Shandygaff Part 12

Apparently his friend had written a book. Tommy, like a practical seaman, went to the heart of the matter. He went into the shop and bought the book. He fell into talk with the bookseller, who had read the book. He told the bookseller that he had known the author, and that for years they had served together on the same vessels at sea. He told how the writer, who was the former second engineer of the _Fernfield_, had done many things for the little Dutch lad whose own father had died at sea. Then came another surprise.

"I believe you're one of the characters in the story," said the bookseller.

It was so. The book was "Casuals of the Sea," the author, William McFee, who had been a steamship engineer for a dozen years; and Drevis Jonkers found himself described in full in the novel as "Drevis Noordhof," and playing a leading part in the story. Can you imagine the simple sailor's surprise and delight? Pleased beyond measure, in his soft Dutch accent liberally flavoured with c.o.c.kney he told the bookseller how Mr. McFee had befriended him, had urged him to go on studying navigation so that he might become an officer; and that though they had not met for several years he still receives letters from his friend, full of good advice about saving his money, where to get cheap lodgings in Brooklyn, and not to fall into the common error of sailors in thinking that Hoboken and Pa.s.syunk Avenue are all America. And Tommy went back to his yacht chuckling with delight, with a copy of "Casuals of the Sea" under his arm.

Here my share in the adventure begins. The bookseller, knowing my interest in the book, hastened to tell me the next time I saw him that one of the characters in the story was in New York. I wrote to Tommy asking him to come to see me. He wrote that the _Alvina_ was to sail the next day, and he could not get away. I supposed the incident was closed.

Then I saw in the papers that the _Alvina_ had been halted in the Narrows by a United States destroyer, the Government having suspected that her errand was not wholly neutral. Rumour had it that she was on her way to the Azores, there to take on armament for the house of Romanoff. She was halted at the Quarantine Station at Staten Island, pending an investigation.

Then enters the elbow of coincidence. Looking over some books in the very same bookshop where Tommy had bought his friend's novel, I overheard another member of the _Alvina's_ crew asking about "Casuals of the Sea." His chum Tommy had told him about his adventure, and he, too, was there to buy one. (Not every day does one meet one's friends walking in a 500-page novel!) By the never-to-be-sufficiently-admired hand of chance I was standing at Joe Hogan's very elbow when he began explaining to the book clerk that he was a friend of the Dutch sailor who had been there a few days before.

So a few days later, behold me on the Staten Island ferry, on my way to see Tommy and the _Alvina_.

I'm afraid I would always desert the office if there's a plausible excuse to b.u.m about the waterfront. Is there any pa.s.sion in the breast of mankind more absorbing than the love of ships? A tall Cunarder putting out to sea gives me a keener thrill than anything the Polo Grounds or the Metropolitan Opera can show. Of what avail a meeting of the Authors' League when one can know the sights, sounds, and smells of West or South Street? I used to lug volumes of Joseph Conrad down to the West-Street piers to give them to captains and first mates of liners, and get them to talk about the ways of the sea. That was how I met Captain Claret of the _Minnehaha_, that prince of seamen; and Mr. Pape of the _Orduna_, Mr. Jones of the _Lusitania_ and many another. They knew all about Conrad, too. There were five volumes of Conrad in the officers' cabins on the _Lusitania_ when she went down, G.o.d rest her. I know, because I put them there.

And the Staten Island ferry is a voyage on the Seven Seas for the landlubber, After months of office work, how one's heart leaps to greet our old mother the sea! How drab, flat, and humdrum seem the ways of earth in comparison to the hardy and austere life of ships! There on every hand go the gallant shapes of vessels--the _James L. Morgan_, dour little tug, shoving two barges; _Themistocles_, at anchor, with the blue and white Greek colours painted on her rusty flank; the _Comanche_ outward bound for Galveston (I think); the _Ascalon_, full-rigged ship, with blue-jerseyed sailormen out on her bowsprit snugging the canvas.

And who is so true a lover of the sea as one who can suffer the ultimate indignities--and love her still! I am queasy as soon as I sight Sandy Hook....

At the quarantine station I had a surprise. The _Alvina_ was not there.

