a long and eloquent silence. Then he turned to me. "This beats all," he
said. "Come and have a drop of gin, old dear." He led the way to his
berth, which smelt of varnish and of lamp, and we swayed in chorus as
the ship rolled, and had a heartening mourn together. But for its
accidental compensations travel would not be worth the trouble. In proof
of that there is the entry in my diary some days after:
"December 22. Awoke at four a.m. with the ship rolling as brutally as
ever. A great noise of waters and things banging. The seas huge at
sunrise, when the light came over their tops. Depressing sight. The sky
was blue at first, but was soon overcast with squalls. The horizon ahead
gets slate coloured, and low clouds underneath, like ragged bales of
dirty wool, come towards us heavy and fast. Then the squall and waves
rush down on us express, and the ship buries herself. Constantly hearing
engine-room bell sounded from bridge to slacken speed as a big sea
appears. The captain popped in his head as I was deciding whether to get
up or stay where I was. He gazed sternly at me and said he was looking
for Jonah. I half believe he means it too. Everybody is weary of this.
The men have been in oilskins since the start.
"Noon to-day, Lat. 42.6 N. Long. 11.10 W. Miles by engines since noon
yesterday 222. Knots by revolutions 9.2. But the slip is 49.2 per cent.
So actual distance 112 miles only, and knots 4.6. Bad going. Wind
southly. Engines racing and engineer still at throttle.
"Night, and a full moon tearing past cloud openings. The ship
occasionally shows like a pale ghost, the black shadows of the funnel
guys and stanchions oscillating on the white paint-work as she rolls. I
went into Chief's cabin, and from its open door--for it was sensibly
milder--looked out astern over the way we had come. Up and down, this
side and that, went the steamer, and the Great Bear, in a wind clear
patch of sky, was dancing on our wake. Polaris was making eccentric
orbits round the main masthead light. Then the Skipper came in. He sat
gazing astern. The look of his face was enough. It was quite plain he
would like to be offended to-night, and attack anybody about anything.
Presently he started intently as he looked astern, and jumped from his
seat crying the ultimate anathema on the chap at the wheel; and ran out.
The Chief glanced astern and laughed. 'The old man comes in here because
it's uncommon handy for watching the wake. Look at it. Somebody on the
bridge writing letters on the ocean. Thinking of his sweetheart, and her
name is Sue.' We gave the Skipper's voice time to reach the wheelhouse,
and then saw the wake visibly tauten out.
"I went aft, balancing like a man learning the tight rope, along the
trestle bridge. The moon was still falling precipitously through the
broken sky, and areas of the great seas, where the sweeping searchlight
of the moon showed monsters shaping and slowly vanishing, were
frightful. There were sudden expansions of vivid green lightnings in the
north and east. I found the Doctor in the chief mate's cabin. I sang
some songs in a riving minor, accompanied by the mate on an accordion,
for the doctor's amusement, and discovered why sailors always use the
accordion, previously a mystery to me. It has a sad and reflective note,
suited to men with memories when alone on the ocean. It ought to fit
Celtic bards better than the harp. It has a fine expiring moan. The mate
gave an imitation of a dying man with it.
"To bed at 11. Tried to read Henry James. My cockroach came out to wave
his derisive hands at me. No wonder. The light was very bad, and I was
pitched from side to side of the bunk. Nearly thrown out once. I might
just as well have attempted to read the Bhagavad-Gita in the original.
So I read the last letters from home instead and then fell asleep as a
little child."
* * * * *
There was something of leisure in her movements next morning. I felt
sure the glass must be rising at last. The air felt lighter and more
expansive. A peep through the port showed me the ceiling had gone up
considerably in the night. There was little wind, for the waves, though
as great as ever, had lost their white ridges. Their summits were
rounded and smooth. We were running south out of it, though the residue
of the dreary northern seas was still washing about the decks. It was
December yesterday, but April to-day. The engineers' messroom boy, with
bare fat arms, went by the cabin, singing.
At breakfast we heard that Chips, who had retired to his bunk for some
days past to mend a leg damaged when the hatches were in danger, had met
with a still more serious misfortune. We fell into a mood of silent and
respectful compassion. There was nothing to be said. Chips had lost his
Victoria Cross. He was an old hero in trouble. The few of us who were
British there--true, most of us were Germans, Dutchmen, Scandinavians,
and Portuguese--felt we represented The Country. Chips limped about the
forecastle with reproach in his face, and we felt we were petty in
noticing his face was also dirty, though it certainly was difficult to
avoid seeing that too, perhaps because, and this can be said for us, the
dirt was of longer standing than the reproach. Then again it is common
knowledge that Chips sleeps in straw, having no mattress.
Chips' story we knew. It had been whispered about the ship. He was at
the Siege of Alexandria, and a shell fell near a group of men on his
ship. Chips picked it up and dropped it overboard before the fuse was
finished. The Doctor and I felt especially responsible, for a reason I
cannot easily explain, it is so vague, and we told Chips we would help
him in his search for his lost treasure. This took us to Chips'
sea-chest, and amid a group of mask-like faces--for how could foreigners
guess what this mattered to us?--we hunted carefully for Chips his
aureole. We found--but I suppose even Victoria Cross heroes must dirty
their socks. There were other things also. Yet it was out of one of
these very other things, which were, I think, shirts, that there
dropped, when the Doctor picked up the garment, a little package wrapped
in newspaper. Chips, from his berth, gave a cry of joy. The Doctor and
I, smiling too, looked upon the old man feeling that we had acted for
you all. Chips, secretive with his sacrosanct emblem, was putting the
little packet under his coverlet, when a low foreign sailor snatched it
from him. The Cross fell to the deck. I recovered it from the feet
instantly in a white passion, and chanced to look at it. It confirmed
that one, who is named Chips here, was something in the Royal and
Ancient Order of Buffaloes.
Coming back from the fo'castle, suddenly I felt as the man of the
suburbs does when, bowed with months of black winter and work in a city
alley, he is, without any warning, transfigured on his own doorstep one
morning. There as before is his familiar shrub, dripping with rain. Yet
is it as before? It points a black finger at him. But the finger has a
polished green nail.
He is translated. His ears are opened, and there comes for the first
time that year the silver whistle of the starlings. A touch of South is
in the air. His burden falls.
The cloudy sky was not grey now, but pearly, for it was translucent to
the sun. More than day had come; life was born. There was ichor in the
day. They were not dark northern waves that baffled us, but we were
shoved and rocked by the send of a long nacreous ocean swell, firm but
kind, from the south-west. The iron ship which had been repulsive to the
touch, for its face had been glassy and cold, was now drying a warm rust
red, like earth of Devon in spring, and was responsive. You could rest
against its iron body and feel yourself grow. I saw the Chief outside
his cabin in his shirt sleeves, gazing overseas between the stanchions
of the boat deck, smoking in the evident luxury of full comfort and
release. Involuntarily, he danced the two-step as she rolled. "Got
anything to read?" he asked.
