An Ocean Tramp Part 2

I suppose we may say of everyone, that he sooner or later falls a victim to the desire to travel, with as much truth as we say, far more often, that he falls a victim to love. However that may be, I claim no special destiny when I say that I have been mastered by both pa.s.sions, except perhaps that they culminated in my case simultaneously.

I must go back to the time when I was some six years old to find the first faint evidences of the rover in me. At that time we lived almost at the foot of that interminable thoroughfare, the Finsbury Park Road, next door to a childless dame whose sole companion was a pug of surpa.s.sing hideousness of aspect, and whose sole recreation was a morning stroll in Finsbury Park with this pug. How I came to form a third person in these walks I cannot quite remember but I can imagine.

At the age of six I was a solemn child, unclean in habits, consorting with "grown-ups," and filled with an unsocial hatred for the baby whose matutinal ablutions were consummated at the same hour at which the old lady usually took her walk. I can remember that I was supposed to a.s.sist in some way at those ablutions, probably to hold the mottled soap, which curiously resembled the infant's limbs when pinched with cold; and so, I suppose, I would steal out and join the lady and her dog, walking a little to one side as we drifted slowly up the dull suburban street into the park. Sometimes we went as far as the lake, and I have faint memories of a bun, purchased by the dame, and munched by me as we watched the gardeners tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the beds. I do not wish to suggest that this lady was my first love--I have never carried my senophile proclivities to that extent. She was, to me, the ant.i.thesis of mottled soap and cradle-rocking, and as such she lives in my memory. I am also grateful to her for giving me my first glimpse of a world outside the front door; an ugly world, it is true, a world of raucous bargaining and ill-bred enjoyment, but a world nevertheless.

Why should I tell of so trivial an incident? Bear with me a moment.

Since I have been at sea I have often reflected upon the fact that many phases of my life are even now going on, quite heedless of my absence, quite apathetic of my very existence, in fact. How marvellous, it seems to me, to know that life at my old school is proceeding upon exactly the same lines as when I was there! At this moment I can see, in imagination, the whole routine; and I can tell at any time what the school is doing. Again, I know precisely the goings-in and the comings-out of all the staff at my old employer's; picture to myself with ease what is happening at any instant. More wonderful still, I know what my friend is doing at this moment. I know that he is seated in his room at the Inst.i.tute, talking to our friends (perchance of me), ere they descend to their lectures at seven o'clock. At ten, while I am "turned in," he will be leaving the Inst.i.tute, and the 'bus will put him down at his favourite hostelry.

At this moment he is smoking a cigarette! But then, of course, he is always smoking a cigarette!

It is a far cry from a stealthy stroll with an old woman in Finsbury Park to a twenty-thousand-mile tramp in a freighter, and yet one is the logical outcome of the other, arrived at by unconscious yet inevitable steps. Listen again.

At a later period, when I had discovered that tools were a necessary complement to my intellectual well-being, I brought my insatiable desire to _make_ something to the a.s.sistance of my equally insatiable desire to _go_ somewhere. From a sugar-box and a pair of perambulator wheels I fashioned a cart, between the shafts of which I travelled many leagues into the wilds of Middles.e.x and Ess.e.x. "Leagues" must be understood in the sense in which Don Quixote would have used the word.

I do not suppose I ever traversed more than eight or ten miles at a time. But never, while the desire to go out and see is living within me, shall I forget how, one breathless August day, when the air was heavy with the aroma of creosoted sleepers, my small brother and I stared through the gates of a level crossing, and saw Epping Forest in the blue distance! O phantoms of Cortes, Balboa, and De Soto, wert thou there? O Sir Francis, hadst thou that thrill when

"_Drake went down to the Horn, And England was crowned thereby_"?

But I grow magniloquent. My object is attained if I can but show that when my friend took me under his wing at the Inst.i.tute long years agone, when the innocent-looking lad with the fair hair, that might have had an incipient tonsure superimposed without incongruity, drifted away from text-books of mechanics, and sat down with Schiller, Ducoudray, and Carlyle, he little imagined how adventurous a spirit there boiled under that demure disguise of retiring scholarship--a spirit fired with an untamable pa.s.sion for looking over the back-garden wall!

