The Bonadventure Part 3

Bless my soul....' for twenty minutes. I'd go away from the wheel for fear of laughing out--and then he'd go somewhere else and do it."

"Davy Jones got him at the finish, didn't he?"

"--And a dam'd fine ship too."

"It was her maiden trip."

"What happened to her?"

"Ran ash.o.r.e."

"Both the boats capsized."

"She had the most valuable cargo I ever heard of." A pause.

"Old Shank used to ask for it, though. Once in the Gulf of Mexico he was down below, and the ship was on the course he'd given. (He never used to take any notice of deviation.) The second mate heard breakers, you could hear them quite plain, and not very far off; so he turns the ship a little, and goes down to tell Shank. Old Shank jumped up and stormed and stamped, and rushed up on the bridge roaring, '_Am I to be taught after forty-eight years at sea by a set of b---- schoolboys?_' and had her put back to the old course again. And then he walked off. You could hear him snapping his teeth. Presently he stopped. You could see the breakers now, the phosph.o.r.escence of them. '_What's that?_' he whipped out, '_What's that?_ My G.o.d.'"

"He was one of the white-haired boys in the office, what's more."

"His officers saved him."

"Well, one night he gave me a course, and the last thing he said to me on the bridge was, 'It's up to you to keep her there.' I soon found we were going to fall on land, and I changed the course. And as it was, we pa.s.sed three-quarters of a mile inside the lightship. I went down to his room and told him. 'Why, you d.a.m.n'd fool,' he started off; he nearly went mad. 'But I've hauled her out,' I said, 'I hauled her out.' And then he yelled, 'Changed her course without orders, did you?' and so on."

"Well, the office made a pet of him. Some people get away with it."

"After my trip with him, the whole crew refused to sail with him again.

And the mate went up to Shields to join a new ship. And when he got there, he found Shank had joined her as skipper!"

We came into the Doldrums, and I felt none too well. "Cold, worse; heat, worse," became my diary's keynote. The steward also complained of a persistent cold. Six bottles--six--of his own medicine since we left Barry had not cured him. This notable Cardiff Irishman was always pleased to answer questions about this cold of his, and they became suspiciously frequent. Then his solemn face would grow still more solemn, his voice of office would take on a pleasing melancholy, and he would shake his grey head with dolorous realizations. Nevertheless, his stores being just below my cabin, I grew accustomed to his morning rejuvenate roarings from the threshold at the avarice of the modern sailor. It seemed that at such times he was momentarily free of his illness.

He, nevertheless, at present, added his good word to the general approval of the cook. The bread was universally admired, the pea-soup also. This popularity did not cause any alteration in the melancholy orientalism of its deserver. He looked forth from his galley with the same wooden countenance. He was the thinnest man I think I ever saw.

His macaroni, however, appeared to fall under a general taboo. It was "eschewed." Bicker, the most a.s.siduous tale-teller, seized it as the chance for describing an old shipmate's misfortune. It was in Italy: "He was keen on seeing all the sights, so we asked him if he'd seen the macaroni plantation. He said he'd like to. We told him to take the tram out of the town and walk on another mile or so, when he'd see the trees with macaroni growing on them like lace--natural lace. And he went. But the best of it was that he'd sent a card home the day before to say, 'To-morrow I am going to see the macaroni plantation.'" This, which if true was stranger than fiction, elicited recollections of fool's-errands in the shipyards ("Run and get a capful of nailholes,"

"Ask the storekeeper for a bra.s.s hook and a long stay"), which kept us at table until the steward groaned aloud.

I led a lazy life. There was not much reason for being active. My afternoon walk might reach as far as the fo'c'sle, in which lay a kindly miscellany of wire, hemp and manila ropes in coils, and an aroma of paint and tar was never absent. The heat, however, seemed intenser in this house than in the open. Clouds and a little rain soon vanished, and the sea was one long flame towards the sun. White uniforms were in vogue. For me, the half-closed eye, with a flying-fish or two sometimes glittering to awake its notice, in any corner out of the sun, was an occupation. The unfortunate boatswain and his men were chipping paint, clanging and banging in the heat; or I would see him perching on the bulwarks directing some aerial operation, and a sailor seated in the "bosun's chair" being hauled up the mast. They rested from Sat.u.r.day noon until Monday morning. Now, more than ever, the lot of the engineers and firemen seemed unacceptable. The blaze, the fierce blue sea, and a flagging breeze became a routine now. The rains of the Doldrums were not much in evidence; a short shower, flying over the clay-coloured water, might come towards evening.