Now that reminded me. We have no library, of course, but we have a
circulation of books on board. There are no common shelves; but the book
you left thoughtlessly on the skylight five minutes ago, while you went
to find some matches, is gone when you return. And you, if you see a
book lying open and unprotected in a cabin, glance round warily, dash
in, and take it; very often only to discover to your bitter
disappointment that it is one of your own, and not an adventurous and
unread stranger. The Chief's question reminded me that the day we left
Swansea a lady (and a friend of poor Jack, the public is well aware)
sent us a bale of literature. We blessed her when we saw its bulk,
looking at it as oxen might look at a truss of hay, for that was its
size and shape. Though it proved to be shavings and a cruel blow to the
animals, as you shall hear.
Here was the very day to get at that bale, and impatiently I rolled it
into the open. It was trussed with great care, so I tore away a corner
of the wrappings, dived in a hand, and hauled out a copy of "Joy Bells
for Young Christians," the November number of 1899.
Well. Anyhow, it was a clean copy, and I put it by as the portion of our
bald-headed German steward.
This disappointment made me pause, though. Here was going to be a long
job for the Purser, sorting out this. Supposing there was anything
nutritious in the bale I did not mind the labour of the unpacking and
the distribution; but if the bulk of the consignment was hailed, so to
speak, by "Joy Bells," then it would be better to call a deck hand and
get the package overside before the ship was littered with too much of
this joy. A Brazilian stoker, as he passed, saw me standing in thought,
and I suppose imagined--for he could not ask--that I wanted to cut the
string, but had no knife. Before I could stop him, he, smiling a knowing
and friendly smile, whipped out a blade from his rear; and at once we
stood ankle-deep in literature. There was a landslide near me of Infant
Methodists (dates unknown) and I gave the Brazilian an armful for his
kindness.
Our dear unknown friend at Swansea, with her eye on our sailor-like but
yet immortal souls, had heard, no doubt, at the annual meeting of the
Society for the Succor of Seamen, at Caxton Hall, Westminster (held on
the 29th of every February), what simple and barbarous and yet, in the
main, considering our origins and circumstances, what worthy fellows we
were. But she was not told at the meeting that the wealthy shipowners,
subscribers to the society, and whose presence there made Caxton Hall
seem nautical, have a way of signing on crews at continental ports
because wages rule lower there; and that consequently not one of our men
was moved by Christian English, but only by mates English, and then not
so very quickly. The officers and engineers were English, and there the
sailors' friend was right in her surmise; but I do not see how she could
have done more to put in awful jeopardy the soul of our wise and
spectacled chief engineer, for instance, than by approaching him with a
winning and philanthropic smile, under the impulse to do him good with a
statement of her religion in words of one syllable. He would have met
her politely, I know; but after she had gone----
Let her try to imagine her own feelings if our Chief, uninvited and
blankly unmindful, invaded the exclusive inner circle of Swansea
society, and approached her in the midst of her own with the childish
notion of instructing her in the first principles of his pronounced
Pyrrhonism; or say he went to her as a colporteur of the Society for
Instructing the Intelligence and Manners of Leisured Folk. But I must
say for our chief that this cannot be even supposed. He would never
offer the lowliest being such an indignity.
We pulled and dragged at the escaped mass of periodicals, looking for
something good, but found no pearls had been cast before us. There were
parish magazines and temperance monthlies, there were religious almanacs
for the years we have lost; by some sporting chance there were even a
few back numbers of the "Monumental Mason." It is plain the latter could
be considered an added grievance, even though they were put in as a
kindly reminder of our narrow lease here. It was an aggravation of the
original offence to sailors who, when their short term here closes, have
to make shift with some firebars at their heels. What is Aberdeen
granite and indelible gold lettering to such men but a hint of the
hardships which follow them even beyond the end?
So overboard went the lot--I may as well tell the whole truth, overboard
also went the evangelical hymn books, new though they were. I will only
suppress the advice cried to the gulls astern as the literature went
floating and flying in their direction. We had to rely for our reading
on what had been brought aboard by our crowd, a collection which
gradually revealed itself in single books and magazines.
There was, for example, the "Morphology of the Cryptogamia," an
exhaustive work which gave me much pleasure in wondering how it got
aboard at all. The chief mate used it as a wedge between his open door
and the bulkhead, to prevent the miserable knocking as the ship lolled
about. He would not lend me that book, because it jammed into the
opening nicely; but I borrowed from him "Three Fingered Jack, the Terror
of the Antilles," and I made him a complete gift in return of "Robert
Elsmere" which I found marooned on a bunker hatch as I came along. There
you see the delightful chance and hazardous character of our literature.
I prided myself on the select reading I had brought aboard with me. But
what devilish black art the sea air worked on those choice volumes,
however, I cannot explain. I have no means of knowing. But there they
are, their covers bitten by cockroaches, and the words inside bleached
and sterilised of all meaning. There they will stop; Henry James, too.
For what is the use of him when big seas are running? He would be a
magician indeed who could capture our minds then. You get the right
amplitude of leisure and the flat undistracting circumstances he
demands, the emptiness and the immobility necessary, when you are
waiting for cargo long in coming at a low seaboard. I suppose we want
the representation of life only when we are not very much alive. In
heavy weather there is no doubt old newspapers make the best reading,
especially if they have good bold advertisements. For I know it requires
the same courage and concentration needed ashore for reading Another
Great Speech by the Premier; indeed, the steel blue quality of deadly
resolution used only by men of letters who write biographies and spin
literary causeries, to manage even novels when great billows are moving.
The mind is inclined to absent itself then. Then it is you put all
reading aside with a promise of a long and leisurely festival of books
when the ship is steaming uniformly down the unvarying "trades."
But when you get near the neighbourhood of the constant sun, during the
day you fall asleep over "Three Fingered Jack" and the old magazines
which you had on your knees while musing on the colours of the sea and
the mounting architecture of the clouds; and beyond sundown listen to
the mate's accordion or the engineer's flute. Perhaps, moved by the
hu-s-s-h of the waves, the silky and purple dark, and the loneliness of
your little company under the mid-ocean stars, tentatively (though your
shipmates are very forgiving) lift a ballad yourself; for something is
expected of you, and singing seems right.
Of all the books aboard the "Capella" I got most out of the Skipper's
sailing directories and his charts. Talk of romance! There was that
chart-room under the bridge, across its open doors on either side
creaming waves going by in the moonlight, and the steamer inclining each
side alternately, and the shadows of the rigging sliding back and forth
on the pale deck. You cannot know what romance is till you are in seas
you have never sailed before, where the marks will be few when landfall
comes; that ocean where the Skipper is to find his own way by his lore
of the sea, and may even ask your opinion about alternatives; and there
read sailing directories. The romance of these books cannot be
translated or quoted. It would leave them, as though a glimmer went out,
if you attempted to take them from that chart-room where pendant things
are swaying leisurely, where you can hear the bells tell the watches,
and the skipper's gold-laced cap is on the mahogany table. The South
Atlantic Sailing Directions, our own guide, is fine, especially when it
gets down to the uninhabited islands in far southern latitudes. I do not
think this noble volume is included in the best hundred books, but I
know it can release the mind from the body.
But what's this talk of landfalls? as the old man would say. There will
be no landfall yet for us; and this is Christmas Eve. I knew it was an
auspicious occasion of some kind, for the steward just went aft with two
big plum cakes cuddled in his apron. That made me look at the calendar.