One old roustabout told me he thought she had gone to sea. I was duly taken aback. Had I made the two-hour trip for nothing? Then another came to my aid. "There she is, up in the bight," he said. I followed his gesture, and saw her--a long, slim white hull, a cream-coloured funnel with a graceful rake; the Stars and Stripes fresh painted in two places on her shining side. I hailed a motor boat to take me out. The boatman wanted three dollars, and I offered one. He protested that the yacht was interned and he had no right to take visitors out anyway. He'd get into trouble with "39"--"39" being a United States destroyer lying in the Narrows a few hundred yards away. After some bickering we compromised on a dollar and a quarter.

That was a startling adventure for the humble publisher's reader!

Wallowing in an ice-glazed motor boat, in the lumpy water of a "bight"--surrounded by ships and the men who sail them--I might almost have been a hardy newspaper man! But Long Island commuters are nurtured to a tough and perilous his, and I clambered the _Alvina's _side without dropping hat, stick, or any of my pocketful of ma.n.u.scripts.

Joe Hogan, the steward, was there in his white jacket. He introduced me to the cook, the bosun, the "chief," the wireless, and the "second." The first officer was too heavy with liquor to notice the arrival of a stranger. Messrs. Haig and Haig, those _Dioscuri_ of seamen, had been at work. The skipper was ash.o.r.e. He owns a saloon.

The _Alvina_ is a lovely little vessel, 215 feet long, they told me, and about 525 tons. She is fitted with mahogany throughout; the staterooms all have bra.s.s double beds and private bathrooms attached; she has her own wireless telegraph and telephone, refrigerating apparatus, and everything to make the owner and his guests comfortable.

But her beautiful furnishings were tumbled this way and that in preparation for the sterner duties that lay before her. The lower deck was c.u.mbered with sacks of coal lashed down. A transatlantic voyage in January is likely to be a lively one for a yacht of 500 tons.

I found Tommy below in his bunk, cleaning up. He is a typical Dutch lad--round, open face, fair hair, and guileless blue eyes. He showed me all his treasures--his certificates of good conduct from all the ships (both sail and steam) on which he has served; a picture of his mother, who died when he was six; and of his sister Greta--a very pretty girl--who is also mentioned in _Casuals of the Sea._ The drunken fireman in the story who dies after a debauch was Tommy's father who died in the same way. And with these other treasures Tommy showed me a packet of letters from Mr. McFee.

I do not want to offend Mr. McFee by describing his letters to this Dutch sailor-boy as "sensible," but that is just what they were. Tommy is one of his own "casuals"--

--those frail craft upon the restless Sea Of Human Life, who strike the rocks uncharted, Who loom, sad phantoms, near us, drearily, Storm-driven, rudderless, with timbers started--

and these sailormen who drift from port to port on the winds of chance are most in need of sound Ben Franklin advice. Save your money; put it in the bank; read books; go to see the museums, libraries, and art galleries; get to know something about this great America if you intend to settle down there--that is the kind of word Tommy gets from his friend.

Gradually, as I talked with him, I began to see into the laboratory of life where "Casuals of the Sea" originated. This book is valuable because it is a triumphant expression of the haphazard, strangely woven chances that govern the lives of the humble. In Tommy's honest, gentle face, and in the talk of his shipmates when we sat down to dinner together, I saw a microcosm of the strange barren life of the sea where men float about for years like driftwood. And out of all this ebbing tide of aimless, happy-go-lucky humanity McFee had chanced upon this boy from Amsterdam and had tried to pound into him some good sound common sense.

When I left her that afternoon, the _Alvina_ was getting up steam, and she sailed within a few hours. I had eaten and talked with her crew, and for a short s.p.a.ce had a glimpse of the lives and thoughts of the simple, childlike men who live on ships. I realized for the first time the truth of that background of aimless hazard that makes "Casuals of the Sea" a book of more than pa.s.sing merit.

As for Tommy, the printed word had him in thrall though he knew it not.

When he got back from Liverpool, two months later, I found him a job in the engine room of a big printing press. He was set to work oiling the dynamos, and at ten dollars a week he had a fine chance to work his way up. Indeed, he enrolled in a Scranton correspondence course on steam engineering and enchanted his Hempstead landlady by his simple ways.

