came into view. Bright sandy shores gave place to a parched sort of +greenery, as it looked, with large buildings here and there; the town +beyond lay terraced on rising ground, its square monotonous buildings hot +in the sun, whose fervour the roofs returned in dazzling mirror-glare. +The spires and minarets of its more pretentious architecture, something +scantily, relieved the greyness of the formal rows, barracks, warehouses +and whatever else. Farther on a rough squat cone of barren-looking +ground surmounted with another heavy square-cut building caught but +scarcely charmed the eye. As the heat was dreary, so at a casual glance +through the smouldering air this town of flat roofs and tiers. + +Hosea, very smart, with his telescope under his arm, and the second mate +beside him, stood on the bridge. Hosea was giving orders, the second mate +passing them on to the engineer below on the ringing telegraph, and by +megaphone to Meacock, who with the carpenter stood to the anchor forward. +Flags were run up announcing the _Bonadventure_. No answer, in the form +of a launch, was vouchsafed so early, although other ships moored round +about us were being visited by agents or doctors. The word was given +to let go the anchor. "Forty-five on the windlass!" The cumbrous chain +unwound and ran down with a cloud of rust. The _Bonadventure_ lay still, +even the cocoa-like mud which her propeller had been diffusing in a few +moments thinning away. + +A gangway was let down over the side. Firemen and engineers came up +from the underworld and all--not only the passenger--looked towards a +motor launch which now appeared making swiftly towards us. She was tied +up a moment later with ropes at the foot of the gangway, and an Englishman +emerging from her small beautifully polished saloon, asked in supercilious +fashion for the captain. "Come aboard." "No, I can't," Hosea stalked +forth with successful dignity, as if unaware that anyone should be +calling; then, going back for the ship's papers, boarded the launch, and +we heard that we were going on to Buenos Aires. The papers were quickly +seen and restored; letters--general gloom!--were absent, probably with +some other agents; and the launch and the young man in his beautiful +suit, raiment for a diplomat, departed. + +We stayed here at anchor through the afternoon; telescopes sprang up on +all sides, even if to unacquainted, non-cubist eyes the view was rather +interesting than pleasing. Every half-hour or so, some tramp would leave +the harbour. Curiosity in their case was small. Every half-hour, launches +puffed along to take back their pilots. The purlieus of Monte Video with +their apparent but distant gaiety, even, were soon disregarded. + +Bicker and Meacock exchanged humorous history by the engine bunkers, +in holiday mood. The steward, who had lost little time in putting out +a fishline, leaned over the rail in meditation, not knowing that his +misanthropic look was being almost to a line caught by Bicker behind him. +Bicker also illustrated in dumb show the action of heaving the poor old +man overboard. And, meanwhile, it was hot: no doubt of that! Presently the +doleful patience of the steward was rewarded with a foolish-looking +fish perhaps three pounds in weight, which was soon cut into sectors +and salted. + +When towards seven in the evening the anchor was got up and the ship +began to move up the River Plate to Buenos Aires, the scene was one to be +remembered. Astern lay Monte Video with its lines of lights, and from +its hill one great light glowed out momently; ahead lay the buoys of the +channel, flashing first red and then white in reassuring alternation +along our course; and the moon overhead, pale with a stratum of thin +cloud, or lost at times behind echelons of stormier vapours, gave light +enough to hint at the look of the shores. At first the captain, the mate +and the anchor appeared the three forces acting on the ship, the anchor +especially, which was loath to come aboard. At last it came, and the +_Bonadventure_ went steadily up the river to the pipe of a rising wind. + +Hosea, well satisfied, sat down in his room with his "purser" to theorize +in our wonted way. The beauty of the commonplace, it was; then we were +considering the simplicity of seafaring men. They must be simple, he +said, to have done what they had done, including Columbus. Seafaring +in sailing ships, he described in the powerful phrase "fighting against +your God"; a phrase which I suppose the early mariners in their piety +might have applied to steamers. + + 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 the _Golden Hind's_ boatswain, 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 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 the _Bonadventure's_ bell, 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 next +STRIKE begin?" 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 +listened meanwhile 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, _he_ came 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. + + + + +XIV + + +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 the _Bonadventure_ in. 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 of what, 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 them and showed what +they too stood for, emblems peculiar. + +Scarcely had the _Bonadventure_ come 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 the _Bonadventure_ at 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, the _Bonadventure_ was 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's +walk 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 name _Ypres_ on 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 threatened invasion had begun. Determining +not to consider the question at all, I read deep in my pocket copy of +Young's _Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality_, as in worse +quarters many a time, and duly went to sleep like a philosopher. + + + + +XV + + +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 conditions were 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 weakest trying 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. + +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 watching the 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 the _Bonadventure_ in 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 the _Bonadventure_ he 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 elevators glaring 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 the _Primrose_ whom 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, _of_ his 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 the +_Bonadventure_ with 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. + + + + +XVI + + +There was a feeling (based on observation) aboard the _Bonadventure_ that +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. With _Macbeth_ in hand as a convenient +weapon., I nightly reduced the horde, but these + + 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 end at 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; the +_Bonadventure's_ fair 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. If it 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 be _writing up_ my 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 the _Bonadventure_, who in his +uniform cut a most splendid 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 found _The 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 of yesterday, 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. + + + + +XVII + + +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 of _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ by 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 time of 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 the _Bonadventure_ would +be sent up the river 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 the +_Bonadventure_ out 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 and +unchallenged 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 the _Bonadventure_ was 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 the end 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, +the _Bonadventure_ began to move, and the bags of guano were a tyranny +that is overpast. That channel into which I had been pleased to see +the _Bonadventure_ come 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 him +was 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. + + + + +XVIII + + +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, the _Bonadventure_ +seemed 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 the _Bonadventure_ was 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 +conferred it 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 keep clean. For the inward man, I once again took refuge in Young's +_Night 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 + + I was born in the city of Sydney, + And I was an apprentice bound, + And many's the good old time I've had + In that dear old Southern town. + +The apprentice fell in with a dark lady--indeed "she came tripping right +into his way." It was an unfortunate encounter. He became her "darling +flash boy." He could readily put the case against her when, as receiver +of stolen goods, he had served some years in jail; and then, like the +author of _George Barnwell_, he addressed apprentices on the subject: + + So all young men take a warning and + Beware of that black velvet tie. + +But yet, and here was the charm of the ballad, and the token of his +entanglement by Neæra's hair, ever and anon came the burden + + For her eyes they shone like the diamonds, + I thought her a Queen of the land, + And the hair that hung over her shoulders was + Tied up with a black velvet band. + +When Mead later on gave me a copy of this song, which I shall not forget, +duly set out in "cantos," he was good enough to ornament it with a little +picture of the black bow as tailpiece. + +The heat became very strong, and as the day declined, a great cloud-bank +rose up out to sea, and the air settled to that stillness in which the +fall of the ripples from the side sounds most insistent. Dark came +on, and from two arches or caverns of smouldering twilight under the +extremities of that mighty cloud the lightnings burst; lightnings in +whose