An Ocean Tramp Part 13

But, old friend, is it not true? Have I not heard your own voice give way a little, your own hand falter with the eternal cigarette as some long-hidden memory swept across your mind? So I believe, and so I understand the terse silence when you rise abruptly from the piano in the middle of some sad, low improvisation, and I lose you in the smoke-laden darkness of the room. Life for us moderns has its difficulties at times, life being, as it were, anything but modern. We have so many G.o.ds, not all of them false, either; but the Voice of the Dweller in the Innermost brings their temples crashing about our ears, and we are homeless, G.o.dless, atheists indeed.

I do not think this problem has been solved for us yet. It is all very well for the orthodox to say sneeringly, "Why not believe, like us?

Why stand outside the pearly gates, while Love and Lovers pace beneath the trees that grow by the River of Life? So easy, _mes amis_! Only believe. Do not delay, but come. Why not to-night?" We are further from yon purple-crowned heights than you wot of, good friends. Between us and that golden radiance lie many miles of dusty road, lies even the Valley of the Shadow, through which we have pa.s.sed. And now, as we are emerging from that same Valley, out upon the broad high tablelands of Understanding, we turn and see the distant loveliness, and we halt and stumble, and (sometimes) lose our way.

"_She should never have looked on me, If she meant I should not love her!

There are plenty--men, you call such, I suppose--she may discover All her soul to, if she pleases, And yet leave much as she found them: But I'm not so, and she knew it When she fixed me, glancing round them._"

x.x.x

Chains rattling, winches groaning, sun shining, longsh.o.r.emen shouting, breezes blowing.

"_G.o.d's in His heaven-- All's right with the world._"

And the dock postman (dear old Postie, who cadges sticks of hard tobacco and cigars from us when he brings good news) is standing on the quay while the ship is being moved into her new berth, and he waves a batch of letters when he sees me looking towards him. So! I have been burrowing in our boilers, testing the scale, inspecting stays and furnace crowns, and the joy of working has come back to me.

I was solemn last evening, melancholic and somewhat metaphysical it seems; but let it stand. 'Tis morning, and Postie's on the quay.

I breakfast alone. The others are ash.o.r.e, but they will appear during the day to finish up and to bestow mementoes on the wretched one they leave behind. And so I sit smoking my pipe by the mess-room fire; Postie descends, beaming expectantly. He hands me two letters, one from my friend, one from----

There was a thick mist before my eyes, the fire seemed an infinitely distant red blur, and Postie, several continents away, was burbling about possible promotions, good voyage, fine weather, tobacco, and the like. Forgive me, old man, but your letter lay unopened for a while. I poured tobacco and cigars into Postie's pockets, and sat down to think things out. Was it foolish of me to sit down to think? To set down the problem thus: Here am I, a man of infinite, almost unknowable latent possibilities, suddenly repossessed of the supreme power and glory of life. How can I, by taking thought, bring out those same possibilities, make them actual and patent to the world, apply them to the highest and n.o.blest uses, and so justify myself before men? In some such manner did I put to my own soul the position, trying ever to keep in view the sanct.i.ty, the holiness of life, and the preciousness of its holiest of holies, where dwell, as I have said, the power and the glory.

It is late in the evening of this most momentous day, and I must put down my pen, but there is one thought which perhaps may serve as answer to the scepticism so often expressed when I a.s.serted my belief in this world after all. I mean if a man, when he experiences some transcendent joy, is prompted to express that joy in terms of n.o.bler effort and sterner consecration to the welfare of others--does not this fact lead him to infer that happiness is, at least, more natural than unhappiness? that the universe does indeed exist, in Emerson's phrase, "hospitably for the weal of souls"? That, in fine, when the majority turn their faces this way, first keeping the houses of their souls swept and garnished for the love they are awaiting, then will the mountain of our misery be levelled, our valleys of despair filled up, and the rough places of life made plain?

So, at least, it seems to me just now as I sit and write. How I long for a talk with my friend!

"_You're my friend!

What a thing friendship is, world without end!_"

x.x.xI

I was awakened by something rattling outside my open window-port, wakened to a small tragedy. A circular wire rat-trap, depending from a line held by someone on the p.o.o.p, and containing two frantic rats, dangled against the opening. Alas! how they ran round and round and round! The cause of all their agony, a piece of decayed fish and a fragment of mouldy cheese, was left untouched as they dangled before me. The voice of my friend the Mate is audible down my ventilator. He is arguing with the Steward, one Nicholas, of whom you have heard.

