The phrase “intoxicated with pleasure,” too common in our literature,
would most inexactly describe the condition of George Mulross Demaine
as he left the Prime Minister’s room upon that Monday midnight.
In the first place he was not and never had been intoxicated, and even
when he exceeded (as in youth he frequently had) in the matter of wine,
spirits, liqueurs and fancy liquids, the effect of such excess had
rather been atrophy than intoxication. Nor had he ever felt what poets
finely call the “sting of joy.”
But he was pleased: he was very pleased. Thoughts that in another more
volatile and less substantial brain might have crowded, appeared slowly
separated one from another and in a solemn procession. They comforted
rather than exhilarated him.
First of all there was the £5000 a year: that was something.
He ruminated on that about as far as Cleopatra’s Needle; there, as he
leant upon the parapet of the Embankment and looked down into the
water, a second thought rose upon the horizon of his mind: the £5000 a
year would be his, not Sudie’s.
In the first stage of this nightly ramble he had barged into two men:
one a poor man who had made the accident the excuse for the delivery
of money; the second a rich one who cursed him abominably, but George
was in too equable a mood to mind. Now, as he left Cleopatra’s Needle
behind him and strolled still farther eastward, ruminating upon the
fact that the £5000 a year would be his and not Sudie’s, he had the
misfortune to cannon against yet a third, to whom he apologised: but it
was a post, not a man.
He looked at it with those slow, sensible eyes of his for perhaps
thirty seconds, and saw in large red letters under the electric light
“Motors to the right of this post.”
He repeated the phrase mechanically as was often his wont upon reading
anything, and it set up a new train of thought. Post.... The post
offered him was not permanent ... but he considered the careers of his
friends and he could remember none, neither Ted nor Johnny nor old
Bill Curliss, nor Fittleworth nor Glegg, who from the moment they had
received such promotion had not gone forward.
It always meant something, even when one was out of office, and then
who knows? One might be in office again. A Party may be in office
twice running! Stranger things had happened. And then, even if they
went out of office, Ole Man Benson would have brought something off by
that time.
Look at it how he would, heaven was smiling on him, and he in return,
and as though in gratitude, smiled at the gaunt front of Blackfriars
Station, opposite which he had now arrived.
Between him and it there lay the street, and he was naturally too
cautious to attempt to cross until he had gazed carefully to the front
and right. But at midnight there is no pressure of traffic in the City
of London, and when he had allowed a belated dray and a steam roller
to pass him at their leisure he hurriedly crossed over with a vague
intention of taking the train.
Like many men of the governing classes, whose mental activities are
naturally divorced from the petty details of London life, and who are
independent of that daily round which makes the less fortunate only
too familiar with our means of communication, George Mulross Demaine
was not quite certain where the Underground went to, nor what part
of London precisely it served. But he had been taught from childhood
that it was circular in form, and that round it like Old Ocean[3] in a
perpetual race, went along streams of trains. Enter it where you would,
and you might leave it somewhere upon its periphery.
He knew that St. James’s Park Station was at his very door. He asked
for and obtained a ticket with that promptitude which distinguishes the
service of our premier Metropolitan line, left the change for sixpence
by an oversight on the ledge of the ticket window, and then, as Fate
would have it, turned to the left-hand stairs.
The official whose duty it was to examine and to cut designs upon the
tickets presented to him by the public, was that evening (under the
guidance of Fate) most negligent.
He should surely have seen that he was dealing with an Obvious
Gentleman and should gently have directed him to the opposing platform.
As it was he did no more than half puncture the cardboard without so
much as glancing at it, and George Mulross Demaine (in whom now yet
another pleasing thought had arisen--that there were such things as
Cabinet pensions--) sauntered down on to the platform.
A train roared in; he stumbled into it just in time to save his coat
from the shutting of the gate, and sat contentedly until he should hear
the conductor shout “St. James’s Park!” But this cue word which would
have aroused him to action, he was destined not to hear.
The Mansion House went by, and Cannon Street, but yet another pleasing
thought having arisen in his mind he noted them not.