Even perambulator wheels give out, however. I forget whether the wheels of my little cart failed before my mother's patience, or the reverse. I was growing away from those tiny journeys; my head bulged with loose heaps of intellectual rubbish acquired during long hours of unsociable communion with a box of books in the lumber room. I knew the date of Evil Merodach's accession to the a.s.syrian throne, but I did not know who killed c.o.c.k Robin. I knew more than Keats about the discovery of the Pacific, but I did not know Keats. I knew exactly how pig-iron was smelted, but I did not know the iron which enters into the soul. I knew how to differentiate between living and non-living matter, but I did not know that I was alive. Then a new heaven and a new h.e.l.l opened before me; I was sent away to school.

Concerning school and, after school, apprenticeship, I shall not speak. Neither mind nor body can wander far in those humane penitentiaries called schools. I had fed myself with _History_ since I had learned, painfully enough, to read, and here at school I found I knew nothing. What did it matter? The joy of knowing the name of the wife of Darius, of Lucan, of Caesar, was mine alone. I wove stories about Roxana and Polla, but I doubt if any one ever wove stories about the Conventicle Act, or the Pet.i.tion of Rights, or the Supremacy of the Pope, as told in a school history. I often wonder that boys do not grow up to hate their country, when they are gorged with the horrible trash in those yellow volumes.

I once read of a little boy who killed himself after reading "The Mighty Atom." I believe many people deplored this, and expressed aversion to the book in consequence. That is proper; but suppose the school history had related the story of "The Little Princes in the Tower" with the same power and intensity which Corelli employs in the "Atom," and suppose the little boy had been so overwhelmed with the horror and vividness of the historical perspective that he had hanged himself behind the fourth-form cla.s.sroom door--well, then, I should say the remainder of the boys would have learned the reign of Richard the Third as it has never been learned before or since, and the unhappy suicide would not have died in vain.

But, as I said, one cannot wander far at school. A schoolmaster once advised his colleagues to take up some literary hobby--essay writing, articles for the press, etc.; for, said he, teaching is a narrowing profession. I wonder if any schoolmaster has ever imagined how narrowing it is for the boys? Have they never seen the look of abject boredom creep over the faces of even clever lads as the "lesson"

drones on: "At this period the Gothic style of architecture arose, and was much used in Northern Europe for ecclesiastical buildings." And so on, including dates. Whose spirit would not fail? Why not, oh, my masters, why not use this inborn pa.s.sion for wandering abroad of which I write? Why not take that jaded band of youths out across yon fields, take them to the village church, and _show_ them grinning gargoyle and curling finial, show them the deep-cut blocks of stone, show them, on your return, a picture of the Rue de la Grosse Horloge at Rouen? Would your trade be narrowing then?

III

But the sea!

My friend asked me once, of the Mediterranean--Is it really blue? And I replied that I could give him no notion of the colour of it. And that is true. From the real "sea-green" of the shallow North Sea to the turquoise-blue of the Bay; from the grey-white rush of the Irish Sea to the clear-cut emerald of the Clyde Estuary; from the colourless, oily swell of the Equatorial Atlantic to the paraffin-hued rollers of the Tropic of Cancer, the sea varies as human nature itself. To the artist, I imagine, no two square miles are alike, no two sunsets, no two sunrises:

"_His sea in no showing the same, His sea, yet the same in all showing._"

As I climbed the steep side of the almost-empty steamer, lying at the Tyne-main Buoys, a keen, alert, bearded face looked over the gunwale above me. I stepped aboard and spoke to the owner of this face. I said, "Is the Chief aboard?"

"He is not."

"Is the Captain aboard?"

"He is not."

"Then who _is_ aboard?"

"The Mate's aboard."

"Are you the Mate?"

"I am that."

"My name is McAlnwick. I am signing on with this steamer."

"Ye're welcome." And we shook hands.

