The Bonadventure Part 7

The hart desireth the waterbrooks; and so did we. Again, on such a summer afternoon, we went at it, upon the field we had hired for the ordeal. This time we lost, but still the blood of the team was up; the _Bonadventure's_ fair name was in jeopardy. Again there was immediately arranged a return match for the following evening. We lost, and it was hotter still. This nevertheless cooled the ardour of the footballers, and did not finally ruin the reputation of S.S. _Bonadventure_.

The evening form of this game continued upon the original ground, but my connection, like Mead's, soon declined. The main cause was that the ball, or Ball--its importance aboard requires the capital letter--flew off one evening as usual into the dock, but there by some conspiracy of wind and current sailed along at a merry rate until it was carried under the framework of piers upon which the coal wharf was built--a noisome place, a labyrinth of woodwork. If it stayed here, it was generally out of sight and beyond reach; if it was swirled out, it would go on out, into the middle stream, and doubtless into the Atlantic. We groped along the filthy piles of the tunnel, and the darkness was imminent; when the ball suddenly appeared, decidedly going out into the middle stream. At this crisis, Mead with a war-cry plumped into the evil-looking water and brought off a notable rescue.

Cricket would have seemed the more seasonable sport. Twice Mead and myself joined the Mission XI for grand matches in the suburbs, and said to ourselves, "In the midst of football we are in cricket"; but twice we met with disappointment, the rain choosing the wrong days altogether.

I had naturally observed silence over my journalistic life of the remote past, but one evening at the British Bar I was asked, was it not true that I was a relation of Kipling? and at the Mission "your book" was several times alluded to. It was, I think, taken for granted that being a penman I should be _writing up_ my adventures, as though I were on a voyage to Betelgueux or Sirius. I was asked to recite some of my poems, also, by a lady, but I was churl enough to ask her pardon on that score.

She evidently felt this the basest ingrat.i.tude. "Why? Why not give us a recitation? I'm sure you can." I tried to explain that my attempts were frequently, almost invariably, of a meditative cast of mind, not suitable for the platform. At this she sniffed and I felt that my explanation was disgraceful in the highest degree.

Entertainment was not lacking there at the Mission. It was a hearty place. One evening Tich, the pride of the _Bonadventure_, who in his uniform cut a most splendid figure, went into the ring and laid about him magnificently. Or there might be a concert, local talent obliging. A pa.s.senger ship's varieties drew a large attendance both from the ships and the sh.o.r.e; there was much funny man, much jazz band, much conjuring, much sentimental singing--in fact plenty of everything which is expected at popular concerts, and every one departed with reflected pride. Mead and myself, however, quarrelled over the amount which I subscribed to the whip-round. It was that or nothing--I had but one coin; and its removal robbed us of our wonted refreshment. We walked somewhat moodily down the road to the docks, unsoothed by their thick coa.r.s.e greenery, which the night filled with the incessant buzzing of crickets and a loud piping whistle perhaps from a sort of cricket also, while here and there a fire-fly went along with his glow-worm light.

We tried the cinematograph's recreations, once or twice. How strong is habit! We could not settle down to these performances of single films; nor to the box-like halls. A cowboy film of eight acts comes back to my recollection from those evenings. It was full of miracles. The operator believed, like the hero, in lightning speed. The hero on horseback was far too speedy for the villain who dragged off the heroine into his car and did his best to break records. These heroes will one day a.s.sume the proportions, in the dark world, of the pleiosaurus in natural history.

But we had our reward. In a more expensive theatre, we found _The Kid_.

We had come out to see a much trumpeted film of a bullfight--Mead for one set of reasons, I for another; but it was of yesterday, and we had no difficulty in consoling ourselves. One Chaplin, we acknowledged, was better than many toreadors.

And then, we had a glimpse of the Carnival. In our wonted quarter of the town, that where the seafaring man mostly rested, it took the form of some processions of hobbledehoys and urchins, beating as their kind do on drums and things like drums. The next evening we took the same dreary cobblestone walk as usual, but did not limit ourselves to that.

We took a tram, indeed, to more fashionable haunts and at last came into the great Avenida and all its garish illuminations; its paper ribbons were as multi-coloured as the lights, and, flung from the upper storeys of the hotels, in some places they were thick enough to form a fantastic and absurd cascade. Here the Carnival was in mid sprout. We got what we came for--a diversion.

The pavements, broader here than in the generality of the streets we knew, were chock-a-block with folks, the cafes overflowing, the towering hotels gleaming with bright dresses on every balcony, and all this was the accompaniment of the gorgeous procession that moved slowly along the highway. Its vehicles of every kind, but their kind hidden from pa.s.sing observation by their curtains and festoons of flowers, trooped along in the unreal glare. Here, ladies of most aristocratic air came by, with the blackest of masks above the whitest of countenances; there was a girl in the dress of a bull-fighter, driving her own light carriage; next, a set of laughing "gipsies" apparently advertising a brand of cigarettes; then, a collection of men with Cyrano disguises and attempting Cyrano humour to the G.o.ds--

All these and more came flocking.

