A Master of Fortune Part 37

Now Captain Kettle had endured all this publicity with a good deal of restiveness, and had used language to one or two interviewers who managed to ferret him out, which fairly startled them; but this last move for a public subscription made him furious. He spoke in the captain's room of the hostelry he used, of the degradation which was put on him, and various other master mariners who were present entirely agreed with him. "I might be a blessed missionary, or India-with-a-famine, the way they're treating me," he complained bitterly. "If they call a meeting to give me anything, I'll chuck the money in their faces, and let them know straight what I think. By James!

do they suppose I've got no pride? Why can't they let me alone? If the _Grosser Carl_ people pay up for that cargo, that's all I want."

But the eternal healer, Time, soothed matters down wonderfully. Captain Owen Kettle's week's outing in the daily papers ran its course with due thrills and headlines, and then the Press forgot him, and rushed on to the next sensation. By the time the subscription list had closed and been brought together, the _Flamingo_ had sailed for her next slow round trip in the Mexican Gulf, and when her captain returned to find a curt, formal letter from a firm of bankers, stating that 2,400 had been placed to his credit in their establishment, he would have been more than human if he had refused it. And, as a point of fact, after consulting with Madam, his wife, he transformed it into houses in that terrace of narrow dwellings in Birkenhead which represented the rest of his savings.

Now on paper this house property was alleged by a sanguine agent to produce at the rate of 15 per annum apiece, and as there were thirty-six houses, this made an income--on paper--of well over 500 a year, the which is a very nice possession.

A thing, moreover, which Captain Kettle had prophesied had come to pa.s.s.

The "trade connection" in the Mexican Gulf had been very seriously damaged. As was somewhat natural, the commercial gentry there did not relish having their valuable cargo pitched unceremoniously to Neptune, and preferred to send what they had by boats which did not contrive to meet burning emigrant liners. This, of course, was quite unreasonable of them, but one can only relate what happened.

And then the second part of the prophecy evolved itself naturally.

Messrs. Bird discovered from the last indent handed them that more paint had been used over the _Flamingo's_ fabric than they thought consistent with economy, and so they relieved Captain Kettle from the command, handed him their check for wages due--there was no commission to be added for such an unsatisfactory voyage as this last--and presented him gratis with their best wishes for his future welfare.

Kettle had thought of telling the truth in print, but the mysterious law of libel, which it is written that all mariners shall dread and never understand, scared him; and besides, he was still raw from his recent week's outing in the British Press. So he just went and gave his views to Mr. Isaac Bird personally and privately, threw the ink-bottle through the office window, pitched the box of business cigars into the fire, and generally pointed his remarks in a way that went straight to Mr. Bird's heart, and then prepared peacefully to take his departure.

"I shall not prosecute you for this--" said Mr. Isaac.

"I wish you dare. It would suit me finely to get into a police-court and be able to talk. I'd willingly pay my 'forty shillings and' for the chance. They'd give me the option fast enough."

"I say I shall not prosecute you because I have no time to bother with law. But I shall send your name round amongst the shipowners, and with my word against you, you'll never get another command so long as the world stands."

"You knock-kneed little Jew," said Kettle truculently, "do you think I'm giving myself the luxury of letting out at a shipowner, after knuckling down to the breed through all of a weary life, unless I knew my ground?

I've done with ships and the sea for always, and if you give me any more of your lip, I'll burn your office down and you in it."

"You seem pleased enough with yourself about something," said Mr. Isaac.

"I am," said Kettle exultantly. "I've chucked the sea for good. I've taken a farm in Wharfedale, and I'm going to it this very week."

"Then," said Mr. Isaac sardonically, "if you've taken a farm, don't let me wish you any further ill. Good-morning."

But Kettle was not to be damped out of conceit with his life's desire by a few ill-natured words. He gave Mr. Isaac Bird his final blessing, commenting on his ancestors, his personal appearance, his prospects of final salvation, and then pleasantly took his leave. He was too much occupied in the preliminaries of his new life to have much leisure just then for further cultivation of the gentle art of insult.

The farm he had rented lay in the Wharfe Valley above Skipton, and, though its acreage was large, a good deal was made up of mere moorland sheep pasture. Luckily he recognized that a poetical taste for a rural life might not necessarily imply the whole mystery of stock rearing and agriculture, and so he hired a capable foreman as philosopher and guide.

And here I may say that his hobby by no means ruined him, as might reasonably be expected; for in the worst years he never dropped more than fifty or sixty pounds, and frequently he ran the place without loss, or even at a profit.

