for him to the light, with a look of pensiveness in the one bloodshot
eye he kept open, “we tarns to and makes a flare--a sort o’ bonfire. But
if we couldn’t see anything, who was to see us? However, we kept all on
burning flares, whilst first the fore-top-gall’nmast came down with a
run, causing us all to jump aft out of the road, and then the
main-topmast carries away at the cap and falls with a roar over the
side, and set us all running forrard. I for one made up my mind we was
all to be drownded. I couldn’t see no help for it. The noise of them
spars cracking and tumbling away in the blackness overhead, and the
shindy set up by the slatting canvas, along with the creaking of the
hull and the washing of the water that came as white as milk over the
starboard rail, was enough, I reckon, to make any man suppose his time
had come, and that his ghost was to be turned out of him. However, we
took heart after a spell, by noticing that the seas burst with less
weight as the tide left us, though every butt in her must have yawed
open after she had been grinding awhile, for she was full of water and a
few hours more of such dusting was bound to have made staves of her.
Well, at about half-past four o’clock in the morning, we being by that
time pretty near froze to death, the weather thinned down, and we caught
sight of the Gull Light shining--about three mile off, I dare say. What
was to be seen of our wessel was just a fearful muddle; masts overboard
washing alongside, the lower masts working in her like loose teeth with
every heave, decks full of raffle, and the water every now and again
flying over us as though detarmined if it couldn’t wash us overboard it
would keep us streamin’ wet. When we spied the Gull Light we turned to
and made another flare, and presently they sent up a rocket, and to cut
this yarn short,” continued he, having by this time emptied his second
tumbler, and finding me slow in offering him a third, “just as the light
was abreakin’ in the east one of us sings out that there was a steamer
headin’ for us, and when the mornin’ grew stronger we spied a tug makin’
for us with a lifeboat in tow. Well, by this time there was little
enough sea, and the lifeboat, letting go off the tug, came alongside,
but two of our men was so badly froze up that they had to be lifted into
her, and such had been our sufferings, though I’m not going to say they
equalled what others have gone through on those cussed sands, that we
couldn’t have looked worse, with salt in our eyes and our faces washed
into the appearance of tallow, had we been spendin’ forty-eight hours on
that shoal. We lost all our clothes, every bloomin’ thing we had with
us; and that same forenoon, just afore twelve o’clock, half a gale of
wind sprung up, and by two o’clock there was nothing to be seen of the
brig.”
“And that’s the story,” said I.
“That’s it,” he answered; “every word gospel true.”
“How did the others behave,” said I, “in this awful situation? Pretty
well?”
“It was too dark to see,” he answered.
“Did you encourage one another?”
“Well,” he replied, “the cook at first kept on singin’ out, ‘We’re all
drownded men! Lord have mercy upon me!’ and the like of that, until the
cold took away his voice. I don’t know that there was any other sort o’
encouragement.”
“And what were your feelings,” said I, “when the brig took the ground
and the water washed over her?”
“My feelings?” he replied. “Why, that we was in a bloomin’ mess. That
was my feelings.”
“How did the prospect of death affect you--I mean the idea of being
swept into the black water and strangling there?”
“Are you chaffin’ me, sir?” he asked.
“Certainly not,” said I.
“Well,” he said, “I’m blessed if I was asked such a question as that
afore,” grinning. “It’s like a meetin’-house question.”
“Didn’t you think at all?” said I.
“Yes,” he answered; “I thought what a jolly fool I was to be ashore on
the Good’ens on a winter’s night, gradually dyin’ of frost, instead of
bein’ in a warm bed ashore, with a parlour to take breakfast in when I
woke up. That’s about it, sir.”
