line of gloom. The lights of the earth mingled with the lights of
heaven; and above the tossing lanterns of a trawling fleet a great
lighthouse shone steadily, like an enormous riding light burning above
a vessel of fabulous dimensions. Below its steady glow, the coast,
stretching away straight and black, resembled the high side of an
indestructible craft riding motionless upon the immortal and unresting
sea. The dark land lay alone in the midst of waters, like a mighty ship
bestarred with vigilant lights—a ship carrying the burden of millions
of lives—a ship freighted with dross and with jewels, with gold and
with steel. She towered up immense and strong, guarding priceless
traditions and untold suffering, sheltering glorious memories and base
forgetfulness, ignoble virtues and splendid transgressions. A great
ship! For ages had the ocean battered in vain her enduring sides; she
was there when the world was vaster and darker, when the sea was great
and mysterious, and ready to surrender the prize of fame to audacious
men. A ship mother of fleets and nations! The great flagship of the
race; stronger than the storms! and anchored in the open sea.
The Narcissus, heeling over to off-shore gusts, rounded the South
Foreland, passed through the Downs, and, in tow, entered the river.
Shorn of the glory of her white wings, she wound obediently after the
tug through the maze of invisible channels. As she passed them the
red-painted light-vessels, swung at their moorings, seemed for an
instant to sail with great speed in the rush of tide, and the next
moment were left hopelessly behind. The big buoys on the tails of banks
slipped past her sides very low, and, dropping in her wake, tugged
at their chains like fierce watchdogs. The reach narrowed; from both
sides the land approached the ship. She went steadily up the river. On
the riverside slopes the houses appeared in groups—seemed to stream
down the declivities at a run to see her pass, and, checked by the mud
of the foreshore, crowded on the banks. Further on, the tall factory
chimneys appeared in insolent bands and watched her go by, like a
straggling crowd of slim giants, swaggering and upright under the black
plummets of smoke, cavalierly aslant. She swept round the bends; an
impure breeze shrieked a welcome between her stripped spars; and the
land, closing in, stepped between the ship and the sea.
A low cloud hung before her—a great opalescent and tremulous cloud,
that seemed to rise from the steaming brows of millions of men. Long
drifts of smoky vapours soiled it with livid trails; it throbbed
to the beat of millions of hearts, and from it came an immense and
lamentable murmur—the murmur of millions of lips praying, cursing,
sighing, jeering—the undying murmur of folly, regret, and hope exhaled
by the crowds of the anxious earth. The Narcissus entered the cloud;
the shadows deepened; on all sides there was the clang of iron, the
sound of mighty blows, shrieks, yells. Black barges drifted stealthily
on the murky stream. A mad jumble of begrimed walls loomed up vaguely
in the smoke, bewildering and mournful, like a vision of disaster. The
tugs backed and filled in the stream, to hold the ship steady at the
dock-gates; from her bows two lines went through the air whistling, and
struck at the land viciously, like a pair of snakes. A bridge broke in
two before her, as if by enchantment; big hydraulic capstans began to
turn all by themselves, as though animated by a mysterious and unholy
spell. She moved through a narrow lane of water between two low walls
of granite, and men with check-ropes in their hands kept pace with her,
walking on the broad flagstones. A group waited impatiently on each
side of the vanished bridge: rough heavy men in caps; sallow-faced men
in high hats; two bareheaded women; ragged children, fascinated, and
with wide eyes. A cart coming at a jerky trot pulled up sharply. One of
the women screamed at the silent ship—“Hallo, Jack!” without looking at
any one in particular, and all hands looked at her from the forecastle
head.—“Stand clear! Stand clear of that rope!” cried the dockmen,
bending over stone posts. The crowd murmured, stamped where they
stood.—“Let go your quarter-checks! Let go!” sang out a ruddy-faced old
man on the quay. The ropes splashed heavily falling in the water, and
the Narcissus entered the dock.
The stony shores ran away right and left in straight lines, enclosing
a sombre and rectangular pool. Brick walls rose high above the
water—soulless walls, staring through hundreds of windows as troubled
and dull as the eyes of over-fed brutes. At their base monstrous iron
cranes crouched, with chains hanging from their long necks, balancing
cruel-looking hooks over the decks of lifeless ships. A noise of wheels
rolling over stones, the thump of heavy things falling, the racket of
feverish winches, the grinding of strained chains, floated on the air.
