I have tried to put some connection into the various things Captain
Nichols told me about Strickland, and I here set them down in the best
order I can. They made one another’s acquaintance during the latter
part of the winter following my last meeting with Strickland in Paris.
How he had passed the intervening months I do not know, but life must
have been very hard, for Captain Nichols saw him first in the Asile de
Nuit. There was a strike at Marseilles at the time, and Strickland,
having come to the end of his resources, had apparently found it
impossible to earn the small sum he needed to keep body and soul
together.
The Asile de Nuit is a large stone building where pauper and vagabond
may get a bed for a week, provided their papers are in order and they
can persuade the friars in charge that they are workingmen. Captain
Nichols noticed Strickland for his size and his singular appearance
among the crowd that waited for the doors to open; they waited
listlessly, some walking to and fro, some leaning against the wall, and
others seated on the curb with their feet in the gutter; and when they
filed into the office he heard the monk who read his papers address him
in English. But he did not have a chance to speak to him, since, as he
entered the common-room, a monk came in with a huge Bible in his arms,
mounted a pulpit which was at the end of the room, and began the
service which the wretched outcasts had to endure as the price of their
lodging. He and Strickland were assigned to different rooms, and when,
thrown out of bed at five in the morning by a stalwart monk, he had
made his bed and washed his face, Strickland had already disappeared.
Captain Nichols wandered about the streets for an hour of bitter cold,
and then made his way to the Place Victor Gélu, where the sailor-men
are wont to congregate. Dozing against the pedestal of a statue, he saw
Strickland again. He gave him a kick to awaken him.
“Come and have breakfast, mate,” he said.
“Go to hell,” answered Strickland.
I recognised my friend’s limited vocabulary, and I prepared to regard
Captain Nichols as a trustworthy witness.
“Busted?” asked the Captain.
“Blast you,” answered Strickland.
“Come along with me. I’ll get you some breakfast.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Strickland scrambled to his feet, and
together they went to the Bouchée de Pain, where the hungry are given a
wedge of bread, which they must eat there and then, for it is forbidden
to take it away; and then to the Cuillère de Soupe, where for a week,
at eleven and four, you may get a bowl of thin, salt soup. The two
buildings are placed far apart, so that only the starving should be
tempted to make use of them. So they had breakfast, and so began the
queer companionship of Charles Strickland and Captain Nichols.
They must have spent something like four months at Marseilles in one
another’s society. Their career was devoid of adventure, if by
adventure you mean unexpected or thrilling incident, for their days
were occupied in the pursuit of enough money to get a night’s lodging
and such food as would stay the pangs of hunger. But I wish I could
give here the pictures, coloured and racy, which Captain Nichols’ vivid
narrative offered to the imagination. His account of their discoveries
in the low life of a seaport town would have made a charming book, and
in the various characters that came their way the student might easily
have found matter for a very complete dictionary of rogues. But I must
content myself with a few paragraphs. I received the impression of a
life intense and brutal, savage, multicoloured, and vivacious. It made
the Marseilles that I knew, gesticulating and sunny, with its
comfortable hotels and its restaurants crowded with the well-to-do,
tame and commonplace. I envied men who had seen with their own eyes the
sights that Captain Nichols described.
When the doors of the Asile de Nuit were closed to them, Strickland and
Captain Nichols sought the hospitality of Tough Bill. This was the
master of a sailors’ boarding-house, a huge mulatto with a heavy fist,
who gave the stranded mariner food and shelter till he found him a
berth. They lived with him a month, sleeping with a dozen others,
Swedes, negroes, Brazilians, on the floor of the two bare rooms in his
house which he assigned to his charges; and every day they went with
him to the Place Victor Gélu, whither came ships’ captains in search of
a man. He was married to an American woman, obese and slatternly,
fallen to this pass by Heaven knows what process of degradation, and
every day the boarders took it in turns to help her with the housework.
