The Bonadventure Part 9

The wharves were haunted, it goes without saying, by rats; more publicly, by dogs. One grey giant was regarded, especially by the mess-room boy, with romantic fondness. His history, if his, was current. He was "a Yankee," but had lost his pa.s.sage in the North American ship to which he belonged; and now, it was maintained, he made a complete round of all the docks, boarded every ship that came in, and looked into the alleyways to try and recognize his own. The dog did, I agree, wear a saddened expression. But, discreetly, I did not feel sure about his sentimental journey. It was "Mess-room" too who encouraged a cat to prepare for the homeward voyage, and I cannot say that he at first appeared likely to persuade the animal, which, shut in for the night, like Chips on a recent occasion, gave vent to piercing miaows. Parrots and monkeys, without which surely no sailor should ever return to his native village, were alike scarce.

The subject of my future standing in the village tavern had already been discussed when others failed. It now arose again. The saloon's ideas of rural England were almost as broad as mine of sea life. They could see or affected to see nothing else in agriculture but one large joke; and its communities as so many tribes of gaping lads in smocks, with churchwardens, cl.u.s.tering about the oldest inhabitant. I had told them not once nor twice that no one in my village had any sense of distance, or wish to travel, or to hear of travels. But still it was believed that on my return I should be received at the inevitable "Green Cow" or "Pig and Whistle" with roars of applause, all mouths in the shape of O's, all attentions grappled to my lightest word. More probably, I hinted, if I were to return and mention as a news item a voyage in a tramp to South America, the patronage would preserve a chilling silence, as who should say, "We are too old for these youthful frivolities. We are not amused"; and would then resume the old buzz of 'sheening and jack hares and the riches of the rich'-- But I was not heard.

Lightning, a pa.s.sion with me, grew bright and furious towards the end of our stay, about the fall of darkness; in its blue flare, it was startling to see how like a wreck a Swedish motor-ship, which had put in because of a fire aboard, lay lonely at some distance from us. Presently the rain came down and cooled the air; the night grew quiet then, the far thunder dying out, or if there was noise, it was the cricket's cry, and the gruff brief conversation of the ship's watchman with his comrade on the wharf as he pa.s.sed by.

Sunday came again, day of washing for Meac.o.c.k and others; day of eggs and bacon for the Saloon's breakfast, and with it special duff and crimson sauce for dinner, tinned pineapple and cake for tea. Fortified thus, Bicker and Mead and myself go a-fishing on the opposite quay, where some Argentines have been catching fine fish. Now it is, to the best of my memory, the fact that I have never yet caught one fish on Sunday; and so I should have been wiser than to have joined in this excursion. Luck stopped dead as soon as we began, and to make things worse, through a sleepy reply of Bicker's I imagined the line to be made fast to the jetty, and threw out the sinker with special success "far out at sea." That line was not made fast. It had belonged to the steward. He, when he heard the disaster, stood in a kind of _rigor_, gazing at high heaven as one insensible to misfortune.

And now came our last day at Ingeniero White. Not too soon, it seemed; the scenery of the port having but little of freshness, and the drama of loading again lacking in situations. Mosquitoes here served me well by arousing me in the early morning, as I was instructed to take a hand at six with tallying the bags of grain. I was there to the moment, but my duty proved to be that of standing by, enjoying life. At twelve, all hands were mustered amidships and numbered by the port authority, and one was missing. At length it was found out who, namely, one Towsle the sleepiest of the apprentices, and where--in his bath, dozing unaware of the parade outside the door. The pilot came aboard at three, and the tug _Lydia_ presented herself to guide the _Bonadventure_ out: there was much business with ropes fore and aft, and the ship swinging round was free of the wharf about the top of the tide. The warehouses with their stacks of bags, slippered blue-trousered handymen, surpliced overseers with their sampling hollow bayonets, railway trucks and capstans, ubiquitous dogs and all, began to recede. But we had not come more than a couple of miles from the elevators, nor out of sight of the refugee-like town behind them, when we anch.o.r.ed to await Hosea. At a considerable s.p.a.ce from the town, all alone, we saw as we waited the big drab square building euphemistically known aboard as the "variety show." It was a sad sight, and to me in its significance of some people's luck in this world, a challenge to my random cheerful philosophy, which I have not yet been able entirely to dismiss.

