The Firm of Girdlestone Part 39

"Aye, aye, sir!"

"All right?"

"All right, sir."

"Hoist away!"

And clank, clank went the chain again, and whir-r-r the engine, and up would come a pair of oil casks, as though the crane were some giant forceps which was plucking out the great wooden teeth of the vessel.

It seemed to Tom, as he stood looking down, note-book in hand, that some of the actual malarious air of the coast had been carried home in the hold, so foul and close were the smells evolved from it. Great c.o.c.kchafers crawled about over the packages, and occasionally a rat would scamper over the barrels, such a rat as is only to be found in ships which hail from the tropics. On one occasion too, as a tusk of ivory was being hoisted out, there was a sudden cry of alarm among the workers, and a long, yellow snake crawled out of the cavity of the trunk and writhed away into the darkness. It is no uncommon thing to find the deadly creatures hibernating in the hollow of the tusks until the cold English air arouses them from their torpor, to the cost occasionally of some unhappy stevedore or labourer.

All day Tom stood amid grease and steam, bustle and blasphemy, checking off the cargo, and looking to its conveyance to the warehouses. At one o'clock there was a break of an hour for dinner, and then the work went on until six, when all hands struck and went off to their homes or to the public-house according to inclination. Tom and the mate, both fairly tired by their day's work, prepared to accept the captain's invitation, and to meet him up in his quarters. The mate dived down into his cabin, and soon reappeared with his face shining and his long hair combed into some sort of order.

"I've been performing my ablutions," he said, rolling out the last word with great emphasis and pomposity, for, like many Scotchmen, he had the greatest possible reverence for a sonorous polysyllable. Indeed, in McPherson, this national foible was pushed to excess, for, however inappropriate the word, he never hesitated to drag it into his conversation if he thought it would aid in the general effect.

"The captain," he continued, "has been far from salubrious this voyage.

He's aye complainin' o' his bodily infirmities."

"Hypochondriacal, perhaps," Tom remarked.

The Scotchman looked at his companion with a great accession of respect.

"My certie!" he cried. "That's the best I've heard since a word that Jimmy M'Gee, of the _Corisco_, said the voyage afore last. Would you kindly arteeculate it again."

"Hypochondriacal," said Tom laughing heartily.

"Hypo-chon-driacal," the mate repeated slowly. "I shouldn't think Jimmy M'Gee kens that, or he'd ha' communicated it to me. I shall certainly utilize it, and am obleeged to you for namin' it."

"Don't mention it," said Tom. "I'll let you have as many long words as you like, if you are a collector of them. But what is the matter with the captain?"

"It's aye the drink," the mate said gravely. "I can tak' my modic.u.m mysel' and enjoy it, but that's no the same as for a man to lock himself up in his cabin, and drink rum steady on from four bells in the mornin'

watch to eight bells in the evenin'. And then the cussin', and prayin', and swearin' as he sets up is just awfu'. It's what might weel be described as pandemoniacal."

"Is he often like that, then?" Tom asked.

"Often! Why, he's never anything else, sir. And yet he's a good seaman too, and however fu' he may be, he keeps some form o' reckoning, and never vera far oot either. He's an ambeequosity to me, sir, for if I took a t.i.the o' the amount I'd be clean daft."

"He must be dangerous when he is like that?" Tom remarked.

"He is that. He emptied a sax-shooter down the deck last bout he had, and nigh perforated the carpenter. Another time he scoots after the cook--chased him with a handspike in his hand right up the rigging to the cross-trees. If the cook hadn't slid down the backstay of the mast, he'd ha' been obeetuarised."

Tom could not refrain from laughing at the last expression. "That's a new word," he said.

"Ha!" his companion cried with great satisfaction, "it is, is it?

Then we are quits now on the hypochondriacal." He was so pleased that he chuckled to himself for some minutes in the depths of his tawny beard. "Yes," he continued at last, "he is dangerous to us at times, and he is dangerous to you. This is atween oorsels, as man to man, and is said withoot prejudice, but he do go on when he is in they fits aboot the firm, and aboot insurances, and rotten ships, and ither such things, which is all vera well when sequestrated amang gentlemen like oorsels, but sounds awfu' bad when it fa's on the ignorant tympanums of common seamen."

"It's scandalous," Tom said gravely, "that he should spread such reports about his employer. Our ships are old, and some of them, in my opinion, hardly safe, but that's a very different thing from implying, as you hint, that Mr. Girdlestone wishes them to go down."

"We'll no argue aboot that," said the canny Scot. "Muster Girdlestone kens on which side his bread is b.u.t.tered. He may wish 'em to sink or he may wish 'em to swim. That's no for us to judge. You'll hear him speak o't to-night as like as not, for he's aye on it when he's half over.

Here we are, sir. The corner edifice wi' the red blinds in the window."

