I paused on the bridge in Old Gravel Lane, that surprising lapse in the
walls of Wapping, because water was on either side of it. The street
lamps were just lit, but the sky was still high and yellow. The forms
of the ships under the dock warehouses were plain, like dim creatures
asleep in the shadows at the base of cliffs. It did not look like the
present, that silent scene, but the past. I was peering into the past,
a vista down the London Dock which evening was quickly closing, when
Captain McLachlan took hold of me and brought me back to Old Gravel
Lane. I didn’t know his ship was in port. “Don’t lie,” he jollied me.
“Don’t pretend you knew I was in, and that you were looking for me.”
As if anyone would lie to McLachlan! No need. He is too good-natured,
too sagacious. So judicious and deliberate that he would see through
almost any neat and nicely polished artifice. “You never told me you
would be here to-day,” I reminded him.
“Well, I’m off at midnight,” he said, still with a grip on my arm. “You
come along with me.”
“Not to Glasgow,” I said in alarm.
“No. Just as far as she is now. There she is.” The skipper pointed to a
misty confusion of funnels and masts up the dock.
It seemed easy to get to her. She was not far off. But in fact, at
that hour, which was neither day nor night, our little journey through
streets and sheds, and by quaysides where lower lights were burning
though day was in the sky, and the shapes of things were queer, was
like an excursion into an inverted world. It was confused. What were
streets doing there, and ships? They had been jumbled in an antipodean
upset. The lights were not in the right places. The shadows were all
wrong. Funnels were in the streets, apparently, and houses in the
water. But the skipper kept on talking, stepping over mooring ropes and
children on kerbstones.
“That was a nasty passage down,” he was saying.
“It was? But I don’t remember a blow this week.”
“I do; but you wouldn’t have noticed it. I didn’t like it. Here’s me,
with forty years of it, but I didn’t like it. Once or twice I wondered
whether the old girl could stand it. Aye. Most of the way from the
Broomielaw. Mind that rope.”
We were standing now on concrete, looking up at a steamer’s counter.
This was McLachlan’s charge. She was not a liner, but an aristocrat
compared with the usual coaster. She looked quite big in that place and
in that light.
The skipper was shaking his head. “God forbid that I ever see the Storm
Petrel again.”
This was a little ridiculous, and not at all like my friend. Almost
superstitious of him. I thought it was his fun, but then he turned to
mount the gangway of his ship. His face, downcast to his footing, was
serious enough. His short, hard moustache looked even grim. It was
amusing to discover that the skipper, among the orderly and scientific
sequence of his experiences and thoughts, should allow an old myth
about a bird to interrupt Scotch logic so irrelevantly. I chuckled as
I followed the elderly seaman to his ship, and to divert his attention
asked his opinion about the derivation and uses of the word cleat. That
gangway reminded me of it. There had been a dispute ashore about it,
and McLachlan was the man who would know. He keeps even _The Golden
Bough_ in his cabin, with Burns, Shelley, _The Evolution of the Idea
of God_, an encyclopædia, and other incongruous companions. He is
the unknown but harsh enemy of all hurried journalists. His untiring
exactitude over trifles is awe-inspiring, and even tedious to casual
and indifferent men. He paused on deck, gave me the root of the word,
and assured me of all its uses, with qualifications; then turned into a
door and descended to the saloon.
His steward stood at attention as we squirmed into those seats which
will not push back from saloon tables, and then the man went, as the
captain made a perfunctory sign for what we wanted. The skipper sat
without speaking till he had the glass in his hand. “Ye see, I knew we
were in for it as soon as I clapped eyes on yon lunatic,” he remarked.
He had not been at all cautious with what he measured into the glasses.
“As soon as the Storm Petrel came aboard, two firemen went ashore. He
was enough for them. No good talking to the fellows. They were scared.
They knew what that warning meant, and it happened they saw him coming
up the gangway.”
“I thought it was a bird,” I said.
