‘Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon,
Down with me from Lebanon to sail upon the sea.
The ship is wrought of ivory, the decks of gold, and thereupon
Are sailors singing bridal songs, and waiting to cast free.
‘Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon,
The rowers there are ready and will welcome thee with shouts.
The sails are silken sails and scarlet, cut and sewn in Babylon,
The scarlet of the painted lips of women thereabouts.’
Two or three days after the conversation related in the last chapter
the Mate and I fell into a vein of reminiscence and reconstructed a
vision we had once shared of the ship that was some day to be our
home. It had the proper condition of a vision that the thing longed
for was unattainable; the vessel of our dreams had always been as far
down on the horizon as the balance at the bank that would pay for her.
She was, above all things, to be beautiful, even for a ship, which is
saying much--for who ever saw a sailing ship otherwise? Of course, she
was to be square-rigged, for how else should we be able to splice the
mainbrace with rum and milk when the sun crossed the yard-arm? We
fancied gorgeous pictures on her sails, so that the winds should be
lovesick with them as with the sails of Cleopatra’s barge; an ensign
aft, and streaming pennants of bright colours on her masts. Her poop,
towering above the water, fretted and carved and blazoned with all the
skill of bygone guilds, should have a gallery aft on which the captain
and his wife would take their ease On either quarter, lit up at
sundown, there would be tall poop lanterns covered with cunning
tracery and magic, such as Merlin might have wrought, so that on windy
nights the passing craft might see
‘Far, far up above them her great poop lanterns shine,
Unvexed by wind and weather, like the candles round a Shrine.’
Guns she would have on deck, and a fighting-top on the main, and a
forecastle where the crew should man the capstan and weigh anchor to a
chanty. Beneath her jibboom pointing heavenward she would set a
spritsail heralding her on her way. We could see her with sails all
bellied out in bold curves before a brave wind, and hear ‘the
long-drawn thunder neath her leaping figure-head.’
Thus she would sail on her happy course, leaving behind ‘a scent of
old-world roses.’ She would have to return, though, amid the smell of
burnt crude oil or coal, for of course she could never go to
windward. And I am afraid we were going to have electric light too.
After all, we are practical people.
I remember the evening of this reminiscence very well, because I
suddenly became conscious that we were talking of the vision as a
thing that had been supplanted by something else. There was no doubt
about it. Our remarks had implied our consent to the scuttling of that
glorious galleon. We took an artistic interest in the image, but it
was no longer even good make-believe.
The more I had thought over it the more the idea of the barge had
taken hold of me as a feasible scheme, for I was almost sure that the
sale of the cottage and the _Playmate_ would realize enough to buy the
barge and pay for making her habitable.
I was familiar with the dimensions of a barge, and sketched out
roughly to scale various plans by which we could have five sleeping
cabins, a saloon, a dining cabin, kitchen, scullery, forecastle, and
steerage. This occupation became so fascinating that I could hardly
tear myself away from it at nights to go to bed.
As I am inclined to be the fool who rushes in while the Mate is the
angel who fears to tread, it was natural for her to maintain certain
objections for some time, even though thus early I could see that she
was nearly as much bitten by the thought of the barge as I was. Here
is the kind of discussion that would occur:
_Skipper_: You see, we’ve only got to be tidy and there’ll be heaps of
room.
_Mate_: You don’t understand. Men never do. There are hundreds of
things one doesn’t want in a yacht, even on a long cruise, which one
must have in a house-boat.
_Skipper_: Well, there’ll be our cabin and a cabin for the boys, and
another for Margaret, a spare cabin, the saloon, the dining-room, the
bathroom, the kitchen, the forecastle, the steerage, and lots of
lockers and cupboards everywhere.
_Mate_: Oh, you don’t understand.
_Skipper_: I could be bounded in a nutshell and feel myself the king
of infinite space.
_Mate_: Hamlet won’t help us!
_Skipper_: But look at the alternative. If we go in for a house and
can’t afford the rent we shall have to give up the _Playmate_ and take
to walks along a Marine Parade instead. Oh, Lord!
_Mate_: The children might fall overboard.
_Skipper_: We can have stanchions all round the ship and double lines.
_Mate_: What about slipping overboard between the ropes?
_Skipper_: Well, I don’t want to be laughed at, but if you really wish
it we’ll have wire netting as well.
_Mate_: What about a water-supply? We can’t get on without plenty of
fresh water.
_Skipper_: You shall have plenty.
_Mate_: How?
_Skipper_: In huge tanks.
_Mate_: What shall I do without my garden?
_Skipper_: That is the worst point and the only bad point. I’ve got no
answer except that we must give up something, and the question is
whether you would rather have the garden than everything else. Oh,
happy thought!--some day we will tie up alongside a little patch and
cultivate it.
_Mate_: Are you perfectly sure we shan’t have to pay rates?
At this point the Skipper could always cite in evidence the case of
the ‘floating’ boathouse near by, which had been rated because it
would not float. That proved to demonstration that anything capable of
floating would not have been rated. Our friend Sam Prawle, an ex barge
skipper, who lived in an old smack moored on the saltings, held
himself an authority on rating in virtue of having taken part in this
case. He had helped to build the floating boathouse, and therefore
felt that his credit was involved in her ability to float.
Some years ago our saltings--the strip of marsh intersected by rills,
which is covered by water only at spring tides--were not considered to
have any rateable value. Later a good many yachts were laid up on
them, and as the berths were paid for the saltings were rated. Then
followed two or three small wooden boathouses on piles, in which gear
was kept, and on these a ferret-eyed busybody cast his eye. He
reported them as being of rateable value. It was argued that the boats
in which gear was stored, as distinguished from the yachts, might as
well be rated too; but this would not hold water, for the simple
reason that boats could be floated off and anchored in the river or
taken away altogether, whereas the boathouses, though often surrounded
by water, were buildings on the land.
