The Bonadventure Part 8

Meanwhile the _Bonadventure_ not slacking her unusual speed came to a lightship; then (for this was a pilot station) the engines thrashed up the water as she manoeuvred for the pilot's most comfortable approach.

The boatmen came rowing him l.u.s.tily out to us; our rope ladder was lowered--at these moments I was sensible of a sort of proud anxiety on the part of all aboard, that such a detail should be carried out with all despatch--and up he came. And after him, a rope was asked for, and sent down; up came a great stringful of fish, gleaming like the sea under the moon; and once more the rope went down, and a collection of jars which were at once thought to contain wine was hauled on board.

Then, from the boat "Finish!" but she did not depart, making fast to the _Bonadventure_. She circling about the lightship, at length brought her companion within a stone's throw. Then the boat was cut adrift, and we went on our way towards a line of buoys whose flashes lit up the expanse ahead.

We came now close by the misty lights of a town named Puerto Militar and further on those of Ingeniero White, the little port of Bahia Blanca to which the _Bonadventure_ was actually bound, began to beckon. About eleven the anchors were let go, and the pilot retired to sleep; but I still stayed with Mead, regarding dully the dull lights of our surroundings, and consuming cocoa, and blessing the exhalation of the continent which had first met me at sea some weeks ago. Already fishing, the steward leaned over the rail close by; he had often painted the angling at Bahia Blanca in enthusiastic colours. However, he seemed to catch nothing.

By this the moon, that had grown almost a giantess as she stooped down the horizon, and had reddened like a glowing coal to the last almost, was dwindling. The orb became a beacon dying on a hill; then dropped below the sky. The lightnings over the quiet sea had almost ceased.

XIX

I slept heavily, and when I got up, the _Bonadventure_ had moved into the channel towards Ingeniero White, and was lying at anchor outside that place. The scenery about us was of pleasing ugliness, worthy of George Crabbe's poetical painting. To seaward there lay long stretches of mud, or banks of a sort of gra.s.s--long layers of brown and green ending at the frontier of a blue-grey rainy sky; and the land was low, featureless (save for a mountain height in the hazy interior) and dark. Close to our mooring was the a.s.semblage of motley huts and tenements, galvanized iron roofs, tall chimneys, and more notably the grain elevators, under which several other steamers were lying. Above the salt marshes a rainbow touched the clouds, and too soon the sun was pouring upon everything a dazzling sultry heat.

At breakfast the fish which the pilot had brought aboard as a kindly offering during the night were eaten, curried. This mode of serving them displeased the Saloon. The steward, affecting to be in a philosophic doze in his lair, could not fail to have heard such scathing remarks as these:

"The nicest fish I've had down here."

"Yes, spoiled."

"Wasted."

"Why the devil must they go and camouflage it?"

"If it had been high we'd have had it neat."

"Must have curry and rice on Monday morning. Mustn't go outside the routine."

"Well, you see, if they started on the wrong note on Monday they wouldn't be able to pick up the tune for the rest of the week."

"O, it's easy. Steak, steak, steak."

We hurried our breakfast amid these criticisms, as the port authority was expected. Towards nine o'clock, all hands being a.s.sembled amidships, his launch came to the foot of the gangway. Eight sailors in white uniform rowed this launch. He divested himself of his sword, came up, and went inside Hosea's quarters to "talk things over"; whereupon, the parade broke up. The next event was, we changed our mooring. As we pa.s.sed to the new tether, which was among several tramps as ladylike as ourselves, I had my first experience of the groaning, screeching and gasping noise which the machinery of a dredger can make, as its buckets come round on the endless chain and empty themselves into the barge alongside. I wonder these contrivances were not introduced during the Pa.s.schendaele operations. They would have served two purposes, that of keeping a good depth of water for the infantry to swim through; and that of demoralizing the enemy.