He is the very image of my old Headmaster, is this mate of the _Benvenuto_. The trim beard, the keen, blue, deep-set eyes, the smile--how often have I seen them from my vantage-point at the bottom of the Sixth Form! On his head is an old uniform cap with two gold bands and an obliterated badge. He wears a soiled mess-jacket with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons in the breast-pocket of which I see the mouthpiece of a certain ivory-stemmed pipe. His hands are in his trouser pockets, and he turns from me to howl into the cavernous hold some directions to the cargo-men below. In the gathering gloom of a short January afternoon, with the rush and roar of the winches in my ears, I stumble aft to my quarters, thinking pleasantly of my first acquaintance.

And our friendship grows as we proceed. When we have slipped out of the Tyne one grey evening, when the lights of Shields and Sunderland die away, we are friends. For, as I prophesied, my whiskey would open hearts. It was on a cold, bleak morning, ere we left Newcastle, that I heard a stealthy step down the stairs to my room, and a husky whisper--had I a nip o' whiskey? Yes, I had a nip. The bottle is opened, and I fill two gla.s.ses. Evidently the First Officer is no believer in dilution. With a hushed warning of "Ould Maun!" as a dull snoring comes through the part.i.tion, he tosses my whiskey "down his neck," rubs his stomach, and vanishes like--like a spirit! Later in the day, as I stare across at some huge ships-of-war (for we are opposite Elswick now), I hear a voice, a hearty voice, at my elbow.

"Thank ye, Mister McAlnwick, for the whiskey. 'Twas good!"

I express my pleasure at hearing this. He touches me on the shoulder.

"Come down to me berth this evening," he says, "an' we'll have a _nip_." And I promise.

Perhaps it is the sensation of drinking whiskey with my Headmaster's double, but I enjoy creeping down the companion-way to the Mate's room. And I, being of the true line of descent, with my father held in memory still, am welcome. I am taken into this old sea-dog's confidence, and we talk. I have learnt, I think, the delicate art of asking questions of the men who do the world's work. Perhaps because I have dwelt so long with them, because I love them truly, they tell me the deep things of their lives. And so you must picture me in the Mate's room, seated on his settee, while he loads my knees with photographs of his wife and children. This is Jack, son and heir, in his Boys' Brigade uniform. He has a flute, too, which he "plays beautiful, Mr. McAlnwick--beautiful!" Then there is Madge, a sweet little English maid of fourteen, with a violin: "Her mother to the life." "Dot" follows, with only her big six-year-old eyes looking out of curls which are golden. And the Baby on his mother's knee--but I cannot describe babies. To me they are not beautiful creatures. They always seem to me, in photographs, to be stonily demanding why they have been born; and I, wretched man that I am, cannot answer them, for I do not know. Calypso, too, _not_ "eternally aground on the Goodwin Sands of inconsolability," interests me, in that I also was mothered of a sea-wife. A hard life, I imagine, a hard life. I find no delight in the sea in these mariners. "A Life on the Ocean Wave" was not written by one who earned his bread from port to port. My friend the Mate (he has gone on watch now, so I may speak freely) lives for the future. He holds a master's ticket, yes; but commands do not come to all. He lives for the time when the insurance money falls in, when he will sit down in the little house in Penarth where the sun warms the creeper on the back-garden wall. He will keep chickens, and perhaps there will be a cuc.u.mber frame between the peas and the vegetable patch, and he will do a little gardening when the weather is fine, and smoke, and read the shipping news. "And there shall be no more sea."

Not that I would give you to think that a Chief Officer's life is one of toil. Indeed, on a steamship, while at sea, he has little to do.

His "watch" is a sinecure save in thick weather, and is usually occupied by day with sundry odd jobs, by night with thoughts of home.

In port he is busy like everybody else; but at sea, in fine weather, his greatest grievance is the short hours "off" and "on." Our steamer carries but two deck officers, and these two keep alternate "watch and watch" throughout the twenty-four hours. This means that his watch below is all sleep. The Chief Officer comes off at eight p.m., say, washes himself, smokes a pipe, and "turns in." At eleven-forty-five the sailor coming on watch at the wheel calls him, and he "turns out."

