The Bonadventure Part 12

Days of reviving fine weather and swaying sea in hills and hollows, flinging proud manes of spray aloft for the sun to gild with rainbows again and again, gave place to one of skies generally overcast. Cold blues and greens came and went above us; the wind blew bleak over a steely sea. Land came into view on the port beam. Above it the clouds hung in dim phantasmagoria; a gleam of silver white below announced the coast, and, now sparkling, now dull, the lie of the land presented itself to our gaze. And this was Grand Canary. The mountain's sides seemed chequered with forest; at its bases white villages glistened; and further on, a conical peak and headlands grew on the eye.

The sea had lately been crowded with porpoises, acre upon acre; and here another vast a.s.sembly crossed our track. To a credulous eye, as they leapt along, they might have painted the image of several sea serpents writhing through the waves. Above them wheeled a flock of gulls, intent I supposed on fishing.

The cathedral of Las Palmas appeared in mirage; then the _Bonadventure_ rounded the coast until the town came clearly before us. It was to the harbour just beyond the town that we were making. As we approached, boats came rowing ferociously towards us. One crew threw hooks carrying ropes over our bulwarks, and sent a man aboard. His skill would have done a spider credit; but to no purpose did he exert it, for the hooks were thrown back and the invader held prisoner on the bridge during Hosea's pleasure. When we anch.o.r.ed, a fleet of boats sprang up around us, the chances of any individual one, of course, for the privilege of supplying us with a b.u.m-boatman being smallish. Not long afterwards, the ship was swarming with miscellaneous merchants, and merchandise.

Bananas, monkeys, canaries, cigarettes, cigars, photographs (chiefly improper), wicker chairs, matches, field gla.s.ses, parakeets and other useful articles were pressed upon every one aboard who could possibly be tackled. Some of the canaries were heard whistling loud and long, and yet Kelly found that the bird which he bought, a seeming musician, was mute.

No cabin was left unguarded. It was pointed out that one gentleman offered plain proof of knavery; on his right foot he wore an English boot, on the left a tennis shoe. They were all tarred with the same brush: "Worse than Port Said." I do not think they found much opportunity to enhance the reputation at our expense.

A tug, the _Gando_, immediately re-named the _Can-do_, brought out our lighters of coal. At that signal, an interesting enterprise moved nearer to us. When bags are being slung over from hold to hold, a good deal of coal is dropped into the water; and so the enterprise consisted in a small barge, with the men, and material, for sending down divers to rescue the estrays. The diver was a huge fellow, curiously wearing a red tam-o'-shanter. He of course went down in a diving suit to survey the ocean; when he thrust his muzzle out of the water again, up would come at the same time his two bushel baskets; and as these were almost full of coal, presumably that department of salvage had its rewards.

After much criticized anxiety about winches and blocks and guys, our stevedore gangs began their work at good speed. I was again dressed up in a borrowed boiler suit for the duties of tallyman. The weather became burning hot. The coal-dust flew round in copious whirlpool. After an hour I was full of discomfort, and not to be distinguished from any of the coal heavers. Work continued in such hearty fashion that I gathered that it was piece work. The foreman was another giant, with such a belly on him that whenever he gesticulated--that was often--stamping his foot and brandishing his hands, that belly really and truly quaked. His voice was not a success. He would have roared like thunder, but only a feeble croaking left his snapping jaws.

By six our bunker coals had been put aboard, I discarded my honourable discomfort, my mask of grime, and my piratical appearance. The dealers in Constantinople canaries and cork soles withdrew. About the harbour of La Luz, the lights came out in the houses and aboard the shipping; the masts and yards stood out calm against a quiet coloured evening, the water rippled with no skirmish nor much voice to our sides. Beyond the towns, the mountains gloomed with the dreams of romantic journeys.

An hour or so afterwards, the welcome though broken melody of the anchor's uprising heralded our departure. It had been a colourable interlude. I remember it best by a circular handed out by "Gumersindo Alejandro, b.u.mboat Business." It ran through the rigmarole of desirable articles, a few of which I have named above, and concluded

"and all kinds of silks suitable for presents and use."

A harsh description of presents? Perhaps.

XXVIII

By some mystical means, the mates had charmed away from our Las Palmas visitors at small cost or none an unusual supply of cigars and cigarettes.

These brightened up the melancholy purser, who was now approaching the end of his employment. There were still, however, many things to amuse his leisure. How often the table talk had come to the subject of h.e.l.l and its occupants! The latter seemed to be--after the landlubbers--shipowners, ship's chandlers, ship's tailors, and Customs men. Curious pictures were projected of notorious shipowners of the past, now compelled to wield the shovel next to the firemen late of their employ. As to the unfortunate Customs officials, witness A and B.