_THE STRANGERS’ HOME._
A plain red-brick building stands in the West India Dock Road, with the
following lengthy name or description written along the front of
it:--“The Strangers’ Home for Asiatics, Africans, and South Sea
Islanders.” On the day I visited this house there were three or four
people standing on the doorsteps, with faces which did more in an
instant to express the character of the place than could have been
effected by reams of reports of annual meetings and descriptive
pamphlets. They were, it is needless to say, persons of colour, and of
very decided colour too: one as black as a hat, another of a muddy
yellow, a third a gloomy brown. They were dressed in European clothes:
they might have belonged to nations which were in a high state of
civilization when the Thames was clean water, and rolled its silver
stream through a land whose scanty population hung loose and unclothed
among the trees; but for all that, they had the look of wild men in
breeches, and the very black person needed little more than a boomerang
or a bow and arrows to give him the aspect at least of an unsafe object.
I had, however, but little time to inspect these men, for a commotion in
the hall of the building, coupled with an assemblage of some dozen or
twenty people on the street pavement, called my attention to a
spectacle of real interest. This consisted of the starting of a troupe
of Javanese musicians for the place of entertainment where they were
then performing. There were a number of men and four women--at least, I
think there were four women; yet it is possible that I may have mistaken
a man for one of the other sex, for some of the men and women were very
much alike, especially the men. They streamed out in a great hurry,
their bright black eyes sparkling in their brown faces, the men smoking
short pipes of a decidedly West India Dock Road pattern, and the women
bundling along in such queer raiment that it would be as hopeless to
attempt to describe its colours and cut as to catalogue the stock of a
rag-and-bottle merchant. A kind of large private omnibus stood at the
door, into which these strange people got, some of them climbing upon
the roof; and striking indeed was the appearance of the windows of the
vehicle, framing, as they did, every one of them, a dark, contented
face, whilst the roof of the omnibus was crowded with blacks and whites,
like the keys of a pianoforte.
“Who are those people?” said I to a Chinaman, as the omnibus rolled
away.
“Hey?” answered John.
“Those people,” I said, pointing towards the retreating vehicle, “they
are not sailors, are they? There are women among them.”
“No, no, not sailor, no, no,” cried the Chinaman with great earnestness,
and wagging his head so violently that he nearly shook his hat off.
“Music-man, not sailor; play tic-a-tic, tic-a-tic;” and here he screwed
an imaginary fiddle into his throat and fell to sawing the air with his
elbow.
At this moment I was joined by the secretary--a gentleman, let me say
at once, who, after spending many years of his life in India, is now
gratuitously devoting his services to the poor Asiatic who finds himself
homeless in this great wilderness of London, often penniless, and
speaking a tongue with which he may journey from Mile End Gate to
Hammersmith without finding an ear capable of comprehending a word he
says. This gentleman told me who those queer-looking people were, how
they were in charge of a Dutch _entrepreneur_, and how they were
“putting-up” at the Strangers’ Home because there, and at no other place
in London, they were likely to meet people who, even if they did not
speak their language, would impart a sense of home.
We now proceeded to inspect the building. As at the Well Street Sailors’
Home, so here, the common room, if I may so term it, is the central
hall, a large place furnished with seats and tables and heated by an
immense stove. Here of an evening, when it is cold or damp out of doors,
the inmates of the home assemble, and the bright lamps shed their light
upon as many diverse countenances and costumes as there are
nationalities to the eastward of Russia and in the great oceans which
wash the Capes of Africa and South America. Strange, indeed, is the
admixture to a European eye: the Hindoo sitting cross-legged on a bench
listening, with dusky eyes rolling in his black attenuated features, to
the pigeon-English of a round-faced Chinaman; a Malay endeavouring by
gestures to make himself understood by a Kanaka; a native of Ceylon
smiling over the porcine gutturals of a couple of Zulus; with here an
Arab reis pacing the floor in lonely dignity, or a red man of a
paternity indistinguishable in his features, which seem compounded of
the Nubian, the last of the Mohicans, a dash of Polynesia, with a hint
of Liverpool or Bristol, spelling over a volume full of murky and
eye-confounding hieroglyphs.