We are now 800 miles out, and the steamer has reached six knots. This
was the best night we had yet found. The steamer was on an even keel,
with but occasional spasms of sharp rolling, for there was no sea, but
only old ocean breathing deeply and regularly in its sleep, and
sometimes making a slight movement. The light of the full moon was the
shining ghost of noon. The steamer was distinct but immaterial,
saliently accentuated, as a phantom. A deep shadow would have detached
the forecastle head but for a length of luminous bulwark which still
held it, and some quiet voices of men who were within the shadow,
yarning. The line of bulwark and the murmuring voices held us together.
The prow as it dipped sank into drifts of lambent snow. The snow fled by
the steamer's sides, melting and musical. Two engineers off duty leaned
on the rails amidships, smoking, looking into the vacancy in which the
moonlight laid a floor of troubled silver. As if drawn by its light a
few little clouds were poised near the moon, grouped round the bright
heart of the night. There was the moon and its small company of clouds,
and ourselves below in our own defined allotment of sea. The only thing
outside and far was Sirius, burning independently in the east, looking
unwinking through the wall of night into our world.
On such a night and with Christmas morning but sixty minutes away it
would have been wasting life to go to bed. I glanced expectantly at the
door of the Chief's cabin, and saw indeed it was open, a yellow
rectangle within which was the profile of the Chief beneath his lamp,
talking to somebody. The Doctor was there, and he made room for me on
the settee. Then the captain joined us, and I perched myself on the
washstand.
"Well, we can undress to-night when we turn in," said the Chief. (None
of us had, so far.) In a long silence which filled the cabin with
tobacco smoke I could hear the engines below uplifted in confident song.
"Now they're walking round," said the Skipper, nodding his head. "Now
she feels it."
* * * * *
When we met thus, between the hours of nine and midnight, as was our
irregular habit, the talk first was always desultory, and about our own
ship and our own circumstances, for the concerns of our little world
strangely occupied our minds, as you would think, and the large affairs
of that great world we had left, of which we heard now no sound nor
rumour, had lessened in the mind, faded and vanished, all the huge
consequence and loud clangour of it, so that now there was an empty
horizon astern, and nothing between us and that void but a few gulls,
like small and pursuing recollections. Our little microcosm, afloat and
sundered in the wastes, was occupied in its own polity. We talked of the
carpenter's bad leg; complained of the cook's bread; heard that Tinker
the dog, being young, had the habit at night, while honest folk slept,
of eating the saloon mats; grumbled that the ship's tobacco was mouldy.
The deck was getting dry, the Skipper said, and now we could get the men
chipping it, and then it could be tarred.
"That donkeyman," said the Skipper, "that man wastes the fresh water.
I'll have a lock put on the pump handle. He works it as if we were laid
out to the main. I spoke to him about it this morning." The fresh water
is a vital affair with us. We may not drink the water of the country to
which we are bound, so eighty tons of Welsh mountain spring is in our
cleansed and whitewashed tanks. Woe to the man caught overflowing his
can, if an officer sees him. "The handle can't be locked," said the
Chief, "because it's next to the galley. The cook wants it all day
long."
"Well, let me catch anyone wasting it. We'd look all right with a lot of
dysentery, drinking that river water out there."
This common meeting-place of ours, the Chief's cabin, is on a highway of
the ship, being on the direct route from the poop to the bridge, and so
it is a hostel, for the Chief is a kindly and popular man, big and
robust in body and mind; though he has a knack, at odd and unexpected
times, of being candid in a way that shocks, treading on corns without
ruth, the Skipper's particularly, when their two departments are at a
difference.
This cabin was one which I always visited first, for, especially in the
morning when other folk had not rubbed the night out of their eyes, and
so looked darkly upon their fellows, my friend the Chief had the early
eye of a child and the soaring spirit of the lark. I never met him when
he had got out of bed on the wrong side. His cabin became a refuge to
me, for, unlike the Doctor's and my own place (we both were birds of
passage, therefore our cabins were cold and stark), the Chief's was
comfortable with settled furniture, cosy and habitable, like a fixed
home. There was a wicker chair, with cushions, and a writing-desk where
the engineer's log lay handy and bearing some plug tobacco, freshly cut,
on its cover, and a pipe rack above the desk carrying a most foul
assortment waiting their turns again for favour. Portraits of the
Chief's family were on the walls, smiling boys and girls, with their
mother in a chief place, looking upon daddy by proxy. There was a
bookshelf bearing some engineering manuals, a few novels and magazines,
a tape measure, some gauge glasses, some tin whistles, a flute, and a
palm leaf fan. Above the washstand was a rack with glasses and a carafe.
A settee ran along one side, and his bunk upon the other side. There we
sat on Christmas Eve, while the wicker chair bent and complained with
the Skipper's weight as he swayed to the leisurely rocking of the ship.
The tobacco smoke floated in coils and blue smears in the room. A bottle
of Hollands rested for security on the bed, and we held our glasses on
our knees.
The pallid and puffy face of the steward, a very honest man secretly
free with his small store of apples on my account because I am green and
my palate not yet used to the flatness of tinned provisions, looked in
on us from the right. "Vhere is der dog, sir? I haf not seen der dog."
"Must be about," we cried. "We had seen him," we said, "nosing about the
poop for rats, or asleep on the saloon mat, or padding round the casing
looking for friends." "But no, I haf looked. He is not found. Vhere is
der dog?" A hole in our little community, it was apparent from our
intent looks, could not be thought of with equanimity. Tinker's
importance became quite large. The second engineer passed the door,
caught the drift of our anxious converse, and turned to say the dog was
then asleep in his room. "Ach! zat is all right." We struck matches for
our pipes again.
"That dog, I shouldn't like to lose him," said the Skipper, stroking his
beard. "There's no luck in that. I shot a dog once on a ship; and first
we ran into a blow and lost a lot of gear, and then the mate got his
hand smashed, and then everything got cross-grained till I'd have paid,
ah, fifty pounds to have had the brute back again, and an ugly customer
he was. Ah, you can smile, Doctor, but there it is. I'm not
superstitious and never was. But you can't tell me. Look at the things
that happen. When I was a youngster, my ship was off Rio, and I dreamt
my father was dead. I took my bearings and the time. I dreamt my father
died in a red brick house with a laylock tree by the door and that tree
was in blossom plain enough to smell. I didn't know the house. There was
a path of clean red bricks leading up to the porch, through a garden. I
didn't see my father. But you know what dreams are like--no sense in
them--there the house was and not a soul in sight. I knew he was dying
inside it."
"How do you account for that? Have you got it down in your books? I lay
you haven't. I forgot all about that dream. Long after I was at Cape
Town and met my brother. That reminded me. After a bit I said to him,
'Father's dead.' 'Yes,' he said, 'but how did you know?' Said I, 'Was
the house like this?' and I told him. 'Yes,' he said, 'it was like that.
A place he was staying at in Essex. But how did you know?' I didn't tell
him. What's the good? He wouldn't have believed it. People don't."
