Aliens Part 14

"But I was making up my mind. Somehow or other, in spite of my twenty-five years in cotton-wool, I had imagination enough to see in my uncle's weather-beaten old face something that was not in the city faces I saw every day. He had come into London out of an alien world.

Then, I argued, there are other worlds beside this one! I had not realized it before! All the time I was snug in my little job in Victoria Street men were out on the sea, out in the heat and cold and wet, living in a totally different world to mine. You may think it a foolish and common enough idea, but to me it was dazzling, blinding. It took hold of me. I could think of nothing else. I said, 'I'll go, but I can't go to-night, I've nothing to wear.' So my uncle told me to go to Cardiff and meet the _Corydon_ at Barry Dock.

"'What's she like?' I said, standing up. He took me into another office, and showed me a beautiful model of a steamer.

"'There she is,' he says. 'That's the old _Corydon_. I commanded her for three years.' I can tell you I was pleased to think I was going to sea in such a fine ship. Humph!

"I went home and had a talk with my mother. All _her_ ideas were capsized too. Here was her eldest son, the quiet, studious, respectable elder son, out of employment, while her harum-scarum disobedient Frank was getting three hundred a year and with good prospects. She was all bewildered by it. You can't blame her. She looked at me when I told her what I was going to do. 'Take plenty of socks,' she said, quietly.

'You'll need them at sea.' And I suddenly remembered she'd done the very same thing I was to do, long ago; broken out of her life and made a fresh start--on the sea.

"And what had happened to me? You'll think I was a pretty cheap sort of a lover to let my brother cut me out so easy as that. You'll say I never really loved her. Who can tell that? Who can say how much or how little he loves? Yes, yes, I loved her. But what, I ask you, is the use of a man mooning his life away for a girl who has never given him a minute's thought? It is a waste of time and energy and life. When that view of worlds outside of mine broke on me the love-trance broke. I said to myself: 'I am young; I will go out and see things.' Well, I went out and I saw things, and I don't regret it. But there's one thing we never see again, and that's the illusion of first love.

"I begged my mother to say nothing to Frank about me until I was gone, and a day or two later I slipped away to Paddington with a couple of grips and took the train to Barry Docks. It will give you an idea of the quiet life I had led when I tell you this was my first long journey. I had been to places within one hundred and fifty miles of London, but never farther. I felt lost when they turned me out on the platform at Barry in the rain and dark. A seaport is not a very attractive place to a landsman.

"The next twenty-four hours were strenuous for me. More than once I wondered if I could live through it. When I got to the dock I walked up and down looking for a ship that resembled the model of the _Corydon_.

There weren't any. I asked a man in a blue frock-coat if the _Corydon_ had come in.

"'Aye,' says he. 'Here she is, just abaft of ye,' and he pointed to a rusty, dirty old tub with a battered funnel and a bridge all blocked with hatches. That the beautiful shiny _Corydon_? There was the name on her stern--_Corydon, London_. She was loading coal from a big elevator.

Her decks were piled high with it, and where there wasn't coal there was mud, black oozy mud, and ashes and ropes and soppy hatches. I climbed up the ladder and one by one got my grips aboard. And I stood there in the rain, my gloves all black with the coal on the ladder, my nice mackintosh barred with it, and my boots slipping on the iron plates. No one took any notice of me. Men went to and fro in oilskins and shouted, but they didn't seem to see me. Just for a moment I thought of bolting!

Humph!

"Finally I spoke to one of the men, saying I had a letter for the chief engineer. He took me round into a dark alleyway under the bridge-deck aft and shouted down: 'Here comes the Second,' he says. 'He'll fix ye.'

"Well, he came up, that Second did, not very pleased at being disturbed.

'What is it?' he says. He was grease from head to foot, as though some one had been rolling him in a sewer.

"'I'm the Fourth Engineer,' I said. 'Oh, are ye,' says he, 'I thought ye were comin' this mornin'. Better get a boiler-suit on and give a hand.

We're goin' to sea to-morrow noon.'

"He took me along the alleyway and unlocked a door. 'There,' says he, 'there's your room. Ye share wi' the Third.' It was a smelly little hole, and so dark I could scarcely make out the bunks.

"'I haven't a boiler-suit with me,' I said, and he looked at me. He was a younger man than I was, and I felt it would be strange to have to take orders from him. 'Oh,' he says, 'you're about my size, I'll lend you one.' I couldn't help thinking as he went into his berth next to ours, that if he was the Second and I was the Fourth, what on earth would _I_ be like when we got to sea?

"And then he took me down below.