A shout of “Monument” startled him, for he had heard in a general way
of the Monument, and it was nowhere near his home. When he came to Mark
Lane he was seriously alarmed, and at the cry of Aldgate East, his mind
was made up. He got out.
He asked with the utmost courtesy of the man who took the tickets what
he should do to get to St. James’s Park, and the man who took the
tickets replied with less courtesy but with great rapidity that he had
better turn sharp to the right and that on his right again he would
find Aldgate Station, whence there was still a service of trains, late
as was the hour.
Alas, for the various locutions of various ranks in our society! he did
turn sharp to the right; he went right round the corner into Middlesex
Street, and to the right again into Wentworth Street, but not a station
could be seen. The summer night was of a glimmering sort of darkness.
It was hot, and many of the local families were still seated upon their
steps, speaking to each other in a dialect of the Lithuanian Ghetto
which George Mulross erroneously took for an accent native to the
London poor.
He stepped up to one and asked whether he were yet near the station.
The voluble reply “Shriska beth haumelshee! Chragso! Yeh!” illumined
him not at all, and as he moved off uncertainly up the street, a roar
of harsh laughter tended to upset his nerves.
He could not bear this raking fire: he turned, most imprudently, up
a narrow court which was in total darkness; and, then at first to his
surprise but almost immediately afterwards to his grave chagrin, he
felt a voluminous and exceedingly foul cotton sheet drawn sharply round
his throat, twisted, the slack of it thrown over his head, and one end
crammed into his mouth for a gag; almost at the same moment his wrists
were jerked behind him, a rope whose hardness must have been due to
tar was hitched round them with surely excessive violence, putting him
to grievous pain, his feet were lifted from under him, he felt several
hands grasping his head and shoulders at random, a couple of them
seizing his ankles; he was reversed, and in the attitude described at
the Home Office as “The Frogs’ March” he felt himself carried for some
few yards, and at last reversed again and placed face upwards upon a
narrow and hard surface.
Through the filthy cotton which still enveloped his face, the
disgusting stains of which were dimly apparent to him, he saw the
glimmer of a light, and he heard round him language the accent and many
of the words of which were so unfamiliar to him that he could make
nothing of it. He was incommoded beyond words.
Whatever his defects, George Mulross Demaine was not lacking in
physical courage; he begged them in a mumble through the gag that
covered his mouth, to let him go. There was no direct reply, but only
a good deal of whispering, which so far as he could make it out--and
much of it was foreign--related to his person rather than to his
request.
An attempt to move betrayed the fact that some heavy body was seated
upon his shins; another attempt to raise the upper half of his body was
met by so sharp a reminder upon the side of his head that he thought it
better for the moment to lie still.
What followed was an examination of his clothes and their contents,
which showed his new neighbours to be unacquainted with the sartorial
habits of the wealthy. The two slits in his cape were taken for pockets
and their emptiness provoked among other comments the shrill curse of
a woman. His trouser pockets, wherein it was fondly hoped that metal
might lie hid, and wherein he would rather have died than have put
anything, similarly drew blank, and to their disgust, of the two little
lines on the waistcoat one was a sham and the other contained nothing
but a spare stud. However, this contained a small precious stone, and
was the immediate object of a pretty severe scuffle.
He was next reversed yet a third time without dignity, and in a manner
the violence of which was most wounding: but in his tail pocket was
nothing but a large new silk handkerchief which went (apparently by
custom, for there was no discussion) to the captain of the tribe.
Purse there was none, a thing that bewildered them; not even a
portmonnaie, until, to their mingled astonishment and joy, some one
acuter than the rest discovered in a mass of seals at his watch chain,
a little globular receptacle which opened with a spring, and revealed
no less than four sovereigns.
It was a poor haul, but the clothes remained. Not for long. They were
all removed, and that not with roughness but, he was glad to note,
tenderly: less perhaps from the respect they bore him than from a
consideration of the value of the cloth. The precise manoeuvre
whereby the difficulty of the ankles and the wrists was eliminated,
I leave to those of my readers who are better acquainted with such
problems than I. There are several well-known methods, I understand,
whereby a man may have his trousers and his coat removed and yet his
hands and feet preserved in custody.