Presently from the land a storm began to foreshadow itself, and suddenly there was a burst of wild piping wind, like a spiteful cry, that flung sharp rain over us and in scarcely a minute had died down again. Its short career sent every one interested scampering to take in the canvas awnings, and left a breeze which when the captain arrived in a launch, carrying some newspapers, blew them round him like a garment. He was wearing a straw hat. He jammed it on with a will and hurried up the rope ladder. With his return, we were at sea again, though not yet in the open.

The evening was one of strange majesty. One saw clouds ama.s.sing in every similitude of mountainous immensity and ascent, and wild lights everywhere burning among them; but most of all, a tawny lion's colour mantled in a great tract of the sky and below shone dim yet in a manner dazzling from the darkening water. The heat of the day had been oven-like.

Lightnings began after a red weeping sunset, sheet lightnings often veined with the fiercest forks of white flame, wreaths of golden fire, volleys, cataracts, serpents; and these danced about the horizon until daybreak, sometimes in silence, sometimes with deep but weary-sounding thunderclaps. The light that these wanderers cast was often of an intensity scarcely credible. A deluge of rain was always imminent, but only towards dawn arrived.

The _Bonadventure_ had been, under these innumerable lights, making quiet way down an avenue of buoys twinkling in their degree, and came into view of the lightship beyond them. The pilot sounded the siren (for he was to leave us here), and in reply to the second call of the siren the lamp of a boat pulling out towards us appeared. It was good-bye to the pilot and his bag, which on the end of a rope now caused a moment's interest; the engines, stopped to let him depart, were started again, and the captain fixed the ship's course. Mead's watch, as usually it was, shared by the purser, engaged us in more recollections of the great war; and in the glitter first of a swarm of dragon-flies, then presently the surly gleam of the lightning, we talked on until midnight. I admired him for having already forgotten all about his disappointment in the lottery, and begun with new hopes according to his motto; _Quo fata vocant_.

XXI

The breakfast steaks were leathery past antic.i.p.ations. The flies in the cabin were thousands strong. But the _Bonadventure_ was homeward bound, and a general spirit of liveliness prevailed. Conversation was running much upon the value of the mark, for it was to Hamburg that we were believed to be going. Base hopes were expressed that the rate of exchange might be a thousand to the pound. No one imagined that this would some day be surpa.s.sed by eleven thousand. The Argentine had been expensive; the cheapness of Germany was thrown up all the clearer.

As, however, I had no anxiety to buy a safety razor, mouth-organs, clocks, and pocket manicure sets, to which and other articles like them I imagined the German cheapness would be limited, I was not elated on that score.

At any rate, here we were steaming north at a steady speed, with a light breeze ahead, and the coast of the Argentine slipping past, dimly seen.

And everything was bent for England. For weeks the chief had expressed a longing for pancakes at almost every meal; and now, auspicious, they came. On the other hand, the cheese was done. Dark suspicions about a certain cake were also whispered; knowing ones, whose information was that Hosea had sent one aboard from Bahia Blanca for the benefit of the saloon, saw villainy in the delay of its forthcoming. When it did appear its pomp of white icing and green and red crescents, and diamonds of fruit ornaments, certainly warranted an anxiety, as for crown jewels.

Meac.o.c.k, the ever-busy and never-fl.u.s.tered, about this time showed me his private notebook, in which he had from time to time copied verses and aphorisms, chiefly from _Nash's Magazine_, which he considered worthy.

In this anthology of his I might have seen the signs of a literary revival aboard which shortly afterwards befell. I daresay he would have expanded a remark of his, "Novels were untrue to life, but life was not by itself interesting enough" (during the war he had commanded a trawler in the Mediterranean), had not the slow flash of a lighthouse appeared on the port side. He climbed to Monkey Island to take a bearing. The blurred lights of Mar del Plata past, our course was altered to agree with the set-back of the coast. Mead came up for his watch, eight bells went, and Meac.o.c.k departed. His "Ay, ay" to the retiring steersman's report, the apprentice's reading of the log, and the forward lookout's shout "The lights are bright, sir," always had a handsome resonance and lingering dignity.