general wide waft of brightness intense white wreaths suddenly +lived and withered, branches of fire stretched forth and were gone; while +in the opposite heaven "like a dying lady," went the horned moon. + +Meanwhile the _Bonadventure_ not slacking her unusual speed came to a +lightship; then (for this was a pilot station) the engines thrashed up +the water as she manoeuvred for the pilot's most comfortable approach. +The boatmen came rowing him lustily out to us; our rope ladder was +lowered--at these moments I was sensible of a sort of proud anxiety on +the part of all aboard, that such a detail should be carried out with +all despatch--and up he came. And after him, a rope was asked for, and +sent down; up came a great stringful of fish, gleaming like the sea +under the moon; and once more the rope went down, and a collection of +jars which were at once thought to contain wine was hauled on board. +Then, from the boat "Finish!" but she did not depart, making fast to the +_Bonadventure_. She circling about the lightship, at length brought +her companion within a stone's throw. Then the boat was cut adrift, +and we went on our way towards a line of buoys whose flashes lit up the +expanse ahead. + +We came now close by the misty lights of a town named Puerto Militar and +further on those of Ingeniero White, the little port of Bahia Blanca to +which the _Bonadventure_ was actually bound, began to beckon. About eleven +the anchors were let go, and the pilot retired to sleep; but I still +stayed with Mead, regarding dully the dull lights of our surroundings, +and consuming cocoa, and blessing the exhalation of the continent which +had first met me at sea some weeks ago. Already fishing, the steward +leaned over the rail close by; he had often painted the angling at Bahia +Blanca in enthusiastic colours. However, he seemed to catch nothing. + +By this the moon, that had grown almost a giantess as she stooped down +the horizon, and had reddened like a glowing coal to the last almost, was +dwindling. The orb became a beacon dying on a hill; then dropped below +the sky. The lightnings over the quiet sea had almost ceased. + + + + +XIX + + +I slept heavily, and when I got up, the _Bonadventure_ had moved into the +channel towards Ingeniero White, and was lying at anchor outside that +place. The scenery about us was of pleasing ugliness, worthy of George +Crabbe's poetical painting. To seaward there lay long stretches of mud, +or banks of a sort of grass--long layers of brown and green ending at +the frontier of a blue-grey rainy sky; and the land was low, featureless +(save for a mountain height in the hazy interior) and dark. Close to +our mooring was the assemblage of motley huts and tenements, galvanized +iron roofs, tall chimneys, and more notably the grain elevators, under +which several other steamers were lying. Above the salt marshes a rainbow +touched the clouds, and too soon the sun was pouring upon everything +a dazzling sultry heat. + +At breakfast the fish which the pilot had brought aboard as a kindly +offering during the night were eaten, curried. This mode of serving them +displeased the Saloon. The steward, affecting to be in a philosophic +doze in his lair, could not fail to have heard such scathing remarks as +these: + +"The nicest fish I've had down here." + +"Yes, spoiled." + +"Wasted." + +"Why the devil must they go and camouflage it?" + +"If it had been high we'd have had it neat." + +"Must have curry and rice on Monday morning. Mustn't go outside the +routine." + +"Well, you see, if they started on the wrong note on Monday they wouldn't +be able to pick up the tune for the rest of the week." + +"O, it's easy. Steak, steak, steak." + +We hurried our breakfast amid these criticisms, as the port authority was +expected. Towards nine o'clock, all hands being assembled amidships, +his launch came to the foot of the gangway. Eight sailors in white uniform +rowed this launch. He divested himself of his sword, came up, and went +inside Hosea's quarters to "talk things over"; whereupon, the parade +broke up. The next event was, we changed our mooring. As we passed to the +new tether, which was among several tramps as ladylike as ourselves, I +had my first experience of the groaning, screeching and gasping noise +which the machinery of a dredger can make, as its buckets come round +on the endless chain and empty themselves into the barge alongside. I +wonder these contrivances were not introduced during the Passchendaele +operations. They would have served two purposes, that of keeping a good +depth of water for the infantry to swim through; and that of demoralizing +the enemy. + +We remained only a few minutes in this new position. Then we moved into a +dock, lined with warehouses as they appeared, under whose grey tin roofs +were stacked bags of grain in large profusion. With much shouting and +manipulating of ropes, we got in, behind the steamer _Caxambu_; alongside +a framework of piles. On these, even the less accessible slanting +timbers, many a ship's name scrawled in black or red paint, and often +followed by the date of the call, addressed the new-comer's eye. In +these inscriptions the S's, B's, D's, and 9's, had a tendency to be +reversed. I thought that the exotic poets and others who deny their +readers capital letters, apostrophes and so forth might here find another +inspiration. The medley of names included such as the _Trebarthan_, the +_King Arthur_, the _Alf_, the _Olive_, the _Bilbao_. And the _Keats_; +why _Keats_? Apart from this mystery, I could not help contrasting +many of the names with those of the figure-head days, and like the +posy of a ring, some of them came into my mind, from my reading, the +_John and Judith_, _Charming Nancy_, _Love and Unity_, _Lancashire Witch_. + +Here, the heat seemed to redouble, and the flies to bite harder +accordingly. For some time nothing much happened. The Captain, after +being visited by the doctor, ship's chandler and others, but not such a +swarm as on our previous berthing, went ashore, leaving Bicker, who +prided himself upon his mathematical faculty, to wrestle with the +problems of the Customs manifest. I myself had handed over trench +stores; this looked a worse job, and there were the familiar dilemmas +of one thing with different names. + +The ship was not here, it soon showed, to take her time. Loading began +after dinner. A leather band or rather gutter working on rollers was +lifted out from the wharf over each of several holds, and a spout fixed +at its extremity; the gang in charge spread sacking under the feeding +band and directed the spout as they wished. Then the machinery behind +began to drone, and the grain, like a gliding brook, to travel along +the leather band; whence, at the overturn, it leapt into the spout which +directed its descent into the hold, while a sort of idle snowstorm of +chaff and draff glistened thick in the sunlight. Many heads looked +over the rails to see this process at first, but there was a sameness +about it and the heads quickly found other occupation. Presently I went +to look at the activities behind the scenes, where a gang was taking +bags of grain from a railway truck and emptying them through a grating +into another travelling conduit, which duly under the flooring of the +building bore the wheat to the automatic machines. There, it seemed +to my inept wish to learn, it was amassed until a certain weight was +registered, and that point reached the heap was flung forward into +the feeder which ran up to the spout over our hold. Before the yellow +current arrived there, it had been sampled at intervals by a boy who +squatted beside, dipping a horn-shaped can on the end of a stick into +it, and filling thereby small labelled sacks convenient to him. + +The Brazilian steamer ahead of us was receiving the grain in bags, which +looked oddly like pigs asleep as they were hurried along the endless band. +On this steamer, the _Caxambu_, real live pigs and sheep were routing +about over the forecastle. I was told that she was an ex-German. Anyway, +though in déshabille, she was a handsome ship. Her bell was the most +resonant; the _Bonadventure's_ was known still more surely for a thin +tinkler when that gong rang. + +For the settlement beyond, it was not conspicuous. The spires of Bahia +Blanca showed up white some few miles inland; the nearer scene was one of +tin roofs, of railway coaches and wagons, small muddy decks and mud +flats. Naturally the steward was fishing. But nothing was biting. He +stood pensively gazing into heaven, even holding the line listlessly, when +the third mate having collected a good attendance crept up behind him +as quiet as a cat and jerked the line with the hungry violence of a +monster, contriving also to make his retreat out of sight before the aged +angler had quite decided that he was _not_ going to catch a huge bass. +This heartless deception was very popular. Something was necessary to +while away the evening despite its bright array of dewy-lighted clouds, +which suited the coolness of the air. The grumble of the machinery gave +place to "Cock Robin" and other classic opportunities for bawling; and +cards were brought out. + +The next day, cold enough for every one, and proving that the English +climate is not alone in its uncertain habits, went on quietly. The party +who brought the sacks of grain to the door of the railway truck, the +man who there at singular speed cut away the string from the mouths of +the sacks, the lads who swept all loose grain from the truck and its +neighbourhood--all were working to load us as if their lives depended on +it. Actually, no doubt, this was the case. The _Bonadventure_ ceased to +tower aloft out of the water. + +Bicker, Mead and the passenger-purser passed the evening in the village. +We went in and out of shops in a casual manner. There was one whose +contents were sufficiently varied for the sailors' fancy. On one wall +hung a large collection of crudely cured pelts, the fur of wild cats, +foxes, and other animals. From the ceiling hung, unpitied, many canaries +imprisoned in yellow cages; under the counters were displayed baskets made +of turtle shells, lined with pink sateen. Cigarettes of all nationalities, +boot polishes of uncertain price and utility, and in the window a regiment +of notes and coins advertising the money-changer's department, caught +my eye. There were even old books. As we were leaving two sailors +entered bearing a cage wrapped in paper. They accosted the fat and greasy +shopkeeper abruptly. + +"Canary eh? died 'smornin' eh?" + +(This "eh?" was the mainstay of our Anglo-Argentine intercourse.) + +"Ah, Ah, no give monjay!" + +"Yes, mucho plenty monjay." + +The question in short was, what about giving us our money back?