That lasted just two weeks. The level ground made Tommy's feet uneasy.

The last I heard he was on a steam yacht on Long Island Sound.

But wherever steam and tide may carry him, Tommy cherishes in his heart his own private badge of honour: his friend the engineer has put him in a book! And there, in one of the n.o.blest and most honest novels of our day, you will find him--a casual of the sea!

THE LAST PIPE

The last smoker I recollect among those of the old school was a clergyman. He had seen the best society, and was a man of the most polished behaviour. This did not hinder him from taking his pipe every evening before he went to bed. He sat in his armchair, his back gently bending, his knees a little apart, his eyes placidly inclined toward the fire. The end of his recreation was announced by the tapping of the bowl of his pipe upon the hob, for the purpose of emptying it of its ashes. Ashes to ashes; head to bed.

--LEIGH HUNT.

The sensible man smokes (say) sixteen pipefuls a day, and all differ in value and satisfaction. In smoking there is, thank heaven, no law of diminishing returns. I may puff all day long until I nigresce with the fumes and soot, but the joy loses no savour by repet.i.tion. It is true that there is a peculiar blithe rich taste in the first morning puffs, inhaled after breakfast. (Let me posit here the ideal conditions for a morning pipe as I know them.) After your bath, breakfast must be spread in a chamber of eastern exposure; let there be hominy and cream, and if possible, brown sugar. There follow scrambled eggs, shirred to a lemon-yellow, with toast sliced in triangles, fresh, unsalted b.u.t.ter, and Scotch bitter marmalade. Let there be without fail a platter of hot bacon, curly, juicy, fried to the debatable point where softness is overlaid with the faintest crepitation of crackle, of crispyness. If hot Virginia corn pone is handy, so much the better. And coffee, two-thirds hot milk, also with brown sugar. It must be permissible to call for a second serving of the scrambled eggs; or, if this is beyond the budget, let there be a round of judiciously grilled kidneys, with mayhap a sprinkle of mushrooms, grown in chalky soil. That is the kind of breakfast they used to serve in Eden before the fall of man and the invention of innkeepers with their cra.s.s formulae.

After such a breakfast, if one may descend into a garden of plain turf, mured about by an occluding wall, with an alley of lime trees for sober pacing: then and there is the fit time and place for the first pipe of the day. Pack your mixture in the bowl; press it lovingly down with the cushion of the thumb; see that the draught is free--and then for your _sackerhets tandstickor!_ A day so begun is well begun, and sin will flee your precinct. Shog, vile care! The smoke is cool and blue and tasty on the tongue; the arch of the palate is receptive to the fume; the curling vapour ascends the chimneys of the nose. Fill your cheeks with the excellent cloudy reek, blow it forth in twists and twirls. The first pipe!

But, as I was saying, joy ends not here. Granted that the after-breakfast smoke excels in savour, succeeding fumations grow in mental reaction. The first pipe is animal, physical, a matter of pure sensation. With later kindlings of the weed the brain quickens, begins to throw out tendrils of speculation, leaps to welcome problems for thought, burrows tingling into the unknowable. As the smoke drifts and shreds about your neb, your mind is surcharged with that imponderable energy of thought, which cannot be seen or measured, yet is the most potent force in existence. All the hot sunlight of Virginia that stirred the growing leaf in its odorous plantation now crackles in that glowing dottel in your briar bowl. The venomous juices of the stalk seep down the stem. The most precious things in the world are also vivid with poison.

Was Kant a smoker? I think he must have been. How else could he have written "The Critique of Pure Reason"? Tobacco is the handmaid of science, philosophy, and literature. Carlyle eased his indigestion and snappish temper by perpetual pipes. The generous use of the weed makes the enforced retirement of Sing Sing less irksome to forgers, second-story men, and fire bugs. Samuel Butler, who had little enough truck with churchmen, was once invited to stay a week-end by the Bishop of London. Distrusting the entertaining qualities of bishops, and rightly, his first impulse was to decline. But before answering the Bishop's letter he pa.s.sed it to his manservant for advice. The latter (the immortal Alfred Emery Cathie) said: "There is a crumb of tobacco in the fold of the paper, sir: I think you may safely go." He went, and hugely enjoyed himself.

