situation, but the night being very cold, I had to move or get
benumbed. Leaving my bag and bed where it was I groped my way into
the town, and after about a quarter of an hour’s stumbling along
what I afterwards found was the main street, I saw a feeble light.
Making for it at once I discovered a man standing at the door of a
lowly shanty smoking, the light I had seen proceeding from a tallow
candle flickering in the interior. Receiving my salutation with gruff
heartiness the man bade me welcome to such shelter as he had, so
I lugged my dunnage up and entered. He showed me an ancient squab
whereon I might lie, and closing the street door bade me good night,
disappearing into some mysterious recess in a far corner. I composed
myself for sleep, but the place was simply alive with fleas, which,
tasting fresh stranger, gave me a lively time. Before morning I was
bitterly envious of the other occupant of the room, who lay on the
bare floor in a drunken stupor, impervious to either cold or vermin.
At the first gleam of dawn I left, taking a brisk walk until somebody
was astir in the place, when I soon got quarters in a boarding-house.
Then as early as possible I made for the shipping office, finding to
my surprise that the vessel in want of a mate was the ancient relic
that had so much amused us as we entered the harbour. After a good
deal of searching, the commander of her was found--a bluff, red-faced
man with a watery, wandering eye, whose first words betrayed him
for a Welshman. He was as anxious to get a mate as I was to get a
ship, so we were not long coming to terms--£6 per month. Her name I
found was the _Amulet_, last from Santos, and now awaiting a cargo
of coal for St. John, New Brunswick. No sooner had I signed articles
than the skipper invited me to drink with him, and instantly became
confidential. But as he had already been drinking pretty freely,
and even his sober English was no great things, I was not much the
wiser for our conference. However, bidding him good day, I went on
board and took charge, finding the old rattletrap in a most miserable
condition, the second mate in a state of mutiny, and the crew doing
just whatever they pleased. I had not been on board an hour before I
was in possession of the history of their adventures since leaving
England eighteen months before. I found too that I was the fourth
mate that voyage, and judging from appearances I thought it unlikely
that I should be the last. As soon as he had finished unburdening
himself to me, the second mate, who seemed a decent fellow enough,
started to pack up, swearing in both Welsh and English that he was
finished with her. Of course I had no means of preventing him from
going even if I had wished to do so, and away he went. Then I turned
my attention to the ship, finding the small crew (seven all told)
desperately sullen, but still willing to obey my orders. Oh, but
she was a wreck, and so dirty that I hardly knew whether it was
worth while attempting to cleanse her. There was abundance of good
fresh food though, and one of the men helped the grimy muttering
Welsh lad who was supposed to be the cook, so that the meals were
at least eatable. According to my orders I was to report progress
to the skipper every morning at his hotel, and next morning I paid
him a visit. I found him in bed, although it was eleven o’clock,
with a bottle of brandy sticking out from under his pillow and
quite comfortably drunk. He received my remarks with great gravity,
graciously approving of what I had done, and assuring me that he
was very ill indeed. I left him so, thinking deeply over my queer
position, and returned on board to find the second mate back again
in a furious rage at not being able to get at the “old man,” but
resigned to going with us to St. John as a passenger. Well, as time
went on I managed to get her in some sort of trim, received the cargo
on board, bent the sails, and made all ready for sea, the second mate
lolling at his ease all day long or in his bunk asleep. Every morning
I saw the skipper, always in bed and always drunk. Thus three weeks
passed away. When the vessel had been a week ready for sea, during
most of which time a steady fair wind for our departure had been
blowing, I had a visitor. After a few civil questions he told me he
was the agent, and proposed giving the captain one day longer in
which to clear out, failing which he would on his own responsibility
send the vessel to sea without him. I of course raised no objection,
but seized the opportunity to get a few pounds advance of wages
which I at once despatched home to my wife. The agent’s threat was
effectual, for at noon the next day my commander came on board
accompanied by a tugboat which towed us out to sea, although a fair
wind was blowing. No sooner had the pilot left us to our own devices
than Captain Jones retired to his bunk, and there he remained,
his cabin no bad representation of a miniature Malebolge. Details
impossible.