--but we +could not stop long enough to see the result. Further along, children's +sandals were ranged in a window. Mead thought that he would shine in a +pair like them; but the shopkeeper thought his inquiry for sandals size 9 +a good joke. + +At this stage, when Mead emerged, I was very sorry to have to call his +attention to a board in the window, which in his concentration on the +sandals he had overlooked. It was a board giving the numbers (announced +that day) of the winning lottery tickets. None of these numbers coincided +with that owned by Mead. + +The disappointment quite naturally led us to the refreshment room at the +station and kept us there until the hour of closing. The angry Mead in +some measure became reconciled to the injustice which he had suffered, and +we all enjoyed the friendliness of the waiters. These, not being over +busy, played the fool, except one who behind the bar sat with pen and +ink and a folio blank-book laboriously copying an English exercise on the +ancient pattern: Have you seen my glove?--Yes, I have seen your glove, +&c. One endeavoured to persuade us that he was a Russian, and feigned +a horrid interest in a news paragraph about Lenin. The other indulged in +an anti-French speech, with gestures. "La Liberté!" he jeered, at the same +time grasping vigorously in all directions. + +Our nights were disturbed by mosquitoes, not so ferocious as formerly, +and cats. Aboard, it still seemed cold; but ashore there was little +breeze, and my walks round the town were warm work. The outskirts of this +ramshackle place were dreary, but I liked them better than city streets. +They formed a loose encampment of tin, or plaster, or matchboard, in +which one would perhaps notice most the open drains, the chickens, goats +(some of them of most sheepish appearance), cows, pigs, cats, dogs of +the silly sort, sunflowers, and gentlemen in blue cotton trousers, about +the thresholds. Grumble as you may at militarism, most army camps +would have been better favoured in some respects: since here, despite the +prospects of mud suggested by the dust of the present season, no hut +seemed to have a raised approach, whether stone causeway or duck-walk. +I never walked into Bahia Blanca, though not far short of its tall +spires, but found these habitations a sufficient view; the way back to +the _Bonadventure_ might be over a moorish level, thickly grown over +with yellow flowering weed, and all sorts of drouthy "flora of the +marsh." Marsh, however, it was not, the soil being thoroughly baked and +cracked. Here were a few birds, that seemed to me the thrushes of the +place; a few butterflies; beetles, lying dead here and there; lizards +in greater number. But the fields hereabouts had all a solitary look. +Often the track was inches deep in dust. + +On one of my walks, the wireless operator being with me, we were seen +going up from the wharf by the ship's carpenter, who, it afterwards +came out, had tried to attract our attention by shouting. The reason for +his attempt is interesting. He was, in fact, at that time in "calaboosh," +having been haled thither during the night, according to a prophecy of +Mead's. Looking too long on the wine (three glasses, by his reckoning) +and the beer (one innocent glass), he had succeeded in arriving abreast +of the Brazilian next to us. At this point, he had the misfortune to +lose the way to the _Bonadventure_; and presently for his safety the +police took him to the cells. Thence, the next afternoon, Chips was +released, and that without even a fine. The winter wind is not so unkind +as this cadaverous man's ingratitude to the gendarmes for their kindly +act. Asked about it, he complained in loud and bitter terms that such +things should be, and + + with swinish phrase + Soiled their addition. + +This episode appeared to please the mate, Meacock, in no small degree. +He recounted other imprisonments; told of black sheep among crews newly +arrived from Sing Sing and similar haunts, for whose arrest a warrant +was always handed to the police as soon as the ship arrived in port; +described the difficulty of getting these incorrigibles from the ship to +the wharf, the police having no sanction to touch them on the ship; and +how the Brazilian police got the upper hand of bruisers towering above +them by lambasting them with the flat of their swords. + +Lethargy and grain dust seemed to hang in our air together. The +exploration of Ingeniero White as an amusement became less liked as +time went on, and as sometimes the dull sky broke in a drizzle of rain. +One hatch was filled with wheat; the gang trimmed it quickly; and the +loading of the other hatches continued apace, so that our going to sea +again looked close at hand. The sailors and apprentices with pots of +paint were perched at various points above and beside the ship; and it +was no great surprise to me when one of the boys, much given to +recreation, suddenly appeared in a waterlogged state. + +The town was not without its Mission to Sailors. It depended upon the +energies of a very small English community, of course, but they kept up +a comfortable room, where dancing and singing were entered upon in +the evenings; the standards of pastime required by Bicker and Mead, +however, were not reached. It pleased them to drift about; to call at +the refreshment room of the station and throw dice for drinks, to prowl +about the town with an independent air. The funds at the disposal of +this party were dwindling. It was therefore proposed to take to the +vile syrup known as _caña_ instead of whisky, and an ingenious logic +was discovered in favour of the plan, apart from the great cheapness of +the caña. As thus: Even at B.A. (did you but know it) you often had +turpentine sold you for whisky; in fact, here, if you asked for whisky, +ten to one that what you received was caña at four times its proper +price. Better ask for caña straight away. This reasoning in favour of an +adopted plan could not be answered except by sudden wealth. These +driftings were mainly spent in wondering what to do next. (The only real +prospect was, to get back to the ship.) If any decision was made, it was +a picturesque one. For instance, the town being abed, we went into a +general stores where there was a light showing the proprietor about to +close. Somewhat to his surprise, and after the first few moments to his +discontent, supper was taken, dog biscuits and cream cheese, washed +down with yellow caña--a more inflammatory distillation even than the +white. And so home. + + + + +XX + + +We did not get away so quickly as had been thought, and as every one +seemed to wish. Heavy skies came on, giving the slack waters a leaden +look. The air, though it was not hot, was close; and the fine dust from +the grain which carpeted all the decks began to sit heavy on the lungs. +Among the business outstanding remained that of stowing 7,500 bags in +the bunker hatch--slower work, clearly, than the loading in bulk which had +until now been the method with the _Bonadventure_. Bicker and Mead, as +they supervised the trimming of hatches that had been filled, wore a +melancholy look, nor was the entry at breakfast of two young men from the +Customs, though pleasant acquaintances, considered a relief. If clouds +disappeared, and left the day like a furnace, there was every facility +for doing nothing at all. Even at evening the cabins were filled with +tepid air and flies: and most of us might be found leaning over the +rails in silence, watching sunset's orange red colour to the prime and +die away again in the sky and the water below it, scarcely marked with +a ripple; and then the moon riding high above our bridge, itself not +unexalted, not ungraceful by its proximity to the warehouse. In such a +night comes Mead, and a consultation ends in my approaching Mouldytop +the steward with respectful petition for ship's biscuits. These soon +refreshed in my mind Solomon's choosing a dish of herbs and love over a +stalled ox and hatred. + +The time now arrived when I was honourably appointed to a job of work. I +felt proud indeed when Meacock explained it to me. It was, to keep +count of the number of bags of grain shipped for the bunker hatch and +another one aft. The tallyman employed by the merchants kept his record, +shouting out his "Una, dos, tres" until each tally of bags was complete; +the ship's representative looked on at the descending bags and made his +oblique strokes in his book accordingly. This work in effect was not so +simple as it sounds; sometimes after a pause the bags would be let +loose suddenly and in quick succession, nor moreover was it possible to +question the other tallyman at the moments of disagreement, since he +spoke no English and I no Spanish. + +This delivery of some thousands of bags was to be completed in the course +of a day, but was not. The arrangement of shoots for the bags to travel +down was as neat as a scenic railway: they slid down one, were deflected +by a fixed bag at the foot of it to another shoot at right angles to +it, and so on down to the caverns and the packers. The day's work ended, +but some thousands of bags remained to be put aboard, and I felt that I +was growing used to times and seasons nautical, "the ways of a ship," in +the cook's phrase. When a sergeant-major says, Parade at 8.30, he is +understood to have ordered a parade for 8.15; but I suspect that at sea, +should the tramp be expected away this week, next week is the actual +time of departure. + +Newspapers reached the ship from Buenos Aires, one day old, and by that +time having an antiquarian value of twenty centavos, or fourpence. In +consequence we generally went without; yet somehow important news, such as +the result of Cardiff City versus Tottenham Hotspur, was quickly passed +round. Unimportant, such as the latest development in the