To avoid paying rates, therefore, and at the same time to have a
comfortable place in which to camp out and store things, the
yacht-owner who employed Sam Prawle decided to build a floating
boathouse. Sam and he, having fixed several casks in a frame, built a
house on this platform.
Now it came to pass that the local ferret informed the overseers that
this ‘building on the saltings’ did not float, and was therefore
rateable. From that time onwards until the matter was decided our
waterside world argued about little else but whether it was a
house-boathouse or a boat-houseboat. The owner was invited to meet the
overseers at the next spring tide to satisfy them on the point.
Sam worked hard all the morning of the trial, covering the casks with
a thick mixture of hot pitch and tar. A small crowd gathered on the
sea-wall to watch events. It was a good tide, and I, who was present
as chairman of the overseers, was glad, because it gave the owner a
fair run for his money. My sympathy was all with him, although as an
official I had not been able to give him the benefit of the doubt. As
the tide rose near its highest point Sam and the owner, wading up to
their thighs in sea-boots, did their utmost to lift the boathouse or
move her sideways, but without success.
At the top of the tide, both of them, red in the face and sweating
hard, managed to raise one end a couple of inches, and called on
Heaven and the overseers to witness that the boathouse floated. As
chairman of the overseers, I took the responsibility of saying that if
they could shift her a foot sideways she should be deemed to have
floated. They went at it like men, but the tide had fallen an inch
before their first effort under these terms was ended, and two or
three minutes later Sam was heard to say to the owner, ‘That ain’t a
mite o’ use a shovin’ naow, sir. She’s soo’d a bit.’
And so the boat-houseboat turned out to be a house-boathouse after
all, and was assessed at £1 a year. Sam used to pay the rate every
half-year on behalf of his employer, not without giving the collector
his views on the subject.
When the Mate had been convinced that we should really escape rates
the thought of giving up her garden remained the last outwork of her
very proper defences. But this position also fell in good time. My
foot-rule, my rough scale plans and piled-up figures of cubic capacity
and surficial area carried all before them. I trembled for my
arithmetic once or twice, however, when I proved that we should have
very nearly as much room as in the cottage.
A barge, then, it was to be. Not a superannuated, narrow, low-sided
canal barge; nor a swim-headed dumb barge or lighter, such as one can
see any day of the week bumping and drifting her way up and down
through London--the jellyfish of river traffic; nor yet, above all, an
upper Thames houseboat of any sort, but a real sailing Thames topsail
barge which could work from port to port under her own canvas, and
meet her trading sisters in the open on their business.
* * * * *
The news that we were going to live in a barge spread like wildfire,
and raised a storm of protest which took all our seamanship to
weather. Many a time I had to clear off the land, so to speak, against
an onshore gale with my barge and family. We thought our relations
were unreasonable, for all barge skippers to whom we unfolded our plan
became enthusiastic and said--tactful men!--that their wives were of
the same mind. I claimed their views as expert at the time, though to
be sure I knew well enough that there is a law of loyalty among
sailormen whenever the old question of wives sailing with their
husbands is discussed.
Our relations, who did not know a Thames topsail barge from a Fiji
dug-out, regarded our scheme alternately as a sign of lunacy and as an
injury to themselves. They were bent on shaking us; third parties were
suborned to try tactfully to dissuade us, leading up to the subject
through rheumatic uncles on both sides of the family. The emissaries
lacked versatility, for they all approached the subject by way of uric
acid, and the moment we heard the word rheumatism we took the weather
berth by saying in great surprise, ‘You’ve come to talk about the
barge, then?’
Having outsailed the emissaries, we were still bombarded with letters
mentioning every possible objection. One said the barge would be dark,
and we replied that we intended to have twenty-six windows. Another
that it would be damp; against this we set our stoves. Another that it
would be stuffy; and the windows were indicated once more. A fourth
that it would be cold; and we brought forward the stoves again. A
fifth declared that it would be draughty. To this last we intended to
reply at some length that a ship with her outer and inner skin, and
air-lock or space between the two, is the least draughty place
possible. On second thoughts, however, we felt it would be waste of
time, so, acting the part of a clearing-house, we switched the
‘draughty’ aunt on to the ‘stuffy’ uncle and left them to settle which
it was to be.
Really we were too full of hope and plans to care what anyone said.
Life was not long enough to get on with our work and answer objections
too, so after a time we settled down in the face of the world to a
policy of masterly silence.
In the meantime, as a first step, we took the measurements of a barge
lying at Fleetwick Quay, so that we knew more accurately than before
what room we should have, and could plan our home accordingly.
How those winter evenings flew! Armed with rulers, pencils, and
drawing-boards, we sat in front of the drawing-room fire working like
mad. We used reams of paper and blunted innumerable pencils making
designs of the various cabins and placing the cupboards, the bunks,
the bath, the kitchen range, the water-tanks, the china, the silver,
the furniture, and the thousand and one things which make a house.
After we had spent a week in deciding where the various pieces of
furniture were to go, we discovered that they could not possibly be
got in through the hatchways we had planned, and we accordingly
designed a special furniture hatch. It was glorious fun, and we were
always springing surprises on each other, and mislaying our pencils
and snatching up the wrong one in the frenzy of a new idea. Indeed, we
became so much absorbed that progress was hindered, for we could not
be induced to look at each other’s plans until we agreed to have two
truces every night for purposes of comparison.
At any moment the house might be sold, and then we should want our
barge, and buying a barge is not to be done in a moment or
unadvisedly. The transaction is critical. We should not be able to go
back upon it. Yacht copers, we knew, were as bad as horse copers, but
both apparently were new-born babes compared with barge copers, if our
information were correct.