A. "... Yes, he quite got pally with this Customs fellow----?"

B (_older than A, hastily interrupting_): "I wouldn't trust any Customs fellow, not if he'd got a pair of b---- wings on."

The _Optimist_ went on its way with the weeks. Mead added "The Vamp" to his cabinet of tales of mystery; but the strain of discovering subjects apart from the steward and the galley was clearly growing. The prominence of food and meal times upon a tramp was described in a ballad published about this time.

THOUGHTS OF A ROMANTIC.

Ten thousand miles from land are we, Hark how the wild winds pipe!

What grand reflection swells in me?

This morning we'll have tripe.

For ever and evermore These billows rage and swell; O may I, through their angry roar, Not miss the breakfast bell.

Here octopi, here great white whales, Here krakens haunt the Main; Mad mermaids sing--my courage fails-- Here comes Harriet Lane.[1]

There, far far down, what jewels lie, What corals, red enough To make this sauce[2] seem pale, which I Am wolfing with my duff!

To think that one lone ship should thus Ride o'er the greedy seas!

Alas! what will become of us Now we've run out of cheese?[3]

The northern spring came into the air. Sc.r.a.ps of the casual verse of one English poet who never tired of the year afield started up in memory now, where the pondered solemn music of others had no reverberation; and so for the rest of my voyage. The sea for a time grew intensely calm, the swell seeming to swim along under a mantle of pearl or quicksilver. The undulating surface stretched to the horizon, unbroken anywhere by restless foam; and over this calm lay the golden track to the setting sun. When presently a breeze ruffled this strange sleep, it was as though shoals of tiny fishes had everywhere risen to the surface; and in one or two places, those bubbling, flickering shoals were actual and not imaginary.

As if schooled by misfortune, Sparks now posted up in the port alleyway a statement of football results and tables; so that many bosoms aboard needed no longer to feel a heaving anxiety. A turtle lazily floated by, watched by many who could have welcomed him on deck; a whale pa.s.sed, shouldering and spouting the brine; and shortly, as the midnight moon had portended, the dark green sea began to run in hilly ridges, sometimes sluicing the decks, and tilting the _Bonadventure_ to one side or the other. Grey rain-squalls flew over us now and then; but, considering our near approach to the redoubtable Bay, we were in excellent weather. The mate, however, was not one to take chances; and certain barrels, an anvil and a few other heavy movables were shifted from the windward side of the engines.

The steward and his adjutant had now little time certain in which to reform my room, so they fell upon it with paint brushes and "flat white"

in vigorous style; it had been my hope to be allowed this labour, but I remembered my "Tom Sawyer," where painting as a recreation was so truly valued. Mouldytop was seldom seen in these days without his pot and brush; he went at it from dawn to midnight and then did overtime. My room was turned into a whited sepulchre, which is better than a sooted one, but as it was a sort of receptacle for coal-dust, which was coal grease withal, even when port, ventilator and door were all closed, it was to be feared, _tamen usque recurret_, it would be black again in a week.

We came into a region of ships, tramps like ourselves for the most part, and the less handsome oil-tankers also. Finisterre lighthouse shone kindly upon us. With a fair wind, the concourse of shipping dwindling away somewhat as we went on, we now entered the Bay. Our angles began to be anything but right, but it was much gentler weather than I had any reason to need. Fair as it was for us, save for the cinders that fell in showers amidships, the vessels running in the teeth of the weather were pitching with vigour. Grey and shrouded the sea met us in hills and valleys, with white ridges and flecked with foaming veins; as we went further into the famous corner, the _Bonadventure_ could not but roll and lurch as though she liked it, and the waves were mountainous; yet out there we pa.s.sed a fishing boat making beautiful weather of it.

The second mate, Bicker, could scarcely get any sleep; but not on any score of weather or discomfort. All his watch below, or most of it, one might see him standing at his sea chest with pen scratching away at the forthcoming _Optimist_. So sweet is journalism when wooed as a casual mistress. Shall I go on? No.

My trouble was not what to write but what to read. Even Young's _Night Thoughts_, buried in annotations reverent and irreverent, began to grow familiar beyond all reason. _Pears' Cyclopaedia_, _Brown's Nautical Almanac_, _The South Indian Ocean Pilot_, _Phrenology for All_, and other borrowed books, were all at much the same stage. This ship was not the one recently reported in the newspapers in which the chief read poetry like a pa.s.sion, the cook chewed Froude with his morning crust, and the cabin-boy needed the help of Hegel. I forget if those were the actual claims, but in any case that was another ship. About now, an accident happened to my Young. It seemed as if a Poltergeist had visited the spare cabin port during the night, for awaking I found my settee, and the _Night Thoughts_ thereon, waterlogged. Perhaps the heavy rain had been answerable for this, but I could not see how--my port was closed. Poltergeist had spared my novel, lying next to Young: evidently he thought that already watery enough. Young, immortal, made a surprising recovery.