Anglo-Irish +situation, was considered "politics," and its seeker ignored. + +The wharves were haunted, it goes without saying, by rats; more publicly, +by dogs. One grey giant was regarded, especially by the mess-room boy, +with romantic fondness. His history, if his, was current. He was "a +Yankee," but had lost his passage in the North American ship to which he +belonged; and now, it was maintained, he made a complete round of all the +docks, boarded every ship that came in, and looked into the alleyways +to try and recognize his own. The dog did, I agree, wear a saddened +expression. But, discreetly, I did not feel sure about his sentimental +journey. It was "Mess-room" too who encouraged a cat to prepare for the +homeward voyage, and I cannot say that he at first appeared likely to +persuade the animal, which, shut in for the night, like Chips on a +recent occasion, gave vent to piercing miaows. Parrots and monkeys, +without which surely no sailor should ever return to his native village, +were alike scarce. + +The subject of my future standing in the village tavern had already been +discussed when others failed. It now arose again. The saloon's ideas +of rural England were almost as broad as mine of sea life. They could +see or affected to see nothing else in agriculture but one large joke; +and its communities as so many tribes of gaping lads in smocks, with +churchwardens, clustering about the oldest inhabitant. I had told them +not once nor twice that no one in my village had any sense of distance, +or wish to travel, or to hear of travels. But still it was believed +that on my return I should be received at the inevitable "Green Cow" or +"Pig and Whistle" with roars of applause, all mouths in the shape of +O's, all attentions grappled to my lightest word. More probably, I +hinted, if I were to return and mention as a news item a voyage in a +tramp to South America, the patronage would preserve a chilling silence, +as who should say, "We are too old for these youthful frivolities. We are +not amused"; and would then resume the old buzz of 'sheening and jack +hares and the riches of the rich'-- But I was not heard. + +Lightning, a passion with me, grew bright and furious towards the end of +our stay, about the fall of darkness; in its blue flare, it was startling +to see how like a wreck a Swedish motor-ship, which had put in because +of a fire aboard, lay lonely at some distance from us. Presently the +rain came down and cooled the air; the night grew quiet then, the far +thunder dying out, or if there was noise, it was the cricket's cry, and +the gruff brief conversation of the ship's watchman with his comrade +on the wharf as he passed by. + +Sunday came again, day of washing for Meacock and others; day of eggs and +bacon for the Saloon's breakfast, and with it special duff and crimson +sauce for dinner, tinned pineapple and cake for tea. Fortified thus, +Bicker and Mead and myself go a-fishing on the opposite quay, where some +Argentines have been catching fine fish. Now it is, to the best of my +memory, the fact that I have never yet caught one fish on Sunday; and +so I should have been wiser than to have joined in this excursion. Luck +stopped dead as soon as we began, and to make things worse, through a +sleepy reply of Bicker's I imagined the line to be made fast to the jetty, +and threw out the sinker with special success "far out at sea." That line +was not made fast. It had belonged to the steward. He, when he heard +the disaster, stood in a kind of _rigor_, gazing at high heaven as one +insensible to misfortune. + +And now came our last day at Ingeniero White. Not too soon, it seemed; +the scenery of the port having but little of freshness, and the drama +of loading again lacking in situations. Mosquitoes here served me well +by arousing me in the early morning, as I was instructed to take a +hand at six with tallying the bags of grain. I was there to the moment, +but my duty proved to be that of standing by, enjoying life. At twelve, +all hands were mustered amidships and numbered by the port authority, +and one was missing. At length it was found out who, namely, one Towsle +the sleepiest of the apprentices, and where--in his bath, dozing unaware +of the parade outside the door. The pilot came aboard at three, and the +tug _Lydia_ presented herself to guide the _Bonadventure_ out: there was +much business with ropes fore and aft, and the ship swinging round was +free of the wharf about the top of the tide. The warehouses with their +stacks of bags, slippered blue-trousered handymen, surpliced overseers +with their sampling hollow bayonets, railway trucks and capstans, +ubiquitous dogs and all, began to recede. But we had not come more than a +couple of miles from the elevators, nor out of sight of the refugee-like +town behind them, when we anchored to await Hosea. At a considerable +space from the town, all alone, we saw as we waited the big drab square +building euphemistically known aboard as the "variety show." It was a +sad sight, and to me in its significance of some people's luck in this +world, a challenge to my random cheerful philosophy, which I have not yet +been able entirely to dismiss. + +Presently from the land a storm began to foreshadow itself, and suddenly +there was a burst of wild piping wind, like a spiteful cry, that flung +sharp rain over us and in scarcely a minute had died down again. Its +short career sent every one interested scampering to take in the canvas +awnings, and left a breeze which when the captain arrived in a launch, +carrying some newspapers, blew them round him like a garment. He was +wearing a straw hat. He jammed it on with a will and hurried up the +rope ladder. With his return, we were at sea again, though not yet in +the open. + +The evening was one of strange majesty. One saw clouds amassing in every +similitude of mountainous immensity and ascent, and wild lights everywhere +burning among them; but most of all, a tawny lion's colour mantled in a +great tract of the sky and below shone dim yet in a manner dazzling +from the darkening water. The heat of the day had been oven-like. +Lightnings began after a red weeping sunset, sheet lightnings often +veined with the fiercest forks of white flame, wreaths of golden fire, +volleys, cataracts, serpents; and these danced about the horizon until +daybreak, sometimes in silence, sometimes with deep but weary-sounding +thunderclaps. The light that these wanderers cast was often of an +intensity scarcely credible. A deluge of rain was always imminent, but +only towards dawn arrived. + +The _Bonadventure_ had been, under these innumerable lights, making quiet +way down an avenue of buoys twinkling in their degree, and came into view +of the lightship beyond them. The pilot sounded the siren (for he was to +leave us here), and in reply to the second call of the siren the lamp of a +boat pulling out towards us appeared. It was good-bye to the pilot and +his bag, which on the end of a rope now caused a moment's interest; the +engines, stopped to let him depart, were started again, and the captain +fixed the ship's course. Mead's watch, as usually it was, shared by the +purser, engaged us in more recollections of the great war; and in the +glitter first of a swarm of dragon-flies, then presently the surly gleam +of the lightning, we talked on until midnight. I admired him for having +already forgotten all about his disappointment in the lottery, and begun +with new hopes according to his motto; _Quo fata vocant_. + + + + +XXI + + +The breakfast steaks were leathery past anticipations. The flies in +the cabin were thousands strong. But the _Bonadventure_ was homeward +bound, and a general spirit of liveliness prevailed. Conversation was +running much upon the value of the mark, for it was to Hamburg that we +were believed to be going. Base hopes were expressed that the rate of +exchange might be a thousand to the pound. No one imagined that this +would some day be surpassed by eleven thousand. The Argentine had been +expensive; the cheapness of Germany was thrown up all the clearer. +As, however, I had no anxiety to buy a safety razor, mouth-organs, +clocks, and pocket manicure sets, to which and other articles like them +I imagined the German cheapness would be limited, I was not elated on +that score. + +At any rate, here we were steaming north at a steady speed, with a light +breeze ahead, and the coast of the Argentine slipping past, dimly seen. +And everything was bent for England. For weeks the chief had expressed a +longing for pancakes at almost every meal; and now, auspicious, they +came. On the other hand, the cheese was done. Dark suspicions about a +certain cake were also whispered; knowing ones, whose information was +that Hosea had sent one aboard from Bahia Blanca for the benefit of +the saloon, saw villainy in the delay of its forthcoming. When it did +appear its pomp of white icing and green and red crescents, and diamonds +of fruit ornaments, certainly warranted an anxiety, as for crown jewels. + +Meacock, the ever-busy and never-flustered, about this time showed me +his private notebook, in which he had from time to time copied verses +and aphorisms, chiefly from _Nash's Magazine_, which he considered worthy. +In this anthology of his I might have seen the signs of a literary +revival aboard which shortly afterwards befell. I daresay he would have +expanded a remark of his, "Novels were untrue to life, but life was not +by itself interesting enough" (during the war he had commanded a trawler +in the Mediterranean), had not the slow flash of a lighthouse appeared +on the port side. He climbed to Monkey Island to take a bearing. The +blurred lights of Mar del Plata past, our course was altered to agree +with the set-back of the coast. Mead came up for his watch, eight bells +went, and Meacock departed. His "Ay, ay" to the retiring steersman's +report, the apprentice's reading of the log, and the forward lookout's +shout "The lights are bright, sir," always had a handsome resonance and +lingering dignity. + +Mead was by this time full of Hamburg, and he kept breaking into songs +in very low Low German, and memories of one Helen, not without sighs. +That romance was not the first, nor the last, which I heard from him. He +would show me Hamburg! and by way of a Pisgah