We remained only a few minutes in this new position. Then we moved into a dock, lined with warehouses as they appeared, under whose grey tin roofs were stacked bags of grain in large profusion. With much shouting and manipulating of ropes, we got in, behind the steamer _Caxambu_; alongside a framework of piles. On these, even the less accessible slanting timbers, many a ship's name scrawled in black or red paint, and often followed by the date of the call, addressed the new-comer's eye. In these inscriptions the S's, B's, D's, and 9's, had a tendency to be reversed. I thought that the exotic poets and others who deny their readers capital letters, apostrophes and so forth might here find another inspiration. The medley of names included such as the _Trebarthan_, the _King Arthur_, the _Alf_, the _Olive_, the _Bilbao_. And the _Keats_; why _Keats_? Apart from this mystery, I could not help contrasting many of the names with those of the figure-head days, and like the posy of a ring, some of them came into my mind, from my reading, the _John and Judith_, _Charming Nancy_, _Love and Unity_, _Lancashire Witch_.

Here, the heat seemed to redouble, and the flies to bite harder accordingly. For some time nothing much happened. The Captain, after being visited by the doctor, ship's chandler and others, but not such a swarm as on our previous berthing, went ash.o.r.e, leaving Bicker, who prided himself upon his mathematical faculty, to wrestle with the problems of the Customs manifest. I myself had handed over trench stores; this looked a worse job, and there were the familiar dilemmas of one thing with different names.

The ship was not here, it soon showed, to take her time. Loading began after dinner. A leather band or rather gutter working on rollers was lifted out from the wharf over each of several holds, and a spout fixed at its extremity; the gang in charge spread sacking under the feeding band and directed the spout as they wished. Then the machinery behind began to drone, and the grain, like a gliding brook, to travel along the leather band; whence, at the overturn, it leapt into the spout which directed its descent into the hold, while a sort of idle snowstorm of chaff and draff glistened thick in the sunlight. Many heads looked over the rails to see this process at first, but there was a sameness about it and the heads quickly found other occupation. Presently I went to look at the activities behind the scenes, where a gang was taking bags of grain from a railway truck and emptying them through a grating into another travelling conduit, which duly under the flooring of the building bore the wheat to the automatic machines. There, it seemed to my inept wish to learn, it was ama.s.sed until a certain weight was registered, and that point reached the heap was flung forward into the feeder which ran up to the spout over our hold. Before the yellow current arrived there, it had been sampled at intervals by a boy who squatted beside, dipping a horn-shaped can on the end of a stick into it, and filling thereby small labelled sacks convenient to him.

The Brazilian steamer ahead of us was receiving the grain in bags, which looked oddly like pigs asleep as they were hurried along the endless band.

On this steamer, the _Caxambu_, real live pigs and sheep were routing about over the forecastle. I was told that she was an ex-German. Anyway, though in deshabille, she was a handsome ship. Her bell was the most resonant; the _Bonadventure's_ was known still more surely for a thin tinkler when that gong rang.

For the settlement beyond, it was not conspicuous. The spires of Bahia Blanca showed up white some few miles inland; the nearer scene was one of tin roofs, of railway coaches and wagons, small muddy decks and mud flats. Naturally the steward was fishing. But nothing was biting. He stood pensively gazing into heaven, even holding the line listlessly, when the third mate having collected a good attendance crept up behind him as quiet as a cat and jerked the line with the hungry violence of a monster, contriving also to make his retreat out of sight before the aged angler had quite decided that he was _not_ going to catch a huge ba.s.s.

This heartless deception was very popular. Something was necessary to while away the evening despite its bright array of dewy-lighted clouds, which suited the coolness of the air. The grumble of the machinery gave place to "c.o.c.k Robin" and other cla.s.sic opportunities for bawling; and cards were brought out.

The next day, cold enough for every one, and proving that the English climate is not alone in its uncertain habits, went on quietly. The party who brought the sacks of grain to the door of the railway truck, the man who there at singular speed cut away the string from the mouths of the sacks, the lads who swept all loose grain from the truck and its neighbourhood--all were working to load us as if their lives depended on it. Actually, no doubt, this was the case. The _Bonadventure_ ceased to tower aloft out of the water.

Bicker, Mead and the pa.s.senger-purser pa.s.sed the evening in the village.

We went in and out of shops in a casual manner. There was one whose contents were sufficiently varied for the sailors' fancy. On one wall hung a large collection of crudely cured pelts, the fur of wild cats, foxes, and other animals. From the ceiling hung, unpitied, many canaries imprisoned in yellow cages; under the counters were displayed baskets made of turtle sh.e.l.ls, lined with pink sateen. Cigarettes of all nationalities, boot polishes of uncertain price and utility, and in the window a regiment of notes and coins advertising the money-changer's department, caught my eye. There were even old books. As we were leaving two sailors entered bearing a cage wrapped in paper. They accosted the fat and greasy shopkeeper abruptly.