Unfortunately I had so severely injured my left hand that I could
not use it at all, and the second mate, though perfectly friendly
with me, would do nothing but just keep a look-out while I got some
sleep; he wouldn’t even trim sail. The first day out I took sights
for longitude by the chronometer, which I had kept regularly wound
since I had been on board, but I found to my horror that it had been
tampered with, and was utterly useless. It was now the latter end of
November, fogs and gales were of everyday occurrence, the currents
were very strong and variable, and I was on an utterly strange coast
in command for the first time in my life. When I saw the sun, which
was seldom, I thought myself lucky to get the latitude, and Sable
Island under my lee with its diabolical death-traps haunted me
waking and sleeping. My only hope of escaping disaster was in the
cod-schooners, which, as much at home in those gloomy, stormy waters
as a cabman in London streets, could always be relied on to give one
a fairly accurate position. Then the rotten gear aloft kept giving
out, and there was nothing to repair it with, while the half-frozen
men could hardly be kept out of their little dog-hole at all. Only
one man in the ship was having a good time, and that was the skipper.
Hugging a huge jar of “chain lightning” brandy he never wanted
anything else, and no one ever went near him except the poor little
scalawag of a cook, who used to rate him in Welsh until the discord
was almost deafening. But if I were to tell fairly the story of that
trip round Nova Scotia it would take a hundred pages. So I must hurry
on to say that we _did_ reach St. John by God’s especial mercy, and
laid her alongside the wharf.
I am afraid I shall hardly be believed when I say that Captain Jones
reappeared on deck at once and went ashore, promising to return by
six o’clock. Now the tide rises and falls in St. John’s over thirty
feet, so when night came the _Amulet_ was resting on the mud, and
the edge of the wharf was very nearly level with our main-top. I had
prepared a secure gangway with a bright lantern for my superior’s
return, but about eleven o’clock that night he strolled down and
walked calmly over the edge of the wharf where the gangway was not.
All hands were aroused by his frantic cries of “Misser Bewlon,
Misser Bewlon, for Gaw’ sake safe my lyve!” After much search we
found him and hoisted him on board out of the mud in which he was
embedded to the armpits. No bones were broken, and next day he was
well enough to climb ashore and get into a conveyance which took
him up town to another “hotel.” A repetition of the tactics of
Sydney now set in, except that I did not visit him so frequently.
The second mate and one of the men got their discharge out of him
and left us, in great glee at their escape. Then I think some one
must have remonstrated with him whose words were not to be made
light of, for one day he came on board and tried to get all hands
to sign a paper that he had got drawn up, certifying that he was a
strictly sober man! He was _so_ hurt at their refusal. Finally he
re-embarked, bringing a tugboat and pilot with him as before, and the
startling news that we were to tow right across the Bay of Fundy and
up the Basin of Minas to Parrsboro’, but no sooner were we abreast
of Partridge Island than again my commander disappeared below. All
through the night the panting tug toiled onward with us, the pilot
remaining at his post till dawn. Fortunately for my peace of mind
I knew little about the perilous navigation of this great bay, the
home of the fiercest tides in the world. But when, drawing near Cape
Blomidon, I saw the rate at which we were being hurled along by the
fury of the inrushing flood, I felt profoundly thankful that the
responsibility for our safety was not upon me. However, we arrived
intact that afternoon and proceeded up the river, which was as
crooked as a ram’s horn, and only began to have any water in its bed
when it was half flood outside. As we neared the village the pilot
asked me to what wharf we were going, as we could not lay in the dry
river bed. I knew no more than he did, and neither of us could shake
any sense into the unconscious skipper. So we tied her up to the
first jetty we came to, and pilot and tugboat took their departure.
There was a fine to-do when the wharfinger heard of our arrival, and
I had to go up to the village and ask all round for information as
to where we were to lie. I got instructions at last, and shifted to
a berth where we were allowed to remain. Next day the old man went
ashore again, saying nothing to me, and I remained in ignorance of
his whereabouts for ten days. Meanwhile lumber began to arrive for
us, and a scoundrelly stevedore came on board with the skipper’s
authority to stow the cargo. He and I quickly came to loggerheads,
for I did not at all fancy the way he was “blowing her up,” and the
dread of our winter passage to Europe lay heavy upon me. But I found
that all power to interfere with him was taken out of my hands, and I
just had to stand by and see potential murder being done.