His boots (they were astonished to note) were elastic-sided. They were
under the impression that among the wealthy buttoned boots alone were
tolerated at the evening meal and thenceforward until such hours as the
wealthy seek repose. But they were good mess boots, and take it all in
all, his clothing, every single article of which was soon folded and
put into its bundle, made the best part of their booty.
Then there was a considerable movement of feet, a murmur of voices
purposely low; there seemed to be one person left, agile and rapid in
movement ... perhaps two: at any rate after these or this one had held
him for some thirty seconds, during which he had the sense and prudence
to lie still, there was a sharp sliding of feet, the quick but almost
noiseless shutting of a door, and he found that he was free.
His first act was to disembarrass himself of his stinking head-gear,
but his captors had laid their trap with science, and it was precisely
this which was destined to give them the leisure for their escape. The
sheet was tied to his head by a series of small hard knots which took
him, between them, quite a quarter of an hour to undo.
At last he was free. He tore the filthy thing from his head and the
bunch of it from his mouth with the same gesture, overcame a strong
desire to vomit, and looked round him.
He found himself seated upon a sort of narrow bench attached by iron
clamps to the wall of a small and exceedingly noisome room, which even
at that moment he had the wit to think that he would certainly have
dealt with by the local inspector when he should have assumed what he
had heard called the reins of office.
But for the moment other considerations occupied him to the exclusion
of the condition of the room. A dirty paraffin lamp with no shade stood
on the rickety table; the one window was blinded by a large old wooden
shutter barred down against it; on the cracked, distempered walls,
stained with a generation of grease and smoke, hung a paper upon which
a few figures had been scrawled roughly in pencil, and most of them
scratched out again, and here and there the same pencil or others had
inscribed the surface of the plaster with sentiments and illustrations
most uncongenial to his breeding.
The next thing that met his eye was a peculiarly repulsive pair of
breeches, an old green-black torn overcoat, and a pair of workmen’s
boots, cracked, grey with weather, laceless and apparently as stiff as
wood. He had no choice: his first business was to find aid. He must put
these on, break his way out of this den as best he could, and summon
the Police.
He had never had his feet in such things as those boots before; it was
like shuffling in boxes. He hated to feel the clammy grease of the
trousers and coat against his skin.
He left the lamp burning and made for the door. To his astonishment
the latch was open. To his further astonishment it gave into an open
passage like a tunnel, with no door but a plain arch opening into the
court beyond. He shuffled out. He was glad that it was not yet day.
Fortunately it was not cold.
He turned, he knew not whither, following the streets aimlessly, but
more or less in one direction, until he saw in a blotted silhouette
against the darkness of the walls, the glad and familiar form of a
policeman. It was like coming home! It was like making a known harbour
light after three days of lost reckonings and a gale.
He went up to the man and began in that pleasant but not condescending
tone in which he had ever addressed members of the force:
“Policeman, can you tell me....”
He got no further. The agile though weighty custodian of order, with
the low and determined remark, “I know yer!” had seized him by the
shoulders, whirled him round and away, so that he fell, bruised and a
little dazed, against the steps of a house.
George was angered. He had already risen with some remark on his
lips about taking a number when he saw his antagonist make a sharp
gesture--there was a shrill whistle, immediately afterwards an
answering whistle from perhaps a hundred yards away, and George Mulross
Demaine,--blame him if you will,--kicked off the impossible boots, and
ran for it.
They let him run, and it is not for us to criticise. He left their
district at any rate.
He had run for but a few moments in his absurd and horrible greatcoat
and on his naked feet, until he saw down the end of an alley a great
gate, a light to one side of it, and beyond it an empty space of
glimmering nightly sky. Ignorant of where he was or what he did, but
determined upon safety, he looked round and to his horror saw the form
of yet another policeman pacing slowly towards the place where he was
crouching.