"That was my introduction to my new career. No handshakes, no good night's rest--nothing. I got into the Second's boiler-suit and followed him down. We had to work all night. The Third was down there all the time under the boilers. He was an old chap; must have been sixty, with a moustache that was dirty brown at the tips and grey at the roots, and a crease down each of his cheeks that was always twitching while he chewed. He was lying on his side in a puddle of water, a slush lamp close to his head, working a ratchet-drill into the sh.e.l.l of the boiler.

I had to crawl in alongside of him and help him. _Me!_ And I'd been writing 'fitters' instructions' in the office for three years. It was a come-down.

"And yet, something inside of me responded to the call. Say it was romance if you like, say it was sentiment, say it was just foolishness.

Something inside of me answered to the call. We worked all that night, patching that bad plate on the boiler. The other boilers were under steam, so you can believe it was hot down under there. My hands were all soft with office work, and in the first few hours I got cuts all over them, and the salt of the boiler-seams got into them and made them raw. What a time it was! It wasn't long before I was as dirty as the rest of them. I forgot all about time or food or sleep; just fetched and carried as I was told. Once the Second, who was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the holes we drilled, asked me if I had been to sea before. I said 'No,' and both of them said 'Oh Lord!' I can't blame them now. I've said it myself since, when I've found a new starter on my hands.

"The Chief came down about three o'clock in the morning and looked through the hole in the boiler casing. He was a little man with a gla.s.s eye. 'Is the Fourth there?' he says, sucking at his pipe. 'Yes,' I said, and he raps out, 'Yes what?' Humph!

"When the patch was on we had to get the boiler filled and the fires away as soon as we could. I tried to get some information out of the old Third, but he just chewed and spat. When I asked the Second he says, 'Oh h.e.l.l, I can't stop to show ye now. Take a hand-lamp and go and see the run o' the pipes yerself.' I was nearly dropping for sheer sleepiness, but I made up my mind I would not give in. At breakfast time the Chief said we'd missed a tide and couldn't get away till midnight, and I thanked G.o.d. But it's a funny thing about a steamer, that the more time you have the more work there is to do. We had stores to get stowed away, and as soon as that was done a steam-pipe split on the fore-deck and we had to go in the rain and patch it. I didn't know where things were; I didn't know the names of things; I didn't know how they should be done.

I'd been a gentleman for six years, never soiling my hands except to clean my bicycle. When the Second said to me at tea-time, 'You'd better knock off and turn in. You'll be on watch to-night,' I began to realize what I was in for. I sat on the settee in our room and tried to think.

No wonder my old sh.e.l.l-back uncle had laughed. My clothes were lying all round. I had no bedding, nor sea-gear, and I didn't know where to get it. Suddenly the door opened and the Chief came in.

"'Haven't you a letter for me?' he says. I gave it to him. 'Captain Carville's nephew, I see. Coming for a trip, or are you going to stick to it?' I looked at him.

"'I'm going to stick to it if it kills me,' I said. 'I'm here for keeps.' He nodded. He liked that.

"'Got any gear?' he says. I said, 'I've got nothing except an extra suit and some pyjamas.'

"He told me to get washed and go ash.o.r.e and buy some bedding. 'I don't know how you'll get on with that old Third,' he says. 'The last Fourth left because of him.'

"'I'm not going to leave, sir,' I said. I wasn't going back for anybody.

I was going to find out something about life, right away from everybody I'd ever known.

"'Bully for you,' says he, and with that he went away. I went ash.o.r.e and bought myself some gear, and by the time I got back it was eight o'clock by my watch.

"Never shall I forget that night. I'd meant to write my mother and uncle and tell them I was all right, but I was too tired and worried. The old Third came aboard at ten o'clock with a skinful, and the Second was rushing round cursing me because there was n.o.body else to curse. The firemen were drunk and the donkey-man was drunk. And at eleven-fifteen the gong sounded for slow-astern. I stood by the telegraph and worked the handle, and do what I would I kept shutting my eyes. My G.o.d! I thought, shall I ever sleep again? The old Third stood near me, his eyes all bloodshot, the crease in his cheek working, his dyed moustache all draggled, his breath--Humph! He was cunning enough to pretend he was all right, helping the Second with the reversing gear. Now and again the Chief would come down and give an order, his gla.s.s eye fixing me in a queer way. I never got used to that gla.s.s eye. It wasn't part of him, so to speak, and it distracted one's attention. The Chief himself would be talking quite friendly to you, when you would suddenly catch sight of that gla.s.s eye glaring at you, full of undying and unreasonable hate. He would be roaring with laughter at some joke, while all the time the gla.s.s eye seemed to be calculating a cold-blooded murder. It was strange enough in its socket; but I tell you, when I ran up to call him for a hot bearing one night and he looked across at me with one bright blue eye and the other b.l.o.o.d.y-red and sunken, and I saw the gla.s.s thing staring at me from the dressing table--Humph!