“When this hall is full the sight is a remarkable one,” said the
secretary. “What with the hum of the strange languages--perhaps as many
as twenty all going at once--together with the various faces and
clothes, I assure you it needs no small effort of mind to convince one’s
self that one is still in London, and that just out of doors omnibuses
are rolling, small boys calling out the evening papers, and policemen
standing at the corners.”
I felt the force of this, thinly peopled as the hall was, when I stood
in it gazing around. Was it the strange haunting Eastern smells--vague
fumes, as of a hubble-bubble recently smoked out; a lingering whiff as
of curry; a thin, ghostly odour of bamboos, chillies, oil, nutmeg, and
cedar-wood? or was it the turban, the pigtail, the almond-shaped eye,
the black, bronze, and yellow skins of the few Asiatics who were seated
in a body on a central bench, that carried my imagination out of the
West India Dock Road into the tangled forests, the hot, blue heavens,
the joss-houses, the sampans and junks, the rushing rivers, the
jackalls, the dusky figures, the blue gowns and red or yellow shoes of
the distant, spacious provinces of the sun? Hark to the sing-song
chatter babbling from that Mongolian visage! What is the magic of it,
that this hall, gloomy with the smoke of the great city blowing
riverwards, should be transformed into a shining Eastern city, whose
shores, rich with the green of tropical vegetation, are washed by a sea
whose breast reflects a heaven of sapphire? The voice ceases; the spell
is broken; the muffled roar of the toiling world outside breaks in and
establishes one of the very sharpest contrasts in life--that of the
condition of an Asiatic, fresh from the hot suns and thick jungles of
his own country, plunged amid the smoke, the turmoil, the unspeakable
odours of the east end of London, incapable of making his wants known,
languishing in misery and cold in the gloom of railway arches or some
unfrequented court, feeling what solitude is in a sense never imagined
by Byron. For the Asiatic’s loneliness is that of the dumb brute; he has
a language, but he might as well be voiceless, and, worst of all, he is
the victim of the unnatural, ignorant, and wicked prejudice which finds
in the coloured skin nothing but what is fit for derision, contempt, and
cruel neglect. This was the lot of the Eastern stranger before a number
of humane Englishmen banded themselves together to furnish him with a
refuge. I own that the fine humanity of this institution affected me
strongly as I stood looking at the knot of dark-visaged, strangely
apparelled men, and considered what would be their fate if this Home
were not at hand to help them, to receive them, to interpret their
wants, and to assist them to return to their native countries. Time was
when few tragedies were commoner than that of the finding the body of
some coloured man who had made his way as a sailor or stoker to London,
been robbed by the beasts of prey who wander hungrily round the dockyard
gates, and had lain himself down in some corner of this opulent city to
die of cold and hunger. Such horrors are things of the past, and
honoured be those and the memory of those who have made them so. No
Asiatic stranger need perish for the want of a friend in London now. The
Home will receive him, and for a very moderate sum--which he may easily
pay either from the wages due to him from the ship he leaves, or by the
note advanced by the owners whose ship he joins--feed and lodge him,
and spare no trouble to restore him to his own country. Hence, to a
large extent, the institution contributes to its own support. But the
charges it makes are so small, the losses it incurs through the new
allotment or bonus notes are so frequent, and the cases of absolute
destitution it deals with so numerous, that it is bound to continue to
be dependent upon outside help to a certain extent; and I believe that
no one who has any knowledge of the work it is doing, no one with
sympathy for the helpless of his own species, but will admit that there
is not an institution in existence that better deserves the gifts of the
charitable than this Home for Asiatic Strangers.
But all this time I am leaving the obliging and kind-hearted secretary
waiting to show me over the premises. We pass out first of all into a
space of open ground at the back of the building, of which a substantial
piece has been converted into a flower garden. This the superintendent
of the Home, who has joined us, contemplates for a while with silent
satisfaction, and then, with considerable pride, draws my attention to
it.