Captain Nichols looked upon it as a smart piece of work on Strickland’s
part that he had got out of this by painting a portrait of Tough Bill.
Tough Bill not only paid for the canvas, colours, and brushes, but gave
Strickland a pound of smuggled tobacco into the bargain. For all I
know, this picture may still adorn the parlour of the tumbledown little
house somewhere near the Quai de la Joliette, and I suppose it could
now be sold for fifteen hundred pounds. Strickland’s idea was to ship
on some vessel bound for Australia or New Zealand, and from there make
his way to Samoa or Tahiti. I do not know how he had come upon the
notion of going to the South Seas, though I remember that his
imagination had long been haunted by an island, all green and sunny,
encircled by a sea more blue than is found in Northern latitudes. I
suppose that he clung to Captain Nichols because he was acquainted with
those parts, and it was Captain Nichols who persuaded him that he would
be more comfortable in Tahiti.
“You see, Tahiti’s French,” he explained to me. “And the French aren’t
so damned technical.”
I thought I saw his point.
Strickland had no papers, but that was not a matter to disconcert Tough
Bill when he saw a profit (he took the first month’s wages of the
sailor for whom he found a berth), and he provided Strickland with
those of an English stoker who had providentially died on his hands.
But both Captain Nichols and Strickland were bound East, and it chanced
that the only opportunities for signing on were with ships sailing
West. Twice Strickland refused a berth on tramps sailing for the United
States, and once on a collier going to Newcastle. Tough Bill had no
patience with an obstinacy which could only result in loss to himself,
and on the last occasion he flung both Strickland and Captain Nichols
out of his house without more ado. They found themselves once more
adrift.
Tough Bill’s fare was seldom extravagant, and you rose from his table
almost as hungry as you sat down, but for some days they had good
reason to regret it. They learned what hunger was. The Cuillère de
Soupe and the Asile de Nuit were both closed to them, and their only
sustenance was the wedge of bread which the Bouchée de Pain provided.
They slept where they could, sometimes in an empty truck on a siding
near the station, sometimes in a cart behind a warehouse; but it was
bitterly cold, and after an hour or two of uneasy dozing they would
tramp the streets again. What they felt the lack of most bitterly was
tobacco, and Captain Nichols, for his part, could not do without it; he
took to hunting the “Can o’ Beer,” for cigarette-ends and the butt-end
of cigars which the promenaders of the night before had thrown away.
“I’ve tasted worse smoking mixtures in a pipe,” he added, with a
philosophic shrug of his shoulders, as he took a couple of cigars from
the case I offered him, putting one in his mouth and the other in his
pocket.
Now and then they made a bit of money. Sometimes a mail steamer would
come in, and Captain Nichols, having scraped acquaintance with the
timekeeper, would succeed in getting the pair of them a job as
stevedores. When it was an English boat, they would dodge into the
forecastle and get a hearty breakfast from the crew. They took the risk
of running against one of the ship’s officers and being hustled down
the gangway with the toe of a boot to speed their going.
“There’s no harm in a kick in the hindquarters when your belly’s full,”
said Captain Nichols, “and personally I never take it in bad part. An
officer’s got to think about discipline.”
I had a lively picture of Captain Nichols flying headlong down a narrow
gangway before the uplifted foot of an angry mate, and, like a true
Englishman, rejoicing in the spirit of the Mercantile Marine.
There were often odd jobs to be got about the fish-market. Once they
each of them earned a franc by loading trucks with innumerable boxes of
oranges that had been dumped down on the quay. One day they had a
stroke of luck: one of the boarding-masters got a contract to paint a
tramp that had come in from Madagascar round the Cape of Good Hope, and
they spent several days on a plank hanging over the side, covering the
rusty hull with paint. It was a situation that must have appealed to
Strickland’s sardonic humour. I asked Captain Nichols how he bore
himself during these hardships.