"Canary eh? died 'smornin' eh?"

(This "eh?" was the mainstay of our Anglo-Argentine intercourse.)

"Ah, Ah, no give monjay!"

"Yes, mucho plenty monjay."

The question in short was, what about giving us our money back?--but we could not stop long enough to see the result. Further along, children's sandals were ranged in a window. Mead thought that he would shine in a pair like them; but the shopkeeper thought his inquiry for sandals size 9 a good joke.

At this stage, when Mead emerged, I was very sorry to have to call his attention to a board in the window, which in his concentration on the sandals he had overlooked. It was a board giving the numbers (announced that day) of the winning lottery tickets. None of these numbers coincided with that owned by Mead.

The disappointment quite naturally led us to the refreshment room at the station and kept us there until the hour of closing. The angry Mead in some measure became reconciled to the injustice which he had suffered, and we all enjoyed the friendliness of the waiters. These, not being over busy, played the fool, except one who behind the bar sat with pen and ink and a folio blank-book laboriously copying an English exercise on the ancient pattern: Have you seen my glove?--Yes, I have seen your glove, &c. One endeavoured to persuade us that he was a Russian, and feigned a horrid interest in a news paragraph about Lenin. The other indulged in an anti-French speech, with gestures. "La Liberte!" he jeered, at the same time grasping vigorously in all directions.

Our nights were disturbed by mosquitoes, not so ferocious as formerly, and cats. Aboard, it still seemed cold; but ash.o.r.e there was little breeze, and my walks round the town were warm work. The outskirts of this ramshackle place were dreary, but I liked them better than city streets.

They formed a loose encampment of tin, or plaster, or matchboard, in which one would perhaps notice most the open drains, the chickens, goats (some of them of most sheepish appearance), cows, pigs, cats, dogs of the silly sort, sunflowers, and gentlemen in blue cotton trousers, about the thresholds. Grumble as you may at militarism, most army camps would have been better favoured in some respects: since here, despite the prospects of mud suggested by the dust of the present season, no hut seemed to have a raised approach, whether stone causeway or duck-walk.

I never walked into Bahia Blanca, though not far short of its tall spires, but found these habitations a sufficient view; the way back to the _Bonadventure_ might be over a moorish level, thickly grown over with yellow flowering weed, and all sorts of drouthy "flora of the marsh." Marsh, however, it was not, the soil being thoroughly baked and cracked. Here were a few birds, that seemed to me the thrushes of the place; a few b.u.t.terflies; beetles, lying dead here and there; lizards in greater number. But the fields hereabouts had all a solitary look.

Often the track was inches deep in dust.

On one of my walks, the wireless operator being with me, we were seen going up from the wharf by the ship's carpenter, who, it afterwards came out, had tried to attract our attention by shouting. The reason for his attempt is interesting. He was, in fact, at that time in "calaboosh,"

having been haled thither during the night, according to a prophecy of Mead's. Looking too long on the wine (three gla.s.ses, by his reckoning) and the beer (one innocent gla.s.s), he had succeeded in arriving abreast of the Brazilian next to us. At this point, he had the misfortune to lose the way to the _Bonadventure_; and presently for his safety the police took him to the cells. Thence, the next afternoon, Chips was released, and that without even a fine. The winter wind is not so unkind as this cadaverous man's ingrat.i.tude to the gendarmes for their kindly act. Asked about it, he complained in loud and bitter terms that such things should be, and

with swinish phrase Soiled their addition.

This episode appeared to please the mate, Meac.o.c.k, in no small degree.

He recounted other imprisonments; told of black sheep among crews newly arrived from Sing Sing and similar haunts, for whose arrest a warrant was always handed to the police as soon as the ship arrived in port; described the difficulty of getting these incorrigibles from the ship to the wharf, the police having no sanction to touch them on the ship; and how the Brazilian police got the upper hand of bruisers towering above them by lambasting them with the flat of their swords.

Lethargy and grain dust seemed to hang in our air together. The exploration of Ingeniero White as an amus.e.m.e.nt became less liked as time went on, and as sometimes the dull sky broke in a drizzle of rain.