At last one day at dinner-time the old man paid us a visit,
characteristically announcing himself by falling between the
vessel and the wharf into the ice-laden water. Of course he wasn’t
hurt--didn’t even get a chill, but he was taken back to his “hotel,”
and came no more to see us. With the completion of our deck-load my
patience was exhausted, and as soon as she was ready for sea, I
hunted him up and demanded my discharge. I felt prepared to take all
reasonable risks, but to cross the Atlantic in December with a vessel
like a top-heavy bladder under me, and myself the sole officer, was
hardly good enough. Of course he wouldn’t release me, and the upshot
was, to cut my yarn short, that I remained ashore penniless, while he
towed back to St. John, engaged another unfortunate mate, and after
a week’s final spree, sailed for home. As I had expected, she got no
farther than the mouth of the Bay of Fundy. There her old bones were
finally broken up in a howling snowstorm, in which several of the
crew were frozen to death, but he escaped to worry better men again.
Two years after in the Court of Queen’s Bench we met again, when I
arose, the one essential witness to his misdoings, and made him feel
as if my turn had come at last.
AMONG THE ENCHANTED ISLES
Enchained by the innumerable complexities of modern city existence,
how strangely, how sweetly, do the dreams of roaming amid isles of
perpetual summer come to the pale slave of civilisation. Leaning
back in his office chair, the pen drops idly from his relaxed
fingers, while the remorseless hum from the human hive without loses
its distinctive note and becomes by some strange transmutation the
slumberous murmur of snowy surf upon far-off coral shores. The dim
ceiling, that so often has seemed to press upon his brain like the
load of Atlas, melts upward into a celestial canopy of a blue so deep
and pure that it is the last expression of the Infinite.
* * * * *
On the wings of fancy, swifter and more easeful than those of the
albatross, he is wafted to those fairy shores where Nature smiles
in changeless youth and winterless glow. Through every weary sinew
thrills the bright message of life, the unconscious outcome of
perfect health absorbed from perfect surroundings. He is back again
in the days of the world’s infancy, feeling his mid-millennial
vigour bounding in every pulse, flooding every artery. In
cunningly-fashioned canoe, with grass-woven sails, he floats upon the
radiant sea, so like to the heaven above that his gliding shallop
seems to swing through the boundless ether, a sprite, a fay of the
fruitful brain.
Then as the flood-tide of living bubbles over the brim of restraint
he lifts a mighty voice, a full-throated cry of joy wherein is no
speech nor language, only exultant music welling up from deeps of
fathomless satisfaction. He springs erect, with flashing eyes, and
rolling muscles heaving under his shining skin, such a figure as,
made in His own glorious image, the Master gazed upon--and, behold,
it was very good. Far below him swim the gorgeous sea-folk, each
ablaze with colour, living jewels enhanced by their setting. In mazy
evolutions full of grace they woo him to join in their play, to
explore with them the splendours of the coral groves, to wreath about
his majestic form the tender festoons of sea-flowers and deck himself
with glowing shells.
Like a dolphin he dives, deeper and deeper as with grasping hands
he overcomes the resisting waters. Deeper and deeper yet until the
fervent sunshine is suffused into a milder, tenderer light, and
everything around is enwrapped in a beauty-mist, a glamorous illusion
that melts all angles into curves of loveliness. He enters into the
palaces of the deep, and all the skill of Titanic builders on earth
becomes to his mind a thing of naught. Interminable rows of columns,
all symmetrical, each perfect in beauty, yet none alike, are arrayed
before him; massy architraves, domes light-springing from their
piers as bubbles, yet in circumference so vast that their limits
are lost in shadow, slender spires of pearl, soaring upward like
vapour-wreaths: and all interwoven with the wondrous design a fairy
tracery of stone, appearing light and luminous as sea foam. The happy
living things troop forth to meet him and sweep in many a delicate
whirl around until, recalled by the need of upper air, he waves them
farewell and ascends.