look, he drew gay pictures +of that town, omitting however its architectural glories. Like critics +of nature poetry, he saw the world in terms of men and women: and Hamburg +as the location of dancing saloons and a singular exhibition of waxworks. + +The evening had at first looked stormy, and sharp fits of lightning lit +the low clouds, but all passed by. The clear and cool heaven was left, +diamonded with steady constellations, and crowned with the round moon +"and a star or two beside"; below like a field of silver lay the sea, +and the quiet ship flung by veils of lily foam, and the shadows stealthily +counter-changed the glistening decks. In these calm airs and waters, she +made such good speed that the next afternoon we came in view of Monte +Video. The pilot took over the bridge, and we were soon at anchor in +the harbour, which seemed thronged with ships. Our business here was +to load bunker coal, and as our coal was at the moment aboard a collier +which was to be seen some distance out of the breakwaters, nothing was +done this first evening. The news that his coal was yet to arrive at +Monte Video was cheerfully imparted to Phillips with the comment, "Well, +anyway, chief, you'll get your coal nice and fresh"; but he seemed by no +means consoled. Nor did the assurance of the shipping clerk--a somewhat +lilified young man in immaculate blue serge--that "Our Cardiff house have +let us down badly," act as a charm upon his depression. He told me to +stand by for the office of tallying at seven the next morning, and I +thanked him. The request implied, perhaps, the paternal anxiety for my +avoiding mischievous indolence which he had shown before. + +But meanwhile what was there to do? We lay at a distance from the +shore, and had therefore no distraction. I watched the lighthouse on +the hill, the buoys, the ship's signals, the trams on the quay, the other +illuminant causes all round us; I listened to a brass band which, for +whatever reason, was playing close to the harbour until late in the +evening; and then, driven to extremes, I sat down to write a "novel" +which became my refuge from ennui during what remained of my holiday, +but which I fear will never be finished. I spoke to Mead about it. He +thought little of my hero. I agreed to have the hero killed in a bayonet +fight near Alberta pill-box, but he thought I might go still nearer to +propriety and have the hero kill his man, and go through his pockets. +There did seem something in this suggestion, and a few years ago such an +ending as it conjured up would have been popular, I think: + + "The battle was over. Whistling 'Tipperary,' and placing the + wallet and watch of his prostrate antagonist in the pocket of + his body shield, Arthur strode onward to join his comrades at + their evening meal in Houthulst Wood. Here let us leave him, + calmly facing the morrow as only an Englishman can. + + "THE END." + +The next day brought the worst weather that we had met since we left the +Channel. At first it was merely cool and mild; but that was misleading. +Down came the rain, thick, cold, and steady; and there seemed a sufficient +supply to last until we left. I noticed it, myself, with more especial +observation, at my post of tallyman. + +In the drizzle the lighters came alongside bringing the coal in bags. +The stevedore's gang and their own overseers arrived aboard. One of +these overseers was an Englishman, who by his manner and speech had +evidently been brought up in a widely different setting; but it was none +of our business, though Bicker and others considered it a disgrace for an +Englishman to be so employed. All I heard was that he came from the +West of England, and that he was wild (which appeared sufficiently in his +countenance); and I admired his intellect, and tried to make him feel +that. The other overseer was a fat old Italian, who tallied with me for +the lighter on the port side. + +As these men and the poor fellows who were emptying the sacks into the +hatches or trimming the coal down below had been at work all the night, +it was not surprising that our affairs moved slowly. The winch, steaming +and thudding and jerking in a mutinous mood, brought up four bags at +a time, on my side. The sling that held them was lowered to the deck, the +hands rushed to swing them on to the improvised platforms beside the +hatches, with a concerted roaring as if over the capture of a tiger. While +these bags were being emptied, the sling would be descending into the +lighter again; and so it continued, with a fog of coal particles +wrapping the neighbourhood. The gang was a mixed multitude. Nationality +might have been anything. The prevailing colour was a sable (unsilvered), +under which mask might be distinguished Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, +West Indian, and other types. Among the most energetic of those who +were emptying the bags, the most vocal of the roarers, there was a +tall, thin, humorous fellow who reminded me irresistibly of a brilliant +poet and miscellanist of the modern school. I thought of that dazzling +smile, that æsthetic face transferred to the surroundings of Chelsea, +and what a success, if looks meant anything, he ought to be! So strongly +did I feel that in his hours of leisure and coallessness he was a +critic of verse and _moeurs_ that I almost asked him his name. + +My co-tallyman was pleasantly disposed. He asked me if I would give +him one of several casks standing near the galley. I referred him to +Phillips, who referred him to Meacock, who referred him elsewhere. We +disagreed now and then over the tally, but I was able to hold my own. +The _lex talionis_ was in force. Sometimes I was induced to accept his +surplus over my figure as accurate, but then I would take him back at +another opportunity, and ignore his doleful "Make it _threeee_." My +imagination lagged behind his, which seemed to see occasional slings +put aboard by aerial hands, and aerial coal at that, and these went +down in his book. But altogether we "made it." Mutual mistrust served +the public good. + +The chief lent me a boiler suit, for which I was insufficient, and added +an old macintosh presently. I soon grew black; even the tallyman, though +he seemed to have some natural gift in his stubbled skin which repelled +the grime, grew black. Presently I was disguised in the order of things +as a film thug, with waterlogged cap sagging over eyes heavily inlaid in +blackness. Tired as the labourers must have been, they went on working +as if they liked it, grinning, singing, enjoying comments upon each other, +and refreshing themselves with cheroots, cigarettes, peaches, or sups +from cans containing a brown decoction like strong tea. They ceased at +four. + +It was by way of variation in the evening that Bicker and Mead fell upon +me, with the idea of shampooing the begrimed tallyman. Zambuk (Hosea's +trusted salve), lime cream, and talcum powder were employed. There was +a struggle, however, which disturbed Meacock opposite. He came to the +rescue, but leaping upon the two barbers, who were holding me down, he +forgot that I was underneath. "Rough house," the word went round. + +When the stevedore's men arrived the following day, they were almost to +a man rigged out in the cleanest of suits, or costumes rather. This +was, to the best of my information, not the habit with the British +trimmer. Their hats were pleasing to the eye. In his jet-black felt, +my poetry-critic looked the picture of a member of the _Athenæum_ staff +(lamented _Athenæum_!). Others wore the type of hat but not the manner. A +number of matey caps, check and khaki and indigo, then white wideawakes as +though for haymaking, and a few pillbox-like creations in crimson and +daffodil, made part of the splendour. Some of the coalheavers wore +large sashes amidships, sashes of lurid colour also, violet and plum, +extra shade. In the shirts, more colour appeared. Here, like Aurora, +stepped Antonio in salmon pink; there, was a construction of red and +green rings on a white background. The bright-blue cotton suits added +to the general effect. Curious that these workers should come so clean, +only to be coated with coal-dust in half an hour! It spoke well for their +outlook. + +The work was much as before. Wheelbarrows had to be got to put the sacks +beside other hatches which the winch did not command. The chief had some +argument with the Italian foreman about the last two hundred bags, which +he wished to be shot into the starboard hatch only, to bring the ship up +straight. The foreman asked him to withdraw this. "Damn you!" roared +Phillips, and put an end to the matter, "when I say NO I mean NO. Don't +you understand plain English?" + +So that was that, and my job finished. The bosun and his worthies +quickly gathered to remove the disgraceful signs of bunkering; they swept +and garnished, the stylish shipping clerk came aboard with his final +papers to see Hosea and Phillips. Already the pilot was on the bridge; +soon we were slowly backing away from our mooring. The blue peter was +hauled down, the gangway got in. The _Bonadventure_ was manoeuvred past +the breakwaters and down the marked channel, at whose last buoy, or soon +afterwards, the tug to fetch the pilot came alongside. As he withdrew +in her she sounded the three blasts or rather hoots meaning a "Bon +voyage," and our own burly voice sounded three times in acknowledgment. +The many turrets and spires, chimneys and gaunt roofs of Monte Video, +distinctly ranged along a rainy sky with shelves of rock-like cloud, +lessened duly; the evening came on. Still the coast appeared here and +there, its yellow sands, its dark-blue cliffs and hills, and as if +shouldering the dull and heavy sky the sun burned out with a golden power +before he departed. + +Mead bade good-bye for a short time--in all probability--and myself for +a long time, to South America, still symbolized by its lighthouses and +the night-glow of a seaside town or two. Once again I felt a regret that +I had not seen the elder Buenos Aires, whose extinction was no doubt a +wise thing, but which surely must have triumphed as a thing of beauty +over the present cubic blocks of utility. Mead was not sentimental about +going to sea once more. He was too deeply engaged with devising a piece +of invective