[Music]
“It was a’ for our richtfu’ King
We left fair Scotland’s strand,
It was a’ for our richtfu’ King,
We first saw Irish land, my dear,
We first saw Irish land.
“Then right he turned and round about
Upon the Irish shore
He gave his bridle rein a shake
With ‘Adieu for ever more, my dear,’
With ‘Adieu for ever more.’”
No one knows who wrote these words—some mournful Jacobite, perhaps,
who felt as the author does; for though the night is perfect, with the
golden harvest moon reflected in a sea like glass, we cannot but feel a
little sentimental on turning our backs on relatives and on our dear West
Highland strand (especially during the shooting season).
The tune fits the words, does it not? I think it is a recollection of
an old sea-chantey I once heard—coming back to mind to suit the words,
and what might seem to be the mournful cadence of our Diesel engine and
the sighing of the glassy water as we surge gently across the swell. I
wrote before of the musical notes of our engine. I do not think my cousin
Urmston or Henriksen notice it much to-night, for they are too absorbed
in whale talk. My cousin left desk, and shoots, and engagements, to come
with us to the Irish shore to see us as far as Belfast, and to go over
our business papers, but pipes and whale talk and more pipes and more
whale talk, and minute examination of the engines, seem more to their
taste at the moment than business papers by lamplight. Belfast docks
will be more the place for business than the Sound of Islay, with Jura
and the day fading and a night full of the yellow light of the harvest
moon. A joyous change for the family lawyer, is it not—from the city to
the coast he dreams of in town—from the busy office to the quiet of the
Highlands and islands—from affairs of companies to the picking up of the
lights on Islay and the Mull of Cantire? We hoped for his sake to see a
killer at least, or something to fire one of the guns at—several finners
have been seen lately on the Scottish coast. But as the morning dawned it
grew rough with thick haze, and it was all we could do to pick up Black
Ness and then the entrance to Belfast Lough. We are not proud, so we took
a pilot and felt our minds at rest as we steered up the three miles of
buoys which mark the channel almost as close as lamp-posts in a street.
If you have not seen Belfast I give you my word that the first impression
is astonishing. You can hardly believe you are not dreaming. The iron
network of building leviathans in course of construction is overpowering,
enormous, so vast is the perspective of not merely one or two great
iron ghosts, but streets of them, high as buildings in New York, one
beyond the other on either side of the river, fading into smoke and
distance, and the noise of iron hammering and banging is universal, so
all-pervading that you hear yourself speak quite easily. We felt like a
mere speck crawling up the grey river. By-and-by we noticed little mites
moving about in these gigantic structures of iron filigree-work, high up
on stagings, or higher still on vast cranes, up in the sky; these were
men, twenty-six thousand of them in one yard alone! We met them later,
in marching order, hefty fellows, blue-eyed, drilled Ulster Irishmen,
stronger looking than Scotsmen. Later on we saw them sign their National
Covenant.
These are descendants of the people who gave Scotland its name. Few
there are who know this. Men learn about the Kings of England and of
Israel, with their dates, at public schools, but never a word are they
taught of the far longer, far more dramatic and interesting succession of
Scottish kings, previous to their succession to the English crown. Not
one in a hundred knows that the old name for Ireland was “Scotia,” that
it was not till the seventh century that the Scots of Ireland gave their
name to Alba, to the United Scots and Picts of Britain north of Tweed,
our Scotland of to-day. But we are verging toward dangerous ground—let us
get to sea again and continue to chronicle on the rolling deep, and let
_Erin go bragh_.
* * * * *
Erin goes fast away on our right—a violet line between white-capped
greenish waves and a grey, windy sky. We came down Belfast Lough
against dead head-wind and proudly passed much larger sailing craft
than ourselves waiting in shelter for fair wind, and having hunted for
a boat in which to deposit our pilot! We got out to sea, set sail, and
have again become a sailing-ship with a strong breeze on our quarter. We
knocked off eleven knots an hour, leaving tramps and such-like behind us.
But what an awful appearance we have! Four days alongside the quays in
Belfast, with coal-dust flying everywhere, have made us like a collier,
rather hard lines, considering we make no mess coaling ourselves as
others do. What a change there will be in the amenity of seaports and all
towns when oil takes the place of coals. Imagine a clean town—Edinburgh,
for example, and the beauty of such a dream!
It was the air pump and the connections between our oil tanks that
brought us into the thick of great events—into “Ulster Day” and the
signing of the National Covenant, and a small matter (hunting for some
flexible iron tubing) brought us into the great and beautiful City Hall.
I am sure few people have heard what an exquisitely designed building
this is—indeed, what a very handsome town Belfast is, taking it all
round. And the people! how I wish my northern countrymen knew what they
were like in the mass. How very like themselves, both men and women,
but perhaps rather bigger and stronger than the average Scot, and as
reliable-looking, and yet perhaps a little happier than we are, even in
their anxious times.
I don’t think our Norse crew found Belfast altogether a bed of roses.
Some had shore leave, with five shillings each to spend up town. Our
cook, or steward, told me of their adventures. He heard of them from the
watchman, who was made their confidant. Now they are ship’s property.
Seven of them, all young fellows, “very greenhorns,” said the cook,
washed, put on celluloid collars, brushed up, and sallied forth at night,
and they had barely got to the bridge along Queen’s Quay when three of
them had given their five shillings to maids of Erin, fair, frail things
in shawls, and the coy creatures fled and the three came home to the
ship lamenting—so the watchman said. The others, to a certain extent,
enjoyed all the _tumasha_, and, to be sociable, bought a penny Union Jack
buttonhole, badges that almost everyone was wearing; what they signified
they don’t quite know yet. It was jolly lucky they weren’t killed.