“Never knew him say a cross word,” answered the Captain. “He’d be a bit
surly sometimes, but when we hadn’t had a bite since morning, and we
hadn’t even got the price of a lie down at the Chink’s, he’d be as
lively as a cricket.”
I was not surprised at this. Strickland was just the man to rise
superior to circumstances, when they were such as to occasion
despondency in most; but whether this was due to equanimity of soul or
to contradictoriness it would be difficult to say.
The Chink’s Head was a name the beach-combers gave to a wretched inn
off the Rue Bouterie, kept by a one-eyed Chinaman, where for six sous
you could sleep in a cot and for three on the floor. Here they made
friends with others in as desperate condition as themselves, and when
they were penniless and the night was bitter cold, they were glad to
borrow from anyone who had earned a stray franc during the day the
price of a roof over their heads. They were not niggardly, these
tramps, and he who had money did not hesitate to share it among the
rest. They belonged to all the countries in the world, but this was no
bar to good-fellowship; for they felt themselves freemen of a country
whose frontiers include them all, the great country of Cockaine.
“But I guess Strickland was an ugly customer when he was roused,” said
Captain Nichols, reflectively. “One day we ran into Tough Bill in the
Place, and he asked Charlie for the papers he’d given him.”
“‘You’d better come and take them if you want them,’ says Charlie.
“He was a powerful fellow, Tough Bill, but he didn’t quite like the
look of Charlie, so he began cursing him. He called him pretty near
every name he could lay hands on, and when Tough Bill began cursing it
was worth listening to him. Well, Charlie stuck it for a bit, then he
stepped forward and he just said: ‘Get out, you bloody swine.’ It
wasn’t so much what he said, but the way he said it. Tough Bill never
spoke another word; you could see him go yellow, and he walked away as
if he’d remembered he had a date.”
Strickland, according to Captain Nichols, did not use exactly the words
I have given, but since this book is meant for family reading I have
thought it better, at the expense of truth, to put into his mouth
expressions familiar to the domestic circle.
Now, Tough Bill was not the man to put up with humiliation at the hands
of a common sailor. His power depended on his prestige, and first one,
then another, of the sailors who lived in his house told them that he
had sworn to do Strickland in.
One night Captain Nichols and Strickland were sitting in one of the
bars of the Rue Bouterie. The Rue Bouterie is a narrow street of
one-storeyed houses, each house consisting of but one room; they are
like the booths in a crowded fair or the cages of animals in a circus.
At every door you see a woman. Some lean lazily against the side-posts,
humming to themselves or calling to the passer-by in a raucous voice,
and some listlessly read. They are French. Italian, Spanish, Japanese,
coloured; some are fat and some are thin; and under the thick paint on
their faces, the heavy smears on their eyebrows, and the scarlet of
their lips, you see the lines of age and the scars of dissipation. Some
wear black shifts and flesh-coloured stockings; some with curly hair,
dyed yellow, are dressed like little girls in short muslin frocks.
Through the open door you see a red-tiled floor, a large wooden bed,
and on a deal table a ewer and a basin. A motley crowd saunters along
the streets—Lascars off a P. and O., blond Northmen from a Swedish
barque, Japanese from a man-of-war, English sailors, Spaniards,
pleasant-looking fellows from a French cruiser, negroes off an American
tramp. By day it is merely sordid, but at night, lit only by the lamps
in the little huts, the street has a sinister beauty. The hideous lust
that pervades the air is oppressive and horrible, and yet there is
something mysterious in the sight which haunts and troubles you. You
feel I know not what primitive force which repels and yet fascinates
you. Here all the decencies of civilisation are swept away, and you
feel that men are face to face with a sombre reality. There is an
atmosphere that is at once intense and tragic.
In the bar in which Strickland and Nichols sat a mechanical piano was
loudly grinding out dance music. Round the room people were sitting at
table, here half a dozen sailors uproariously drunk, there a group of
soldiers; and in the middle, crowded together, couples were dancing.