"At last, about one o'clock in the morning, we were outside, and he sent me up to see if the pilot had gone. Just as I stumbled up on the bridge-deck I saw the pilot going over the side, down a rope ladder. Oh, didn't I wish I was going with him! She was beginning to roll, you see.

"And yet, though I was in the depths, so to speak, up to the eyes in it, as I stood there in the rain and wind, the sweat bitter cold on my body, I saw the coast-wise lights, and realized with a sudden jump of the heart what I was doing. I was out at sea. And I'd been born at sea.

Twenty-six years in cotton-wool! Can you realize what I had done?

Somewhere inside of me there was something answering the call. I was going back through toil and sorrow to my own. I was away at last. I went down again into the engine-room and told them that the pilot was gone.

The Second says, 'Get yourself turned in, then.'

"I could have put my head on his shoulder and cried for joy!

"Well, I've said enough to give you an idea of the sudden turn in my fortunes. A week ago I was in love, and comfortably tucked away inside a cozy corner of the professional cla.s.s. My brother was a mysterious prodigal. Suddenly he b.u.t.ts in, and all is changed. He's snug and safe in a good berth, he's taken up the tale of his girls just where he left off, and I'm out at sea, Fourth Engineer of a rusty old freighter bound for a place I'd never heard of: Port Duluth, British Namaqualand. Well, let him marry her and be hanged! I thought; I'm out of that world. I was resolved not to go near London town till I'd worked out my probation on the _Corydon_. I saw that I was back in the Third Form at school again.

I saw that my shipmates knew nothing about culture or public schools or art or gentility. I saw they knew their business, and if I would be willing and quick to jump, they would teach it to me. My only real trouble was that old Third. If he'd only been a little cleaner in his habits! He would lie on the settee when he was off watch, the creases in his cheeks twisting, his bloodshot old eyes fixed on the toes of his red slippers and then--biff!--he would spit on the floor. But even that I could have stood if he'd been more cheerful. He never smiled, only creased his cheeks a little deeper. In time I learned why the last Fourth, a gay young spark of twenty-two, had fled out of the ship. This old Third, old Croasan his name was, didn't care what happened to him.

His children were grown up and run away; he was too ignorant to get a certificate, and he was just waiting for a ship to go to the bottom and take him with her. When the Second told me that I didn't believe him. I held, as most people hold, that even a man a hundred years of age will fight like a tom-cat for his life. But I found that the Second was right!

"We struck bad weather as soon as we got into the Bay. The _Corydon_ was loaded to her summer draught and here was a westerly gale coming on her bow, and later on her beam. She rolled day and night, shipping big seas all the time. This rolling washed the bilge water up on the plates in the stoke hold and lifted them, so that the small Welsh coal, like the Lehigh stuff you get here, was washed into the limber and choked the pump suctions. Very soon the bilge began to fill. The old ship was leaking like a basket any way, and she took a heavy list to port. All my watch that night, from eight o'clock till twelve, I was on those bilge-pumps trying to make them draw, while the Chief looked after the engines. It was no joke, with her listed over like that, the platform under water and green seas coming down through the skylights. I thought of my pleasant home at Oakleigh Park then, the quiet autumn streets, the bright fire in the dining-room and the cosy warm bed. Oh yes, I thought of it, but not with regret. I was out to win through, and all h.e.l.l wouldn't have made me desert!

"At twelve o'clock it was pretty serious. The Chief had the Second out to help with the pumps and sent me to call the old Third. It was his watch on the main engines, you see, twelve to four. Our berth was flooded. There was a couple of inches of water on the floor, and at every sea the water flew through the leaky joints of the dead-lights, all over old Croasan. To and fro on the floor my slippers were floating and a torn magazine swam into the room from the alleyway as I opened the door. The oil from the lamp was dripping on to the drawer tops, and every time she gave a deeper roll the light flared. I put the magazine under it to catch the drip, and as I did so I caught sight of a picture in it, a picture of two men standing on the deck of a ship in a storm.

Underneath were the words, 'I think she's sinking.' Curious, wasn't it?

That's just what I thought. I turned to old Croasan. He lay in his bunk just as he had come off watch at six o'clock, his dungarees shining with grease, his tattooed arms grey with dirt. He looked eighty years old as he lay there with his bald head against the bottle rack, the pouches under his eyes marking dark shadows on his creased cheeks. I shook him, and he opened his eyes for a second. I hardly knew what I was doing, I was so crazy with sickness and bruises and incessant toil. 'Mr.

Croasan,' I shouted at him. 'Eh!' says he, without opening his eyes.