against an enemy for an alleged injury, and immersed in the +troubles of rhyme. I thought he was acquitting himself very well. + + + + +XXII + + +I have mentioned a scarcely concealed feeling in the saloon against the +omniscience of the wireless operator. That was not all the opposition +to which this youth of the glazed locks was subject. He was understood, +while the ship was at sea, to receive news issued daily, and frequently +when a subject was being discussed by the ship's officers he sat there +in possession of the facts but with serene indifference to the general +interest. In this, he was carrying out the regulations, I imagine; but +his behaviour resembled that of the dog in the manger. To aggravate +this sense of injustice, he rashly told some one that the news might +be taken at three guineas. + +This in the first place affected the saloon only. But it happened that +throughout the ship there was a particular desire for information. At +home, the football season was at its zenith. Important matches, in the +Leagues and the Cup competition, were known to be playing; and one +man on the ship when she was out at sea could, and it was believed did, +hear the results. But never a word said he. Looking in at the galley +during the evening to brew my cocoa, I would find animated discussion of +the favourite teams in progress. Kelly, the "Mess-room," would wipe his +fist across his mouth and huskily explain. "It's like this, mister." He +had known other wireless operators who gladly announced the football +results. But this fellow--he was too b---- stuck-up, mister--"The +Marconi," the term which he used for the offending operator, savoured +queerly of the phrase "The Bedlam" in _King Lear_. + +Such was the background against which Mead's vision of the unfortunate +Sparks stood out, and with the particular unfriendliness which I must +briefly describe. Earlier in the trip, Sparks had, in Mead's opinion, +adopted a tone of equality and then even of command towards him, in the +course of the ship's routine. Mead had immediately resorted to warlike +acts. Sparks lodged a written complaint with Hosea, who gave both parties +the best advice. But it was a false step in Sparks to send in this +communication, which would if forwarded have cost Mead, perhaps, his +living; and it was made worse by Sparks's glib defence, "I was doing my +duty," since he had been at a safe distance from the war when Mead's +duty lay on the Gallipoli beaches. And he still affected to think of +upholding his letter. + +Matters were therefore strained, and the more they were so the more Mead +liked it. "Don't let me catch you ashore," had been his way of passing +Sparks the time of day in port; at sea, he growled abuse at him whenever +he saw him, and if no better occasion offered itself, would suddenly +thrust his face in all the semblance of murderous intention through the +open porthole of the young man's room and utter calm, deliberate, and +unnatural purposes. + +In this feud, my position was not comfortable. Unlicked as he was (up to +the present) and devoid of fine points, the Marconi, whose cabin was +neighbour to mine, wished me no harm, and even sought my esteem. Mead, +whom I did esteem, was discontented with any half-measures on my part, and +in any case I felt bound to observe neutrality. But the capers of my +angry friend were often amusing, the declarations of duty conscientiously +executed by his _bête noir_--Mead had a weakness for style--were not. And +it is scarcely necessary to repeat, the general view of Sparks was not a +moral support to Mead even if he had "no case." + +On the occasion that I described, Mead had decided to drive his point +well home with the aid of rhyme. I took a copy of his somewhat indecorous +production. It had many "spirited couplets," embodying considerable +observations: + + 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 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 things + Some one or I'd be wearing wings. + +This effusion, laboriously printed in CAPITALS so that its effect on the +recipient should be the more demoralizing, headed THE ANSWER, and signed +in characteristic fashion NULLI 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. + + + + +XXIII + + +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 the _Optimist_ +until Sunday afternoon. Bicker said in self-protection that no Sunday +paper is available in the provinces before breakfast. When the _Optimist_ +was 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 lettered YOU.ARE.USING.MY.BUCKETS. I.AM.THE.BANDOLIERO) and +Meacock, smoking as always and nevertheless replying YOU.BIG.STIFF _ore +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 light of 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. Gallant enough the _Bonadventure_ looked 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 the _Bonadventure_ lived 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 the _Bonadventure_. 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. + + + + +XXIV + + +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. The _Bonadventure_ was 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 several nights; 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 torch + That could its light relumine. + +Bicker, the editor, instead of reviewing his admired literature in his +journal, lengthened breakfast by doing so there _viva voce_. He was all +for Boeotian 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 meant remark: "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 the _Optimist_ was 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? + +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 current +_Optimist_ contained an illustrated article on the bosun's tyranny, as: + +"YOUSE take them two derricks for'ard." + +"YOUSE jes' 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 +(_né_ white) 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 the grey 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 wireless +aerial, 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. + + + + +XXV + + + _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 the _Optimist_ it 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 blooded _fighting_ in 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, + +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. + +Let but a sailor apply to him at the wrong hour--or even the right +hour--for tobacco, and his indisposition was 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 on _her_ +charges had been of the weakest. + + + + +XXVI + + +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 discussion of 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 was mad; 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 +the _Optimist_ were 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." + +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 the _Optimist_ had 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 +watery beauty. 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's clear 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 the _Bonadventure_; +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 such arrangements 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." + + + + +XXVII + + +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 the +_Bonadventure_ obliged 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 +that DID something for their country," said Meacock, and I gave up. +Bicker was once agaia _in excelsis_ at this evidence of his superior +understanding, which he seemed 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 +settling _that_ point. + +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 the _Bonadventure_ +rounded 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 think they found much opportunity to enhance +the reputation at our expense. + +A tug, the _Gando_, immediately re-named the _Can-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 dealers +in 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 suitable + for presents and use." + +A harsh description of presents? Perhaps. + + + + +XXVIII + + +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." + +The _Optimist_ went 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 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.[1] + + There, far far down, what jewels lie, + What corals, red enough + To make this sauce[2] 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?[3] + +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 the _Bonadventure_ to 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 and +brush; 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, the _Bonadventure_ could 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 +forthcoming _Optimist_. 