Tramping on Life Part 89

I complained to the captain of the bully--repeated how he had bellowed at me to tell the unmentionable skipper he would receive his b.u.mps b.l.o.o.d.y well, too, if the latter did not stick to his own part of the ship.

I saw fright in the captain's face....

"It's up to the chief engineer."

"Either that fellow goes off this ship or I do. You'll have to hire another third cook."

The boat was sailing in an hour.

I walked back for my few effects. But, on the way back, I took hold of myself and determined to stick by my guns. I made up my mind that I would not leave the boat, and that, at the first hostile move of the bully I would oppose him--besides, what had the fellow done, so far, besides chucking a bluff?

My opportunity to live up to my resolve came at mess for supper. There was a smoking platter of cabbage set before the boys.

"What the h.e.l.l! Who wants to eat b.l.o.o.d.y cabbage."

And s.n.a.t.c.hing up a handful of the dripping, greasy vegetable, he was about to fling it into the face of one of the men opposite, when, without giving myself a chance to hesitate, I stepped up quickly and grabbed the "bad man's" wrist. The cabbage went high and spattered all over the opposite wall.

The bully glared like an enraged bull at me.

"I'll--"

Quaking in my boots, I made my eyes glare level with his.

"Listen to me, bo," I bluffed, "I ain't much on guff, and I don't want specially to fight ... but I'm waiter in this mess room and you don't pull anything like this here, unless you do it over my dead body."

"That's just what I will do ... I'll--I'll--" and the chap, pale with what seemed insane rage, started to his feet.

"Ah, sit down!" I commanded, marvelling at my nerve, and pushing him violently by the shoulders back on the bench ... then, deliberately, I turned my back, and walked away, expecting any moment to have him on me like a clawing wild cat.

With seeming calm and nonchalance I made the kitchen. With a semblance of outward serenity I picked up a rag and returned to wipe off the wall.

I was vastly relieved to find that the bluff had worked.

The Canuck was finishing his meal in silence.

From that moment till the end of the voyage he was as quiet and Un.o.btrusive as anyone could wish him to be....

I have a curious habit of often waking up in the night from deep slumber, and breaking into laughter over some funny incident or other that has happened to me a long time ago ... I have chuckled over this incident many times ... if that bully only knew how terrorised he really had me!...

It is impossible to describe the Georgian Bay and the beauty of its thousands of islands ... as we steamed through them in the dawn, they loomed about us through sun-golden violet mists.... Here as small as the chine of some swimming animal, there large enough for a small forest of trees to grow upon them....

Another storm ... on Lake Huron ... a fair-sized one.

I was walking along the deck, just after dawn, the waves riding and running and shattering aboard. I carried the dinner bell, was ringing it for breakfast ... when the greatest wave I have ever seen on the Lakes came running, high-crested, toward the boat,--that seemed to know what was happening, for it rose to meet it, like a sentient being....

The wave smashed ... hit the galley and washed over the top of it, catching me in a cataract as I hugged close. I was driven hard against the taut cable wire that made our only railing. For a moment I thought the water reaching up from over-side as the vessel lurched would clutch me and suck me down.

A close and breathless call. A rending, splintering sound told me damage had been done. I looked toward the captain's cabin ... and laughed heartily, for all my discomfort and dangerous escape ... for the whole side of the cabin had been stove in,--and, terrified, his eyes sticking out, in his dirty underclothes the captain had been hurtled forth, his face still stupid from sleep though full of fear.

I rushed up to him. His drawers sagged pitiably with wet.

"A close shave, sir!" I remarked.

When I brought him his breakfast he was still trembling.

I left the package freighter _Overland_. It was almost time for the new school year. But Warriors' River lay in my way back to Laurel, and I determined to stop off and pay a visit to Baxter, at Barton's Health Home....

I was disappointed with my summer. In terms of poetic output. I had written only three or four poems dealing with life on the Lakes, and these were barely publishable in the _National Magazine._ I realise now that poetic material is not to be collected as a hunter goes gunning for game. It cannot be deliberately sought and found. It must just happen.

Yet all the things that I had seen and been through, I knew, would live in my mind till they were ready of themselves to get birth in words. I knew that I had not lost a single dawn nor one night of ample moon. And there drifted back into my remembrance that night when the Italian coal-pa.s.ser had come to my bunk and wakened me, that I might come forth with him and observe a certain wonderful cloud-effect about the full, just-risen moon, over Huron....

I had cursed at him, thought he was trying to make a monkey of me ...

for I had dropped on deck a letter to me from Lephil of the _National_, and so the crew had learned that I was a poet among them.

But I was not being spoofed ... actual tears of surprise and chagrin came into the coal-pa.s.ser's eyes. Then I had been ashamed of myself ...

"Of course I'll go on deck ... mighty fine of you to wake me!" I slid into my pants and went up the ladder--

To envisage, rapturous, a great, flaming globe of shadowy silver ... and across it, in a single straight ebony bar, one band of jet-black cloud ... and the water, from us to the apparition of beauty, danced, dappled, with an ecstasy of quivering silver....

I have met many a man in my wanderings, simple and silent, who felt beauty like a poet or an artist, without the poet's or artist's gifts of expression,--with, on the contrary, a queer shame that he was so moved, a suspicion that, somehow, it was not manly to be moved by a sunrise or sunset.

I found Penton Baxter, his wife Hildreth, and their child, Dan, living in two tents, among a grove of trees, near the main building of the Health Home. These two tents had, of course, board floors, and there was a woman who kept them in condition ... and there was a rack for towels, and hot water was supplied by pipes from a nearby building. I think the tents were even wired for electric light.

Baxter welcomed me. But I took a room for a week in town, though he urged me to stay with him. But when I had the means I liked better to be independent. I calculated living a week in Warriors' River for ten or twelve dollars. That would leave me thirty dollars over, from what I had earned while working on the _Overland_.

Then, back to the university for my last year of leisurely study and reading, in the face of the desolate poverty that would have defeated many another man, but to which I was used as a customary condition.

After that--Paris or London, or both! Kansas was growing too small for me.

I have mentioned that Baxter had a head too large for his body. Daniel, his son, slight and frail and barely eight years of age, possessed the same characteristic....

I footed it out to Baxter's tents, faithfully as to a shrine, each afternoon. The mornings he and I both occupied in writing. He, on a novel which was the story of the love-life of his wife and himself, and of his literary struggles, called _Love's Forthfaring_; I, on my abortive songs of the Great Lakes that all came forth still-born ...

because I was yet under the vicious literary influence of the _National Magazine_, and was writing my verse, trying to be inspired by the concepts of middle-cla.s.s morality ... or what was even worse, I was attempting to glorify the under-dog; who, if he were the demiG.o.d Socialists portray him, would by no means remain the under-dog.