They went up Bally Macarack Street, in the heart of the Roman Catholic
district, and were mobbed by Nationalists, fifteen girls and a dozen men.
Happily the police arrived in time. The tallest of our crew got a severe
kick on the part he sits on, and the smallest got a “shock,” as he said,
on his eye, and they say: “If we lies here in Belfast one years we no go
shore again! No fears; dem’s folk’s mad, dem’s crazy! What’s all that
for-dumna ‘Ulster’ dems shouts all de time?”
* * * * *
We are picking out our course to-night (Monday) on the chart rather
comfortably in the cabin. It is smooth and we are in mid-Channel, in
the north-west we have Holyhead Light. We forecast a run of luck for
ourselves. We’ve had our share of head-winds and little difficulties
since we left the south of Norway, so with the compasses we mark out six
days’ run as long as to-day’s run, which will bring us to Azores in six
days, or seven days sure, if we have a little strong fair wind—we won’t
think of nasty rough weather.
But “Just about here,” the compasses pause, “I was three weeks,” said
Henriksen. “That Christmas was the roughest time of my life,” he
continued, puffing at his new calabash.
“We was on the Kron Prince three weeks out from Cardiff, seven feet water
in the hold and the pumps won’t work.” They had reached the Azores and
drifted back to the Bay, then to the Irish Channel, and got shelter, I
think, in Bridgewater.
“Captain and mate they’s on deck, with revolvers, but we get ashore and
run away. We was not going in that for-dumna sink ship, I’se sure. No!
tree hours at wheel was my last watch, one hour pumping, cold, wet, then
I finds in corner of fo’c’sle three biscuits, one half-cup tea cold, dat
decides me!” “How did you get off?” I said.
“With a runner—runner come alongside: we cuts square hole under fo’c’sle
head, captain and mate, they looks all round deck, but not below bows,
and we slips out, eight of us and our bags.”
Perhaps these eight were justified for the Crown Prince got a new crew
and sailed, and was never heard of again.
Henriksen had three guineas sewn in the waistband of his trousers, and a
lot of sense besides for eighteen, also his mate’s certificate, although
he was only a sailor on board, and he reflected, as he went ashore, on
what he knew of runners and their ways: how the sailor is kept by the
same on the credit of his next two or three months’ advance wage, and
then goes to sea with precious few clothes and say five shillings to land
with at the next port, and has therefore to go to another runner until he
gets another ship, and so may be at sea two or three years with hardly
the sight of pay. So on getting ashore Henriksen made a clean bolt to
the nearest railway station, jumped into first train, taking ticket to
first station, leaving his bag with the runner, of course, but keeping
his mate’s ticket. Where did he say he got to? I forget, somewhere near
Liverpool, but five or ten miles he did free of charge as the guard was
interested in his recital.
From Liverpool he booked third class to Belfast. It was a wild crossing
and he met, strangely enough, another runaway, an Englishman, and isn’t
this the making of a story? They befriended a would-be second-class
passenger and his wife, who were obliged, by overcrowding, to go
steerage, and both these people were helplessly sea-sick, and their poor
children just rolled about the floor till the two young seamen took care
of them, and held them in their arms all night. The father pressed a
whole £1 note on Henriksen, which he refused, as he had plenty of his £3
remaining, but the Englishman was stony, and he was persuaded to take ten
shillings, and the parents gave each of them their address.
Afterwards Henriksen called on them—and such a fine house it was!
Henriksen reflects now he might have called on these old friends in
Belfast this journey. “They must be old people now. Next time I come to
Belfast,” he says, “I calls—maybe they’s in life.”
At Belfast he went on a local tramp, then got berth as second mate, and
had twelve months at sea without a day ashore. For it was to Bahia that
he went, where you anchor almost out of sight of land. For I forget how
many weeks he lay at anchor, then sailed to another port, twelve men
in the fo’c’sle, seven with monkeys, the rest with parrots, fancy the
racket! then to Mobile Bay and then back to Troon, “two houses and a
wall,” as he describes our charming little Scottish seaport, then home
to Norway. That is all you sometimes see of foreign parts if you go down
to the sea in ships. Nine months at sea with one night ashore is the
writer’s longest spell of salt water, but Henriksen tells me he knows
of a man being twenty-seven months at sea without getting on shore. I
think I must make a special book of Henriksen’s adventures. As told to me
they are interesting, but our surroundings count for a good deal: over a
chart in the little lamplit cabin or on our quarter-deck (three steps and
overboard), the moon overhead, and our sails looking dark and large, and
our Æolian engine singing its steadfast song.
Though only a little south of Ireland, we have the real swell of deep
sea; rolling low hills that leave no level horizon to us, for we are so
close to the sea-surface, long, gentle undulations that suggest a perfect
golf-course for elderly people.
We have a steady air from the north-east like the Trades. Possibly we
may never have to shift a sail till we reach the Azores, and certainly
to-day there was that in the light at midday, the sharp shadows on
faces as we took the sun’s altitude, that, even with a pigeon-grey sky,
reminded me of southern light that I have not seen or felt for several
years, and we did things with our coats off, and brought our rifles on
deck for an overhaul.
Our Norwegian heavy bores for sea-elephants cost £3, and as far as I
can see are extremely accurate at the short range. I have tried them at
one hundred and one hundred and thirty yards and they do not burst. It
will be interesting to compare the effect of my higher velocity sporting
mauser, a 375, with their work. Possibly the larger bullet of the Norse
rifle, about 500, may be more useful for this huge animal at close range.
The Norsemen are sure of this, but I back the bullet with the higher
velocity every time.
There is a gale this evening and we are running with reefed foresail.