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's _Night +Thoughts_, buried in annotations reverent 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 the _Night Thoughts_ thereon, 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 night with little to notice, save +the gulls and divers whom such weather suited well. At any rate we were +not unfortunate in our direction. The _Hammonia_ going 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 the _Bonadventure_ with 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 of France. +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, the +_Bonadventure_ moved up the river, and in the greyness and chill 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. + +----- + +[Footnote 1: "Harriet Lane." The name of that unfortunate lady is often +applied to the curious tinned meat provided aboard.] + +[Footnote 2: "This sauce." A pink luxury poured over Sunday's duff.] + +[Footnote 3: "Cheese." In these closing lines the poet's hope was to +record the actual expression of the saloon in general on receipt of the +steward's pronouncement: "That there was no more cheese."] + + + + +XXIX + + +On Easter Day the sun--it was an old proverb--will dance; and this time +he was in the mood. We lay in a basin like other tramps; beyond, there +clustered red roofs with blessed ungainly angles, a pleasing sight after +those southern flat ones of grey. Farther off, the church spire climbed +above the trees, and though many people in their Sunday dress were walking +that way, more were taking their rounds beside these docks. + +It was as certainly good to be here as that spring was here. The chirrup +of sparrows, jubilate of larks, noises of poultry, bleating of lambs +from an enclosure of young fruit trees close at hand, and the play of +children, were all comely and reviving. + +Alas! that the Easter gift of the ship's officers should have been so out +of tune. An old gentleman of the same outlook as Polonius, the broker, +brought a packet of letters aboard at breakfast, and among these were the +wrong kind of Easter tidings--statements of their reductions in wages. +They accepted this falling off without murmur, save for a few dry remarks. + +A motor-boat came bringing the stores, and, to the disgust of the cook +and other watchers, a great stack of long loaves, altogether leathery +in external appearance. Most of these were returned. The ship's chandler +must have thought we were arriving in force. Our own boat was tied at the +foot of the gangway, and the apprentices told off as ferrymen for the time +being. + +Next day the larks were aloft again, and their melody, marvellous after +long absence from it, came dropping from heaven as undiminished, one +would say, as raindrops falling. So clear it sounded there even when they +were in the clouds. Meanwhile the bosun and party were getting the winches +and derricks into trim, with less silver voices: "H-h-hup, H-h-hup: Let +go a little: Here, youse...." + +It was not unwelcome when the evening came, and Mead, Bicker, and their +friend so soon to be returned to duty set out up the cobbled road to +Emden; most bitter was the east wind blowing down the long colonnades +of trees, and we hastened into the sheltering streets of the little town. +We found it a quiet and beautiful place of ornamentation, and gables +and high houses, with a canal in the midst. Masterly seemed its spire, +stretching up into the sky with unexpected height and charming ease. It +was Easter Monday, and many folks were walking out--we looked curiously +about us, and while none were anything but tidy and decent, none had +any of the symptoms of much and to spare. They were evidently poor, but +far from poor in spirit. + +We were puzzled by the Sabbath look of things to find a place to sit +down and apply some antidote to the effects of that rawish east wind. We +began drifting as usual, when an old fellow in black coat and Homburg +hat pushed past us, mumbling something. A light came swiftly into the +eyes of Mead and Bicker; the old fellow was fragrant with good beer. +We asked him for directions. He was off at once in a loud, hard voice: +"By Jesus Christ and General Jackson," he began (and _da capo_), "the +two best men in America. You come to my house." Following him, and coping +with his repeated invocations of the Messiah and the General, and requests +for an opinion of his English speech, we arrived by and by. He was an +innkeeper, and (by Jesus Christ) "an old sailing man himself." + +The inn parlour was most excellently warm, free and easy. We set to with +hot grog, the brimmer being rebrimmed (if my memory serves me) not once +nor twice. The room was not one which depressed. Around it hung daubs +of full-rigged ships of Batavia in the fifties and sixties; there was an +automatic weighing machine, a most magnificent penny-in-the-slot piano, +and another apparatus for extracting copper from the air, dressed up as a +blue windmill, but I did not inquire what it was expected to yield. And +the wall-paper was tapped with an ample border, in which one saw smooth +waters, placid smacks, and more windmills. + +The other occupants of the room were the quiet set at the tables, a +drunken Finn seaman with one arm in bandages, a dark-haired musician, +the landlord and his wife and their good-looking daughter; while from the +private house other members of the family came and went at need, as +will be seen. + +We provided the landlord with grog. He melted with gratitude, rose, +and set his horrible piano going, whose wicked hammers champed upon some +of the harshest wires outside of the barbed-wire dumps. And what is +more, whenever the piano began, our friend the Finn thought his hour +had come to shine, and essayed a sort of stamping, stooping dance across +the floor. This led to persuasion. The landlord persuaded, the landlady +persuaded, unclassified assistants persuaded, and presently the dancer +was pleased to be seated once more, exclaiming, "When I come aboard he +says to me, he says, 'All right, Captain, all right, all right.'" No +sooner did the music begin afresh than this enthusiast would rise up +relentlessly as though hypnotized (by the pæan) and perhaps stamp out +a bar or two before being replaced by combined efforts. This kept on +happening. + +None the less, the landlord, who had apparently spent the day in liquid +rejoicings, was swallowing grog and growing taleful. He claimed all +sorts of sea service and seemed to know what he was talking about, +posed even my expert friends with the sailing-ship question: What's +the difference in build between a Scotch ship, a Nova Scotian, and a +Yankee? Boxing too was in his line: "Scholar of John L. Sullivan," he +assured us, and directed admiration to his fist, which was normal. From +taleful he waxed tuneful. "I'm a chanty-man, y'know," and wiping back +his gingery-white whiskers he groaned out "Blow the man down," and "The +streams of our native Australia," in dreadful style. After these, finding +himself strangely appreciated, he offered and began "a real English song, +y'know--exchoose me, y'know, if I don't speak the plain English." It was +"The Maid of the Mill." His rendering was a strain on our tact, and too +much for one of the young ladies of the house, who was smitten with a fit +of giggling most right and justifiable. At that, the old villain flew +into a ridiculous passion, jumped up, and was for hitting this girl. +He was restrained. + +After this unwanted diversion, he returned and (with starts of rage) +barked out the rest of his song. His wolfhound began, and we began, to +find the vocalist a nuisance; and as the evening wore on, I thought the +authentic musician, who played the violin, was beginning to resent our +presence and success. The daughter of the house foolishly sat at our +table. The musician, however, was soothed with an honorarium, and with +much "Auf wieder-sehen!" we went. Even now, however, it was thought +unseemly to reach the ship in one journey, so halts were called twice; +and once aboard, the usual arguments kept us out of our beds until four +or so in the morning. + +The two grain-elevators in the port were still busy with a Greek steamer, +so that, apart from painting, the _Bonadventure_ was idle, and there was +little to do but row over to the canteens and return with undreamed-of +quantities of chocolate and cigarettes. Cigars were, to us, as lightly +bought as matches. As to the painting, it was again mysterious that +two of the apprentices fell off the stage on which they were working +alongside; they were soon dressed in borrowed plumage. Suddenly in the +evening our discharge began. + +Lighters of the local type, very long and narrow, were already alongside +when the tugs swung the first elevator into his place. The huge floating +turret looked somewhat like a smock mill. The stevedores quickly made +fast their tackle: four large drain-pipe tubes were let down into the +chosen hold, and the suckers commenced. There was a drumming boom of +machinery, mixed with the swish of the ingulfing of the grain and its +disgorging through broader conduits on the other side of the elevator +into the river barges. It grew dark, the red and green railway lights +burned fiercely in brisk air against the last of an orange sunset. But +the elevator was kept at work, and arc lights hung over the hold showed +the novel scene of the sliding grain and its trimmers. + +One effect of the late-continued drone and thud of the elevator was to +torment me with war dreams. First I was in an attack, among great rocks, +under a violent barrage; then, on one of those unforgettable raw, dark +mornings, I was at the window of a great ruined house behind the line, +watching the bleary effulgence of the Very lights starting up here and +there and expecting the worst from a nasty silence, only pierced by single +shell-bursts. Then, beside the elevator, an infuriated and intoxicated +bargee stood on the landing-stage about midnight bawling for a boat which +didn't come. His patience was, however, considerable; he bawled for a +long hour. In consequence, I suppose, of these matters I arrived very +late at breakfast amid the usual cries of "You Jonah, you!" + +The second elevator arrived, and, like some great iron insect with many +beaks, began to swallow up the grain from the holds aft. The ship shook +with the speed and power of the pumping machinery; the long lighters with +their great round-table steering wheels filled up, battened down, and +swung away. In one of the holds there were the bags put in at Ingeniero +White; under them again lay the yellow grain in mass. The elevator's +proboscis dipped into that grain, while the trimmers unstowed, slit and +emptied the sacks; so the ship began to lighten, and her bow already +stood high out of the water. + +The red evening sky was smoky with cold; then the stars sparkled with +frost; and a small gathering enjoyed the oil stove in Bicker's room. +The steward, in unusual radiance, came in presently, and sang a long +song concerning a tramp who was flung off a freight train by a brakesman. +"Because he was only a tramp" (_dying fall_). + +This might have been a comment on Mr. W. H. Davies' Autobiography. +Warmed with his singing and other helps, the steward began to recall +his acquaintance (on guard) with Royalty, and spun off at tangents with +affairs half a century more recent: "That b---- flaming butcher-- I +was going to hit him with a box of matches," and other incidents. I +was sorry to hear the lank Chips, the next morning, bawling at the +entrance of the saloon a complaint about the toughness of his meat; the +steward's new mood deserved anything but that sort of damper. + + + + +XXX + + +With little to do, I fought a sort of pillow fight with Meacock, our +weapons being sacks well stuffed; he won, of