Between high buildings the dust of all the continents soared in short
flights; and a penetrating smell of perfumes and dirt, of spices and
hides, of things costly and of things filthy, pervaded the space, made
for it an atmosphere precious and disgusting. The Narcissus came gently
into her berth; the shadows of soulless walls fell upon her, the dust
of all the continents leaped upon her deck, and a swarm of strange men,
clambering up her sides, took possession of her in the name of the
sordid earth. She had ceased to live.
A toff in a black coat and high hat scrambled with agility, came
up to the second mate, shook hands, and said:—“Hallo, Herbert.” It
was his brother. A lady appeared suddenly. A real lady, in a black
dress and with a parasol. She looked extremely elegant in the midst
of us, and as strange as if she had fallen there from the sky. Mr.
Baker touched his cap to her. It was the master’s wife. And very
soon the Captain, dressed very smartly and in a white shirt, went
with her over the side. We didn’t recognise him at all till, turning
on the quay, he called to Mr. Baker:—“Don’t forget to wind up the
chronometers to-morrow morning.” An underhand lot of seedy-looking
chaps with shifty eyes wandered in and out of the forecastle looking
for a job—they said.—“More likely for something to steal,” commented
Knowles, cheerfully. Poor beggars. Who cared? Weren’t we home! But
Mr. Baker went for one of them who had given him some cheek, and we
were delighted. Everything was delightful.—“I’ve finished aft, sir,”
called out Mr. Creighton.—“No water in the well, sir,” reported for
the last time the carpenter, sounding-rod in hand. Mr. Baker glanced
along the decks at the expectant group of sailors, glanced aloft at the
yards.—“Ough! That will do, men,” he grunted. The group broke up. The
voyage was ended.
Rolled-up beds went flying over the rail; lashed chests went sliding
down the gangway—mighty few of both at that. “The rest is having a
cruise off the Cape,” explained Knowles enigmatically to a dock-loafer
with whom he had struck a sudden friendship. Men ran, calling to one
another, hailing utter strangers to “lend a hand with the dunnage,”
then with sudden decorum approached the mate to shake hands before
going ashore.—“Good-bye, sir,” they repeated in various tones. Mr.
Baker grasped hard palms, grunted in a friendly manner at every one,
his eyes twinkled.—“Take care of your money, Knowles. Ough! Soon get a
nice wife if you do.” The lame man was delighted.—“Good-bye, sir,” said
Belfast, with emotion, wringing the mate’s hand, and looked up with
swimming eyes. “I thought I would take ’im ashore with me,” he went
on, plaintively. Mr. Baker did not understand, but said kindly:—“Take
care of yourself, Craik,” and the bereaved Belfast went over the rail
mourning and alone.
Mr. Baker, in the sudden peace of the ship, moved about solitary and
grunting, trying door-handles, peering into dark places, never done—a
model chief mate! No one waited for him ashore. Mother dead; father and
two brothers, Yarmouth fishermen, drowned together on the Dogger Bank;
sister married and unfriendly. Quite a lady. Married to the leading
tailor of a little town, and its leading politician, who did not think
his sailor brother-in-law quite respectable enough for him. Quite a
lady, quite a lady, he thought, sitting down for a moment’s rest on
the quarter-hatch. Time enough to go ashore and get a bite and sup,
and a bed somewhere. He didn’t like to part with a ship. No one to
think about then. The darkness of a misty evening fell, cold and damp,
upon the deserted deck; and Mr. Baker sat smoking, thinking of all the
successive ships to whom through many long years he had given the best
of a seaman’s care. And never a command in sight. Not once!—“I haven’t
somehow the cut of a skipper about me,” he meditated, placidly, while
the shipkeeper (who had taken possession of the galley), a wizened
old man with bleared eyes, cursed him in whispers for “hanging about
so.”—“Now, Creighton,” he pursued the unenvious train of thought,
“quite a gentleman... swell friends... will get on. Fine young
fellow... a little more experience.” He got up and shook himself. “I’ll
be back first thing to-morrow morning for the hatches. Don’t you let
them touch anything before I come, shipkeeper,” he called out. Then, at
last, he also went ashore—a model chief mate!
The men scattered by the dissolving contact of the land came together
once more in the shipping office.—“The Narcissus pays off,” shouted
outside a glazed door a brass-bound old fellow with a crown and the
capitals B. T. on his cap. A lot trooped in at once but many were late.