“It has all been done within the last two or three years,” he says. “The
Asiatics lend a hand, find old seeds knocking about the bottom of their
chests, and plant them, but they never come to anything. They won’t
grow, you know, in this climate. Here’s a sample,” he says, pointing to
a row of shoots which look like the first buddings of that patriotic
vegetable the leek; “they were planted three days ago by those Javanese
women you saw, and this is what they’ve already come to. But I suspect
they’ll end at that.”
A balcony runs at the back of the house, and along it there was stumping
a John Canoe, smoking something strange, whether a pipe or cigar or
cigarette or piece of cane I could not tell. He vanished through a door
when we mounted the steps, which I regretted, as I should like to have
examined the thing he had in his mouth.
“This,” said the secretary on our re-entering the building, “is what we
call the firemen’s dormitory.” It was a large room with a bulkhead
dividing it, and on either hand of the bulkhead went a row of narrow
beds furnished with coarse coverlets and mattresses stuffed with fibre.
There was no carpet, and I ventured to ask the reason, as the bare
boards had but a cheerless look.
“Carpet!” exclaimed the secretary; “my dear sir, these Asiatics wouldn’t
know what to do with such a thing. They’d pull it up and make trousers
of it. You cannot conceive the strangeness of their habits and customs.
For instance, to give them a table-cloth would be like ill treating
them. Nothing bothers them more than a fork; and you may see them eating
eggs with clasp-knives, which they pull out of their pockets.” Then
seeing me eyeing the beds, he continued, “It would hardly do to give the
firemen fine linen to lie in. Sir, they arrive here thick with grime,
they foul whatever they touch, and it takes several days of hard bathing
to clean them.”
There were several of these dormitories, each of them divided by
bulkheads, uncarpeted, and containing the same kind of bedsteads, every
one bearing a number at its head. The Javanese troupe occupied one of
these dormitories, the men sleeping on one side of the bulkhead and the
women on the other. I looked for their luggage, but could find nothing
but a fiddle and an old sword. I think, if the public had seen where
these musicians sleep, they would reckon the sight stranger than any
other part of the performance these Eastern people were giving. There
is one dormitory, however, upstairs filled with cabins similar to what
they have at the old Sailors’ Home at Belvedere. These are occupied, I
was told, by the better class of Asiatics.
“And who might they be?” I asked.
“Why,” I was told, “Japanese officers, stewards, Chinese carpenters,
native doctors, and the like.”
These are the “dignity men.” They have a little room in which they may
dine apart from the Lascars, Kanakas, John Chinamen, and the others;
but, somehow, they don’t seem to value exclusiveness, for most of them
will quit their table to join the pigtails and half-castes in the big
eating-room downstairs, where they find a relish in their rice and fish
which appears to be wanting in the dishes in the other apartment. In one
of the dormitories we came across a Javanese--one of the troupe--sitting
cross-legged on his bed, ill with a cold in the head. His unsmoked pipe
lay by his side, and he was listlessly handling some pieces of printed
calico, though the use he meant to put them to I could not divine. There
is a no more melancholy object than a coloured man suffering from a bad
cold in the head. I saw him shiver, and then roll his eyes--black as
ebony set in orange--upon the window, and I thought to myself, “How this
harmless, coloured man, who speaks nothing but Javanese, and who belongs
to a country where the air is radiant with beautiful birds and fragrant
with delicious fruits, must enjoy the climate of the West India Dock
Road!”
We struggled to impart sympathy by several kinds of gestures and
motions, but it would not do; we could not get further than alarming
him, and so we left him. In another dormitory we found a Ceylon man, a
Madrassee Lascar, and a Japanese. The Ceylon man was a very handsome
fellow, his hair parted down the middle, and he had as fine a pair of
eyes as ever I saw in the human countenance, regular features, and a
wonderfully good figure. He was reading an English book, and spoke
English so well that, what with his correct utterance, the colour of his
skin, and his striking face, a misgiving seized me.
“Are you a pure Cingalese?” I asked.
“No, no,” cried he, with much anxiety in his manner; “my father was an
English sailor!”