All through the anxious time when we were being soused and buffeted I
noticed how our company, every man of them, even the Pyrrhonist, saw
omens in all the chance variety of the vast menace under the frown of
which we huddled in our iron box; porpoises alongside; one of Mother
Cary's dark brood accompanying us, glancing about the vagaries of the
flowing hills with swift precision; the form of a cloud; a loom far out,
as though day were there at least. The fall of a portrait in the Chief's
room once set him wondering and melancholy. Again, when the dog whined
and moped, the Skipper eyed the animal narrowly, as though the creature
had prescience but could tell us what it knew only by drooping and
quivering its hind quarters. You might have thought that Fate, dumb and
cruel, but a little relenting for something inevitably to come to our
mishap, were trying to stretch a point, and so induced the Skipper to
put his shirt on inside out one morning, after dreaming he saw drowned
rats, in case the horse were not too blind to see both the nod and the
wink.
The Sphinx makes subtle dumb motions, as it were, when closely regarded.
I do not wonder if it does. Sometimes in those dark days I thought I got
a hint or two. I cannot tell you what they were. The weather grew
brighter afterwards and I forgot them. From our narrow and weltering
security, where the wind searched through us like the judgment eye, I
know, looking out upon the wilderness in turmoil where was no help, and
no witness of our undoing, where the gleams were fleeting as though the
very day were riven and tumbling, that I saw the filmy shapes of those
things which darken the minds of primitives. While the sky is changeful,
and there are storms at sea when our fellows are absent, and mischance
and death are veiled but here, we shall have gods and ghosts. The
sharp-sighted collectors of old brain-lumber and such curios may still
keep busy, and tie up their dry bundles of mythology and religions; but
I myself could make plenty more.
So it was my shipmates' yarns were most of the dire kind, with some dim
warning precedent. I do not recall a story that was gay, except those of
the wanton sort. They were of close calls and of women, as, I suppose,
have been those of all hard livers, from the cave men on.
Eight bells were rung on the bridge, and, like a faint echo in a higher
pitch, answered from the fo'castle. Christmas morning! By my pocket
compass we toasted the folk at home. We had heard a good many stories of
wreck this night, and the Chief was now at his contribution to the
unseasonable memories. ("I've had enough of it. Here goes," said the
Doctor; and he went.) "Don't leave us. It lets in the draught. Well, the
compliments to you. This typhoon--I had had four others--but this one
made me think it was good-bye. She was a small steamer, that 'Samuel
Plimsoll,' and old, but well-behaved. But her light nearly went out in
that blow. It was that dark you could find nothing but the noise, and we
were just the same as a chunk of wood under a waterfall, because the
Lord knows how many feet of water were in the engine-room, for she was
rolling so. Her fires were out. She had a list of 22 degrees to port.
She simply lay in it, and it went over her. Every time she rolled over
on the deep side, thinks I, this is the last of her. All this, mind you,
went on for two days, and the skipper was in the chart-room, waiting.
I've found that when the danger is not much you get excited, but when
there seems no chance you get cool and cunning and try to make one. One
time I thought she seemed easier, and I was able to get the donkey
engine going. I felt better as soon as I heard the steam, even though it
was only in the donkey. Thinks I, there's power, and it's mine--a canful
of steam to a typhoon. It was a chance to laugh at. Then I took the
other engineers with me and we went below. The water there, full of
cinders and trash, pouring through the gear as she turned from side to
side, made it look a pretty poor show. You see, the donkey wouldn't work
the pumps, for the coal and muck were sucked in. So I took a basket and
got into the tank, holding the basket under the pump. The water was up
to my neck, and every time she rolled I was ducked. But the dodge
worked, and that list of hers to port was a bit of luck in its way, for
it helped us to get the starboard boiler going. When I saw the throws
moving, and the wash angry when it splashed on the hot metal, I said,
'So much for your old typhoon.' We were not counted out then. We crawled
under the lee of an island, and lay for four days repairing her. The
funny thing was when we got to Hong Kong the papers were full of our
loss. '"Samuel Plimsoll" lost with all hands.' It was funny to see a
bill like that. I met the placard as it came running round a corner, and
it made me stand and shuffle my feet on the ground to see if the earth
was all right. I knew the editor of that paper, and I was then going up
to give him something good. And here he was making money out of us like
that. He stood at the door of his office and saw me coming. I went up
laughing, waving his paper in my hand. He looked quite surprised. His
mouth was wide open. 'You're a nice sort of chap,' I said."
* * * * *
Christmas Day. In case it has become necessary for me to show again the
symbols of verity, as this is a book of travel, here they are: "Lat.
37.2 N., long. 14.14 W. Light wind and moderate swell from S.W. Vessel
rolling heavily at intervals. 961 miles out. Miles by engines 226.
Actual distance travelled (because of the swell on our starboard bow)
197 miles." I cannot see that these particulars do more than help me out
with the book, but as they have been considered essential in narratives
of voyaging, here they are, and much good may they do anybody. Thoreau,
in one of his quaintly superior moods when speaking of travel, said, "It
is not worth while going round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar."
In nearly every book of travel this is proved to be true. They show it
was not worth the while, seeing it was either to shoot cats or to count
degrees of latitude. (As for me, I have no reason whatever for being at
sea.) Consider Arctic travel. I have read long rows of books on that,
but recall few emotional moments. The finest passage in any book of
Arctic travel is in Warburton Pikes' "Barren Grounds," where he quotes
what the Indian said to the missionary who had been speaking of heaven.
The Indian asked, "And is it like the land of the Musk-ox in summer,
when the mist is on the lakes, and the loon cries very often?"
You feel at once that the country the Indian saw around him would be
easily missed by us, even when in the midst of it. For taking the
bearings of such a land, the sextant, and the miles already travelled,
would not be factors to help much. Now the Indian knew nothing of
artificial horizons and the aids to discovering where they are which
strangers use. But in summer the mists of his lakes were but the vapour
of his musings, the penumbra of the unfathomed deeps of his mind whereon
he paddled his own canoe; and when the wild-fowl called, it was his
memory heard; it was his thought become vocal then while he dreamed on.
I myself learned that the treasures found in travel, the chance rewards
of travel which make it worth while, cannot be accounted beforehand, and
seldom are matters a listener would care to hear about afterwards; for
they have no substance. They are no matter. They are untranslatable from
their time and place; and like the man who unwittingly lies down to
sleep on the tumulus where the little people dance on midsummer night,
and dreams that in the place where man has never been his pockets were
filled with fairy gold, waking to find pebbles there instead, so the
traveller cannot prove the dreams he had, showing us only pebbles when
he tries. Such fair things cannot be taken from the magic moment. They
are but filmy, high in the ceiling of your thoughts then, rosy and
sunlit by the chance of the light, transitory, melting as you watch. You
come down to your lead again. These occasions are not on your itinerary.
They are like the Indian's lakes in summer. They have no names. They
cannot be found on the best maps. Not you nor any other will ever
discover them again. Nor do they fill the hunger which sent you
travelling; they are not provender for notebooks. They do not come to
accord with your mood, but they come unaware to compel, and it is your
own adverse and darkling atoms that are changed, at once dancing in
accord with the rare incidence of that unreasonable and transcendent
moment of your world, the rhythm of which you feel, as you would the
beat of drums.