The room was large, white-washed, and bare; a counter surmounted by a
brass-wire grating fenced off a third of the dusty space, and behind
the grating a pasty-faced clerk, with his hair parted in the middle,
had the quick, glittering eyes and the vivacious, jerky movements of a
caged bird. Poor Captain Allistoun also in there, and sitting before
a little table with piles of gold and notes on it, appeared subdued
by his captivity. Another Board of Trade bird was perching on a high
stool near the door: an old bird that did not mind the chaff of elated
sailors. The crew of the Narcissus, broken up into knots, pushed in
the corners. They had new shore togs, smart jackets that looked as if
they had been shaped with an axe, glossy trousers that seemed made of
crumpled sheet-iron, collarless flannel shirts, shiny new boots. They
tapped on shoulders, button-holed one another, asked: “Where did you
sleep last night?” whispered gaily, slapped their thighs with bursts of
subdued laughter. Most had clean, radiant faces; only one or two turned
up dishevelled and sad; the two young Norwegians looked tidy, meek, and
altogether of a promising material for the kind ladies who patronise
the Scandinavian Home. Wamibo, still in his working clothes, dreamed,
upright and burly in the middle of the room, and, when Archie came in,
woke up for a smile. But the wide-awake clerk called out a name, and
the paying-off business began.
One by one they came up to the pay-table to get the wages of their
glorious and obscure toil. They swept the money with care into broad
palms, rammed it trustfully into trousers’ pockets, or, turning their
backs on the table, reckoned with difficulty in the hollow of their
stiff hands.—“Money right? Sign the release. There—there,” repeated
the clerk, impatiently. “How stupid those sailors are!” he thought.
Singleton came up, venerable—and uncertain as to daylight; brown
drops of tobacco juice hung in his white beard; his hands, that never
hesitated in the great light of the open sea, could hardly find the
small pile of gold in the profound darkness of the shore. “Can’t
write?” said the clerk, shocked. “Make a mark, then.” Singleton
painfully sketched in a heavy cross, blotted the page. “What a
disgusting old brute,” muttered the clerk. Somebody opened the door for
him, and the patriarchal seaman passed through unsteadily, without as
much as a glance at any of us.
Archie displayed a pocket-book. He was chaffed. Belfast, who looked
wild, as though he had already luffed up through a public-house or two,
gave signs of emotion and wanted to speak to the Captain privately.
The master was surprised. They spoke through the wires, and we could
hear the Captain saying:—“I’ve given it up to the Board of Trade.” “I
should ’ve liked to get something of his,” mumbled Belfast. “But you
can’t, my man. It’s given up, locked and sealed, to the Marine Office,”
expostulated the master; and Belfast stood back, with drooping mouth
and troubled eyes. In a pause of the business we heard the master and
the clerk talking. We caught: “James Wait—deceased—found no papers of
any kind—no relations—no trace—the Office must hold his wages then.”
Donkin entered. He seemed out of breath, was grave, full of business.
He went straight to the desk, talked with animation to the clerk, who
thought him an intelligent man. They discussed the account, dropping
h’s against one another as if for a wager—very friendly. Captain
Allistoun paid. “I give you a bad discharge,” he said, quietly. Donkin
raised his voice:—“I don’t want your bloomin’ discharge—keep it. I’m
goin’ ter ’ave a job ashore.” He turned to us. “No more bloomin’ sea
fur me,” he said, aloud. All looked at him. He had better clothes,
had an easy air, appeared more at home than any of us; he stared with
assurance, enjoying the effect of his declaration. “Yuss. I ’ave
friends well off. That’s more’n you got. But I am a man. Yer shipmates
for all that. Who’s comin fur a drink?”
No one moved. There was a silence; a silence of blank faces and stony
looks. He waited a moment, smiled bitterly, and went to the door. There
he faced round once more. “You won’t? You bloomin’ lot of yrpocrits.
No? What ’ave I done to yer? Did I bully yer? Did I ’urt yer? Did I?...
You won’t drink?... No!... Then may ye die of thirst, every mother’s
son of yer! Not one of yer ’as the sperrit of a bug. Ye’re the scum of
the world. Work and starve!”
He went out, and slammed the door with such violence that the old Board
of Trade bird nearly fell off his perch.
“He’s mad,” declared Archie. “No! No! He’s drunk,” insisted Belfast,
lurching about, and in a maudlin tone. Captain Allistoun sat smiling
thoughtfully at the cleared pay-table.