But the Madrassee man, in a measure, atoned for this disappointment. He
was the real thing--just the sort of conformation to tumble about in a
surf-boat, very black, very lean, with snow-white teeth, and a high long
nose as thin as a hatchet. The secretary conversed with him in his
native lingo, and it seemed to do the poor fellow good to talk. The
Japanese had a wooden face, and had very little to say. Indeed, I always
think that the people of his race and the Chinese view us and our works
with a good deal of contempt. What a mean opinion they must have of our
toys, of our paintings, in which the literal is sacrificed to the
poetical; of our clothes, tea, head-dresses, coiffures, and a thousand
other matters! They have a Chinese porter at the Home, who is dressed in
a black coat and wears a hat. I did not speak to him, but I should
judge, from observing the expression on his face when in a state of
repose, that he has but a poor opinion of Great Britain. In another
dormitory were a couple of Arabs mending shirts; and downstairs, in the
scullery, I met a Zulu, who told me that he was a subject of Cetewayo,
and had called at that King’s lodgings when he was in London, but had
not managed to see his Majesty. One of the suite promised to write and
appoint an hour for an interview; but no letter ever reached the youth,
and the next thing he heard of Cetewayo was that he had sailed for
Africa. This scullery led into a large kitchen, very well appointed, and
in spick and span condition. Adjoining was the provision room,
containing one large sack of rice, a quantity of smoked herrings, a jar
of chillies, another jar of curry powder, and other Eastern relishes.
“The mackerel is the favourite dish with our inmates, be they of
whatever nationality they will,” said the secretary. “They consider it
the finest fish that is caught in European waters, and lament when the
season for catching them is over.”
I asked what food they were supplied with in the Home.
“We have,” he replied, “what we call three messes. The first-class mess
is sixteen shillings a week--this includes a separate cabin; the second,
without a cabin, is fourteen shillings; and the third, which we term the
curry and rice mess, is ten shillings. The first two messes comprise,
for breakfast, fish or eggs, coffee, bread and butter; for dinner we
give beef or mutton, with vegetables, and curry and rice always; tea,
the same as breakfast.”
“The charge is small enough,” said I.
“But they have other privileges,” said he. “For instance, there are hot
and cold water baths downstairs, for the use of which no charge is made.
We also receive and take care of their money and valuables--for some of
the people who come here bring real valuables, such as jewels, with
them, I assure you. Since last January the amount deposited in money
with us has amounted to £2,285, of which I do not scruple to say that,
but for the existence of this home, the greater portion would have been
stolen from its owners by the crimps and boarding-house people who haunt
our neighbourhood. That room you see there is our shipping-office;
captains come to us and select men for their vessels, and when the
choice has been made we accompany the men to the marine offices, see
them sign articles and that the advance is duly made. Indeed, we do all
that we possibly can to help and protect these poor strangers.”
“What I have seen assures me of that,” said I.
“This,” he continued, as we went upstairs and entered a large cheerful
dormitory, “is what we call the ayahs’ room. It is meant for native
women who are brought home as nurses and discharged. Sad cases of
destitution are often occurring. Not long ago a City missionary found a
native woman in an empty house in Shepherd’s Bush. He brought her here,
and, having learnt the name of her mistress, we went to her, and were
told that the ayah was insane, that she had been kept as long as
possible, had at last refused to go, and was accordingly turned out. We
took charge of her for awhile, but her madness increased, and we were
forced at last to send her to a county asylum, where she now remains.”
The inspection of this room exhausted all that was to be seen; so,
bidding the cordial secretary farewell, and taking a lingering look at a
knot of dusky men who were talking in the hall, I quitted this
hospitable and most valuable institution, resolving to record all that I
had heard and viewed, in the earnest hope that of those by whom this
record of my visit will be read some may be induced to help an excellent
charity by sending donations to the manager of the Strangers’ Home, West
India Dock Road, London.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] This was written in 1881.
[B] Loaf, skulk.
[C] 1882.
[D] Since this was written other limits have been defined
End of Project Gutenberg's Round the Galley Fire, by William Clark Russell