That determined him. With an agility that none of his acquaintances,
not even his wife, would have believed to be in him, he slunk quite
close to earth in the shadow of the great gate and entered the open
space beyond.
Such a space he had never seen. Under the very faint light which was
now beginning to show over the east of heaven, he guessed that he was
upon the river, for he saw masts against the sky and that peculiar pale
glint of water which, even at night, may be distinguished between the
hulls of ships. All he sought was shadow, and the great wharves of the
docks--for he had blundered into the docks--give ample opportunity.
He heard a measured step pacing slowly towards him. He crept along the
edge of the quay into a sort of narrow lane that lay between a row of
high barrels and the bulwarks of a big steamship which just showed
above the stone. He flattened himself against the high barrels which,
had he been better acquainted with the details of commerce, he would
have known to contain fishbone manure.
The measured tread came nearer; it passed, it reached a certain point
in the distance, it turned and passed again. It reached yet another
extreme of its beat, turned and re-passed.... And all the while the
light was growing: and as it grew the nervous agony of George Mulross
grew with it, but more rapidly.
He could now just see the figure of the watchman near the gate, he
could distinguish part of the nearer rigging; in half an hour he would
be visible to whatever eyes were watching for vagabonds. He knew what
that meant; further humiliation, perhaps further dangers. There was not
a gentleman for miles,--and with that thought the heart of this most
unfortunate of gentlemen beat slow.
The reader has been sufficiently told that Mr. Demaine, however solid
the quality of his brain, was not a man of rapid decision. But agony
and peril are sharp spurs, and as the conception of a gentleman floated
through his mind he suddenly remembered that ships had captains.
Upon their exact functions he was hazy; he would know it better no
doubt when he had undertaken his functions in the Court of Dowry (the
blessed thought warmed him for a moment even in that dreadful dawn!);
anyhow, the word “captain” meant something ... it wasn’t like a captain
in the army of course ... but then there were captains and captains
... of course the Royal Navy was superior to the Merchant Service ...
but it was all the same kind of thing--only upper and lower, like
a barrister and a solicitor.... For instance there was the Naval
Reserve.... And he remembered a captain upon an Atlantic liner who was
a splendid great fellow, and he was sure could tell any one at once.
And the captain of Billy’s schooner was better than that because he
understood about motor engines.
He had just come to the point of remembering that on the P. and O.
it was rather a grand thing to dine with the captain, when his mind
arrived at its conclusion. He would slip over the side of the big ship,
and when the proper time came he would reveal himself to the captain
for what he was. The captain would show him every courtesy, he would
give him a change of clothes, ready-made but decent, he would know
where there was a telephone, he would have authority to speak to the
watchman and the rest, he would send for a taxi, and George’s troubles
would be over....
George prepared to slip over the side.
Now to slip over the side in a book is one thing, but to do it on a
real ship is another. The bulwarks were high and greasy and salt and
slimy. Demaine was weakened by a night of terrors, and he came down
on the hard iron deck of the tramp with a noise resembling distant
thunder, and in a manner that hurt him very much indeed.
It was a new misadventure and one that had to be repaired. He heard
voices and bolted for a large coil of rope which lay beneath the shadow
of the turtle-deck. Here the stench, though somewhat different in
quality from that of the fishbone manure, was not less noisome, and
carried with it a reminiscence of Channel passages which weakened the
very soul within George Mulross Demaine. But the sensation was soon
swamped in one much more poignant; this was aroused in him by the
approach of two inharmonious voices, one of which was borne towards him
perpetually clamouring:
“Yes ah deed!”
While the other repeated as a sort of antiphon:
“Noa ee diddun, tha silly fule!”
When this dialogue was exhausted the first voice in a lower and much
more determined tone hissed: “Ah’ll ave im aowt!” and a large stave
which might, for all Demaine knew, be a marlingspike or some other
horrid instrument, began rummaging behind the coil of rope.
“T’ould man sez ef ah doan catch next ’un ee’ll skin me live!”
To this the second voice reiterated his certitude that his companion
was a silly fool, and that he had had stowaways upon the brain since he
was last made responsible for the presence of one of these supercargoes
upon the _Lily_.