Oh! the fierce delight of that swift upward rush, the culminating
ecstasy as he bounds into the palpitating air above and lies, so
softly cradled, upon the limpid wave! There for a season he floats,
drinking deep of the brine-laden air, every touch of the sea a
caress, every heart-beat a well-spring of pleasure. Then with a
shout he hurls himself forward as if he too were a free citizen of
the ocean, emulating with almost equal grace the sinuous spring of
the porpoise and the marvellous succession of curves presented by
the overwhelming whale. He claims kindred with them all, embraces
them; clinging lovingly to their smooth sides he frolics with them,
rejoicing in the plenitude of their untainted strength.
Before him rise the islands, mounds of emerald cresting bases
of silver sand. Willowy palm-trees dip their roots in the warm
wavelets and rear their tufted coronets on high. Darker-leaved, the
orange-trees droop their branches shot with golden gleams where
the fruit hangs heavily, filling the gentle air with fragrance.
Bright-plumaged birds flash amongst the verdure; along the
glittering shores rest placidly the sea-fowl returned from their
harvesting and comforting their fluffy broods. With huge steps
he strides shorewards, and springing lightly from the sand, he
reaches in a dozen bounds the crown of the loftiest palm, whose
thickly-clustering fruit bids him drink and drink again.
The island folk dread him not; fear has not yet visited those sunny
shores. And as he was with the sea-people so is he with their
compeers on land, a trusted playfellow, a creature perfect in glory
and beauty, able to vie with them in their superb activities, their
amazing play of vigour, their abounding joy in the plentiful gifts of
Nature.
After those sunny gambols, how sweet the rest on yielding couch of
leaves, fanned by sweet zephyrs laden with the subtle scents of
luxuriant flowers, and lulled by the slumber-song of the friendly
sea. Around him, with drooping wing, nestle the birds; the bejewelled
insects hush their busy songs into tenderest murmurs, the green
leaves hang in unrustling shade, noiselessly waving over him a cool
breath. There is peace and sleep.
“Awake, O laggard!” cry the birds; “awake and live! Joy comes anew.
Love and life and strength are calling us, and every sense answers
triumphantly. Sweet is the dawn when the splendid sun springs skyward
and the quiet night steals away; sweet is the strength of noonday,
when downward he sends his shafts of life-giving flame, and we lie
in the shade renewing from his exhaustless stores of energy our
well-spent strength. But sweetest of all the time when, his majestic
ascension accomplished, our sun sweeps westward to his ocean-bed,
and all his children hasten to revel in his tempered beams until he
hides his glorious face for a season, and night brings her solemn
pleasures.”
Swift upspringing the man answers gladly to the call. And forth
to meet him come a joyous band of his fellows, their dancing feet
scarce touching the earth. Not a weakling among them. Men and women
and children alike clean-limbed and strong, with sparkling eyes and
perfect gestures. Their nude shapes shine like burnished bronze with
natural unguents, their white and well-set teeth glitter as they
laugh whole-heartedly, their black, abundant hair is entwined with
scarlet hibiscus, and their voices ring musical and full. They do not
walk--they bound, they spring, and toss their arms in wildest glee.
Surrounding him, they bear him away to where a crystal river rushes
headlong down through a valley of velvet green to cast itself
tumultuously over a cliff-lip forty feet into the sea. As it
approaches its leap the translucent waters whirl faster and faster
in rising wreaths and ridges of dazzling white, until in one snowy
mass, crowned with a pearly mist, it hurls itself into the smooth
blue depths below. With one accord the wildly gambolling band hurl
themselves into those limpid waters some hundreds of yards above
the fall. As on softest couch they glide swiftly along, their peals
of laughter echoing multitudinously from the green bosoms of the
adjacent hills.
Faster and faster still they are borne onward until, singly and in
groups, they flash out into the sunshine and plunge into the awaiting
ocean. So swiftly do they pass that it seems but a breathing space
since, far inland, they sprang from the banks into the river, and
they now lie in blissful content upon the quiet sea, every nerve
tingling from that frantic, headlong flight. Then, like the care-free
children of Nature that they are, they abandon themselves to their
wild sea-sports, outdoing the fabled Nereids. Around them gather in
sympathy the gorgeous dolphins, the leisurely sharks, the fun-loving
porpoises, while over their heads dart incessantly in arrowy flight
glittering squadrons of flying-fish.
