I
Sydney is one of the finest towns in the world and it has the finest
harbour, unless you call San Francisco Bay a harbour, it has the most
hospitable people and a gaiety and push all its own, also, in the
matter of temperature, when it chooses it can beat any other town
except maybe Calcutta.
“A hot shop,” said Brent. He was seated at a bar adorned with coloured
bottles, and a girl with peroxide of hydrogen tinted hair had just
handed him a lemon squash with a hummock of ice in it.
“You aren’t looking yourself, Captain,” said the girl.
“No, my dear, I aren’t,” replied Brent, “not if I look as I feel.” He
relapsed into gloom and I offered him a cigarette which he refused.
“I’m going to a funeral,” he explained.
“Sorry,” said I. “Not a near relation, I hope?”
“Well, it might be a relation, by the way I feel, but I’ve none. When
a man gets to my age he leaves a lot of things astern.” He sighed,
finished the last half of his drink in one mighty gulp, wiped his
mouth and got off his chair.
“Walk down with me a bit of the way,” said he.
We left the bar and entered the blaze of the street. It was eleven
o’clock in the morning.
“It ought to be raining,” said the Captain as we wended our way along
King Street towards the wharves. “Happy is the corpse that the rain
rains on, is the old saying, and she’s a corpse if ever there was one,
but rain or shine, if there’s happiness for such things as corpses,
she’s happy—she’s done her duty.”
“What did she die of?” I asked, by way of making conversation.
“Old age,” replied Brent. He had a black tie on, but his garb was
otherwise unchanged, his mourning was chiefly expressed by his voice
and manner, and as we drew closer to the whiff of the harbour and the
scent of shipping he took off his panama and mopped his bald head now
and then with a huge red handkerchief.
That handkerchief was always the signal of worry or perplexity with
Brent, and now, right on the wharves and feeling for his state of
mind, I halted to say good-bye.
“Wouldn’t you care to see her?” he asked.
“No thanks,” I replied. “I ought to meet a man at twelve and it’s
after eleven now—and——”
“He’ll wait,” replied the Captain. “It’s only a step from here and
she’s _worth_ seeing. Kim on.”
He took me by the arm and led me along, reluctantly enough, towards
some mean-looking buildings, the relics of old days; under the
bowsprit of a full rigged ship, over hawsers, and then on to a decayed
slip of a wharf beside which an old schooner lay moored.
“That’s her,” said Brent.
On her counter in letters almost vanished stood the word _Greyhound_.
“The _Greyhound_,” said I, “is this the old schooner you and Slane
owned?”
“The same,” said Brent. “She’s to be towed to the breakers’ yard eight
bells—noon, they gave me word so that I might have a last look at
her.”
So this was the funeral he was to attend. He mopped his face with the
red handkerchief, contemplated the deck beneath him, heaved a sigh and
then, “Come down,” said he. “I’ve told Jimmy Scott to leave me
something in the cabin.”
He dropped on to the deck and I followed him. There was no watchman to
guard the corpse. I looked at the standing rigging all gone to ruin
and the sticks that had survived many a gale, the grimy decks that
once had been white, then I dropped down to the cabin after Brent.
The ports were open and water shimmers from the harbour water danced
on the maple panelling, the upholstery had been eaten by rats or
roaches and a faint smell filled the place like the ghost of the odour
of corruption, but there was a bottle of whisky on the table, a couple
of glasses and a syphon.
“If I hadn’t met you, I’d ’a brought someone else,” said Brent, taking
his seat before the funeral refreshments, “but there’s not many I’d
have sooner had than you to give her a send off. You remember I told
you, Buck had her from Pat O’Brien who didn’t know her qualities, no
one did in those days; why, a chap by name of Gadgett come aboard
first day we had her and said she ought to be condemned, said she
wasn’t seaworthy and that’s many years ago.” He took the cork from the
bottle and poured “Many years ago and now I’m having my last drink and
smoke here where Buck and me have often sat, and him in the cemetery.
Well, here’s to you, Buck—and here’s to her.” We drank and lit up.
“Well, she’s had her day,” said I, trying to say something cheerful.
“It’s like a wife that has done her duty——”
The Captain snorted.
“Wives,” said he, “a ship’s all the wife I’ve ever had and I don’t
want no other, it’s all the wife a sailor-man wants and if she’s
decently found and run, she never lets him down. I told that to Buck
once. I told him the _Greyhound_ was his lawful wife and he’d come a
mucker if he took another. He wouldn’t believe me, but he found it
out. You’ve never seen him. He died only four years ago and he hadn’t
lost a tooth, he hadn’t got a grey hair on his head, six foot he stood
and he’d only to look at a girl and she’d follow him, but he wasn’t
given that way after his marriage.”
“Oh, he got married, did he?” said I. “I always fancied from what you
told me of him that he was a single man.—Did she die?”
“I expect she’s dead by this,” said the Captain. “No knowing, but if
she ain’t she ought to be. We fell in with her, me and Slane, the year
after that dust up with Sru I told you of. We’d lost money on that
job, but we’d pulled up over a deal in silver that had come our way
through Pat O’Brien and Buck had thirty thousand dollars in the Bank
of California, and I’d got near ten in my pocket. I didn’t trust
banks. For all that money we lived quiet, not being given to drink,
and we were fitting the _Greyhound_ out for a new job, when one night
at a sociable we met in with Mrs. Slade. That was the name she gave
herself, a fine, fresh-faced young woman, not thirty, with eyes like
Cape mulberries, they had that red look in the black of them, and a
laundry of her own they said was bringing in five hundred a week
profit. She harpooned Buck. Clean through the gizzard. You’ve seen a
chicken running about with a woman after it till she catches it and
wrings its neck, that was Buck. He was no more good after she’d got
the irons into him.
“One night I had it out with him. I said: ‘The Lord Almighty has given
you a ship to tend and take care of, she’s been true to you and
brought you in the dollars, and look at the way you’re usin’ her, why,
we ought to have had her out of dock by this and the cargo half on
board her, she over there at Oakland and you foolandering after a
widow woman.’
“‘She’s a girl,’ says he.
“‘Well, woman or girl don’t matter,’ I says, ‘you ain’t the age for
marrying, nor the sort of chap to make good at the game.’ We went at
it hammer and tongs, me trying to pump sense into him like a chap
trying to pump up a burst bicycle tyre, but at last, somehow or
another, I began to get the better of the business and bring him to
reason and by two in the morning I’d brought him to own he was a damn
fool and marriage a mug’s game. I went to bed happy, and next day he
turned up at noon with a flower in his coat and looking as if he’d
gone queer in his head.
“What’s the matter with you?” I says.
“‘I’ve just been married,’ says he.