Said Nicholas is protesting in his clickety Graeco-English fashion, that the pelt of a drowned rat (_dronded raht_, Nicholas loquitur) is worth less than that of one skinned alive. To which horrible doctrine my friend the Mate opposes a bl.u.s.tering Irish humaneness issuing in "Dammit, ye shan't!" Rats, meanwhile dangling, they as well as their fate hanging uncertain. At last they are lowered. (The Mate talking, I think, over his shoulder at Nicholas, who stands, probably in contemplative fashion, legs apart, face serious, brain calculating income derivable from rats skinned alive.) The line rising in a minute, I turn on my elbow to witness the end. Alas! _Helas!! Ach Himmel!!!_ How are the mighty fallen! Two grey shining lumps, each with tapering tail dropped limply through the bottom; fish, cheese, and rodents all on one dead level now, given over to corruption. Up, up--I hear the trap grounded on the p.o.o.p over my head. I sigh as I climb out and wash. I rather like rats. The Grey One in the tunnel is an old chum of mine. I have never killed one yet, though often even Grey One has been chased up and down, in fun. He, sitting on a stringer and twirling his whiskers, has "views," I think, about Men with Sticks, _his_ conception of the Devil and all his angels.

John Thomas, bursting in with hot water for shaving and information concerning breakfast in the cabin, interrupts my rat-reverie. It is Sunday morning.

"Eight o'clock, sir. Steward say, sir, will you have breakfast with the Chief Officer?"

"No one else aboard?"

"Second Officer's in the galley, sir."

"Where?"

"Galley, sir." A sn.i.g.g.e.r from John Thomas. "Come aboard early, sir."

"Oh! Tell the Steward 'Yes, with pleasure.'"

So! I finish dressing leisurely, donning patrol-jacket and uniform cap, and "turn out." It is a calm Sabbath morning. Not yet have the mists rolled from the heights which frown upon us all around, but the sun glitters on the docked shipping, silent save for the flapping of sea gulls and the clank of some fresh-water pump. With a glance of homage towards the sun, I go below for my inspection. Boilers, fires banked in the donkey-boilers over weekend, bilges, sea-c.o.c.ks all in order; I am at liberty to enjoy my day of rest. Nicholas, in white drill coat, shining silver b.u.t.tons, and sh.o.r.e-boots of burnished bronze hue, glides aft with a dish (held high, in the professional manner) covered with a dome of gleaming pewter. Two youths on the quay, fishing hopelessly for insignificant dock carp, watch with open-mouthed awe. My own b.u.t.tons of yellow metal, linen collar, and badge _de rigueur_, pa.s.s a similar scrutiny as I follow him to the saloon.

The saloon, compared with our own quarters, is sumptuously furnished.

Panelled in hard woods, white ceiling with shining nickel rods and brackets, carpeted floor and ruby-plush upholstering--into such a palace I step to take breakfast with my friend the Mate. He is already entrenched behind the pewter dome, Nicholas gliding round giving the final touch of art to the preparations. The subject of skinned rats has vanished to make room for the serious business of his life.

"Good-mornin', Mr. McAlnwick. Sit there! We are alone to-day, as ye see. Nicholas!"

Nicholas is a believer in ritual. He is tolling his little bra.s.s hand-bell just as though everyone was here. In a minute he reappears.

"Sir?"

"Is Mr. Hammerton aboard?" A sn.i.g.g.e.r from John Thomas, installed _pro tem._ in the pantry as the Steward's aide-de-camp.

"'S in de galley, mister."

"Does he want any breakfast?"

"No, sir. 'S 'sleep in de galley." Another sn.i.g.g.e.r.

"What's the matter with that boy?" thunders my friend the Mate, lifting the dome from ham and eggs.

"He is merely cursed with a sense of humour, Mr. Honna," I observe, and we avoid conversational rock and shoals until we are ensconced in his private berth.

"The fact is, Mr. McAlnwick, Mr. Hammerton's a very foolish young feller. Help yourself to some tobacco. Knowin' as I do that when he went ash.o.r.e last night he had twenty-six pounds ten in his cash pocket, I wonder he isn't lyin' at the bottom o' the dock instead of in the galley. He will not bank his surplus. And he _will_ get drunk."

"What's at the bottom of it all, Mr. Honna?"

"I'll show ye!" With a hoa.r.s.e whisper he rises, tip-toes swiftly along the corridor to the Second Officer's room, and returns with a photograph.

Baby! Is she another milestone nearer to Alsatia, then? My pipe remains unlit as I gaze at the cheap provincial photograph of a girl with large eyes and a sensuous mouth.

Mr. Honna pushes his cap back and stares at me.

"What! D'ye know her?"

"It's Baby," I answer, laying the thing down. "Baby!"

"He's engaged to her."

"Since when?"

"Since--Gawd knows--last Monday, I believe."

I reach for the matches, and recount to the Mate my knowledge of Baby.

His nose wrinkles up, his eyes diminish to steel-blue points of fire, and he nods his head slowly to my tale.