* * * * *
Outside, on Tower Hill, they blinked, hesitated clumsily, as if blinded
by the strange quality of the hazy light, as if discomposed by the
view of so many men; and they who could hear one another in the howl
of gales seemed deafened and distracted by the dull roar of the busy
earth.—“To the Black Horse! To the Black Horse!” cried some. “Let us
have a drink together before we part.” They crossed the road, clinging
to one another. Only Charley and Belfast wandered off alone. As I
came up I saw a red-faced, blowsy woman, in a grey shawl, and with
dusty, fluffy hair, fall on Charley’s neck. It was his mother. She
slobbered over him:—“O, my boy! My boy!”—“Leggo of me,” said Charley,
“Leggo, mother!” I was passing him at the time, and over the untidy
head of the blubbering woman he gave me a humorous smile and a glance
ironic, courageous, and profound, that seemed to put all my knowledge
of life to shame. I nodded and passed on, but heard him say again,
good-naturedly:—“If you leggo of me this minyt—ye shall ’ave a bob for
a drink out of my pay.” In the next few steps I came upon Belfast. He
caught my arm with tremulous enthusiasm.—“I couldn’t go wi’ ’em,” he
stammered, indicating by a nod our noisy crowd, that drifted slowly
along the other sidewalk. “When I think of Jimmy... Poor Jim! When I
think of him I have no heart for drink. You were his chum, too... but
I pulled him out... didn’t I? Short wool he had.... Yes. And I stole
the blooming pie.... He wouldn’t go.... He wouldn’t go for nobody.” He
burst into tears. “I never touched him—never—never!” he sobbed. “He
went for me like ... like ... a lamb.”
I disengaged myself gently. Belfast’s crying fits generally ended in
a fight with some one, and I wasn’t anxious to stand the brunt of his
inconsolable sorrow. Moreover, two bulky policemen stood near by,
looking at us with a disapproving and incorruptible gaze.—“So long!” I
said, and went on my way.
But at the corner I stopped to take my last look at the crew of
the Narcissus. They were swaying irresolute and noisy on the broad
flagstones before the Mint. They were bound for the Black Horse, where
men, in fur caps with brutal faces and in shirt sleeves, dispense out
of varnished barrels the illusions of strength, mirth, happiness; the
illusion of splendour and poetry of life, to the paid-off crews of
southern-going ships. From afar I saw them discoursing, with jovial
eyes and clumsy gestures, while the sea of life thundered into their
ears ceaseless and unheeded. And swaying about there on the white
stones, surrounded by the hurry and clamour of men, they appeared to
be creatures of another kind—lost, alone, forgetful, and doomed; they
were like castaways, like reckless and joyous castaways, like mad
castaways making merry in the storm and upon an insecure ledge of a
treacherous rock. The roar of the town resembled the roar of topping
breakers, merciless and strong, with a loud voice and cruel purpose;
but overhead the clouds broke; a flood of sunshine streamed down the
walls of grimy houses. The dark knot of seamen drifted in sunshine. To
the left of them the trees in Tower Gardens sighed, the stones of the
Tower gleaming, seemed to stir in the play of light, as if remembering
suddenly all the great joys and sorrows of the past, the fighting
prototypes of these men; press-gangs; mutinous cries; the wailing of
women by the riverside, and the shouts of men welcoming victories. The
sunshine of heaven fell like a gift of grace on the mud of the earth,
on the remembering and mute stones, on greed, selfishness; on the
anxious faces of forgetful men. And to the right of the dark group the
stained front of the Mint, cleansed by the flood of light, stood out
for a moment dazzling and white like a marble palace in a fairy tale.
The crew of the Narcissus drifted out of sight.
I never saw them again. The sea took some, the steamers took others,
the graveyards of the earth will account for the rest. Singleton has
no doubt taken with him the long record of his faithful work into the
peaceful depths of an hospitable sea. And Donkin, who never did a
decent day’s work in his life, no doubt earns his living by discoursing
with filthy eloquence upon the right of labour to live. So be it! Let
the earth and the sea each have its own.
A gone shipmate, like any other man, is gone for ever; and I never
met one of them again. But at times the spring-flood of memory sets
with force up the dark River of the Nine Bends. Then on the waters
of the forlorn stream drifts a ship—a shadowy ship manned by a crew
of Shades. They pass and make a sign, in a shadowy hail. Haven’t we,
together and upon the immortal sea, wrung out a meaning from our sinful
lives? Good-bye, brothers! You were a good crowd. As good a crowd as
ever fisted with wild cries the beating canvas of a heavy foresail; or
tossing aloft, invisible in the night, gave back yell for yell to a
westerly gale.
THE END