So they frolic untiringly until, by one impulse moved, they all dash
off to where, outside the enormous headland of black rock which
shelters the little bay, the vast and solemn ocean swell comes
rolling shoreward, towering higher as it comes, until, meeting the
bright beach, it raises itself superbly in one magnificent curve of
white, and dashes against the firm-set earth with a deep note as of
far-off thunder.
The merry players range themselves in line and swim seaward to meet
the next wave as it comes. Diving beneath it they reappear upon its
creaming shoulders, and by sheer skill balance there, elated almost
beyond bearing by the pace of their mighty steed. Higher and higher
they rise, clothed by the hissing foam, until from its summit they
spring to land and race to the woods.
Only a breathing space passes, and again they come rushing shoreward
to where a mimic fleet of light canoes lies covered with boughs to
shield them from the sun. As if time were all important, they fling
the leaves aside and rush the frail craft into the water, springing
in as they glide afloat. Two by two they sail away, an occasional
persuasive touch of the paddles sufficing to guide and propel them
whithersoever they will.
The sun is nearing the western edge of their world, and his slanting
beams are spreading lavishly over the silken waters broad bands of
rich and swiftly changing colour. A hush that is holy is stealing
over all things, a stillness so profound that the light splash of
a flying-fish tinkles clear as a tiny bell. The happy people float
along in a delicious languor, feasting their eyes upon the doubled
beauty of the landscape near the shore, where the line dividing the
reality from its reflection cannot be discerned.
Beneath them are constantly changing pictures no less lovely, the
marvellous surfaces of the living coral with all its wealth of tinted
anemones and brilliantly-decked fish of all shapes and all hues.
Carried by the imperceptible current, they pass swiftly, silently,
from scene to scene, over depths so profound that the waters are
almost blue-black, and as suddenly coming upon a submarine grove of
rigid coral trees, whose topmost branches nearly break through the
placid surface.
Presently the sun is gone, and the tender veil of night comes
creeping up from the East. Already the Evening Star, like a
minute moon, is sending a long thread of silver over the purpling
sea. Beneath the waters the sea-folk have begun their nightly
illumination, and overhead are peeping out, one by one, the vedettes
of the night. Bird and beast and fish have ceased their play, and a
gentle wind arises. The canoes glide shoreward noiselessly, and the
voyagers seek through scented pathways their leafy homes.
* * * * *
“Poor fellow, you look a bit stale and overworked! You ought to run
down to the seaside for a week!”
And the suddenly-awakened clerk starts up, muttering a
half-intelligible apology to his employer, who stands regarding him
with a look of pity. But for a few fleeting moments he has been
perfectly happy.
SOCIABLE FISH
In one of the most charming chapters of that truly charming book,
Gilbert White’s “Natural History of Selborne,” the gentle author
tells of some strange instances of sociability among the denizens of
the farmyard, a craving for companionship that brought into intimate
acquaintanceship such widely differing animals as a horse and a
hen, a doe and some cattle. This, as a proof that loneliness is an
abnormal condition of life even among the lesser intelligences of
creation, “gives to think,” as our neighbours say; but probably few
people would imagine that the same desire for society obtains even
among the inhabitants of the deep and wide sea.
I do not now speak of such gregarious fish as compose the great
shoals that beneficently visit the shallower waters washing populous
countries, from whose innumerable multitudes whole nations may be
fed without making any appreciable diminution in their apparently
infinite numbers; but of those more varied and widely scattered
species that are to be found near the sea-surface all over the ocean.
In the ordinary routine of modern passenger traffic no observation
of these truly deep-sea fish is possible, for, in the first place,
the breathless panting of the propeller fills them with dread of
the swiftly-gliding monster whose approach it heralds; and in the
next, the would-be observer has no time to catch even a glimpse of
the inhabitants of that teeming world beneath him with, perhaps, the
exception of a rapidly-passing school of porpoises or the hurried
vision of a sea-shouldering whale.