The voices moved away and Demaine, while he breathed somewhat more
freely, was back again in his former doubt and terror.
It grew to be broad day; he heard the rattling of chains; the presence
of men upon every hand made him but the more determined to remain
in his hiding-place until he could approach the Captain in some
more convenient manner than through the medium of the unfeeling and
ill-educated North Countrymen who seemed to compose the crew.
He felt the great ship swinging, he could see the patch of cloud in
the sky of which he had a glimpse, turning as she turned, he felt the
slight throb of her engines; she was passing down the dock, she was out
of the gate--she was almost in the river, when, to his horror ... the
coil of rope which had been his bulwark against an unfeeling world,
_began slowly to uncoil at the top_, with the motion of some great and
wicked snake that was making for its harmless prey.
Had George Mulross attained that acquaintance with seafaring terms
which is proper to an administrator of this sea-girt isle (and
especially to a Warden of the Court of Dowry), he would have known that
the rapidly disappearing coil before him was being used as a warping
rope, and he would have connected the steady clank of the donkey engine
which accompanied its disappearance with the absorption of fathom after
fathom of what had been kindly shelter. But even had he known these
things it is doubtful whether they would have interested him at the
moment.
He crouched lower and lower as the coil diminished, occupying the
smallest space compatible with keeping his legs tucked away behind
what was left of the cable: but the Gods were deaf that morning to all
prayers. The last eighteen inches of the coil’s height were reached and
still the pitiless donkey engine clanked, and still the lengths went
slithering away, until at last his back appeared above the element it
lived in,--the unmistakable back of a human being, clothed in a ragged
green-black coat.
To the trained and piercing eye of sailor-men the object was
unmistakable, and like two cats upon one mouse his acquaintances of
an hour before pounced upon his trembling form: the sceptical one now
converted and protesting that he had been convinced from the first of
the stowaway’s presence, the other in cruel triumph dragging him along
the deck and threatening him with such consequences as not even the
peculiar idiom of the North Country could completely veil.
With such energy as remained to him, George sprang up at the first
opportunity they gave him. He had the sense not to run upon those
crowded and confined decks. The button torn off his coat-collar in the
scramble showed his bare neck and chest. Masses of grime, tar and dust
streaked his face; his hair was most untidy, and his bootless feet were
caked in mud.
“I want to see the captain,” he said between his gasps.
“Tha wants...!” began his irate captor,--then plain words failed him,
and he took refuge in a few oaths. The other said more quietly:
“Tha’lt see im, ladd; ow! tha’lt see im,”--and he nodded twice gravely
in a manner which George would have found reassuring had he not already
begun to suspect that the lower classes were capable of sarcasm.
“Tha’lt see im!” he suddenly repeated with the utmost ferocity; and
catching Demaine sharply by the back of the neck he ran him in to the
semi-darkness under the bridge where, as luck would have it, the first
officer in a somewhat surly mood was going down off duty.
I should over-weight these pages were I so much as to attempt the
language of the first officer when he cast eyes upon the unfortunate
figure before him. A stowaway! It was the second time it had happened
in three months.
One stammering attempt to make himself heard so dreadfully increased
the power of this man’s passion that George perforce was silent. The
first officer’s rage rose into a sort of typhoon, and had the law or
even the custom of the sea permitted him to do one quarter of that with
which he threatened the poor vagabond, a British ship would certainly
be no fit place to live in. As a matter of fact when his tirade was
over he confined himself to a general curse upon the town of London and
its inhabitants, to a particular one directed with menace against the
able seaman who had captured the stowaway, and at last, with directions
that he should be shown to the captain when the ship was in the fairway
and the anxious business of getting her out was over.
For some little time, therefore, Demaine still stood a butt for the
occasional but half-exhausted ribaldry of his two guardians, and not
until the waterman’s boat had dropped away from alongside and the
warping rope had splashed into the slime of the Thames, not until the
donkey engine had clanked once more and got it aboard, horrible with
all the horrors of that water, and not until the engine was going
fairly and the _Lily_ dropping swiftly down the tide, was the captain
ready to sit in judgment.