But the privilege of gazing unrebuked upon the profusion of beauty, upon raven hair and great deep-burning eyes, upon the pale cheeks of wintry moons, the privilege of hearing the disjointed music of the fu-fu bands and the verbal crackers of harlequins of the moment, was not without its points of misery. The pavements represented a scrum on the largest scale, in the forefront of one battering ram whereof Mead and myself were securely wedged in for an hour or two. In this state of things, the usual individual turned round to ask Mead "who he was pushing?"--the sense of his remarks being obvious though couched in another tongue. Unable to move the arms, and scarcely free to flicker the eyelashes, we were borne compressedly and gradually on, until at last we were beyond the main pleasure-ground; by this time even Mead had had enough of pleasures which we had noticed others than Englishmen taking seriously. We took our ease in our inn, and reflected.

The newspapers reported that the Carnival was declining year by year.

Perhaps the reporter, like ourselves, had corns and was caught in the scrimmage.

XVII

I borrowed a Shakespeare from the second chaplain at the Mission to escape from what seemed the dullness of our stay in South Basin, Buenos Aires. Mead had taken over my own copy of the Tragedies, and by this time had most of _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ by heart, so that our conversation frequently ran by tags. Of Bicker we saw little. Highly favoured, he would depart on most afternoons to the English suburb, where he had friends; and it was impossible not to regard him, as he regarded himself, as a man of superior rank, who had personal friends in this town. Once or twice in the evenings, nevertheless, he came with us to our accustomed table in that convenient but inglorious place the British Bar; and while there, he did his best to annoy one of the waiters with the oft-repeated slur, "Yah, Patagonio," or "You b---- Patagonian Indian," or "Patagonio no bonio."

The fellow bore it at first with grinning patience; but one evening suddenly danced with fury, and rushing out summoned the greasy little proprietor, who came in scowling and snarling, took stock of us--and went out again. The alleged Patagonian was after this understood to be meditating a fearful revenge.

At evening sometimes the autumn sun, going down, a golden ball, behind the great buildings, and dimmed with a calm transition in the distance of that time of day, removed my mind entirely from these and similar matters. An incomplete state of recollection, the more delightful to me from the strangeness of my temporary lodging, a presence felt but understood, a trouble in the pool whose surface bore the evidence of neither windwave's running V nor bubble subtly appearing, took hold of me. Unable to remain aware of this confused echo long, without endeavouring to resolve it into communicable notes, I would soon find myself counting up memories as plainly as the fellow on the other side of the water was tallying the brown hides discharged into river barges by the paddle-wheeler. It was this verging upon a vision, unknown but longed for, and this inevitable falling back to known fact, which perhaps depressed me and made the time pa.s.s all too slowly here.

The rattle of the cranes, so often interrupted, was all the more welcome; the news of progress began to a.s.sume a better look; the incidents of life in dock, from the angry officiousness of the wharf manager, a crude foreigner, to the arrival of pa.s.senger boats and the swarm of gay-coloured families to and from them, became worth attention again. Food, so interesting at sea, lately become a burden, was reinstated; boiled eggs for instance were welcomed, after a regime of steaks, by the whole saloon. The whole saloon--no; Bicker, the man about town, refused his with a criticism, likening them to plasticine. With his put-and-take top, the youthful-spirited chaplain came more often, and often expressed his regret that we were soon to be away.

Orders were not yet forthcoming. It was feared, and often urged upon me with reference to my late troubles, that the _Bonadventure_ would be sent up the river to Rosario. I made a great mistake about Rosario and other possible destinations up the river, their names suggesting ancient Spanish romantic traditions to me: I mentioned my feelings to the a.s.sembled saloon. All the romance there, it seemed, was hidden behind a cloud of patriarchal mosquitoes.

The discharge of coal was at last over and done. The day following, Hosea sent for me and told me that the ship would shift at two, and perhaps--for all he knew--straight out to sea. I told him I should not be clinging to the stones of Buenos Aires at that hour.

But it was not our fate to depart altogether that day. Instead of going out into the open water, when at three the pilot and the tugs brought the _Bonadventure_ out from her Stygian berth at Wilson's Wharf and down to the outer port, we now turned into an arm of the docks called Riachuelo.

There, between a steel sailing-ship which gave no sign of life and a great black mechanical ferry or transporter, and further--there was no doubt about this--beside a guano works, we were tied up for a time as yet undefined.