Incidents were few. The sight of the flying-fishes still starting up and skimming, veering and spurting into a safe distance from the intruder, was no longer one for my absorbed watch. I woke up, heavy-headed, one morning to find that Meac.o.c.k had suspended one of these poor creatures from my roof; there he hung swaying in the little breeze that there was, in parched and doleful manner, and ever and anon turning upon me, who felt much in his condition, his mild and magnificent eye. I threw him out with sympathy. At night the b.o.o.bies shrieked round the lights on the masts, and appeared at morning flying over the water. Once the sleep of the just was broken by profane language and scuffling in the pa.s.sage outside--a rat hunt. Boat drill took its turn one afternoon, the siren summoning all hands available to their posts. I was questioned about Colonel Lawrence, at intervals, having seen him in the flesh; and the publisher of his _Life_ was expected to be named by me. I said that I believed he himself would write his Memoirs. But this was not the thing.

A book about him by some one who knew how to paint the lily and improve on possibility was what was sought. I think I could design a satisfactory coloured cover.

The morning bucket was a transient happiness. To disturb the "gradual dusky veil" now unescapable, since the bunkers were now chiefly filled with coal-dust, was not too simple in a limited s.p.a.ce, with limited hot water. My porthole, looking over those fuming bunkers, had to be shut at all hours. According to everybody, the _Bonadventure_ was "a dirty ship"; although it seemed unlikely that a carrier of coal by thousands of tons should be clean.

She at least began to please the chief with his coveted "Ten knots"; and at dinner on the seventeenth day out, he asked whether anyone had seen a disturbance in the water. The old gentleman was expected. I was sorry that he did not come, after all, with his "baptism," shave, and medicine (and I believe other rites), when at about four in the afternoon the _Bonadventure_ crossed the Equator; but old customs can scarcely be eternal. The steward's cough mixture was the only medicine I got that day. Neptuneless, the ship furrowed a sea almost silent, and evening came on tranquilly among woolpacks of warm-kindled colouring.

IX

Mary, what news?-- The lands, as I suppose, Are drenched with sleet or drifted up with snows, The east wind strips the slates and starves the blood, Or thaws and rains make life a sea of mud.

You close each door, draw armchairs nigh the fire, But draughts sneak in and make you draw 'em nigher-- No matter: still they come: play parlour gales And whisk about their hyperboreal tails; Bed's the one hope, and scarcely tried before Next morning's postman thunders at the door.

Meanwhile--if I may gently hint--I wear But scanty clothes, though all the sun will bear; A red-hot sun smiles on a hot blue sea And leaves my bunk to laziness and me: I read, until a lethargy ensues, Tales of detectives frowning over clues And last month's papers; then the strain's too strong, Man wants but little, nor that little long, The deck-chair in the shadow now appeals, Until the next hash-hammer rings to meals.

But not alone in climate may I claim Advantage; while you feel the slings of fame, Beset at all hours by the shapes of those Who volunteer your wants to diagnose, Who come with merchandise and go with cheques; No licensed interrupter haunts these decks, No vans of wares along these highways clatter.

None urges to insure, buy broom or platter.

There is no sheaf of letters every day, Regretting, and so forth: no minstrel's lay: Proofs, none: reminders, none--while daily you, Poor creature, tear your hair and struggle through, And darken paper till you light the lamps, And the last shilling disappears in stamps.

Nor weightier cares you lack, it is decreed; The clock won't go, the chickens will not feed, The pump, always a huffy ancient, swears, "Water? if you wants water, try elsewheres": The infant wonder, she who must inquire, Investigates herself into the fire, The playful s...o...b..ll whizzes through the pane, In brief, you try to kick the cat: in vain.

Here no such troubles blot the almanac For me; no day is marked with red or black: Events--eventicles--are few, as these, The sighted school of bobbing porpoises, The flying-fish when first I saw them leap And flash like swallows over the blue deep; The rose-red sunset, or the Sunday duff, Or--but enumeration cries "Enough."