Bearded sailors with brown faces and large horny hands clasped their
partners in a tight embrace. The women wore nothing but a shift. Now
and then two sailors would get up and dance together. The noise was
deafening. People were singing, shouting, laughing; and when a man gave
a long kiss to the girl sitting on his knees, cat-calls from the
English sailors increased the din. The air was heavy with the dust
beaten up by the heavy boots of the men, and gray with smoke. It was
very hot. Behind the bar was seated a woman nursing her baby. The
waiter, an undersized youth with a flat, spotty face, hurried to and
fro carrying a tray laden with glasses of beer.
In a little while Tough Bill, accompanied by two huge negroes, came in,
and it was easy to see that he was already three parts drunk. He was
looking for trouble. He lurched against a table at which three soldiers
were sitting and knocked over a glass of beer. There was an angry
altercation, and the owner of the bar stepped forward and ordered Tough
Bill to go. He was a hefty fellow, in the habit of standing no nonsense
from his customers, and Tough Bill hesitated. The landlord was not a
man he cared to tackle, for the police were on his side, and with an
oath he turned on his heel. Suddenly he caught sight of Strickland. He
rolled up to him. He did not speak. He gathered the spittle in his
mouth and spat full in Strickland’s face. Strickland seized his glass
and flung it at him. The dancers stopped suddenly still. There was an
instant of complete silence, but when Tough Bill threw himself on
Strickland the lust of battle seized them all, and in a moment there
was a confused scrimmage. Tables were overturned, glasses crashed to
the ground. There was a hellish row. The women scattered to the door
and behind the bar. Passers-by surged in from the street. You heard
curses in every tongue the sound of blows, cries; and in the middle of
the room a dozen men were fighting with all their might. On a sudden
the police rushed in, and everyone who could made for the door. When
the bar was more or less cleared, Tough Bill was lying insensible on
the floor with a great gash in his head. Captain Nichols dragged
Strickland, bleeding from a wound in his arm, his clothes in rags, into
the street. His own face was covered with blood from a blow on the
nose.
“I guess you’d better get out of Marseilles before Tough Bill comes out
of hospital,” he said to Strickland, when they had got back to the
Chink’s Head and were cleaning themselves.
“This beats cock-fighting,” said Strickland.
I could see his sardonic smile.
Captain Nichols was anxious. He knew Tough Bill’s vindictiveness.
Strickland had downed the mulatto twice, and the mulatto, sober, was a
man to be reckoned with. He would bide his time stealthily. He would be
in no hurry, but one night Strickland would get a knife-thrust in his
back, and in a day or two the corpse of a nameless beach-comber would
be fished out of the dirty water of the harbour. Nichols went next
evening to Tough Bill’s house and made enquiries. He was in hospital
still, but his wife, who had been to see him, said he was swearing hard
to kill Strickland when they let him out.
A week passed.
“That’s what I always say,” reflected Captain Nichols, “when you hurt a
man, hurt him bad. It gives you a bit of time to look about and think
what you’ll do next.”
Then Strickland had a bit of luck. A ship bound for Australia had sent
to the Sailors’ Home for a stoker in place of one who had thrown
himself overboard off Gibraltar in an attack of delirium tremens.
“You double down to the harbour, my lad,” said the Captain to
Strickland, “and sign on. You’ve got your papers.”
Strickland set off at once, and that was the last Captain Nichols saw
of him. The ship was only in port for six hours, and in the evening
Captain Nichols watched the vanishing smoke from her funnels as she
ploughed East through the wintry sea.
I have narrated all this as best I could, because I like the contrast
of these episodes with the life that I had seen Strickland live in
Ashley Gardens when he was occupied with stocks and shares; but I am
aware that Captain Nichols was an outrageous liar, and I dare say there
is not a word of truth in anything he told me. I should not be
surprised to learn that he had never seen Strickland in his life, and
owed his knowledge of Marseilles to the pages of a magazine.