The Bonadventure Part 6

A most placid morning. The sky ahead was silvered with the smoke of unseen Buenos Aires, the water so gleaming that the flat coast lined with trees, to starboard, appeared to be midway suspended between one mother-of-pearl heaven and another. The new pilot arrived in this early tranquillity, and the ship resumed her way up the channel marked out by buoys of several shapes.

The sun increased in power all too fast. I stood on the bridge to hear the pilot and the mates giving their directions: we came to a couple of tugs told off to escort the _Bonadventure_ in. Ropes leapt aboard us, tossed up in the adroitest way and caught as cleverly by our sailors; the bigger cables were attached to them, drawn aboard the tugs and made fast; and so we went on with tugboats fore and aft. The peculiar beauty of the morning mist over Buenos Aires soon began to thin away and disclose great buildings. And now we were almost at our journey's end; and in hurrying ease, drew past fishing boats and small sailing craft into the harbour mouth. On our port side, on a sort of palisade running out into the estuary, a host of sea-eagles perched yelping, their lean black bodies sharply designed in the white light. Their motto I took to be: Mult.i.tude and solitude. Beyond their grand stand appeared a green grove of downward foliage, the gaudy precinct of what, I was informed by the wireless operator, who began to act the guide-book, was a destructor for the frozen meat industry. He went on to specify the number of animals daily converted and to give other details which interested him, as an ex-wielder of the pole-axe; but my attention was distracted by the ships swinging into an approach crowded with dredgers and their ugly barges swilling mud, with motor-boats and lighters and as it looked to me every sort of medium for water traffic, bright and drab, proud and lowly in a confusion.

The waterway divides. To our left, a channel lies under giant steel bridges. Our course is not there: we are piloted towards a dock for pa.s.senger and cargo ships, and entering it in a hot glare, and colouring that almost sears, of sky and water and paint, we make our berth, wallowing once over the water's breadth to the anger of lesser navigators, who go by in their boats bawling at the bridge in general. The handsome pa.s.senger boats with their great paddle-wheels and their red awnings lie opposite our plebeian resting-place: beside a grimy wharf, where small cranes and coal carts seem to multiply.

Of an expectant company there on Wilson's Wharf, the chief feature was by immediate common consent recognized in an old lady in a heliotrope dress, tightly girdled--and she was of mountainous shape. The demure inch of petticoat revealed below the hem of her well-hitched skirt was not overlooked. Beside this beldame, a long thin youth, a very reed straw by comparison, puffed at a cherry cigarette-holder, vacantly but fixedly eyed the ship and seemed to await her instructions. A laundry cart, with an insufficient animal in the shafts, stood behind them and showed what they too stood for, emblems peculiar.

Scarcely had the _Bonadventure_ come to rest before a swarm of anxious sallow ruffians were aboard for the "ship's orders." The rooms of Hosea himself were not free from their invasion; not free that is, for a moment. Their intruding faces caused him to roar in the most frightful fashion; at which, hesitating as if before an injustice, they got out, but still hung about the gangways. When, presently, he went ash.o.r.e to pay his official respects to the ship's agents, we saw a trail of these indefatigables close on his heels, and on his return he said that four of them had followed him all the way. I now perceived quite plainly why, when I a stranger appeared aboard the _Bonadventure_ at Barry Dock and desired to find the captain, there was no eager answer to my query.

Tailors, bootmakers (one with a motor-tyre or a piece of one over his shoulder), engineers and I don't know who else formed the polysyllabic cordon.

Meanwhile, the _Bonadventure_ was hauled in close to the edge of the quay, and a gang of dock hands came on deck bearing ropes and pulley blocks. The ship's derricks having been lifted, these made the first preparations for discharging the cargo. The hatches were laid open, and the planks covering them pitched aside much as though they were so many walking-sticks. I was not the only one deluded by this despatch into thinking our discharge likely to be over in a few days.

Buenos Aires; a tremendous town, a "southern Paris," a New-World epitome.