'Oh,' I said, 'I--I think she's sinking.' He opened his eyes for about two seconds and then said to me in a terrible voice just as a big sea crashed over our heads and the ports spurted, 'Let her sink and be d.a.m.ned!' he says and never stirred. I left him there. I ran back to the engine room. I felt I couldn't stay and argue the point with a man who would not make a fight for us, for himself.

"The Chief decided to cut holes in the suction pipe just under the water-line. Then when the pumps sucked them clear, we bound them up with jointing and cut more holes lower down. Oh! it was grand! For fourteen hours we went on doing that, up to our shoulders in the bilge, the grease caking on us in a fresh layer every time we climbed out to get something in the store. The weather eased a little off Finisterre and we got her righted. We went up to the Chief's room to have a nip of whisky.

"'Ye see,' said the Second. 'Ye see, mister, there's some as dinna care.'

"Old Croasan came out of the bunk when the trouble was over. I felt too proud of what I'd been through to be hard on the poor old chap, proud of being in the thick of it. I was seeing life at last. This was what I'd come for. 'Ah,' says the Chief, his gla.s.s eye fixing me over his whisky gla.s.s, 'you'll be marked if you stay on the _Corydon_.'

"I was. It took that old box of misfortune thirty-two days to make Port Duluth. Every day we had some breakdown or other. She was like a good many other ships that fly the Red Ensign, worn out. But did I grumble?

Not a bit of it. I looked at it as any man will who's got sand in him.

It was a fight. There was no fighting in Victoria Street; it was simply riding through life on rubber tyres. Books, art, comfort, philosophy, all these things are well enough; but the _Corydon_, the rusty, leaking, treacherous old _Corydon_, with her starting rivets and banging old engines, she was the real thing, the thing to mark a man and teach him what he's made of.

"I don't suppose any of you people have ever heard of Port Duluth. I certainly hadn't. When I asked where it was, the others told me it was 'up a creek.' In England this would have meant very little; but I had learned from my mother to call even the Thames a creek, and so I was able to swallow the apparent paradox of a seven-thousand-ton ship insinuating herself up to what was known locally as 'a railhead.' When I persisted and wanted to know the name of the creek, n.o.body knew, but they said it was one of the channels of the Niger River. Then, I argued in my bookish way, Port Duluth must be in Nigeria. But this wasn't so certain at all. I became acquainted with the ragged edge of the British Empire. I gathered that the boundaries were not entirely settled, but that when the railway was carried along some watershed into the interior, it would link up with another system and our sphere of influence would automatically extend to include Port Duluth. And when I kept on at my shipmates and wanted to know what made the sphere of influence so very precious I received the staggering answer that it was nuts. We were building battle-ships and recruiting armies and building railways and bridges and harbours, for nuts. To me, walking to and fro on the after-deck in the glow of a tropical sunset, it seemed absurd.

You see, I knew nothing of raw products. Until I went to sea I didn't know how far the common things come. I didn't know that Yorkshire pig-iron was smelted from Tunisian and Ionian ore, or that the sugar in my tea had gone from Java to New York and from there to Liverpool. I didn't know where things came from nor where they went. The geography at school had some of it no doubt. I can recall some few vague facts about flax at Belfast and jute at Dundee. Humph! That trip to Port Duluth was worth a million geography lessons.

"To begin with, I learned much about rivers. In England a river is something easily comprehended. You can see along it, and across it, and it is locked, bolted and barred with towns and bridges and weirs and tow-paths. It is no more like an African river than a tame cat is like a leopard. Yet on the map the only difference is that perhaps the large river will have two mouths, and several tributaries running into it, exactly like a branch running into a tree. It wasn't like that at all. I had an atlas with me and when we reached the mouths of the great river I tried to find out where we were on the map. But it was hopeless. Where the map showed one channel there were hundreds on the chart. And the chart was out-of-date. It seemed a dream to me. I was under the impression that navigation nowadays was a humdrum affair of making points, steering on a ruled pencil line on the chart, so much for currents, so much for tides and so on. So it is, no doubt, in a great measure; but we can hardly realize how much of it is sheer skill and gallant daring. Even the men who do it don't realize it because they are always doing it. That first voyage to Port Duluth was a revelation to me in several ways. I had my own private troubles you may be sure. I was as green as gra.s.s. My hands blistered and my heart sickened many a time.

But I am glad to think I could see other things as well. To me it was thrilling to look out across the oily blue glitter and see a hazy line which was the Ivory Coast. There was the Slave Coast and the Gold Coast--the words had a new significance now! And when I came up out of that awful engine-room and saw the land close in, the eternal grey-green line of mangrove swamp holding up the blazing vault of the sky, I forgot my troubles. I said to myself in a whisper, 'This is what I came for.

This is the world!'