Captain Higgins was a man who had made method and self-control the
hinges of success in life. _His_ Caryll’s Ganglia were all right!
Accuracy in accounts, faithfulness to employers, and strict discipline
aboard, were, as he was proud of repeating, his motto. And when he
heard that yet another stowaway had claimed the hospitality of the
_Lily_, he betrayed no unusual perturbation but sat down at his little
desk, and ordered the prisoner to be brought in.
George, somewhat hurriedly introduced by both arms between his now
silent captors, perceived sitting at that table a sight very different
from that which he had expected. He saw a very small, thin man with a
little pointed red beard and the eyes of a weasel, wearing a well-used
and somewhat dirty peaked cap, upon the front of which was embroidered
a coat of arms long indistinguishable, and surrounded by a scroll of
tawdry and threadbare gold braid.
This was the individual upon whom Demaine’s hopes of speedy restoration
depended. He was determined not to speak first, though he was certain
that the superior education of the officer would pierce through his
involuntary disguise.
Captain Higgins pulled out a large, official-looking paper divided into
certain mysterious compartments, each headed with a printed rubric, and
said briefly, without looking up and with his pen ready to write:
“Name?”
“Demaine,” said George, with all the dignity he could summon....
“But----”
“Silence!” commanded Captain Higgins sharply, still without looking up
from the paper on which he scratched rapidly and in an official manner:
“Mane.” “First name,” he chanted musingly, his pen suspended to write
further.
“George Mulross,” enunciated that individual, and “George Ross” went
down onto the sheet.
He began once more by clearing his throat, but though he had not yet
said a word, Captain Higgins looked up with such an expression in his
small and unpleasing eyes as would brook no nonsense.
“George Ross Mane,” said he, speaking through his nose. “You have been
discovered on my ship, the _Lily_, one thousand three hundred and
twenty tons burthen, London rating, bound from London to Portland with
agricultural and general cargo.”
Captain Higgins loved these formalities.
“I have no jew-risdiction in the matter....” And here
he began speaking by rote out of a dirty little book
in which were laid down the elements of his trade:
“Of-breach-of-contract-tort-replevin-stave-jury-or-execution-major-and-
minor-nor-authority-to-act-savin’-always-and-exceptin’-in-such-way-as-
and-whereby-discipline-accoutrement-good
order-_and_-the-fear-of-the-Lord-proper-to-the-navigatin’-of-this-ship-
from-her-departure-to-her-port-of-destination-is-concerned-_wherefore_-
you-shall-be-fed-in-such-manner-as-shall-keep-you-livin’-until-the-next-
port-or-ports-whereat-this-good-ship-may-touch-and-there-delivered-to-
the-Sheriff-or-his-officers-or-other-justices-of-our-Sovereign-Lord-the-
King-and-of-his-peace: Take-away-the-prisoner! Gawd-save-the-King.”
This sentence, which was delivered in one breath and with the rapidity
of an expert, became towards its close a torrent of syllables ending up
sharp upon the word “King” as upon a bell, and followed by a stinging
silence.
“I demand,” shouted George in an uncontrolled voice over his shoulder
as they dragged him away.
“Put him in irons!” cried Captain Higgins as loudly as was consistent
with order, discipline and self-control. “Put the ---- in irons!”
And after this natural exhibition of feeling (which in his heart he
regretted) the navigator returned to the bridge, relieved the second
officer there present, and continued to take his ship down the fairway.
* * * * *
In a little cubical space with iron sheeting above, below and all
round, and a dirty porthole still streaked with the salt of the sea,
the prospective Warden of the Court of Dowry sat upon the floor in a
despondent mood.
There was already a slight swell upon the vessel; his dungeon was
far forward and he felt it to the full. They had brought him some
detestable mess or other in a battered pannikin at noon. He had sent it
away untasted. Whither they were taking him, what would be his fate,
had formed for too many hours the subject of his speculations.