And what are these things?--but how can we tell? A strip of coral beach,
as once I saw it, which was as all other coral beaches; but the ship
passed close in, and by favour of the hour and the sun this strand did
not glare, but was resplendent, and the colours of the sea, green, gold,
and purple, were not its common virtues, but the emotional and passing
attar of those hues. There was the long, slow labouring of our burdened
tramp in the Atlantic storm. Or one April, and a wild cherry-tree in
blossom by an English hedge, a white cloud tinctured with rose, and in
it moving a dozen tropical chaffinches; the petals were on the grass.
And now, this is Christmas morning. I am in the Chief's bunk, and he
still sleeps on the settee. We fell asleep where we lay yarning on our
backs after midnight. I wake at the right moment, opening my eyes with
the serene and secure conviction that things are very well. The slow
rocking of the ship is perfect rest. There is no sound but the faint
tap-tap of something loose on the desk and responding to the ship's
movements. The cabin is strangely illuminated to its deepest corner by
an extraordinary light, as though the intense glow of a rare dawn had
penetrated even our ironwork. On the white top of the cabin a bright
moon quivers about, the shine from live waters sent up through the round
of our port. When we lean over, the port shows first the roof of the
alleyway dappled with bright reflections; then a circle of sky, which
the horizon soon halves; and then the dazzling white and blue of the
near waves; we reverse.
This is life. This is what I have come for. I do not repose merely in a
bunk. I am prone and easy in the deepest assurance of good. This
conviction has penetrated even the unconsciousness of the Chief; he
snores in profound luxury. If in a ship you are brought sometimes too
cruelly close to the scrutiny of the terms of your narrow tenure,
expecting momentarily to see the document torn across by invisible
fingers, yet nowhere else do you feel those terms to be so suddenly
expanded in the sun. And nowhere else is got such release, secure and
absolute, from the nudging of insistent trifles. There is nothing
between your eyes and the confines of your own place. Empty day is all
round. In the entire circle there is not the farthest impertinent
interruption--through all the degrees there is not one fool standing in
the light; and you yourself are on nobody's horizon. No history stains
that place. There is not a black doubt anywhere. It is the first day
again, and no need yet for a rubbish heap.
Yet when, singing to myself, I went outside to matins, I found Sandy our
third engineer with the toothache. So much of truth is got from being a
gymnosophist and regarding your own toes with aloof abstraction on a
sunny Christmas morning. I became Sandy's courage for him instead, took
his arm firmly, and led him aft to the doctor. We would start a rubbish
heap for a pristine world with a decayed tooth. Something to be going on
with.
Seeing we were almost off Madeira we had some amount of right to the
July sun under which we had run. For the first time since the Mumbles
our decks were quite dry, and cherry red with rust. There were
glittering crusts of salt in odd places. At eight bells (midday) the
captain ordered a general holiday, except for the routine duties; and
the donkeyman appeared to startle us as the apparition of a stranger on
the ship, for he had a clean face, though his eyes still were dark and
spectral, and he wore a suit of new dungarees, stiff and creased from a
paper parcel, but just opened, out of a Swansea slop shop. His mates
were some seconds realising him. Then they made derisive signs, and the
boldest some ribald cries. I thought their resentment was really aroused
by Donkey's new shirt; it was that touch which pushed matters too far,
and made him unfriendly. He saw this himself. Soon he changed the new
shirt for one that had been rendered neutral in the stoke-hold and the
bucket.
There was something neutral, like Donkey's old shirt, about most of our
crowd. Each one of the mob which gathered with mess kits a little before
midday about the galley door seemed reduced, was faded in a noticeable
measure from the sharp and strong pattern of a man. Their conversation
about the galley was always in subdued mutterings, not direct, but out
of the mouth corners, sideways. Their only independence was in the
negligence of their attitudes. They might have been keeping in mind an
austere and invisible presence, whose swift words from nowhere might at
any time cleave their soft babble. If I made to pass through them the
babble ceased, and from limp poses they sprang upright in the narrow way
to let me pass, their eyes cast down. A man who had not seen me coming,
but still sprawled on the rail, talking quietly, would be nudged by his
neighbour. It struck me this attitude would change when they knew us
better; but it never did. These deckhands and firemen were mostly
youngsters, steadied by a few older hands. Chips and Donkey were the
veterans. In that crowd the boatswain was the admirable figure. He was a
young Britisher, tall, upright, and weighty, with a smiling, respectful
eye in which sometimes, I thought, there was a faint hint of mockery. He
had an easy balance and confidence in his movements which made him worth
watching when about his business. Clean shaven when he came aboard, he
now had a tawny beard which caught gold lights, and it was singularly
good on his weather-darkened face. He seldom wore a cap, for it could
have added little protection to the taut vigour of his hair, and would
have spoilt, as perhaps he himself guessed, that proper flourish and
climax to the poise of his head.
Donkey was an Irishman, and he was the huge frame of what, maybe thirty
years before, had been a powerful man. This morning his big cadaverous
face, white only on the bony ridges surrounding the depressions of the
temples, the cheeks, and the dark pits of the eyes, and with the shadowy
hollow of the mouth which gaped through the weight of the massive jaw,
would have resembled, from a little distance, that of a skeleton head of
one of the monsters in a geological gallery, but for the dewlap
sustained by sinews running from his chin down his throat. Donkey was a
silent man, and never caught your glance as you passed him, but lumbered
along with so much of the surprising celerity of a gaunt elephant that
you thought you might hear the rasp of his loose clothes. He was a
simple and docile fellow. I never heard him speak, but he used to come
to the Chief, fill the door with his massive front, his small eyes which
expressed nothing and were but sparks of life, looking nowhere in
particular, and make guttural sounds; and the Chief, being used to him,
understood. At sea Donkey did his small duties like a plain but
cumbersome mechanism that had somewhere in it an obscure point of
rationality. When ashore, though, he was said to go mad, and to roll
trampling and trumpeting through the squalid littoral of the world;
being brought aboard afterwards an enormity of lax bones and flesh, with
the cogitating glim in his bulk quite doused.
Of the others, there was a Teutonic bunch of lads, deckhands, which I
never succeeded in segregating, they looked so much alike. They had
pimpled, idle faces, and neutral eyes, cast down when they sidled by
one, thin down on their chins, and grimy raiment which, by the look of
it, was an integument never cast after we left port. One name would have
covered that lot, and frequently I heard the mates use it. But Olsen,
the Norwegian with a blond moustache which covered his mouth like a
fog-protector, and stern blue eyes, was a sailor. The firemen made a
better bunch. There was among them a swarthy Brazilian, whose constant
smile seemed ever on the point of breaking into song, but that he was
always chewing the end of a sweat rag he wore twisted round his neck.
The happy feature of our firemen was a Dutchman, whose hollow face was
full of silent woe and endurance. He was our chief joy. When once we
found the sun, he then appeared in a single garment, trousers and braces
cut in one piece of brown canvas, hauled up well under his arms, leaving
his slab feet remote and forlorn. His torso was bare, a dancing girl in
red and blue tattooed on his chest. He wore a bowler hat without a brim.
We will get Christmas over. It was a pagan festival. Looking back at it,
I see--with the astonishment of the sedate who is native to a
geometrical suburb where the morning train follows the night and every
numbered house shelters a moral agnostic--I see a dancing baccanal with
free gestures who fades, as I look back intently, doubting my senses, in
a roseous haze. The lawless movements of that wild, bright and laughing
figure, its exultant blasphemy, its confident mockery, are remembered by
me as though once I had been admitted to the green room of heaven.