Mead was by this time full of Hamburg, and he kept breaking into songs in very low Low German, and memories of one Helen, not without sighs.

That romance was not the first, nor the last, which I heard from him. He would show me Hamburg! and by way of a Pisgah look, he drew gay pictures of that town, omitting however its architectural glories. Like critics of nature poetry, he saw the world in terms of men and women: and Hamburg as the location of dancing saloons and a singular exhibition of waxworks.

The evening had at first looked stormy, and sharp fits of lightning lit the low clouds, but all pa.s.sed by. The clear and cool heaven was left, diamonded with steady constellations, and crowned with the round moon "and a star or two beside"; below like a field of silver lay the sea, and the quiet ship flung by veils of lily foam, and the shadows stealthily counter-changed the glistening decks. In these calm airs and waters, she made such good speed that the next afternoon we came in view of Monte Video. The pilot took over the bridge, and we were soon at anchor in the harbour, which seemed thronged with ships. Our business here was to load bunker coal, and as our coal was at the moment aboard a collier which was to be seen some distance out of the breakwaters, nothing was done this first evening. The news that his coal was yet to arrive at Monte Video was cheerfully imparted to Phillips with the comment, "Well, anyway, chief, you'll get your coal nice and fresh"; but he seemed by no means consoled. Nor did the a.s.surance of the shipping clerk--a somewhat lilified young man in immaculate blue serge--that "Our Cardiff house have let us down badly," act as a charm upon his depression. He told me to stand by for the office of tallying at seven the next morning, and I thanked him. The request implied, perhaps, the paternal anxiety for my avoiding mischievous indolence which he had shown before.

But meanwhile what was there to do? We lay at a distance from the sh.o.r.e, and had therefore no distraction. I watched the lighthouse on the hill, the buoys, the ship's signals, the trams on the quay, the other illuminant causes all round us; I listened to a bra.s.s band which, for whatever reason, was playing close to the harbour until late in the evening; and then, driven to extremes, I sat down to write a "novel"

which became my refuge from ennui during what remained of my holiday, but which I fear will never be finished. I spoke to Mead about it. He thought little of my hero. I agreed to have the hero killed in a bayonet fight near Alberta pill-box, but he thought I might go still nearer to propriety and have the hero kill his man, and go through his pockets.

There did seem something in this suggestion, and a few years ago such an ending as it conjured up would have been popular, I think:

"The battle was over. Whistling 'Tipperary,' and placing the wallet and watch of his prostrate antagonist in the pocket of his body shield, Arthur strode onward to join his comrades at their evening meal in Houthulst Wood. Here let us leave him, calmly facing the morrow as only an Englishman can.

"THE END."

The next day brought the worst weather that we had met since we left the Channel. At first it was merely cool and mild; but that was misleading.

Down came the rain, thick, cold, and steady; and there seemed a sufficient supply to last until we left. I noticed it, myself, with more especial observation, at my post of tallyman.

In the drizzle the lighters came alongside bringing the coal in bags.

The stevedore's gang and their own overseers arrived aboard. One of these overseers was an Englishman, who by his manner and speech had evidently been brought up in a widely different setting; but it was none of our business, though Bicker and others considered it a disgrace for an Englishman to be so employed. All I heard was that he came from the West of England, and that he was wild (which appeared sufficiently in his countenance); and I admired his intellect, and tried to make him feel that. The other overseer was a fat old Italian, who tallied with me for the lighter on the port side.

As these men and the poor fellows who were emptying the sacks into the hatches or tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the coal down below had been at work all the night, it was not surprising that our affairs moved slowly. The winch, steaming and thudding and jerking in a mutinous mood, brought up four bags at a time, on my side. The sling that held them was lowered to the deck, the hands rushed to swing them on to the improvised platforms beside the hatches, with a concerted roaring as if over the capture of a tiger. While these bags were being emptied, the sling would be descending into the lighter again; and so it continued, with a fog of coal particles wrapping the neighbourhood. The gang was a mixed mult.i.tude. Nationality might have been anything. The prevailing colour was a sable (unsilvered), under which mask might be distinguished Italian, Portuguese, j.a.panese, West Indian, and other types. Among the most energetic of those who were emptying the bags, the most vocal of the roarers, there was a tall, thin, humorous fellow who reminded me irresistibly of a brilliant poet and miscellanist of the modern school. I thought of that dazzling smile, that aesthetic face transferred to the surroundings of Chelsea, and what a success, if looks meant anything, he ought to be! So strongly did I feel that in his hours of leisure and coallessness he was a critic of verse and _moeurs_ that I almost asked him his name.