The movement of the ship was beginning to drive even these gloomy
considerations from his mind. He had already discovered two things:
first that the term “irons” was a purely conventional one; and
signified no more than that his harsh treatment might be made
indefinitely severe. Secondly, that he was permitted to communicate
with an extraordinarily lop-sided boy of some fifteen years who acted
as general drudge in the ship and was deputed to bring him his food
from the galley. He was about to discover a third feature in his new
life.
A person evidently containing mixed the blood of the Caucasian and of
the Negroid races approached him in his confinement and ordered him in
broken English to follow up on deck.
The sea air revived him somewhat, but George was far from well when the
half-breed, kicking towards him a lump of something which reminded poor
Demaine of a diseased brick, a bucket of dirty water and a large and
peculiarly evil mop, bade him scrub.
But George’s first attempts at this new trade were such that his
overseer after looking at him first in astonishment and then in anger,
assured him that any lack of good-will would necessarily be followed by
some form of physical compulsion, the which, so far as his victim could
gather from the torrent of broken English, would probably consist in a
larruping with the rope’s end.
Doggedly and despairingly the poor fellow scrubbed away. He scrubbed
perhaps too hard; at any rate he produced a patch of surpassing
brilliance though of exiguous dimensions; and as the result of his
efforts turned faint and ill with something worse than sea-sickness.
He rose from his knees and tottered to his legs, and began aimlessly
swabbing the odd patch of cleanliness with which he had diversified the
beastly decks of the _Lily_.
But the friend and brother (if I may so term the Eurafrican) could bear
no more, and seizing the unstable landsman by the arm he thrust him,
stumbling, down the stairway, and locked him again into his cell.
The exhaustion of nature had caused the unfortunate politician to fall
into a troubled doze, when he was aroused by a gentle kick, and saw
before him the boy, the battered pannikin, a piece of bread which had
unfortunately dropped upon the deck aft of the funnel on its way, and,
within the tin, a peculiarly loathsome liquid compound upon which, like
the magic island of Delos, floated at large a considerable glob of fat.
“I don’t want it,” said George feebly, “take it away.”
To his surprise--if surprise is not too strong a word for the faint
emotions that still stirred him, the boy began, as the conventional
term goes, to look ugly.
“Na yer dahn’t!” he said, “yer dahn’t gemme inter trouble, yer brute!
Yer gort them two Newcastle men inter trouble, and the myte seyes yer
nearly gort im. And yer gort Blacky inter trouble; yer dahn’t ger _me_!
Yer gottereatit!”
“I can’t!” again said George feebly.
“Yer gottereatit!” repeated the boy, with that dogged assumption of
authority which so ill fits the young. “By Gawd, if yer get cookie
inter trouble, I’ll ave the next watch dahn an’ they’ll skin yer.”
“Throw it away,” said George, “there’s a good boy. Throw it
overboard. I’ll make it all right in the long run,” he added, nodding
encouragingly.
The boy looked doubtful. “I dursent,” he said sullenly. “Sides which,
ow’ll yer myke it all roight?”
“Never you mind,” whispered George mysteriously. “You leave me the
bread--I might try that ... the clean part,” he added after a sudden
wave of nausea--“but chuck the rest, there’s a good lad. I can’t bear
it.” His whisper almost rose to a little scream.... “I can’t bear to
look at it.”
The boy still continued to eye him doubtfully and contemptuously.
“Yer cawn’t myke it all roight!” he said, but he bethought him that if
the wretched prisoner could not eat he should catch it from the cook
just the same, and that his own interest lay in the disposal of the
garbage. He drank a good swill of it himself--he was not over-fed on
the _Lily_,--went up on deck for a moment,--and George could hear the
splash as the horror went overboard.
In a moment the boy had returned.
“Yer ought ter be griteful,” he said, “I’ve sived yer a lickin.”
“Thank you,” said George warmly, with his mouth full. He had found
himself able to munch the bread, and it did him good.
The boy lingered; he took the same interest in the stowaway that he
might have taken in an animal at the Zoological Gardens, and the
episode broke the monotony of his fourth voyage.