“No. It’s a parson. You’d know him fine if you were coasting. A wee
man. I can’t leave the ship myself, but I wished the fellow to the
devil. He didn’t look like a man of God to me that night for all his
clericals. And he was so damn jolly when he saw me. He always is.
‘There’s something brewing, captain,’ says he, rubbing his hands.
‘You’re going to get a dusting.’ He was in his oilskins then. A good
beginning, wasn’t it?”
“And you got it?”
“And we did. Anyhow, the sight of that man made me give a good look to
everything.” He paused for a spell, with his service cap pushed well
back, so that I could see the unweathered top of his forehead. He began
talking to the clock at the end of the saloon very deliberately. “I’ve
seen too much to be easily scared. Perhaps I’m too old to be scared at
all. No. I wouldn’t call it fear, at my age. It’s not that. Y’see, you
can watch heavy weather without worry, when you know your ship. That’s
just it--knowing her. It isn’t a matter of calculation. You know, but
you don’t quite know why. So I wouldn’t say that I’m afraid of big
waters--not often--not to call it that. But it’s happened at times that
I’ve had a sort of white feeling inside me while gripping a stanchion.
You could tell it then. The little ship herself was frightened. She’d
got more than she could do.
“So it was that night, and all the next day. I had the feeling twice.
But that blackbird was enjoying it. He always does, though I hoped then
he’d got more than he’d bargained for. But not him. He was all right.
I wished he’d gone overside.”
“Who is he? What’s his caper?” I asked.
“He’s a parson. Got a quiet vicarage somewhere, I suppose. I’ve thought
about him a lot. Church too peaceful for him, maybe. He mustn’t sin,
not in a small country parish, and he needs excitement. It’s as good as
drink to him. Better, perhaps. Anyhow, he looks for trouble. He comes
and has it with us. ‘Sir,’ says the steward, ‘Mr. Jenkins has just
come aboard.’ ‘The hell he has,’ I say, and look at the glass. Sure
enough, down it goes. And there the wee man is. ‘Hullo, captain,’ he
says, ‘good evening. But it won’t be good for long. I’ve been watching
the barometer, and I’ve just had this telegram from the Meteorological
Office. There’s going to be a snorter.’ He always seems as pleased
as though he’d come into a legacy. Rubs his hands. Looks round. ‘I’m
coming along with you,’ says the blackbird.
“And a snorter it is, for sure. All the coasters know him. You ought to
hear the men when they see him hurrying along the quay, just before we
cast off. They’d tip him overside, give him all the trouble there is,
if he wasn’t always so grateful afterwards for the good time he’s had
with us. He’s free with his tips. He pays for his fun.”
“Well, anyway, that’s over,” said the skipper. He poured out some more.
“I deserve this,” he went on. “That last was a voyage and a half. Now
look here. There’s four hours to midnight. I haven’t seen you to talk
to you yet. You run home and get your bag. Come round with us. You know
you can. So don’t argue. I want to hear about things. It’ll be a quiet
trip this time.”
“Any other passengers?”
“Not one. It’s not the season. We’ll have it to ourselves. Likely we’ll
have spring weather all the way. That last blow must have emptied the
sky. What’s this I hear about the American astronomer who is denying
Einstein? Come and tell me.”
I rose to go. It was tempting. I had got to like the smell of the ship.
She looked good. And McLachlan’s reliable face, with its taut mouth and
moustache, and mocking and contemplative eyes--a talk with him would be
more than a holiday. Could I do it?
We mounted the companion to the deck. It was a still night, with an
audience of placid little clouds about a full moon. The dock was
asleep. I went with the captain to his cabin, for he had a book of
mine, and he wished to return it. That peaceful cabin, with its
library, and the broad back of the sailor as he peered into his
bookcase, settled it. I would hurry home and get my bag. Then there
was a voice behind me: “Sir, Mr. Jenkins has come back. He’s just come
aboard.”
The skipper turned slowly round to stare at his steward, dragging his
spectacles from his eyes as he did so. His mouth was partly open. He
only stared for some seconds.
“Has that man brought his bag, Jones?”
“Yes, sir. He’s in his oilskins, sir.”