Nothing can equal the ghastly expression on the faces of men who have been torn from their sleep at an unnaturally premature hour. They move along the iron decks like ghosts, peering into one's face like disembodied spirits seeking their corporeal correlatives, and avoiding stanchions, chains, and other pitfalls in an uncanny fashion. In the meantime, the Second Officer drifts "aft" to his bunk for another four-hour sleep. And so on, day after day, for weeks.

IV

I have this, at any rate, to say of sea-life: a man is pre-eminently conscious of a Soul. I feel, remembering the blithe positivism of my early note, that I am here scarcely consistent. As I stood by the rail this morning at four o'clock--the icy fingers of the wind ruffled my hair so that the roots tingled deliciously, and a low, greenish cloud-bank, which was Ireland, lay nebulously against our port bow--I felt a change take place. It was almost physical, organic. The dawn grew whiter, and the rose-pink banners of the coming sun reached out across the grey wastes of the St. George's Channel. I am loth to use the trite metaphor of "a spiritual dawn." By a strange twist of things, my barest hint of a soul within me, that is to say, the faintest glimmer of the ever-increasing purpose of my being--the moment it showed through, the outer world, including my own self, had always greeted it with inextinguishable laughter. Perhaps because the purpose was always so very immature, so very uncertain. I wanted--I hardly knew what. My ideas of morality were so terrible that I left it alone, on one side, for a time, and charged full tilt at art. I shouted that I thought music a disease, and musicians crushed me. I did not mean that; but I could get no nearer to what I did mean in any other phrase. I told hard, practical business men that they were dreamers and visionaries; and they are still dreaming.

But the Angel of the Spirit does not move in any prescribed path, or make his visits to any time-table. I think I heard the far-off beating of his wings this morning, as we swept up-channel towards the Clyde, and I think I was promised deeper knowledge of Love and Life than heretofore. I know that with the dawn came a sense of infinite power and vision, as though the cool wind were the rushing music of the spheres, and the rosy cloudland the outer portals of the Kingdom of G.o.d.

And, indeed, I have had my reward. I had come from Italy, where I had wandered through churches and galleries, and had seen the supreme excellence of a generation whose like we shall not see again, and as we came up that stately firth and discovered a generation as supreme in their art as the Italians of the sixteenth century were in theirs, I held my breath.

From Greenock to Glasgow resounded the clangour of hammers and the thunder of mechanism. Plate by plate, rivet by rivet, and beam by beam, there grew before my very eyes the shapes of half a hundred ships. I see more clearly still, now, what I meant by insisting on the conservation of intellectual energy. My friend points piteously to past periods, and says, "They can't do it now, old man." And I smile and point to those steel steamships, growing in grace and beauty as I watch, and I say, "They couldn't do _that_ then, old man!" Just as the physical energy in this universe is a definite totality, so is the intellectual or spiritual energy. The Da Vinci of to-day leaves his Last Supper undepicted; but he drives a Tube through the London clay.

Cellini no longer casts a Perseus and alternates a murder with a _Trattato_; he builds engines and railroads and ships. Michael Angelo smites no sibyls from the living stone, but he has carved the face of the very earth to his design. And though no fair youth steps forth to paint the unearthly nimbus-light around the brows of his beloved madonna, I count it fair exchange that from every reef and point of this our sea-girt isle there shines a radiance none can watch without a catching of the breath.

V

It is a far call from such musings to the Skipper, whom I encountered as I was in the midst of them. It is only the bald truth to say that I had not then considered him to be a human being. Even now I am uncertain how to describe him, for we do not meet often. He is a tall, powerfully built, slow-moving man, strong with the strength of those who live continually at sea. Something apart from temporary bias made me look distastefully upon his personality. I resolved to fasten it upon my dissecting board, and a.n.a.lyse it, relegating it if possible to its order, genus, and species. Let me try.