One hatch was filled with wheat; the gang trimmed it quickly; and the loading of the other hatches continued apace, so that our going to sea again looked close at hand. The sailors and apprentices with pots of paint were perched at various points above and beside the ship; and it was no great surprise to me when one of the boys, much given to recreation, suddenly appeared in a waterlogged state.

The town was not without its Mission to Sailors. It depended upon the energies of a very small English community, of course, but they kept up a comfortable room, where dancing and singing were entered upon in the evenings; the standards of pastime required by Bicker and Mead, however, were not reached. It pleased them to drift about; to call at the refreshment room of the station and throw dice for drinks, to prowl about the town with an independent air. The funds at the disposal of this party were dwindling. It was therefore proposed to take to the vile syrup known as _cana_ instead of whisky, and an ingenious logic was discovered in favour of the plan, apart from the great cheapness of the cana. As thus: Even at B.A. (did you but know it) you often had turpentine sold you for whisky; in fact, here, if you asked for whisky, ten to one that what you received was cana at four times its proper price. Better ask for cana straight away. This reasoning in favour of an adopted plan could not be answered except by sudden wealth. These driftings were mainly spent in wondering what to do next. (The only real prospect was, to get back to the ship.) If any decision was made, it was a picturesque one. For instance, the town being abed, we went into a general stores where there was a light showing the proprietor about to close. Somewhat to his surprise, and after the first few moments to his discontent, supper was taken, dog biscuits and cream cheese, washed down with yellow cana--a more inflammatory distillation even than the white. And so home.

XX

We did not get away so quickly as had been thought, and as every one seemed to wish. Heavy skies came on, giving the slack waters a leaden look. The air, though it was not hot, was close; and the fine dust from the grain which carpeted all the decks began to sit heavy on the lungs.

Among the business outstanding remained that of stowing 7,500 bags in the bunker hatch--slower work, clearly, than the loading in bulk which had until now been the method with the _Bonadventure_. Bicker and Mead, as they supervised the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of hatches that had been filled, wore a melancholy look, nor was the entry at breakfast of two young men from the Customs, though pleasant acquaintances, considered a relief. If clouds disappeared, and left the day like a furnace, there was every facility for doing nothing at all. Even at evening the cabins were filled with tepid air and flies: and most of us might be found leaning over the rails in silence, watching sunset's orange red colour to the prime and die away again in the sky and the water below it, scarcely marked with a ripple; and then the moon riding high above our bridge, itself not unexalted, not ungraceful by its proximity to the warehouse. In such a night comes Mead, and a consultation ends in my approaching Mouldytop the steward with respectful pet.i.tion for ship's biscuits. These soon refreshed in my mind Solomon's choosing a dish of herbs and love over a stalled ox and hatred.

The time now arrived when I was honourably appointed to a job of work. I felt proud indeed when Meac.o.c.k explained it to me. It was, to keep count of the number of bags of grain shipped for the bunker hatch and another one aft. The tallyman employed by the merchants kept his record, shouting out his "Una, dos, tres" until each tally of bags was complete; the ship's representative looked on at the descending bags and made his oblique strokes in his book accordingly. This work in effect was not so simple as it sounds; sometimes after a pause the bags would be let loose suddenly and in quick succession, nor moreover was it possible to question the other tallyman at the moments of disagreement, since he spoke no English and I no Spanish.

This delivery of some thousands of bags was to be completed in the course of a day, but was not. The arrangement of shoots for the bags to travel down was as neat as a scenic railway: they slid down one, were deflected by a fixed bag at the foot of it to another shoot at right angles to it, and so on down to the caverns and the packers. The day's work ended, but some thousands of bags remained to be put aboard, and I felt that I was growing used to times and seasons nautical, "the ways of a ship," in the cook's phrase. When a sergeant-major says, Parade at 8.30, he is understood to have ordered a parade for 8.15; but I suspect that at sea, should the tramp be expected away this week, next week is the actual time of departure.

Newspapers reached the ship from Buenos Aires, one day old, and by that time having an antiquarian value of twenty centavos, or fourpence. In consequence we generally went without; yet somehow important news, such as the result of Cardiff City versus Tottenham Hotspur, was quickly pa.s.sed round. Unimportant, such as the latest development in the Anglo-Irish situation, was considered "politics," and its seeker ignored.