The change was, partly on account of the neighbouring industry, "uncertain if for bale or balm." I felt that we might even miss the lively sight of the pa.s.senger boats coming and going, and all their gilded press of friends and acquaintances about the landing-places; their tiers of bright lamps at night rounding the bend between us and the Roads. Perhaps the youths would no longer come by with their ship's stores of macaroni, their jars of wine and panniers of onions and other vegetables; nor the lighters, with their crews glaring in unwashed and unchallenged independence in the whole world's face, and their yellow mongrels scampering up and down the decks. The British Bar with the Patagonian Indian and the giant but amicable c.o.c.kroaches would be too far away. However, we had the prospect of other monotonous distractions if not those. For there were evidence of benefit; green swampy groves, a sort of common with ragged horses at feed, and farther off the irregular line of a landscape not unlike summer's horizon, gave the eye a pleasant change. Football would now be possible on gra.s.s and not a dust-heap. Sailor-town was on the opposite bank--a miscellany of ship's chandlers' offices, gin palaces, untidy trams, and nondescript premises.

The gangway was lowered, the donkeyman was seen at once going ash.o.r.e with his mandoline, and we ourselves of the football persuasion followed with the Football. We returned in time to see the steward's patience nominally rewarded with a small yellow catfish, who showed the greatest wrath at the trick which had been played on him, stiffening his poisonous fin and actually barking.

The next morning, despite the odour of the guano, was a better one than those in South Basin. For all its mud, the river looked cheerful; its many small craft, as yellow as vermilion or as green as paint could make them, lying quiet or pa.s.sing by, caught the early sun. Even the dredgers'

barges, with their hue of Thiepval in November, showed the agreeable activities of a new day, and breakfast.

But we were not to be long in Riachuelo. About midday it became known that the _Bonadventure_ was to leave before evening for Bahia Blanca, a three days' journey to the south. The further orders, what cargo was to be received, and where it was to be delivered, were as yet withheld.

Phillips, the chief engineer, was disappointed at this departure--his son would have been able to meet him in town within a day or two. To leave a message for him in charge of the Mission, he proposed that I should go with him in the afternoon, and that I was happy to do.

Meanwhile, awaiting dinner, we strolled along the waterside. It was sultry and glaring. We pa.s.sed shipping of all sorts and conditions, old junk, discarded masts, boilers eaten through with rust, anchors imbedded in the ground, even a torpedo-boat gone to ruin, nameless; saw an incredibly old man with his beard done in a knot, whittling away at a piece of wood in the sun, tribes of mongrel dogs, and the casual population of the tin town which rambled here drowsy and malodorous, down to the water's edge. The purple trumpet-like flowers that climbed the ragged woodwork seemed not more gay, nevertheless, than the young men and women who crowded to and from the transporter between this shipping parish and Buenos Aires.

From Buenos Aires itself, what but the hastiest impression could I take away with me? Melancholy it was to me to find so little apparent survival of the town as it must have been in its first centuries. My last walk did not altogether revise my picture of bar-tobacconist-bar-tobacconist; of powdered Venuses, over-dressed Adonises; of shops without display, receding obscurely; of cinematograph theatres crudely decorated with notices of rank buckjumping "dramas"; of innumerable tramways, here, there and everywhere; of green sunny courtyards at the end of pa.s.sages between dismal shuttered facades; of trees with drooping foliage before flat roofs with flimsy chimneys--mere drain-pipes--at the top of high white dead walls; of bonneted policemen with their hands on their swords; of boys teasing horses; of whizzing taxis, and dray-horses fighting for a start on the inimical cobbles; of pavements suitable for tight-rope walkers; of the power of money; of living for the present, or the day after to-morrow; of a straw-hat existence. But I must admit that my scantiest notions of a town refer in temper to the quality of its second-hand bookshops.

So then, the ship being under orders to leave at four, soon after five the port authorities held a sort of roll-call amidships, and the pilots and the tugs arrived. The port authorities consisted of a young officer who looked likely to trip himself up with his beautiful sword, a lanky humorist, with sergeant's chevrons, at his heels, and one or two other attendants. Soon after these vigilants had gone down the ladder again, the _Bonadventure_ began to move, and the bags of guano were a tyranny that is overpast. That channel into which I had been pleased to see the _Bonadventure_ come I now watched her leave without remorse. The dredgers fall behind our course, the fishing-boats, and the perches of the sea-eagles. We met a breeze, surprisingly strong, which made even these slothful waters choppy. The sun went out in a colder sky, beyond the outlines of the great chimneys and transporters; and presently a line of dwindling lights, surmounted by one or two more conspicuous, stood for Buenos Aires. Meantime the wind blew hard and loud. When the first pilot went to make his way home, the tug coming up for him was flung against the sides of the ship two or three times, and he was obliged to jump from his swaying rope ladder, "judging the time." We ran on, with many red and yellow lights flashing around our track. The taste of coal-dust, let alone the feel of it as a garment, made me wish the wind an early good night.