Surely I have seen a god whose deathless knowledge derides the solemn
gods, behind the curtain. It was Christmas night, and our little
"Capella," our point of night shine, a star moving through the void to
its dark destiny, filled the vault with its song, while its fellows in
the heavens stood round. Christmas is over.
* * * * *
The day following was Sunday, a grey day of penance, the men soberly
washing their shirts in buckets under the forecastle head, smoking moody
pipes. The garments were tied to any convenient gear where they could
hang free. The sky was leaden. This grey day was distinguished by the
strange phenomenon of an horizon which was almost level; the skyline and
the clouds did not slant first this way, then that. The swell had almost
gone. Already I began to feel the large patience and tranquillity of a
mind losing its shadows, and contemplating the light and space of a long
voyage in which the same men do the same things in the same place daily
under the centre of the empty sky. Sitting on a hatch with the Doctor,
smoking, we confessed, with ease at the heart, and with minds in which
nervous vibrations had ceased, that we must have reached this place that
was nowhere, and that now time was not for us. We had escaped you all.
We were free. There was not anything to engage us. There was nothing to
do, and nobody who wanted us. Never before had I felt so still and
conscious of myself. I realised, with a little start of surprise, that
it was Me who felt the warm air, and who looked at the slow pulse of the
waters, and the fulgent breaks in the roof, and heard the droning of the
wake, and not that mere skin, eyes and ears which, as in London, break
in upon our preoccupied minds with agitating sensations; and I took in
this newly-discovered world of ocean and cloudland and my own sure
identity centred therein with the complacency of an immortal who will
see all the things which do not matter pass away. When we left England
we were tense, and sometimes white (though there were others who went
red) about a Great Crisis in our Country's History. The Doctor and I
arrived on board, detached from the opposing armies in the impending
conflict, and at first put our hands swiftly to our swords every ten
minutes or so during meals. Of that crisis only one small gull now was
left, and he was following us astern with a melancholy cry at intervals,
of which we took no more notice. (And that gull departed, I see by my
diary, the very next day.)
So ended the Great Crisis. I did not even note the ship's position at
the time, though I can see now that was a serious fault for which future
historians may blame me. I can but state vaguely that it was about sixty
miles north-west of the Fortunate Isles. The change in the quality of
the sun and air became most marked; I remember that. The horizon
expanded to a surprising distance. According to letters from home, sent
about that date, which I received long afterwards, I am unable to find
that similar phenomena were witnessed in England. Probably they were but
local. These manifestations in the heavens filled the few of us
privileged to witness them with awe, and a new faith in the power and
compassion of God. Nothing further of note occurred on this day, except
that Chips, as a further miracle, suddenly was raised whole from where
he lay in his bunk with a useless leg. His leg, you may remember, was
damaged in the gale off Cornwall. The Doctor, going his rounds, was
surprised to find Chips dancing the hoola-hoola in the forecastle, and a
stoker, with a cut eye, wailing for a lost half bottle of gin taken from
his box while he was on duty. Thereafter Chips returned to work, his leg
becoming halt again only when he knew we saw him stepping it too
blithely.
* * * * *
"_Decr. 27._ Distance run for past 24 hours to midday 219. Total
distance 1177 miles. Fine weather. Glass rising."
Have you ever heard of the monotony of a long voyage? The same sky you
know, the same waters, the same deck; and now I can see it should be
added, the same old self, dismayed by the contemplation of its features
daily, week after week, within that spacious empty hall, where is no
escape from the bright stare overhead which reveals your baldness and
blemishes without ruth. You get found out. You want to mix with the mob
again, to get lost in the sameness of your fellows. He who goes
travelling should leave his self at home, or as much of it as is not
wanted on the voyage. It is surprising to find how little you want of
yourself. The ideal traveller would venture out merely as a disembodied
thought, or, at most, as an eye.
A mere eye would see no monotony, for the sky may be the same sky, but
its moods are like those of the same woman; and the ocean, though young
as the morning, is older than Asia--you never know what to expect from
that profound enigma. As for the sunny deck, I see the Doctor sitting on
a spare spar, waiting for someone to sit beside him. The Chief is filing
a piece of small gear outside his cabin. The Skipper is overlooking,
with a hard frown, a group of men busy repairing his chart-room, which
is just forward of the engine-room casing (I could get a job from him at
once for the asking, though I shall not ask). The first mate is trying
to be in three places at once. The second mate patrols the bridge. The
German steward, who tells curious stories in a Teutonised dialect of
Shadwell, is hanging mattresses and bed clothes over a boom. The men are
chipping and tarring the deck; and the boatswain, bare-legged, wildly
bearded, a sheath knife on his hams, looks like a fine pirate brought to
menial tasks.
I have watched this day's monotonous sky onwards from the dawn. We are
in the neighbourhood of the Hesperides. For some early hours of the
morning it was grey. But the grey roof soon broke with the incumbent
weight of light, letting sunshine through narrow fractures to the sea,
far out. There were partitions of thin gold in the dim hall. The moving
floor was patterned in day and night. The low ceiling was fused where
the day poured through, became a candent vapour, volatilised. We had
over us before breakfast the ultimate blue, where a few cirrus clouds
showed its great height.
Then it was August. The sea ran in broad heavy mounds, blue-black and
vitreous, which hardly moved our bulk. In the afternoon, the ocean, a
short distance from the ship, grew filmed and opaque, a milky blue shot
with purple shadows. Its surface, though heaving, was smooth and
flawless. No light entered its deeps, but the radiant heat was mirrored
on it as on the pallor of fluid lava. The water ploughed up by the bows
did not break, but rolled over viscidly. The sun dropped behind the sea
about a point west of our course. Night was near. Yet still the high
dome with its circular floor the sea was magically illuminated, as by
the proximity of a wonderful presence. We, solitary and privileged in
the theatre, waited expectant. The doors of glory were somewhere ajar.
The western wall was clear, shining and empty, enclosed by a proscenium
of amber flames. In the north-east, astern of us, were some high
fair-weather clouds, like a faint host of little cherubs, and from their
superior galleries they watched a light invisible to us; it made their
faces bright. Beneath them the glazed sea was coral pink. Even our own
prosaic iron gear was sublimated; our ship became lustrous and strange.
We were the Argonauts, and our world was bright with the veritable
self-radiance of a world of romance where the things that would happen
were undreamed of, and we watched for them from our argosy's side, calm
and expectant; my fellows were transfigured, looked huge, were rosy and
awful, immortals in that light no mortal is given to see.
Now had been given me fellowship with the ship and her men; we were one
body. I had been absorbed by our enterprise. For a long while our
steamer was a harsh and foreign thing to me, unfriendly to the eye,
difficult to understand. But now she had become intelligible and proper.
She and her men were all my world, and I could find my way about that
world in the dark. Getting used to a ship has the process of the growth
of a lasting friendship. Chance begins it. You regard your luck askance,
as you accept a new acquaintance with no joy, to make the best of him.