But though it is hard to confess that a man's ideal comes short of his expectations when put to the trial, I am free to confess that although he enjoyed it all, Kettle was not at his happiest when he was attending his crops or his sheep, or haggling with his fellow farmers on Mondays over fat beasts in Skipton market.

He had gone back to one of his more practiced tastes--if one calls it a taste--the cultivation of religion. The farm stood bleak and lonely on the slope of a hillside, and on both flanks of the dale were other lonely farms as far as the eye could see. There was no village. The nearest place of worship was four miles away, and that was merely a church. But in the valley beside the Wharfe was a small gray stone chapel, reared during some bygone day for the devotions of some forgotten sect. Kettle got this into his control.

He was by no means a rich man. The row of houses in Birkenhead were for the most part tenanted by the wives of mercantile marine engineers and officers, who were chronically laggard with their rent, and whom _esprit de corps_ forbade him to press; and so, what with this deficit, and repairs and taxes, and one thing and another, it was rarely that half the projected 500 a year found its way into his banking account. But a t.i.the of whatever accrued to him was scrupulously set aside for the maintenance of the chapel.

He imported there the grim, narrow creed he had learned in South Shields, and threw open the door for congregations. He was entirely in earnest over it all, and vastly serious. Failing another minister, he himself took the services, and though, on occasion, some other brother was induced to preach, it was he himself who usually mounted the pulpit beneath the sounding-board. He purchased an American organ, and sent his eldest daughter weekly to take lessons in Skipton till she could play it. And Mrs. Kettle herself led the singing.

Still further, the chapel has its own collection of hymns, specially written, printed and dedicated to its service. The book is Captain Kettle's first published effort. Heaven and its author alone know under what wild circ.u.mstances most of those hymns were written.

The chapel started its new span of life with a congregation meagre enough, but Sunday by Sunday the number grew. They are mostly Nonconformists in the dales, and when once a man acquires a taste for dissent, he takes a sad delight in sampling his neighbors' variations of creed. Some came once and were not seen again. Others came and returned.

They felt that this was the loneliest of all modern creeds; indeed, Kettle preached as much, and one can take a melancholy pride in splendid isolation.

I am not sure that Captain Kettle does not find the restfulness of his present life a trifle too accentuated at times, though this is only inevitable for one who has been so much a man of action. But at any rate he never makes complaint. He is a strong man, and he governs himself even as he governs his family and the chapel circle, with a strong, just hand. The farm is a model of neatness and order; paint is lavished in a way that makes dalesmen lift their eyebrows; and the routine of the household is as strict as that of a ship.

The house is unique, too, in Wharfedale for the variety of its contents.

Desperately poor though Kettle might be on many of his returns from his unsuccessful ventures, he never came back to his wife without some present from a foreign clime as a tangible proof of his remembrance, and because these were usually mere curiosities, without intrinsic value, they often evaded the p.a.w.n-shop in those years of dire distress, when more negotiable articles pa.s.sed irretrievably away from the family possession. And with them too, in stiff, decorous frames, are those certificates and testimonials which a master mariner always collects, together with photographs of gratuitously small general interest.

But one might turn the house upside down without finding so carnal an instrument as a revolver, and when I suggested to Kettle once that we might go outside and have a little pistol practice, he glared at me, and I thought he would have sworn. However, he let me know stiffly enough that whatever circ.u.mstances might have made him at sea, he had always been a very different man ash.o.r.e in England, and there the matter dropped.

But speaking of mementoes, there is one link with the past that Mrs.

Kettle, poor woman, never ceases to regret the loss of. "Such a beautiful gold watch," she says it was too, "with the Emperor's and the Captain's names engraved together on the back, and just a nice mention of the _Gross of Carl_." As it happened, I saw the letter with which it was returned. It ran like this:--

_To His Majesty the German Emperor, Berlin, Germany

S.S. "Flamingo,"

Liverpool,

Sir,

I am in receipt of watch sent by your agent, the German amba.s.sador in London, which I return herewith. It is not my custom to accept presents from people I don't know, especially if I have talked about them. I have talked about you, not liking several thing's you've done, especially telegraphing about Dr. Jameson. Sir, you should remember that man was down when you sent your wire and couldn't hit back.

Some of the things I have said about German deck hands you needn't take too much notice about. They aren't so bad as they might be if properly handled. But they want handling.

Likewise learning English.

My wife wants to keep your photo, so I send you one of hers in return, so there shall be no robbery. She has written her name over it, same as yours.

Yours truly, O. Kettle (Master)._