XVIII

There were differences of opinion about the precise distance between Buenos Aires and Bahia Blanca, in which it seemed the authority of the steward was not accepted. Travelling light, however, the _Bonadventure_ seemed little concerned about fifty miles either way. A current a.s.sisted in this turn of speed.

It was enjoyable to be out of sight of land once more, in a morning coolness, with seagulls piping in our wake; although they were yellowish waters that were rolling by. The second pilot went down to the motor boat due to take him home; the blue peter was hauled down when he had gone; and we hurried south. A dove came by, alighted; presumably our course lay at no great distance from the coast: a sail, a smoke-trail here and there dappled the circling scene. The sailors and apprentices set to, cleaning the holds in preparation for a cargo of grain--a black job.

Bucketful after bucketful was flung over the side, the wind playfully carrying off the murky clouds. I washed clothes at a safe distance.

It was at this time or near it that an addition to my daily course was made. So long as the _Bonadventure_ was at sea, the ship's officers received cocoa and sandwiches by way of supper. To this edible privilege I could not imagine that I had the slightest claim, nor in fact was I anxious to be elected; but when the steward out of his magnanimity conferred it upon me I naturally received it with thanks.

The cocoa indeed was not to be lightly considered when ten o'clock found me, as it mostly did, with Mead on his night watch. The first night after we had left the mouth of the Plate, his mind was full of one matter.

Before we had been released from Wilson's Wharf, acting on the advice of the vendor, he had bought a fifth share in a lottery ticket. With this qualification, he began to paint his future in all the colours of 1,166--his possible, or as he wished to be a.s.sured, his probable, harvest. A small schooner, in the enchanted atmosphere of his pipe, seemed already to own him master; she would trade for long years of prosperity in South Sea islands, where uncultivated fruits and beauties abound. While we agreed on the plan, the moon went down; mult.i.tudes of stars shone out, and meteors at moments ran down the sky. A broad glow to starboard revealed the nearness of the coast. Everything was most still, except perhaps Mead's spirit. There might be some hitch. But no, he felt his luck was in; he was sure, something told him that he carried the winning number.

The day's entries in my diary now began thus, or nearly: "Need I say it again--One mosquito, etc., but I killed him; then, one mosquito, etc."

The persistence of these self-satisfied hovering devils was puzzling, for the mornings dawned almost bitterly fresh, and the breeze was always awake. Its direction had now laid, during the night, a carpet of glittering coal-dust along the pa.s.sage outside the door; and the day being Sunday, which should by all precedent be marked by an increased radiance in the outward as well as in the inward man, it was impossible to keep clean. For the inward man, I once again took refuge in Young's _Night Thoughts_, which, despite the disapproval of Mr. Masefield's Dauber, I will maintain to give room and verge enough to annotate, parody, wilfully miscomprehend, skip, doze, and indulge what trains of thought whether ethical, fanciful, or reminiscent.

A gentler air, a bluer sea, a sandy coast in view. There was something lyrical about the "dirty ship" as with the buoyancy of her cargoless holds she fleeted to the south. Mead, his future resplendent with 1,166 and its South Sea bubble, seemed to feel this rhythmical impulse. Every now and then, in his consultations, he would break forth into singing, but seldom more than a fragment at a time; now it was "Farewell and adieu to you, bright Spanish Ladies"--a grand old tune--now "Six men dancing on the dead man's chest." But most, he gave in honour of his native Australia a ballad of a monitory sort with a wild yet sweet refrain.

It began

I was born in the city of Sydney, And I was an apprentice bound, And many's the good old time I've had In that dear old Southern town.

The apprentice fell in with a dark lady--indeed "she came tripping right into his way." It was an unfortunate encounter. He became her "darling flash boy." He could readily put the case against her when, as receiver of stolen goods, he had served some years in jail; and then, like the author of _George Barnwell_, he addressed apprentices on the subject:

So all young men take a warning and Beware of that black velvet tie.

But yet, and here was the charm of the ballad, and the token of his entanglement by Neaera's hair, ever and anon came the burden

For her eyes they shone like the diamonds, I thought her a Queen of the land, And the hair that hung over her shoulders was Tied up with a black velvet band.

When Mead later on gave me a copy of this song, which I shall not forget, duly set out in "cantos," he was good enough to ornament it with a little picture of the black bow as tailpiece.

The heat became very strong, and as the day declined, a great cloud-bank rose up out to sea, and the air settled to that stillness in which the fall of the ripples from the side sounds most insistent. Dark came on, and from two arches or caverns of smouldering twilight under the extremities of that mighty cloud the lightnings burst; lightnings in whose general wide waft of brightness intense white wreaths suddenly lived and withered, branches of fire stretched forth and were gone; while in the opposite heaven "like a dying lady," went the horned moon.