But presently, to put the matter at its lowest, you arrive at an
understanding. You have learned your friend's worth. Familiarity would
breed contempt only in the mouse-hearted. You never have to account him
afresh, or he is no comrade; there can be no surprises again, no
encounters with a stranger in him. His value, at the least reckoning, is
that you know his value. Any hour of the day or night you can guess with
assurance where his mind would be found. And here my "Capella" has no
strange doors and startling declivities and traps for me any more. I
know her. She is not exactly all she should be, but I apprehend exactly
what she is. If I hurt myself against her it is my own fault. She is as
familiar to me as home now. I should resent any alteration. Having
learned to know her faults I like her as she is; the trestle bridge with
its sagging hand-ropes and wobbling stanchions (look out, you, when she
rolls) which crosses the main deck aft on the port side from the
amidships section, where I live, to the poop, where the Doctor lives.
The two little streets of three doors each, to port and starboard of her
amidships, the doors that open out under the shade of the boat deck to
sea. There, amidships also, are the Chief's room and the galley, the
engineers' messroom, and the engine-room entrance; but these last do not
open overside, but look aft, from a connecting alley which runs across
the ship to join the side alleyways. Forward of these cabins is the
engine-room casing, where the 'midship deck broadens, but is cumbered
with bunker hatches (mind your feet, at night, there); and beyond,
again, is the chart-room, and over the chart-room the bridge and the
wheelhouse, from which is a sheer long drop to the main deck foreward.
At the finish of that deck is an iron wall, with the entrance to the
mysterious forecastle in its centre; and over that is the uplifted head
of our world watching our course, a bleak windswept place of rails,
cable chains, and windlass. The poop has a timber deck, and there in
fine weather the deck chairs are. The poop is a place needing exact
navigation at night. Long boxes enclosing the rudder chains are on
either side of it. In the centre is the saloon skylight, the companion,
the steward's ice chest, and the hand-steering gear. Also there are two
boats. I gained my night knowledge of the poop deck by assault, and
retained my gains with sticking plaster. I am really proud of the
privilege which has been given me to roam now this rolling shadow at
night, this little dark cloud blowing between the stars and the deep,
the unseen abyss below as with its profound reverberations, and the
height above with its scattered lights as remote as the sounds in the
deeps. With calm faith in our swaying shadow I place my feet where
nothing shows, sure that my angel will bear me up. I put out my hands
and a support comes to them; the pitfalls have ladders for me, and by
touching at some places in the black shadow, as by magic, a lighted and
comfortable room at once materialises for my rest in the void.
* * * * *
I think I liked her better as a formless shadow after sundown. Whether
it was then a noise in my head, my tranquil thoughts murmuring in their
sleep, or whether the sound I heard was the deep humming of the world's
speed, I don't know; whatever it was, it was the only sound. Our
mainmasthead light was but a nearer star of the host. I was not
surprised to see one of the stars so close. I was within the luminous
porch of the Milky Way.
It was midnight. In that silence, where I was alone in space, adrift on
a night cloud in the constellations, the stars were really my familiars;
once, when in London, though they had been named to me and were constant
there, they were far in the place to which one lifts one's eyes from the
dust and traffic, nothing to do with London and with me. But now there
was no more dust and traffic. I was among them at last. Splendid Orion
was near and vast in his hunting. The Pleiades no longer dimmered on the
very limit of vision, but were separate points of delicate light. The
night moved with diamond fire.
I was so far absent from the body that a human voice beside me was like
a surprising concussion with something invisible in space. Turning,
there was the glow of Sandy's pipe. Sandy is an elderly man, and an
engineer. He was leaning over the rail, cooling after his watch below.
The magic of the star shine had got into his mind too. He began with
guesses about the things which are not known, parrying doubt with,
"Ah--but it's hard to say; there are things----"; and, "you bright young
fellers don't know everything"; and, "somebody told me a queer thing
now."
"There was a bright young feller, same as yourself, and he was first
mate of the 'Abertawe,' out of Cardiff. Jack Driscoll was his name. It
was a funny thing happened to him. I heard about it afterwards.
"All the girls thought Jack Driscoll was so nice. One of the girls was
his owner's daughter, and she was the best of the bunch, anyway, for she
was an only child, and her father would have given her the earth. He was
a good owner, was her father, as things go in Cardiff. Do you know
Cardiff? Well, a little goes a long way on the Welsh coast. Jack was a
smart sailor, with the first chance of the next new boat, if he watched
out. I reckon Jack was a fool. Why, he needn't have gone to sea any
more. But what did he do?
"Jack was one of them fellers who think if they put a gold-laced cap
saucy over one ear, and laugh with the eyes, they can whistle up a
duchess. And I daresay Jack could in summer, in his white suit, when
he'd just shaved. He was a bit of all right was Jack. He was a proper
tall lad, and the way he carried himself--It was a treat to see him move
about a ship. His black hair was like one of the big fiddler chap's, and
his smile would take in one of his pals.
"Well, it was happy days for Jack. He got good things to come to him. He
didn't have to look for 'em, like me and you. He knew his work, too. He
was a good sailor. He could get off the mark, at the first word, like a
bird, and he never left a job while there was a loose bit to it.
Sometimes when there was nothing doing it was pretty rotten, Jack would
say, to be stuck there in a Welsh tramp with a crowd of dagoes, and
drink coffee essence and condensed milk out of a pint mug, and never go
to a music hall only once in six months. Jack reckoned it would be fine
to be brass-bound always, in one of the liners, and have a deck like a
skating rink, and a lot of lady passengers who wanted a chap like him to
talk to them.
"He could tell stories, too, on the quiet, could Jack. They were pretty
blue, though. Sailor stories. They were all about himself in the West
Coast ports. Do you know the Chili coast? Well, it's mind your eye
there, and no half larks. They're pretty handy with knives out there.
But when Jack was out for fun you couldn't stop him. He was like all you
young chaps. He wouldn't listen to sense.
"The 'Abertawe' went light ship to Barry, one trip, from Buenos Aires,
and Jack saw her snug, and told all the men to be at the shipping office
early and sober in the morning, because they got in on a Sunday, and
Jack saw the old man safe on his way to Cardiff, and then shaved, and
sang while he was shaving. He got himself up west-end style, new yellow
boots and all, and tied his red tie Spanish fashion. And he went down
the quay, looking for anything that was about, and he felt like the best
man on the Welsh coast.
"But Barry is a dull place. Do you know Barry? Well, it's a one-eyed
God-forsaken town, made out of odds and ends stuck down anywhere, all
new houses, docks, coal tips, and railway sidings, and nowhere to go.
It's best to stay aboard, in Barry. Jack began to feel like the only
bird on a mudbank. He got out of the town, and walked along a road till
he came to an old woman sitting in the hedge, with her back up against a
telegraph post. Her face was brown and wrinkled, and she had an
orange-coloured handkerchief round her face, and tied under her chin.
She was smoking a pipe, and looking at her blucher boots. As Jack came
along, she said, 'Tell your fortune, pretty gentleman?' Jack laughed,
and told her his face was his fortune.
"'What do you see when you look in the glass?' said she.
"Now that was dead easy to Jack, because he knew as well as the girls;
and he told her. There was none of your silly modesty about Jack. Then
the old woman laughed; but I reckon Jack thought she was only pleased
with him, because he made it a point to make the mothers and the
grandmothers smile, the same as the girls.