So much, so little I knew of it. It lay here, its heart not a half-hour's walk from our mooring. But the vastness of the rumoured hive, the heat, I daresay indolence too, prevented me from taking this first opportunity for walking into the strange streets. It was excessively hot, and that settled the matter. There was plenty to watch on the river and alongside: it would have been odd, if it had not proved so. So, swollen somewhat with the feeling that I was now a considerable seafarer, and not unpleased to be mistaken for one by the miscellaneous visitors who had by this examined the decks and accommodation--all doors locked--somewhat fruitlessly, but still loitered, I stayed idle.

Trenches will recur to their old inhabitants. The small coal in the yards here stood walled in with a breastwork of sandbags, built with tolerable skill upon the old familiar pattern of headers and stretchers and as I happened to be remarking upon this fact to the wireless man, interrupting his propaganda about a strike in which he personally would resist to the last, a little launch chanced past with the name _Ypres_ on her bows.

She was but one of an endless to and fro of small craft. The tall and airy pa.s.senger boats, at intervals, came by in brilliance. When there was a pause in this coming and going, and nothing more happening on the water than the snapping of the small yellow catfish at bread floating below the ship, I still felt a quiet and languid grat.i.tude for the novelty of being where I was.

That grat.i.tude was to be tempered soon. The plague of the mosquitoes of the docks had been painted dark enough for me during the days of approach; and when I got to bed, the threatened invasion had begun. Determining not to consider the question at all, I read deep in my pocket copy of Young's _Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality_, as in worse quarters many a time, and duly went to sleep like a philosopher.

XV

Could this be Saint Valentine's Day? Here in a dreary looking dock with a surplus of sun but a seeming lack of oxygen, and only a sort of amphibious race as company? Newspapers were at any rate valentine enough. They were read with real care, football results being perhaps the consolation most sought.

Hosea showed me the way into the town. We turned out over the docks, out at last from a kingdom of coal-dust, over a swing bridge; took a tram, and were soon at the shipping agents' offices. He spent some time in earnest conference here, and the visit ended with a visit to other agents'

offices, and that again with an adjournment with a serene member of the staff to a bar. In this excellent place, my ignorance of a kind of drink, saffron in colour and with a piece of pineapple submerged, was soon dispelled. The collection of olives, biscuits, monkey-nuts and flakes of fried potato which the waiter brought with the drinks was to me unexpected. We went, with our good-natured guide, to lunch in a huge hotel. Gaining the top of the building by the lift, we sat at a table near the windows of a luxurious room filled with luxurious people, and had the pleasure of looking as we ate over the less celestial roofs of the town to the calm flood of the River Plate beyond. Distance lent enchantment to this view also. The conditions were good for eating, our friend's romantic tales apart.

We departed from this commendable place, and, there being still engagements for Hosea with the shipping agents, we went there. Emerging, he had to go to the British Consulate. We hired a taxi. The traffic of Buenos Aires, or practice and precept differ, was free from irksome restrictions of speed; and we were whirled over the cobblestones and tramlines and round trams, hors.e.m.e.n, wagons, rival cars and everything else in a breath-taking rush. "I get in these things," said Hosea, "saying to myself, If I don't come out of this alive, then I shan't."

We got out alive. The Consul's workshop (it was perhaps known by a more dignified name) was in a scrubby street; and the young man in charge had my sympathy. However, it was not my fault that he was being slowly roasted.

That call left Hosea at liberty to explore the town. We walked on and on, looking at the shops, and be it acknowledged at the beauties who went by, until we arrived at the small park over which the Museum rises to that southern sun, ornate and ma.s.sy. Here we entered to spend the afternoon among a few visitors and as many official inc.u.mbents. We entered solemnly resolved to find a Palace of Art--Hosea putting away from him all his connection with ships and the worries of that next necessity, the "charter party."