There is no Mary in the Atlantic, true, Nor cellared bookshop to be foraged through.

But as I said, at least I've found the sun And idle times--even this will soon be done; A corner where no rags-and-bones apply, Nor postman comes, nor poultry droop and die.

X

The South-East Trade was blowing fresh next day, if a damp clammy rush of hot air deserves the term. The threatened heavy rains of the Doldrums had not come; the heavy heat subdued talk at table. Cloud and sultry steamy haze had hung about us during the morning; at two or thereabouts the first land seen by the _Bonadventure_ since her first day's stubborn entry into the English Channel came into view. My view was at first none at all; but encouraged by Bicker and with his gla.s.ses I could make out the island of Fernando Noronha, twenty miles away to the south-east. A tall peak and the high ground about it for a s.p.a.ce gave the illusion of some great cathedral, a Mont St. Michel seen by Cotman faintly forthshadowed; then, the willing fancy rebuked, I discerned its low coasts of rock, inhospitable and mist-haunted.

This singular crag breaking out of the mid-ocean, I knew, was a convict settlement. "Life sentences" were safely mewed up here. At length we were abeam of this melancholy place, while the sun seemed to make a show of its white prison camp, at a distance of twelve or thirteen miles.

It would have been hard not to imagine the despair of men condemned to such a prison. The peak's stern finger might have struck with awe the first navigators to approach it. To see the immutable pillar in every sunset and at every sunrise, surveying all the drudgery, the emblem of perpetual soullessness, must be an unnerving punishment. The constant processions of ships, to whom Fernando Noronha is a welcome mark, with their smoke vanishing swiftly to north or south, could scarcely tantalize more?

The rough overhanging pinnacle faded again, and evening fell. Leaning with the third mate over the bridge canvas, while the moon, now waxing, riding through the frontiers of a black cloud, cast a dim avenue over the sea, and from other dishevelled clouds a few quiet drops came down, was a most peaceful luxury. About the bows the water was lit up by sudden flashes gone too soon. These travelling lights--akin to the gem of the glow-worm seen close--were, according to Mead, the Portugee men-of-war which I had seen by day. No name could be less descriptive. These small creatures, at night living lamps of green, by day with their gla.s.sy red and blue like the floating petals of some sea-rose, were worthy of some gentler imagist. When, Mead said, you take them from the water, they are nothing but a little slime; evanescent as the rainbow on the spray.

Splendour and fiery heat marked the day still. I had discarded jacket and socks, enjoying the soothing gush of air about the ankles; otherwise even reading was made unprofitable by the drug-like heat. The same sky and seascape, the same condemnations of "a dirty ship" recurred day by day. "The worst ship I ever sailed on, mister. You turn in washed and you wake up black." The bath was still an enjoyable interlude, despite mechanical drawbacks. The bath proper was out of order, owing tosome deficiency of the water-pipes. At one end, in subst.i.tution, you lodged your bucket in a board with a hole in it. At the other end a crossbar offered the bather a seat. Much splashing transferred the water from the bucket to your coal-dust surface; while, there being little air in the bathroom, you breathed sparingly. Yet how well off was the acrobat with his sponge, compared with the fireman who just then was taking bucket after bucket of ashes from the stokehold hoist and tipping them overboard--a job that was never done until the engines rested in port; that punctuated our progress, as did the morning hosepipe on the cabins and the bridge deck.

Not much was said of the country to which we were going. Englishmen were definitely unpopular there, said some one; English sailors, on the slightest pretext, taken off by the police to the "calaboosh." "You only want to look like an Englishman." "Well, what about trying to look like a German?" The chief engineer rarely missed a chance to rub in his politics, and he jumped at this one--"Doesn't the same thing apply at home?"--with eager irony.

Ships were discussed and compared at almost every meal. Some, luxurious.

"But that yacht she was pretty, there's no getting away from it."

"That was _my_ yacht."

"They must employ quite a lot of sh.o.r.e labour to keep these yachts from looking like ships."

"Well, they couldn't very well make them look like standard ships, if they wanted to."

"Oh, I don' know--get the second mate and the chief to co-operate--saw off the funnel halfway, and throw a few ashes about the decks."

Some, ideal.

"She looked just like the model of a ship--and she was spotless."

Some, not what they ought to be.