Now, we were nearing the one country. It needed no drab island of Ushant with its lighthouse to tell me this; for hardly had I put down in my diary "Much milder," when it became necessary to write "Much colder."

The tumults of the Bay were over and gone, and we were under a dun sky dropping rain which obviously belonged to the English Channel.

We swung round Ushant and became more aware of the ups and downs of navigation; these were less noticeable as we ran on. The prospect, or say circ.u.mspect of the day was narrowed in by dismal rainstorm, and once more it was a bleak amus.e.m.e.nt trying to make out the forms of ships through the foggy veils. The wind moaning, the rain splashing, measured out long hours, till all saddened into night with little to notice, save the gulls and divers whom such weather suited well. At any rate we were not unfortunate in our direction. The _Hammonia_ going the other way with pa.s.sengers showed us that by contrast.

The night elapsed, we came abeam of the Isle of Wight, which showed but indistinctly, though the day was cold and steady. Calm indeed lay the green Channel up which the _Bonadventure_ with speed sufficient to please Phillips was making her way. Ships, or their smoky evidences, made the time pa.s.s quickly. It was Good Friday, a great day for my childhood in Kent, land of plum-pudding-dogs and monkey-tail trees, a day when I heard, as indeed my elder companions had long foretold, the church bells rung m.u.f.fled; although I was disappointed in the purple ca.s.socks which, tradition fabled, would be worn by the choir on that day. Lent (and Advent too for that matter) was solemn then and real, outside of churches; and with Good Friday it appeared undeniable that there had been done some thing at which Nature must go in mourning. The three hours' service, like the watch that rang out the dying year and rang in the new, was in every one's thought that we met; such ceremony was not for nothing. The melancholy hymns of the season were more than sung verses.

To-day, at least, we had hot-cross buns to our breakfast. So is the Lord remembered in these years of discretion. The sailors had the day to themselves.

Our course lay more or less east, and brought us a succession of glimpses of shining cliffs and misty downs. Off Dover we saw both coasts at once. In 1919 I hoped I had seen the last of that piece of France.

Running out of this strait into the North Sea under a shrewish though a moderate wind, we pa.s.sed a number of fishermen, and what struck my mind with the strangeness almost of the Flying Dutchman, a three-masted barque under full sail, at a distance. It was sunset at the time. She caught the light and bowed upon her journey, a sweet sight, too quickly lost in the dark. Soon we picked up the flash of a lightship off the Dutch sh.o.r.e, and soon after that the cold to which my wanderings had not made me careless sent me inside.

Chilly brightness and blue sky saw us making rapidly over the North Sea, visited by thrushes and linnets, while the water seemed crowded with those clever birds, though so gawky upon the wing, the divers.

We crossed the wake of an oil-tank, burning the water almost like the witch's oils in "The Ancient Mariner," and scenting the air unlike those abstractions; came to a lightship, where our course was altered; and met the pilot cutter in a calm sea and air vivid with sun and cold about four.

The rope ladder went down, the row-boat came alongside, and the pilot was taken up to the bridge. I could not repress odd emotions at thus seeing again "Brother Boche"--he looked a replica of ancient types of my acquaintance--after such a long separation.

The estuary of the Ems received us, a flat sheet of water, with low coastlands only noticed by reason of towers here and there. The tides obliged us to anchor some miles outside Emden at six, and to wait until midnight. The sky darkened and loured into rain. At twelve in a black and gusty night, to the accompaniment of much hooting and shouting, the _Bonadventure_ moved up the river, and in the greyness and chill of daybreak berthed in a quiet basin at Emden.

Through this last movement I had tried to s.n.a.t.c.h some sleep, but was hara.s.sed by the socialism of Bicker and Mead, who considered it but fair that as they were being deprived of their sleep, I should be deprived of mine. They, therefore, visited me at intervals, switched on my fan which was now quite unnecessary, prodded me with toasting-forks, and so saluted the happy morn, like those larks which were now singing and soaring to justify any praise of them that ever was written.

[Footnote 1: "Harriet Lane." The name of that unfortunate lady is often applied to the curious tinned meat provided aboard.]

[Footnote 2: "This sauce." A pink luxury poured over Sunday's duff.]

[Footnote 3: "Cheese." In these closing lines the poet's hope was to record the actual expression of the saloon in general on receipt of the steward's p.r.o.nouncement: "That there was no more cheese."]

XXIX

On Easter Day the sun--it was an old proverb--will dance; and this time he was in the mood. We lay in a basin like other tramps; beyond, there cl.u.s.tered red roofs with blessed ungainly angles, a pleasing sight after those southern flat ones of grey. Farther off, the church spire climbed above the trees, and though many people in their Sunday dress were walking that way, more were taking their rounds beside these docks.