“Yer’ll ketch it at Parham!” he said in a cheery tone.
George did not understand. “Why Parham?” he asked weakly.
“Coz that’s where they’ll land yer. That’s where they’ll put yer
shore. They’ll ave the cops there roight on the quay wytin for yer,
and they’ll put yer ahverboard in the little dinghy, they wull: they
wahn’t thrah yer bundle arter ye, anforwhoy? acause yer arn’t got none.
But they’ll send one of th’ orficers and ee’ll and yer ahver ter th’
cops, and ee’ll sye: ‘ee’s been very vilent’--that’s what ee’ll sye;
that’s what they said wiv the larst un; and they clapped th’ darbies on
_im_ ... saw em meself,” continued the boy most untruthfully. Then not
knowing his man and going a step too far, he continued: “Ee was ung, ee
was: ung in Lewes Gaol,” he ended, to give the story point and finish.
The poor pedantry of maps does not weigh upon the governing classes of
this country, and Demaine might have had some difficulty in answering
in an examination exactly where Parham lay, but he knew that it was
on the south coast, he knew one reached it easily in an hour or two
from London, because he had gone to golf there. He knew that there was
a good motor track between the harbour and Highcliff, and altogether
Parham sounded to him like an echo from now forgotten, dearer, and long
dead days. He affected indifference.
“Well,” he said, “it’s all the same to me.”
“Ah,” said the boy, not ready to relinquish the delicious morsel, “sah
yer sye! Ut wahn’t be th’ syme tomorrermornin’.”
“Do you mean,” said George, with--what might seem in such a man
impossible--a touch of cunning lent him by adversity, “Do you mean that
this old tub can make Parham in twenty-four hours?”
“I dunno bout arhs,” said the boy surlily, “an’ she’s norr a tub
either” (for they have a curious loyalty to their temporary homes),
“but it’s a dy’s run. Any fool knahs that,” he added courteously.
George dared not betray the hope that was rising in his heart. Luckily
for him the boy volunteered his next information.
“We’re orf Long Nahse now,” he said, “but I dunno bout th’ toide
outsoide.”
“No?” said George, merely desiring to prolong this all-important
conversation.
“Nah: I dahn’t, I tell yer!” said the boy defiantly, “nor there’s norr
many does. I’ll lye yer dahn’t yerself.”
At this stage of the conversation and just as an awkward pause
interrupted it, a new terror struck the boy.
“Oh chise me!” he said, “look at yer tin!”
“What’s the matter?” asked George as he peered into the empty tin.
“It’s gorn empty,” whimpered the boy.
“Well,” said George, his spirits already improved by the news of
Parham, “what of it?”
“Whoy,” said the unhappy scullion, “Whoy, yer cuddenever empty that
tin--they’ll foind me aht!” he said, and began to sniffle. “Wort are
yer to empty it wiv, yer fool? Yer eyn’t got a spoon!”
“Say I licked it,” said George with attempted humour.
“They’d blieve ut of yer,” said the boy viciously, “ye’re nothin but a
woilbeast! Gettin us all inter trouble!” He sniffled. “Ye’re a curse
on th’ ship, that’s wort you are, an I blieve she’ll founder. I blieve
she’ll stroike in th’ noight and go to Ell. _You_’ll be drahwnded,
anyow!” he viciously added as he restrained his tears in prospect of
the wrath to come.
But the thought of safety which the mention of Parham had brought
revived George, and he bore no ill-will. “Look here,” he said, “I’ll
swab it out with my bread and they’ll think I cleaned it up, but it’s
on condition that you chuck the bread overboard,” he added.
The boy accepted the pact and was comforted. It was a cheap act of
kindness, but he hoped it might stand him in good stead a few hours
later.
* * * * *
The June night fell gradually upon the sea, the slight swell dropped to
something almost imperceptible. Through his miserable porthole George
could see great sheets of moonlight playing upon the easy surface, and
there was no noise but the regular thud of the engine.
He fell into a profound sleep.