course, but it was a popular +bout. Then there were acrobatic performances on the stays of the funnel. +The need I had for training appeared on our last night in Emden Port, +when my sleep was nipped in the bud by the entry of Bicker and Mead. +Both had the clear spirits raised, in two senses; both thickened voices +already thick enough. They were disguised (Mead's fancy, I warrant) +as members of the Ku-Klux-Klan; and besides their costume one bore a +revolver, the other an air gun impounded from an apprentice. I was +ordered out of bed, but wished to stop; we argued about it and by good +luck I hung on. After this, insidious, they declared that a lady who +knew me and wished to see me had come aboard. This flight of fancy and +flow of language went on until they sought variety, which they found +in painting the unfortunate Tich in the alley below in several colours. + +The German police, green men and true, watched the ship closely. It was +rumoured that a shipping clerk and a young woman had eloped and were +aboard one of the tramps. "Love in a foc'sle," especially ours, was +considered no bad joke. + +One more home circle was held in the starboard alleyway towards +midnight; gin very prevalent, and the steward also. He fell into a +sequence of army recollections, which (as the glass was thrust replenished +into his hand) began on this pattern, "Well, I'm telling you, Mister, at +three in the afternoon of March the twelfth 1873, we was parading +outside the Queen's pavilion...." Once more also Mead and myself made our +way into Emden. The old nooks of buildings and the vistas of narrow +thoroughfares and lazy waterways, the shops and the folk, all made a +kindly picture; after supper, we avoided a downpour of sleet in a café +with an orchestra, whose repertory of 4,000 pieces included two by +English composers, and his name was Sullivan. On our midnight way home, +we stopped at a Dutchman's bar and asked for and got a dozen hard-boiled +eggs for a second supper aboard. I was carrying a parcel in hand and +two bottles, or rather gas-cylinders, of gin in the lining of my +mackintosh when we reached the German sentry-box beside the Quay. He +puffed at his pipe as he felt the parcel and saw that all was well. + +The iron in the ship began to sweat great drops, and the walls of one's +bunk glistened with damp. The glass was falling; the water of the basin +no longer lay smooth as oil but beat against the ship grudgingly. In +short, excellent Flanders weather ensued the old-established weather, +guaranteed to cure rabid individuals of war cant after one hour's trial +(unshelled) on sentry-go or at the ration dump. For the worst and even +hopeless cases, half an hour's trial on the banks of the Steenbeck was +confidently recommended--I was lucky now to have a roof leaking but +little. Phillips showed me the one dry corner in his room--a portion of +the settee about a foot square. + +Hosea's wife joined us in the saloon, and not only by her genial presence +itself merited our best thanks, but also by her influence on the steward. +As if by magic, Ideal milk was added to our tinned pears (usually, +apricots); and the jam changed to strawberry. + +At length the elevators ceased from troubling, and the supervisors from +dilating in _Platt Deutsch_ over the damage in the bilges. The bosun's +strangled noise timed the hoisting of the ship's boat, which had had +a busy holiday, to its normal place. The little broker made his last +appearance round the steward's precincts; and with the heaving up of the +gangway, the arrival of the tugs, the return of the wireless aerial to its +heights and the smoking funnel--it, no doubt, never looked better--we +were ready to depart. + +It was twilight when our ropes fore and aft were loosed from the dolphins, +and the _Bonadventure_ slowly moved into the lock. Here while the port +authorities made a swift inspection for stowaways and concluded their +arrangements, we stopped a time, listening to the odd mixture of noise +from bleating of sheep and hooting of our whistle. Then we moved out to +sea, not without bumping into the lock wall and gashing the bow. The air +was intensely cold, and the iron frameworks against the last tinges of +sunset and the red and white lights were now all there was to see of +our port of discharge. That episode was over; after midnight, the ship +stopped at Borkum to put down the pilot, and then, on again. My voyage +was hurrying into memory. + + + + +XXXI + + +Short seas running and a squally wind abeam made the light ship jerk and +roll. The early sun was hidden in the dull purple of a racing sleet-cloud, +which passed over the _Bonadventure_ and swept on to lash the dunes of +Holland lying dim blue along the yellow horizon. The engines beat out +a cheerful tattoo and sent the ship, wobbling as she went, at eleven +knots through the green water. The wind grew westerly but not sisterly; +the melancholy began to expatiate on the short text, "The Longships," +but the profusion of fishing smacks out around us seemed to show that no +tempestuous weather was at hand. + +The next morning, a spiritual Beachy Head was glittering like crystal +in the distance; while the head wind fell upon us, and momently a great +thud like the impact of a great shell shook the ship's sizable frame and +lifted her in see-saw style. I watched the south coast sliding by with +as much excitement as if I had been coming home on leave again. Meacock +was at his most picturesque with his reminiscences of a hard-case +ship called the _Guildhall_, but I could not retain what he told me, +with this distraction of English shores and skies about us. The general +scene recorded itself; of all the magnificent evenings which my voyage +had brought forth this was perhaps the nonpareil. The skies were of +tumultuous colour, requiring one of the old Dutch masters to observe, let +alone to reproduce. A bright brazen sun, throwing at his whim (as it +were) his vesture of clouds about him, burnt out below a pavement of +light ever seething with the leaping waves, and sometimes hidden, +sometimes emerging, lit the sky astern to a tawny glow, or left it +sullen as clay. Here, the horizon was an olive green, there, a blue +girdle; ships in stippled blackness tilted this way and that against it, +or nearer ploughed grey expanses; and above pillars and cliffs of +rocky cloud lifted themselves enormously into a firmament purpled or +kindled into wild flame. + +So we hurtled along, the wind flawing, abeam, ahead. The great prow +mounted high against the sunset, or thrust like the head of a porpoise +down again into the onslaught of rolling waters. The hand on the lookout +paced up and down the foc'sle head in loneliness, the officer on the +bridge answered his call as ever, the seagulls followed the ship with +their unvarying calm and pride of wing. Presently the fine light of +Eddystone was our solace. + +The last day of my pursership dawned, a day I welcomed and yet was sorry +to find come. How swiftly it stole by! At seven that morning we were +midway between the Longships lighthouse and that yet lonelier one the +Wolf, with Land's End white with snow to feast the eye. The sun was a +Jolly Bacchus, the waves dancing as green as the young leaves sacred to +that god, and the happy porpoises ambled among them. Yet still, as we +swung round the corner, in a veritable procession of funnels and smoke +trails, a squall came down, heralded by a half-seen rainbow, threw us +rudely off the poise and chilled the air to winter again. But round went +the _Bonadventure_ and coasted beneath moors and tors sullenly green +into the Bristol Channel. + +The heavy rolling died away as we passed from the Cornish shore (where +they are said to eat strangers), and my Emden chilblains felt the weather +growing much warmer. Indeed, we had not had so mild a day since we left +Las Palmas. Towards three we came abreast of Lundy Island's bluff, and +Hartland opposite, a sturdy cliff likewise. The tide helped us well, +but the wind was veering. Urged by those officers and engineers whose +wives would be at Barry Docks this evening to greet them, and by his +own wishes, the chief had promised to bring the _Bonadventure_ to the +tier in Barry Docks by seven. + +Ilfracombe nestling happily under the moors was quickly passed; the +_Bonadventure_ could move when she had a mind; the mellow green country +of Somerset parcelled in such English fashion with such straight +hedgerows, faded astern. The coast of Wales revealed the twin lighthouses +called the Nash Lights, and still the ship raced on. Then, as if before +the time, we were entering the locks at Barry, in a smoky twilight, +after an evening shower; were inside, and tied up to the tier. + +Not much remains to add. The next day I scrambled down the rope ladder, +and bade farewell to the _Bonadventure_, that "dirty ship," not unbeloved; +and Mead came next. The boat below carried us to the quay, under the +red hulls of ships gleaming with the light from the dancing ripples; then +came paying off, a most unpunctual and irritating performance, and +good-byes to the old friends, from Hosea to Kelly, of the last few +months; and most of all, perhaps, to that gay spirit Mead. My good-bye +to these might be, I hoped, no such final one; but my round trip was +accomplished and I felt that for me "there would be no more sea," so that +the actual signing off of the purser seemed to me a point in my life's +course. Then presently, after a hearty last word with Mead--kind be the +dog-watch stars to him, wherever his ship carry him--I departed; the +last train for Slowe having, naturally, gone out, I made for the nearest +town to Slowe, and finishing my journey part on foot, part on a borrowed +bicycle, was enabled to awaken Mary while the rest of the parish of +Staizley slept the sleep of the just. + +[Illustration: Welcome Sailor!] + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Bonadventure, by Edmund Blunden + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BONADVENTURE *** + +***** This file should be named 32371-8.txt or 32371-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/3/7/32371/ + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.fadedpage.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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