An Ocean Tramp Part 15

x.x.xV

Once more I am out at sea. I have stowed away my "sh.o.r.e gear," slipped the movable bar across my book-shelf, screwed up my windows, and made all snug against the wind blowing up-channel. There is a gentle roll; she is in ballast, for the Western Ocean, and the Mate does not smile when we discuss the probable weather. He would like a little more ballast, I know, and he thinks she "draws too much forrard." Well, I am minded to go on deck for a smoke before I turn in. And the Third Officer is on watch.

I call him the Innovation. There is to be much tallying on this charter, and there is a happy rumour that the _Benvenuto_ will pay in future. "I hear," said my friend the Mate, "I hear, Mr. McAlnwick, that she has been reconstructed." By which he means that certain financial props have been introduced into her economy, and she is no longer in liquidation. The Mate glories in a four-hour watch, and the Innovation takes the eight to twelve.

He walks across the bridge with a dozen swift strides. Then a peculiar slew of his active little frame, and he whirls back to starboard. His keen, clean-shaven face, hardened prematurely into an expression of relentless ferocity, looks out from the peak of his badge-cap, the strap cramming the crown against his bullet head. He is twenty-two, and pure Liverpool. He served his apprenticeship in sail on the Australian and Western American coasts. A middle cla.s.s education is submerged beneath seven years at sea, seven years of unbridled l.u.s.t, seven years of the seven deadly sins, seven years of joyous and impenitent animalism.

There is no break in his voice when he speaks of "his old lady"--she is religious. His "old man" is "a hard case," another name for a Liverpool skipper. He met his brother this time at home--"didn't know him, mister. Hadn't seen him for six years." His knowledge of some things extends from Sydney and Melbourne to Ma.r.s.eilles and Hamburg, from Amsterdam to Valparaiso; he drinks Irish neat, and his conversation is blistered from end to end with blasphemous invocations of the name of the Son of G.o.d.

I do not overdraw this picture of one who is only a type of thousands. It is impossible to give any adequate specification of him.

He takes me, metaphorically, by the throat, and I am helpless. With vivid strokes he paints me scene after scene, episode after episode, of his life in "a windbag," and I see that he exaggerates not at all.

He candidly admits that, in his opinion, Ma.r.s.eilles is heaven and Georgia the other extreme. He pa.s.sed for second mate a month ago, collected half a dozen shipmates, and terminated the orgies in the police-court.

The psychology of such a soul fascinates me. I hold to my cardinal doctrine of the illimitable virtue latent in all men; and I am right.

The unspeakable anathemas he p.r.o.nounces on a certain skipper, who let one of his apprentices die in a West Coast "hospital," his own terrific descent into the Chilean "common grave," groping for the body among the rotten corpses, feeling for the poor lad's breast, where hung a broken rouble, token of some bygone Black Sea pa.s.sion--all this tells me that I am right. Stark materialist though he is, he looks with scared awe upon the mysteries of religion, and the denunciations of the Dream on Patmos make him hope and pray that his own end may come in a deep sleep.

We are out beyond the Scillies now, and the Atlantic stretches before us in a grey, ominous immensity. The wind is rising steadily as I turn in, and the ship is rolling deep. The waves loom up, white-crested, snap sullenly, and surge away aft. A deeper roll, the sea crashes against my ports, and I screw them tighter. I think we are to have a bad night of it. As I draw my curtain I catch sight of a letter on my drawer-top, and I sink back with a sigh of content. "A grey eye or so!"

x.x.xVI

I feel strangely to-night, and I cannot sleep. As I woke, Six Bells, eleven o'clock, was striking, half carried away by the wind. For the storm is rising, and a beam sea sends wave after wave against my ports. Now and then, in the lulls, I feel the race of the propeller as she rises from the water, sending vast tremors through the frame of the empty ship. How she rolls! In my thwart-ship bunk I slide up and down, and the green seas thunder over my head repeatedly. As I turn out I feel excited. North Atlantic, light ship.

The mess-room is silent, dark. To and fro on the floor there washes a few inches of water. The stove-pipe has been carried away, and the sea has flooded the stove. The solid teak door at the top of the companion groans as the tons of water are hurled against it. The bra.s.s lamp glimmers in the darkness, creaking as it swings. Against the white wall the Steward's whiter ap.r.o.n sways like a ghost, fluttering in some eddy of draught. In the tiny pantry the cups clink softly on their hooks. And outside the storm-wind whistles in demoniac fury.