Plaster casts and original statuary were plentiful in the Museum. The eye of the weary mariners rested none too long upon these. The mult.i.tude of paintings, however, were considered gently and methodically: Hosea would stand before the weakest trying to comprehend the artist's intention, and to claim something in his daub as a virtue. Sometimes he would put on his eyegla.s.s to survey the subject. To me, there seemed no such quality here--I speak as a scribe, without authority--as there was quant.i.ty.

There have been many energetic and accomplished administerings of paint, but to what purpose? The eternal allegory, demanding one nude figure or more, and justifying by the general level Hosea's praise of a well-known picture called "September Morning," or sweetened description of evening, with its cows coming home under its warped moon, its ploughman in a vague acre, and the rest. Was this the southern genius?

One or two modern pictures here revealed a strength and idiosyncrasy beyond almost all the rest. A portrait of six youths, drawn with fierce intensity of colour and of line, expressing distinctions of character in subtle vital sharpness, long detained me. Another untypical picture, as recent as the last, was based upon a rustic festival or ritual with which I of course was unacquainted; but the epic lives of peasant men and women in their long combat with the stern giver of grain were legible in the strange georgic faces and the mysterious melancholy glory of their a.s.sembly.

--Seemed listening to the earth, Their ancient mother, for some comfort yet.

Among the many harmless little pieces representing vases of flowers, woodland melody, and other conventions, I caught sight of a portrait of a young girl ("My lady at her cas.e.m.e.nt" type) drawn with mild ability.

The signature, very large and clear, was

CH. CHAPLIN.

On referring to the minute bra.s.s plate beneath so innocent a vanity, we learned that Charles Chaplin, 1825-1891, was a painter of the "French School." Pictures must run in the family.

The first afternoon, Hosea and myself could find no specimen of an English artist among the mult.i.tude: but returning another day to make certain (and once again we had the gallery more or less to ourselves) we found a small and typical study by Wilkie, and a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Before this last, a work of the loftiest morality--in its subject I mean--and of a colouring delicately fine, Hosea stood in enthusiasm. "I'm not sure," he said, and once again drew an impression before proceeding, "that that isn't the finest thing we've seen." The spectacle of King Arthur in his bronze near the exit, in his bronze but somehow devoid of his grandeur, ended our artistic adventures.

The business of criticism, no doubt, is to keep cool: but this we had scarcely been able to do. I should have given up early, but for the determination of Hosea; and even he began to feel the scorching heat above the aesthetic calm.

The ship's football was brought out in the evening, and on a patch of waste ground alongside, flanked by thickets of rank weed, and ankle-deep in sand and coal-dust, we enjoyed ourselves most strenuously. There were one or two real drawbacks. A vigorous and unwary kick was apt to send the ball into the river, and to recover it meant clambering up and down the slanting wall of the wharf, which was coated with black grease, fishing with a pole, anxiously watching the currents, and quickly becoming as black and greasy as the masonry. And on the other hand, there was here a depot of large drain-pipes, which might equally receive the erratic ball; then arose the questions: Whereabouts in the pipes had it bounced? Would the drain-pipe on which you were standing really roll from under you and bring down a dozen others? Meanwhile the watchman of the depot would be there uttering untranslated dissatisfaction with the whole affair.

We had not been in the South Basin many minutes when the chaplain of The Missions to Seamen was among us with his witty stories and, I believe, his put-and-take teetotum. At any rate, the latter became as well recognized a part of his equipment as his quips. At his invitation, I went several times to the Mission, which was quite the rendezvous for the crews of British ships in the port. Its concert room, its billiard room and other comfortable places were generally very lively, the two chaplains apparently possessing an inexhaustible reserve of cheerfulness.

English ladies too came there to brighten the evenings, to sing and join in at cards and conversation; their generosity, I believe, furnished the other refreshments of these evenings.

Next door to the Mission, a dingy annexe to a sort of grocery, labelled the "British Bar," was not neglected. Talk and beer and smoke prevailed here until midnight and afterwards: indeed, I had scarcely sat down before a vast mate from some other ship had challenged me to name a better Test Match captain than Mr. Fender. Other patrons of the Oval soon took up the cry, but I resisted for the rest of the session.