There is a Bible for smokers, a book of delightful information for all acolytes of this genial ritual, crammed with wit and wisdom upon the art and mystery we cherish. It is called "The Social History of Smoking," by G.L. Apperson. Alas, a friend of mine, John Marshall (he lives somewhere in Montreal or Quebec), borrowed it from me, and obstinately declines to return it. If he should ever see this, may his heart be loosened and relent. Dear John, I wish you would return that book. (_Canadian journals please copy!_)

I was contending that the joy of smoking increases harmonically with the weight of tobacco consumed, within reasonable limits. Of course the incessant smoker who is puffing all day long sears his tongue and grows callous to the true delicacy of the flavour. For that reason it is best not to smoke during office hours. This may be a hard saying to some, but a proper respect for the art impels it. Not even the highest ecclesiast can be at his devotions always. It is not those who are h.o.r.n.y with genuflection who are nearest the Throne of Grace. Even the Pope (I speak in all reverence) must play billiards or trip a coranto now and then!

This is the schedule I vouch for:

After breakfast: 2 pipes

At luncheon: 2 pipes

Before dinner: 2 pipes

Between dinner and bed: 10 to 12 pipes

(Cigars and cigarettes as occasion may require.)

The matter of smoking after dinner requires consideration. If your meal is a heavy, stupefying anodyne, retracting all the humane energies from the skull in a forced abdominal mobilization to quell a plethora of food into subjection and a.s.similation, there is no power of speculation left in the top storeys. You sink brutishly into an armchair, warm your legs at the fire, and let the leucocytes and phagocytes fight it out. At such times smoking becomes purely mechanical. You imbibe and exhale the fumes automatically. The choicest aromatic blends are mere fuel. Your eyes see, but your brain responds not. The vital juices, generous currents, or whatever they are that animate the intelligence, are down below hatches fighting furiously to annex and drill into submission the alien and distracting ma.s.s of food that you have taken on board. They are like stevedores, stowing the cargo for portability. A little later, however, when this excellent work is accomplished, the bosun may trill his whistle, and the deck hands can be summoned back to the navigating bridge. The mind casts off its corporeal hawsers and puts out to sea.

You begin once more to live as a rational composition of reason, emotion, and will. The heavy dinner postpones and stultifies this desirable state. Let it then be said that light dining is best: a little fish or cutlets, white wine, macaroni and cheese, ice cream and coffee.

Such a regime restores the animal health, and puts you in vein for a continuance of intellect.

Smoking is properly an intellectual exercise. It calls forth the choicest qualities of mind and soul. It can only be properly conducted by a being in full possession of the five wits. For those who are in pain, sorrow, or grievous perplexity it operates as a sovereign consoler, a balm and balsam to the hara.s.sed spirit; it calms the fretful, makes jovial the peevish. Better than any ginseng in the herbal, does it combat fatigue and old age. Well did Stevenson exhort virgins not to marry men who do not smoke.

Now we approach the crux and pinnacle of this inquirendo into the art and mystery of smoking. That is to say, the last pipe of all before the so-long indomitable intellect abdicates, and the body succ.u.mbs to weariness.

No man of my acquaintance has ever given me a satisfactory definition of _living_. An alternating systole and diastole, says physiology.

Chlorophyl becoming xanthophyl, says botany. These stir me not. I define life as a process of the Will-to-Smoke: recurring periods of consciousness in which the enjoyability of smoking is manifest, interrupted by intervals of recuperation.

Now if I represent the course of this process by a graph (the co-ordinates being Time and the Sense-of-by-the-Smoker-enjoyed-Satisfaction) the curve ascends from its origin in a steep slant, then drops away abruptly at the recuperation interval. This is merely a teutonic and pedantic mode of saying that the best pipe of all is the last one smoked at night. It is the penultimate moment that is always the happiest. The sweetest pipe ever enjoyed by the skipper of the _Hesperus_ was the one he whiffed just before he was tirpitzed by the poet on that angry reef.