During this conversation the two had been threading their way through the intricate and dirty lanes which lead up from the water side to the outskirts of Stepney. It was quite dark by the time that they reached a long thoroughfare, lined by numerous shops, with great gas flares outside them. Many of these belonged to dealers in marine stores, and the numerous suits of oil-skin, hung up for exhibition, swung to and fro in the uncertain light, like rows of attenuated pirates. At every corner was a great public-house with glittering windows, and a crowd of slatternly women and jersey-clad men elbowing each other at the door.

At the largest and most imposing of these gin-palaces the mate and Dimsdale now pulled up.

"Come in this way," said McPherson, who had evidently paid many a visit there before. Pushing open a swinging door, he made his way into the crowded bar, where the reek of bad spirits and the smell of squalid humanity seemed to Tom to be even more horrible than the effluvium of the grease-laden hold.

"Captain Miggs in?" asked McPherson of a rubicund, white-ap.r.o.ned personage behind the bar.

"Yes, sir. He's in his room, sir, and expectin' you. There's a gent with him, sir, but he told me to send you up. This way, sir."

They were pushing their way through the crowd to reach the door which led behind the bar, when Tom's attention was arrested by the conversation of a very seedy-looking individual who was leaning with his elbows upon the zinc-covered counter.

"You take my tip," he said to an elderly man beside him. "You stick to the beer. The sperits in here is clean poison, and it's a sin and a shame as they should be let sell such stuff to Christian men.

See here--see my sleeve!" He showed the threadbare cuff of his coat, which was corroded away in one part, as by a powerful acid. "I give ye my word I done that by wiping my lips wi' it two or three times after drinkin' at this bar. That was afore I found out that the whisky was solid vitriol. If thread and cotton can't stand it, how's the linin' of a poor cove's stomach, I'd like to know?"

"I wonder," thought Tom to himself, "if one of these poor devils goes home and murders his wife, who ought to be hung for it? Is it he, or that smug-faced villain behind the bar, who, for the sake of the gain of a few greasy coppers, gives him the poison that maddens him?" He was still pondering over this knotty point when they were ushered into the captain's room.

That worthy was leaning back in a rocking-chair with his feet perched upon the mantelpiece and a large gla.s.s of rum arid water within reach of his great leathery hand. Opposite him, in a similar chair and with a similar gla.s.s, was no less an individual than our old acquaintance, Von Baumser. As a mercantile clerk in the London office of a Hamburg firm the German was thrown into contact with the shippers of the African fleet, and had contracted a special alliance with the bibulous Miggs, who was a social soul in his hours of relaxation.

"Come in, my hearties, come in!" he cried huskily. "Take a seat, Mr.

Dimsdale. And you, Sandy, can't you bring yourself to your berth without being asked? You should know your moorings by this time.

This is my friend, Mr. Von Baumser from Eckermann's office."

"And dis, I think, is Mr. Dimsdale," said the German, shaking hands with Tom. "I have heard my very goot vriend, Major Clutterbuck, speak of your name, sir."

"Ah, the old major," Tom answered. "Of course, I remember him well."

"He is not so very old either," said Von Baumser, in a somewhat surly voice. "He has been took by a very charming and entirely pleasant woman, and they are about to be married before three months, the one to the other. Let me tell you, sir, I, who have lived with him so long, dat I have met no man for whom I have greater respect than for the major, however much they give him pills at a club or other such sn.o.bberies."

"Fill your gla.s.ses," Miggs broke in, pushing over the bottle of rum.

"There are weeds in that box--never paid duty, either the one or the other. By the Lord, Sandy, a couple of days ago we hardly hoped ever to be yarning here."

"It was rather beyond our prognostication, sir," said the mate, taking a pull at his rum.

"It was that! A nasty sea on, Mr. Dimsdale, sir, and the old ship so full o' water that she could not rise to it. They were making a clean breach over us, and we lost nigh everything we could lose."

"I suppose you'll have her thoroughly repaired now?" Tom remarked.

Both the skipper and the mate laughed heartily at the observation.

"That wouldn't do, Sandy, would it?" said Miggs, shaking his head.

"We couldn't afford to have our screw cut down like that."

"Cut down! You don't mean to say you are paid in proportion to the rottenness of the ships?"

"There ain't no use makin' a secret of it among friends," said Miggs.

"That's just how the land lies with us. A voyage or two back I spoke to Mr. Girdlestone, and I says to him, says I, 'Give the ship an overhauling,' says I. 'Well and good,' says he, 'but it will mean so much off your wage,' says he, 'and the mate's wage as well.' I put it to him straight and strong, but he stuck at that. So Sandy and me, we put our heads together, and we 'greed It was better to take fifteen pound and the risk, than come down to twelve pound and safety."

"It is scandalous!" cried Tom Dimsdale hotly. "I could not have believed it."

"G.o.d bless ye! it's done every day, and will be while there is insurance money to be gained," said Miggs, blowing a blue cloud up to the ceiling.