“According to the hand-book, there is,” said the skipper. “It flows
north-east, but a little note says ‘it has been known to flow
south-west.’ Two and two make four, but they have been known to make
five. All I can say is that if there is a Gulf Stream we are going
against it at this moment and beating our engines. Our maximum is
11-1/4 knots, and we are doing 12.”
It was touching to hear English coming over the water when we were
hailed by British patrols.
“What is the name of the ship?”
“_Glamis._”
“What is your cargo?”
“Wood--and--flax. Wood--and--flax.”
“Ah well, I can’t attend to you now, you’d bettah drop your ankah.”
At one point, to the great disgust of the skipper, we were stopped by
a cruiser and some twenty mail-bags were sent to us. And we lost our
steam. “They signalled us six miles away. Why couldn’t they have said
they wanted us to slow up for mails, instead of allowing us to come
up at full speed, and then giving us ‘Stop immediately’ and making us
reverse the engines and go full astern.”
We were a lot of cheerful British grumblers. I was the only passenger
on board, and so got to know them all pretty well. Every man was a
character in his way, and their remarks filled me constantly with mirth.
Our last three days were stormy in the extreme--regular equinoctial
weather. The captain did not sleep, for the waters were, in his
opinion, “too submariny.” I put out my lifebelt and wrapped up my
manuscripts in a waterproof packet.
“What will happen should we strike a mine or be torpedoed?” I asked of
the captain.
“Unless the engines were blown up we should proceed as best we could on
the injured ship,” said he. He showed me what were the vital sections
of the vessel.
“In any case we should not take to the boats except in the worst
extremity,” said he. “For the Lascars have no will to live and they
would not row us far. We should throw three dead overboard every
morning, they so quickly lose hope.”
At Lerwick we learned the name of the port for which we had to make.
’Twas Aberdeen, and as the captain shouted this to us from the boat in
which he was returning from the man-of-war, all the officers rushed to
look at their shipping almanacks to see what the tides were. We made
out that we could just get in in time. And the vessel that night did
the best she ever did.
Still we missed the tide and had to wait all day outside Aberdeen, and
that was very tantalising. I had made up my mind to stay the night
at a hotel, and then suddenly the Daylight Saving Bill made me an
unlooked-for present of an hour, and it was possible to catch the 8.30
night train for London.
An extremely cautious Customs Officer looked at my things, but said
naught, and he insisted on my unpacking the samovar which I was
bringing home. When he saw it, he remarked:
“It’ll be something for taking pictures?”
He said this because I had put in the chimney a number of pictures and
maps to keep them from crumpling.
The doctor when he came thought we might be detained in quarantine for
a week. The captain had a sore throat. He must go to a hospital and
have a culture of it taken.
“A lot of bally rot, I call it,” the captain kept repeating, and tears
were almost trickling from his eyes.
The doctor, however, let me go, and I sent a small boy to fetch a taxi.
The taxi appeared at about 8.25 P. M., and I just got to the station in
time. There was half a minute.
“Take it easy, you’ve plenty of time,” said a porter to me,
characteristically.
All my possessions were labelled, and the doors of the guard’s pan
opened in the moving train and accepted the extra bags. I sped along
through a throng of women waving good-bye to soldiers, and got into a
carriage as by miracle.
There for a moment I paused and considered.
What a contrast to Russian ways, the possibility of getting off by a
train with such a hairbreadth of margin.
The contrast was flattering to ourselves.
Soon, however, came another contrast, less flattering. Two drunken men
got in. I was feeling particularly tender to everything English, and
could not possibly have felt critical or wished to grumble.
But one of the drunken men wanted to fight. He stood up and held on a
minute to the window-strap, looked at me vaguely, and exclaimed:
“I pronounce my ultimatio.”
“What is it?” I asked cheerfully.
“Self-defence,” he replied, and then relapsed into his seat with a bump.
So I was home. And all night long the train rushed on to London.