"'What do you see in this glass?' said she to Jack. She was fumbling in
her dress, and hauls out a mirror like you see in the old-fashion shops,
a mirror made of silver, and it had a frame of ebony. She polished it on
her skirt, and gave it to him, and told him to pass a bit of silver with
the other hand. Well, Jack saw sport, and he could always pay for that,
and he did what she said. But he only saw himself in the mirror.
"'Hi,' said Jack, 'here, what's your little game now? None of your larks
now,' he said, 'or I'll ask a policeman what he can see in this tin
glass of yours.'
"'You and your policeman,' she said. 'Look now, my dandy boy, and see
more than your money's worth.' And she rubbed the glass again. Then Jack
took another look. It was a dull day, but that mirror was bright with
sunshine. There was something funny about that mirror. He saw a fine
place in it, all cool and white and gold, like you see out East. It was
a palace, I reckon. There was a fountain in the middle, and some girls
with not a lot on, like some of the Amsterdam postcard girls, were lying
around, just anyhow. And there was Jack's own self among 'em, and they
were laughing and talking to him. It was fine. Jack turned his head,
just like you would do, to see if the real place was behind him. But, of
course, there was the funnels and topmasts of Barry, and the sky looked
like rain. I bet it gave him a shock.
"'Now you've seen what'll be your luck, honey, if you're not careful,'
said the old woman. 'Mind your eye,' she said, 'mind your eye, you with
the saucy face. What's more,' she called after him, 'don't you speak to
the girl with the odd eyes in Cardiff, though I know you will, and sorry
you'll be.'
"'Go to the devil,' said Jack.
"He was just like all you young chaps. Thought she was an artful old
shark who'd got his money dead easy. That's what you always think. If
you don't understand anything, then there's nothing in it. You call in
at the next pub and chatter to the barmaid. What happened? Why, the very
next day the Skipper came back, and told him the new boat was near
ready, and the owner wanted to see him. Jack went, and forgot about
everything, except that he was going to be the handsome boy all right
with the owner's own daughter to look at him. A pretty girl she was too.
I saw her once, holding up her skirts off the deck while she looked
round. The Skipper introduced me. 'Good morning, Mr. Brown,' she said to
me.
"Coming out of the Great Western Station at Cardiff Jack saw a place
he'd never noticed before. It wasn't Cardiff style. 'It's a new place,'
Jack thinks to himself, 'and a ripping good place it looks,' for he was
thirsty, and there was plenty of time. 'It must have been run up since I
was here last,' says Jack to himself, 'though that's queer, for I reckon
it'd take years to rig up a dandy show of this sort.' But in he went.
"He was surprised, when he got in, and so would you have been. It was
like the place I saw on the stage at London once. It was in Aladdin, at
a place in the Mile End Road. You know what those things are like, when
the curtain goes up. You can see a long way, but you can't see all the
way. You expect something to happen there. It was full of pillars, all
white and gold, in a pink light. There was a lot of ladies and gentlemen
sitting on sofas full of cushions, talking, and they were too grand to
even notice Jack as he stood there looking round for a chair. But it
took a lot to get on Jack's nerves. There was one girl in a white silk
dress, with red roses in her golden belt, and she had a white hat with
red roses in that, and she looked like a summer day. Jack was glad to
see that the only vacant chair was at a table where she sat alone. Of
course, over there goes Jack. The place was as quiet as a church before
the service begins. There was only a faint whispering. He got to where
the girl sat, as if she was waiting for him. She looked up and smiled at
Jack. Jack sat down beside her and said what a fine day it was. She had
a face the colour of moonlight, and her eyes were odd. But there wasn't
a girl who could make Jack wonder if his tie was straight, in those
days, and he began to order things, and talk.
"Once he took a look round, leaning back in his chair, feeling pretty
large, and he noticed the other people were looking at him artful-like,
out of the corners of their eyes, as if he was talking too loud. But
Jack thought he'd jolly well talk as he liked, and he'd got just the
best girl in that room or anywhere else. He looked at his watch. It was
near twelve o'clock. He had to be at his owner's by one. There was
plenty of time.
"The drink had a funny taste, but it was the best liquor he'd ever had.
He marked down that place. He didn't know there was a show like that in
Cardiff. He caught hold of the girl's hand, which he noticed was white,
and very cold, and pretended he wanted to look at her ring. There was a
stone in the ring, just like a bit of soda. She asked him to try it on
his own finger, because the stone changed colour then, but Jack couldn't
get the ring off till he'd placed her finger to his lips, to moisten the
ring. He was the boy, was Jack, to see things didn't drag along. When he
got the ring on his finger the stone was full of red fire. So the time
went; but he forgot all about time, and the owner, and the owner's
daughter, and everything. The girl's hair was scented, too, and it was
close to him.
"Presently he looked up, and saw what he'd never noticed before. He
could see further into the building than ever. There seemed to be a
garden beyond, full of sunshine, and all the men and women were walking
that way, talking loud, and laughing. His own girl got up too, and said,
'Come along, Jack Driscoll,' and he never even wondered how she knew his
name, nor why her face was like snow by moonlight, nor why she smiled
like that.
"No. Not Jack. All he thought was what a ripping garden that was, with
palms, and marble courts, like you see in the East. There was music far
away, two notes and a drum, like you hear in a native dance, before the
dancers come. It made Jack feel like a millionaire or a lord, able to do
anything, but just then only wanting a good time. Then he noticed they
were alone in the garden, which was full of trees in blossom. All the
other people had gone. There was only that music. The place was very
quiet. He could hear water tinkling in a fountain, and he reckoned he
would stay there till closing time. The girl talked to him in whispers,
and he put his arm around her. I don't know how long he stayed there,
but he kept telling the girl she was the best girl he'd ever had, and
he'd never had such a good time in his life.
"It was funny the way he got out. Jack reckoned in there that the world
would never come to an end, like young fellers do, when they're enjoying
themselves proper. But once he took her ring off his finger, to have
another look at it. Then he was in the street again, looking up at a
building which had its doors shut, and Jack only thought he was looking
there for a number he wanted.
"It had started to rain. He looked at his watch. It was just twelve
o'clock. He didn't know what he wanted with an address in that street,
so he started off in a hurry for his owner's house, feeling pretty
stiff, as if he'd been sleeping rough. When he got to his owner's house,
he rang the bell.
"The owner's daughter came to the door, and looked at him like she
didn't know him, and was a bit afraid of him. 'No, thank you,' she said
kindly, 'not to-day.' And shut the door at once.
"What puzzled Jack was that he didn't feel surprised and angry. He
turned and went down those steps again, and down the street, thinking it
over. He looked back at the house. Yes, that was the house all right.
And that was Annie all right. Well, what the devil was the matter with
him? There was a public-house at the corner, and he stopped there,
thinking things over, and staring at the window. Then he saw his face in
a mirror, and shouted so that the barman came and ordered him out of
that, sharp now. But he kept looking at the glass, not believing his
eyes. He knew his own face again, but only just knew it. His eyes were
dull and red and gummy, same as those old men have who've lived too
long, and his face was puffed and pimpled, and he had a lousy white
beard."