The discharge of coal began, a monotonous process however considered; down in the hold one saw through the busy dust a small but growing mine-crater done in coal, at the foot of which were lying, stooping, chattering, the nearly naked figures of the labourers. Negroes they looked down there, but were white unofficially. They shovelled now from this side, now from that into a great iron bucket: above, at a sign, the man with his lever set the winch working and the derrick hoisted the bucket up and over, then down into the lighter that lay alongside. And so with intervals through the day. Then at night, the dock's aboriginal mosquitoes came forth; as the mate said, like a German band, all the most agonizing shades of musical audacity emanating from them. They drove not only me but old hands out on deck at night, where a chilly autumn wind was blowing, which drove us indoors again. But as the light grew, our tormentors lessened. The sun ariseth, and they get them away together, and lay them down in their dens.

To avoid these visitors as much as possible, I refrained from exploring the town over tiringly during the day, and went off with Mead in his sh.o.r.e suit after the evening's football on the dust-patch: and stayed as late as meanderings in the town could make it. We certainly departed from the usual haunts of sailors the first night; went on and on, until even the adventurous Mead had to say: "This is rather a depraved kind of street." And more, there was something in the air--some way off, we heard the interrupted fire of (what roused imagination converted into) a machine gun. The slatternly folk sitting, with white gleams of face or dress in the shadows, by their doors; the herds of unaccustomed faces in the large threadbare bars; the many groups of folk standing expectantly about the street, and our own alien solitude--all gave this sensation of disquiet. In a manner enjoying it, we proceeded, past an orator roaring out in fine fury to a small but intent crowd, and presently found ourselves in a large square with its many lamps, its glossy cars stealing swiftly by or waiting on the rank, its fountains playing like mists among deep green of trees.

Magnificent, and nearly empty, was the cafe into which we went; brilliant its interior; attached to the gilded columns, how eloquent of drinking as a fine art, its scoreboards announcing the many specialities! We stayed until midnight. Then, having roughly found out our way home, we set out for the docks, and, pausing to divine the sense of a poster giving details of a "Radical" demonstration for the next day, saw the police come hurrying up to a gathering of people round the next bar door.

One of the police as he pa.s.sed us at speed caught his toe against a stone and with his sword and fine feathers came down flat on the pavement.

The gathering at the bar door were so absorbed in their topic that no one looked, much less laughed at his loud discomfiture.

Sometimes I found an occasion to leave the _Bonadventure_ in her noisy dishabille, during the day. There was one walk with the wireless operator to a smaller tramp in a distant dock, aboard which somewhat shapelier ship than the _Bonadventure_ he had an acquaintance. Walking over the irregular cobbles and among the railway lines of the wharves in the heat was a sufficient exercise. We left our ship carpeted with coal-dust; pa.s.sed cattle pounds, grain elevators glaring white, and on the opposite side steamers in process of being loaded or discharged; went along a rail track where the grains which had lain longest had sprung up in unavailing green, and under chutes where sacks of corn were sliding down to the holds of ships. The mate of the _Primrose_ whom we had come to see was thoroughly happy, and resembled almost to a hair my sergeant observer of years before. Putting on a record--his gramophone was actually in order--and offering cigars, he produced an extraordinary picture of his ship, in needlework. The ancient art of the sampler had pa.s.sed to him. He seemed, I noticed, _of_ his ship: its mahogany-lined saloon and more domestic style were congenial with his paterfamilias air and "Not to-day, thank you" mildness to various business callers. The wireless operator, also, seemed to be less interested in the regulations of his calling and more in photographs of ships and sailors. With these kind spirits in my mind, I was somewhat preoccupied as we walked back the way we came among the pigeons and the dock labourers stretched out under every railway truck and crane for their siesta.