Across the room a narrow slit of light shows where the Fourth's room is hooked ajar. I go across and peer in. He is on watch, of course, and there is no one there. But all round I see littered the belongings of George's successor. A quiet, likeable Glasgow laddie, as I know him yet. He has put up his bunk curtains, and as they sway I catch a glimpse of a portrait. And so? Who can blame me if I look searchingly into the eyes of the girl with ribbon in her hair and a silver cross on her breast? And just beneath the narrow gold frame, swinging on a screw, there is a coloured paper design, which I know emanates from the Order of the Sacred Heart. It is an indulgence for one hundred days, and it has been blessed by the Vicar of Christ. Yes, and the laddie will have one on his breast, next the skin, as he stands by the throttle down below. And when we are half a world away from the parish church, he will be mindful of the tonsured man who gave him these; he will read the little red Prayer Book, and he will be ill at ease on Friday when we pa.s.s him the salt fish.

Glancing at an old cigar-box full of letters, I go out softly and hook the door.

For all the darkness and the rushing water it is close, and I go up and struggle desperately with the teak door, biding my time until the waters surge back to the rail. The door crashes to again, and I struggle on to the p.o.o.p. To my amazement there are men here, four of them at the wheel. And my friend the Mate, in oilskins and sou'wester, walking back and for'ard. I cry his name, but my voice is swept into the void. He sees me, but does not speak, only walks to and fro. To me, strung up to a tautness of sensation that almost frightens me, this silence of the Mate is horrible. I feel a pain in my chest like the pressure of a heavy weight as I look at him. And the four men toil at the wheel, for the steering chains have been carried away.

Looking for'ard, I see on the well-deck the white wreckage of a boat, and I begin to tremble with excitement. If the Mate would only speak!

A thought strikes me--that he will never speak to me again; then the sea comes. As she rolls to starboard, the great wave lifts his head and springs like a wild beast at the rail. A hoa.r.s.e roar, a rending, splitting sound of gear going adrift, and the sea strikes the p.o.o.p with terrific impact. Then the water soughs away through the scuppers.

And athwart the blackened sky there darts a dazzling flash of lightning. As I hold to my stanchion, soaked to the skin, I watch the wrath of G.o.d on the face of the waters.

Making a rush, I gain the shelter of the canvas screen round the cabin companion, and I b.u.mp into the Innovation. From beneath the dripping sou'wester his small, keen face peers up at me, and he utters his inevitable blasphemy. He hugs his left hand to his side. "Mister!" he hisses in my ear, "for the love of Christ get me a scarf out o' me berth. It's a blue one, in the top drawer." Then, darting out for a moment, he yells "Ai!" boiling over into asterisks. He darts in again, hugging his hand. My foot is in the door, and together we wrench it open. I drop down the companion and turn into his berth for the scarf.

It is while coming back that I see into the cabin, and I halt. The Skipper is standing under the lamp holding out his hand for a cup of coffee. And Nicholas, the fears and imaginings of a volatile race blanching his wizened features, rocks unsteadily across the floor. The big man with the white hair, red face, and cold blue eyes, towers over him, those same eyes snapping with something that has nought to do with money-making or Brixton, something not mentioned in any Board of Trade regulations. And Nicholas, holding by the table, looks like a rat in a trap, shaking with the fear of sudden death. A word from the Skipper, and he turns and runs a zig-zag course for the door. He cannot see me in the darkness, but I hear him whinnying a song to steady his nerves:

"_Ess, a young maid's broken-'earted When a ship is outward bound._"

His face is pinched and drawn, his beady eyes move unceasingly, and I think of one who said, "His nose was as sharp as a pen, and 'e babbled of green fields."

As I go below to my berth again, striving with the door as with a strong man, there crackles and hisses a forked glare of lightning, an enormous whip driving the great white horses of the sea to madness.

Onward they spring, phalanx after phalanx, while above the riot of their disintegration glints the faint yellow light of Fastnet. Far off to nor'ard, guarding Cape Clear, hidden at times by the mountainous water, veiled almost to obscurity by the flying spume, it flashes, a coastwise light. And on the eastern horizon--O wondrous sight to me!--the black pall has lifted a little from the tumbling waters, leaving a band of yellow moonlight with one green-flashing star.

Reaching my berth once more, the terror and delight of that last glimpse is upon me. In that strange yellow rift at midnight, backing the world of dark chaos, that star of palest green, I feel a thrill of the superhuman sense which renders Turner inexplicable to Balham, and stabs the soul with demoniac joy in the Steersman's Song.

One Bell, and the pen drops from my fingers. And so, until the day break and the shadows flee away, I shall be at my post. And in the morning there will be more to tell.

THE END