My co-tallyman was pleasantly disposed. He asked me if I would give him one of several casks standing near the galley. I referred him to Phillips, who referred him to Meac.o.c.k, who referred him elsewhere. We disagreed now and then over the tally, but I was able to hold my own.

The _lex talionis_ was in force. Sometimes I was induced to accept his surplus over my figure as accurate, but then I would take him back at another opportunity, and ignore his doleful "Make it _threeee_." My imagination lagged behind his, which seemed to see occasional slings put aboard by aerial hands, and aerial coal at that, and these went down in his book. But altogether we "made it." Mutual mistrust served the public good.

The chief lent me a boiler suit, for which I was insufficient, and added an old macintosh presently. I soon grew black; even the tallyman, though he seemed to have some natural gift in his stubbled skin which repelled the grime, grew black. Presently I was disguised in the order of things as a film thug, with waterlogged cap sagging over eyes heavily inlaid in blackness. Tired as the labourers must have been, they went on working as if they liked it, grinning, singing, enjoying comments upon each other, and refreshing themselves with cheroots, cigarettes, peaches, or sups from cans containing a brown decoction like strong tea. They ceased at four.

It was by way of variation in the evening that Bicker and Mead fell upon me, with the idea of shampooing the begrimed tallyman. Zambuk (Hosea's trusted salve), lime cream, and talc.u.m powder were employed. There was a struggle, however, which disturbed Meac.o.c.k opposite. He came to the rescue, but leaping upon the two barbers, who were holding me down, he forgot that I was underneath. "Rough house," the word went round.

When the stevedore's men arrived the following day, they were almost to a man rigged out in the cleanest of suits, or costumes rather. This was, to the best of my information, not the habit with the British trimmer. Their hats were pleasing to the eye. In his jet-black felt, my poetry-critic looked the picture of a member of the _Athenaeum_ staff (lamented _Athenaeum_!). Others wore the type of hat but not the manner. A number of matey caps, check and khaki and indigo, then white wideawakes as though for haymaking, and a few pillbox-like creations in crimson and daffodil, made part of the splendour. Some of the coalheavers wore large sashes amidships, sashes of lurid colour also, violet and plum, extra shade. In the shirts, more colour appeared. Here, like Aurora, stepped Antonio in salmon pink; there, was a construction of red and green rings on a white background. The bright-blue cotton suits added to the general effect. Curious that these workers should come so clean, only to be coated with coal-dust in half an hour! It spoke well for their outlook.

The work was much as before. Wheelbarrows had to be got to put the sacks beside other hatches which the winch did not command. The chief had some argument with the Italian foreman about the last two hundred bags, which he wished to be shot into the starboard hatch only, to bring the ship up straight. The foreman asked him to withdraw this. "d.a.m.n you!" roared Phillips, and put an end to the matter, "when I say NO I mean NO. Don't you understand plain English?"

So that was that, and my job finished. The bosun and his worthies quickly gathered to remove the disgraceful signs of bunkering; they swept and garnished, the stylish shipping clerk came aboard with his final papers to see Hosea and Phillips. Already the pilot was on the bridge; soon we were slowly backing away from our mooring. The blue peter was hauled down, the gangway got in. The _Bonadventure_ was manoeuvred past the breakwaters and down the marked channel, at whose last buoy, or soon afterwards, the tug to fetch the pilot came alongside. As he withdrew in her she sounded the three blasts or rather hoots meaning a "Bon voyage," and our own burly voice sounded three times in acknowledgment.

The many turrets and spires, chimneys and gaunt roofs of Monte Video, distinctly ranged along a rainy sky with shelves of rock-like cloud, lessened duly; the evening came on. Still the coast appeared here and there, its yellow sands, its dark-blue cliffs and hills, and as if shouldering the dull and heavy sky the sun burned out with a golden power before he departed.