Then there were one or two more rounds of the town with Hosea, chiefly in the busiest neighbourhood. I began to know the tall statue of Columbus as a landmark. All the morning, perhaps, Hosea would be going from one office to another, seeking to define the ship's future and to hasten her discharge, while I kicked my heels in entrances under the suspicious eyes of the janitors. Kindness was readier in the frowsy offices of the ship's chandlers; whence the delectably dressed youth the firm's son soon led the way to a table and vermouth in the Avenida de Mayo. We went again, with a new companion, to the Florida restaurant for our lunch: but the new companion and myself having been contemporary in the Ypres salient, our excessive reminiscences began to pall upon the long-suffering Hosea. One day Hosea entrusted to me, for transport to the ship, the sailors' wages in notes, and the letters. He was staying ash.o.r.e, and did not fancy the prospect of carrying so much money about with him.

Neither did I; but it is hard to say whether the responsibility for the pay overshadowed that for the letters. I was pleased to climb aboard the _Bonadventure_ with both, after pa.s.sing through the knock-off rush from the docks. But I seemed to be blamed for not bringing letters for every one; such is the lot of the volunteer.

XVI

There was a feeling (based on observation) aboard the _Bonadventure_ that the discharge of the ship was not being carried out with all possible speed, owing to the prevailing mysterious influences of the offices in the town. Delays were many. This augury of a long sojourn in our present berth depressed many of us: I had already observed, or judged, that whatever the earlier mariners may have thought of seafaring, the modern sailor's idea in sailing is to get back home as early as possible. We soon heard that four days of public holiday, the Carnival, would be added to our term. It was evident that one must make the best of it, and be thankful on those days when some actual progress was made.

Mosquitoes, as I have said, were a great subject here. We had opportunities to study them. With _Macbeth_ in hand as a convenient weapon., I nightly reduced the horde, but these

Stubborn spearsmen still made good The dark impenetrable wood.

The heat grew sickly sometimes at night, and the cabins were black with flies and mosquitoes alike. To sleep there was to be slowly suffocated, let alone the folly of sleeping among man-eaters. An outdoor faith was forced upon me, and yet the deck was no real enclosure from the enemy: the faith would end at four or so in the morning, a time of day to which I was becoming as accustomed as of old, and when the riverside gave off a smell which I remembered noticing in the trench regions east of Bethune.

Then, still hopeful, I would face my cabin and soon after swathing myself in the brief sheets of the bunk would be asleep. That interim unrecognized, here I was awake again in a world where chisels chip paint and steam-driven machines tip tons of coal. The great buckets were now being strung over to railway vans, which were shunted duly by a small engine. Winches clattered and wrenched, the clanking engine bustled almost ludicrously up and down the wharf, and all seemed in a great hurry, but the hurry was only on the surface. The yellow river, the coal-dust, the glaring sun, the dockside streets and warehouses and of course the eternal mosquito began to play upon me. My body was in pain from the innumerable bites and want of rest, and generally I was in as low spirits as I could be.

The ship was daily haunted by newsboys, fruit-sellers, and others. The news was difficult to discover from the queer columns of short cabled messages, and yet we never sent the newsboy away unless, perhaps, our only means was in English coppers. Sixpences he (not unwisely) was willing to take. The fruit-sellers gave better value for sixpence, even though their open panniers seemed always liable to the predatory paws of the water police. The shoemaker with his motor tyre put pieces of it upon my shoes, grunting out a satisfaction with the job which I hardly shared.

A thin gentleman with furs, puzzle boxes, and other cheap-jack gear was not much called upon though called at.

Two Englishmen came also, sellers of furs; one, of my own Division in France. They were very warm in their praise of Buenos Aires, and besides bringing good furs with them they brought good spirits.

Football flourished. In red-hot sunlight, we met the team of another ship.

Grim determination was in the game and its afterthoughts; and by a happy accident my foot scored the first goal of our victory. It was counted unto me for righteousness. The form of address "Pa.s.senger" acquired a respectful significance. There was immediately arranged a return match. But

Antres et vous fontaines!