Mead bade good-bye for a short time--in all probability--and myself for a long time, to South America, still symbolized by its lighthouses and the night-glow of a seaside town or two. Once again I felt a regret that I had not seen the elder Buenos Aires, whose extinction was no doubt a wise thing, but which surely must have triumphed as a thing of beauty over the present cubic blocks of utility. Mead was not sentimental about going to sea once more. He was too deeply engaged with devising a piece of invective against an enemy for an alleged injury, and immersed in the troubles of rhyme. I thought he was acquitting himself very well.

XXII

I have mentioned a scarcely concealed feeling in the saloon against the omniscience of the wireless operator. That was not all the opposition to which this youth of the glazed locks was subject. He was understood, while the ship was at sea, to receive news issued daily, and frequently when a subject was being discussed by the ship's officers he sat there in possession of the facts but with serene indifference to the general interest. In this, he was carrying out the regulations, I imagine; but his behaviour resembled that of the dog in the manger. To aggravate this sense of injustice, he rashly told some one that the news might be taken at three guineas.

This in the first place affected the saloon only. But it happened that throughout the ship there was a particular desire for information. At home, the football season was at its zenith. Important matches, in the Leagues and the Cup compet.i.tion, were known to be playing; and one man on the ship when she was out at sea could, and it was believed did, hear the results. But never a word said he. Looking in at the galley during the evening to brew my cocoa, I would find animated discussion of the favourite teams in progress. Kelly, the "Mess-room," would wipe his fist across his mouth and huskily explain. "It's like this, mister." He had known other wireless operators who gladly announced the football results. But this fellow--he was too b---- stuck-up, mister--"The Marconi," the term which he used for the offending operator, savoured queerly of the phrase "The Bedlam" in _King Lear_.

Such was the background against which Mead's vision of the unfortunate Sparks stood out, and with the particular unfriendliness which I must briefly describe. Earlier in the trip, Sparks had, in Mead's opinion, adopted a tone of equality and then even of command towards him, in the course of the ship's routine. Mead had immediately resorted to warlike acts. Sparks lodged a written complaint with Hosea, who gave both parties the best advice. But it was a false step in Sparks to send in this communication, which would if forwarded have cost Mead, perhaps, his living; and it was made worse by Sparks's glib defence, "I was doing my duty," since he had been at a safe distance from the war when Mead's duty lay on the Gallipoli beaches. And he still affected to think of upholding his letter.

Matters were therefore strained, and the more they were so the more Mead liked it. "Don't let me catch you ash.o.r.e," had been his way of pa.s.sing Sparks the time of day in port; at sea, he growled abuse at him whenever he saw him, and if no better occasion offered itself, would suddenly thrust his face in all the semblance of murderous intention through the open porthole of the young man's room and utter calm, deliberate, and unnatural purposes.

In this feud, my position was not comfortable. Unlicked as he was (up to the present) and devoid of fine points, the Marconi, whose cabin was neighbour to mine, wished me no harm, and even sought my esteem. Mead, whom I did esteem, was discontented with any half-measures on my part, and in any case I felt bound to observe neutrality. But the capers of my angry friend were often amusing, the declarations of duty conscientiously executed by his _bete noir_--Mead had a weakness for style--were not. And it is scarcely necessary to repeat, the general view of Sparks was not a moral support to Mead even if he had "no case."

On the occasion that I described, Mead had decided to drive his point well home with the aid of rhyme. I took a copy of his somewhat indecorous production. It had many "spirited couplets," embodying considerable observations:

To see you promenade the deck Gives me a pain in my ruddy neck.

Sparks had been unwise, again, in mentioning his pleasure in the slaughterer's trade, and past experience. Mead did not miss the opportunity.

If the blood of sheep could make you glow Come and dare to make mine flow.

I am no hero out for gore, I had the wind up in the war.

Names and menaces came fast and furious.

... Flowers there'll be which you won't smell, You swob, you'll learn a lot in h.e.l.l.

Had I been called half these things Some one or I'd be wearing wings.