LONDON TO TILBURY.--If I am to write notes about a journey to the Far
East, I must not miss out the exciting part between Grosvenor Square and
Liverpool Street Station. The excitement comes in as you watch the
policeman's hand at the block in the city and wonder if it will stop
your journey; down it comes though, and we are in time, and have a
minute to spare to rejoice on the platform with our cousin and niece who
are going out with us, or rather with whom we home people are going out
to India.
There were those on the platform not so happy as we were; an old lady I
saw held the hand of a young soldier in pathetic silence, and the smiles
on the faces of those left at home were not particularly cheerful, and
the grey set expression of men leaving wives and children is hard to
forget. A younger lady I saw on the platform smiling, and straight as a
soldier, threw herself into her sister's arms as the train moved off in
a perfect abandonment of grief, and the wrinkles in the old lady's face
as we passed were full of tears--two to one against her seeing the young
man, son, or grandson, on this side. But I suppose that is India all
over--many partings, a few tears shed, and enough kept back to float a
fleet.
Our 'guid brither'[1] and his wife have come in the train with us to
Tilbury to see us on board, so we are all very jolly and the sun shines
bright on the river and white cumulous clouds, and the brown sails of
the barges are swelling with a brisk north-east breeze as they come up
on the top of the flood. The "Egypt" lies in mid-stream, and all the
passengers of our train go off to it in tenders, along with hundreds of
friends who have come to see them off--there is a crowd! Passengers only
bring hand baggage with them, the rest went on board yesterday; the
embarkation is beautifully managed and orderly, there is an astonishing
repression of excitement and show of out of place feeling. To compare
this embarkation with that on a foreign liner; I have seen the whole
business of taking passengers and luggage on board an Italian liner
stopped for minutes by one Egyptian with a tin of milk on the gangway,
holding forth on his grievances to the world at large, whilst handsome
officers on deck smiled futilely, their white-gloved hands behind their
backs. I suppose it is this military precision that gives the P. & O.
their name and their passengers a sense of security; but there are
people so hard to please that they ask for less pipeclay, less crowded
cabins, and better service and more deck space, and these carpers will
never be content, so long as they see other lines, such as the Japanese,
giving all they clamour for, comfortable bath-rooms, beds, and a laundry
at moderate rates.
[1] Brother-in-law.
A touch of militarism that I rather fancy on the P. & O. is the bugle
call going round the ship before meals; it is such a jolly cheery sound
to awaken to. It comes from far along the ship in the morning, at first
faintly in the distance, when you are half-awake trying to account for
the faint sound of machinery and the running reflections on your white
roof, dimly conscious of the ever delightful feeling that you are
sailing south across the widest and most level of all plains. Louder and
louder it comes along the alley-way, till outside your cabin door it
fairly makes you jump! A jolly, cheery sound it is, almost nothing in
the world so stirring excepting the pipes. There's a laughing brazen
defiance in it, and gentleness too, as it dies away--most masculine
music! What associations it must have for soldiers; even to the man of
peace it suggests plate armour, the listed field and battles long
ago.... Did you ever hear it in Edinburgh? up in the empty, windy castle
esplanade--empty of all but memories--You see no bugler, but the wide
grey walls and sky are filled with its golden notes. It echoes for a
moment, and then there is quietness, till the noise of the town comes up
again. And at night have you heard it? from the _Far Side_ of Princes
Street, the ethereal notes between you and the stars, long drawn notes
of the last post, from an invisible bugler in the loom of the rock and
the rolling clouds.
G. murmurs, "It is abominable--but after all, going to sea is all a
matter of endurance." What a difference there is in the point of
view--G., I must say, had a hair mattress last night, and it was not
properly blanketted and entailed a certain amount of endurance; on the
other hand she is extremely fortunate in having such glorious pink roses
and beautiful hangings for nicknacks, touching parting gifts from
friends, so her cabin already looks fairly homely; and then, on the
walls, there is the most perfect round picture, framed in the bright
brass of the porthole--a sailing ship hull down on the horizon, her
sails shining like gold in the morning sun, on a sea of mother of
pearl.... There is just the faintest rise and fall, and the air is full
of the steady silky rushing sound; what is there like it, which you hear
in fine weather when the sea makes way to let you pass.
Painted at a sketch to-day of people coming on board the "Egypt" from
the tender, no great thing in colour, less in a black and white
reproduction, for eye and hand were a little taken up with luggage--a
note of lascars in blue dungarees and red turbans--East meeting
West--the Indies in mauve and lilac hats and white veils; for shades of
purple are all the fashion this year.
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[Illustration]
I have found a corner in the waist between first and second class,
where one can draw or paint without being very much overlooked; you can
get under the sky there, elsewhere you can't, and only see the horizon,
for our first class deck is under the officers' deck, and the second
class is covered with awnings, a very poor arrangement I think for you
only get light on your toes. A sailing ship's deck is ever so much
nicer, for you have a reasonable bulwark to keep wind and water off your
body instead of an open rail. You can look over a bulwark comfortably,
your eyes sheltered from the glare off the sea; on these steam-liners it
comes slanting up to your eyes under eyebrows and eyelashes--no wonder
people take to blue spectacles! In the sailing ship too you can look up
and watch the bends of white canvas and the spars-and cordage swinging
to and fro across the infinite blue, an endless delight! Here you have a
floor and blistered paint a few inches above you, on which you know the
officers promenade with the full sweep of the horizon round them and the
arc of the sky above. Still another advantage of the sailing ship is,
that you are not just one of a crowd, ticketed No. so and so, bedded,
fed, and checked off by a numeral; and you can generally count on a
barometer, and learn the names of lights and lands you pass; possibly
there may even be a thermometer, and certainly a compass. On this
"Egypt," barring a small scale Mercator's projection of the world on
which the ship's position is marked daily, there is no means of getting
the information that can make a sea voyage so infinitely interesting. I
would suggest large sized charts showing landmarks, ship's position, and
barometrical readings. What is more interesting at sea than the charts
of ocean depths, currents, winds, salinity, and temperature! If you go
too fast to touch on Plankton, Nekton, and Benthos, at least let the
poor first class passengers have a compass, if not a barograph and a
thermometer, to eke out conversations on the weather, the day's run, and
bridge.
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"THE BAY"--the Great Bay, calm as a mill pond--there's a jolly sense of
rest and peace on board; I suppose everyone knows that feeling who has
gone East. For weeks you have been doing things, shopping, packing,
keeping appointments, then you get out of the bustle of town, breathe
again clear air, and rest, on the level sea, that lovely water cushion,
the most soothing of all beds.
Everyone is soporific and very restful. We begin to distinguish
individuals amongst the many passengers, but so far no one seems
particularly conspicuous. They are rather good-looking as a crowd, and
one or two children are like angels--at least we hope so.
It is darker ahead now and to the east, the shadow of the World on
Nothing, I suppose! possibly an October breeze coming--low banks of
cirri-cumuli above the horizon--clear overhead with streaks of rusty red
cloud fine as hair--the evening is cold, here is an attempt at it with a
brush. And we had music in the place for music on deck; an Irish lady
played the fiddle and played so well with a piano accompaniment to an
audience of six--if the Bay keeps quite the audience ought to increase.
After the sunset, dinner--what a tedious business it is; the waiting is
perfectly planned, but the waiters themselves have to wait ages at the
two service hatches, where they get all jammed together, so the time
between the courses seems interminable; you almost forget you are at a
meal at all. To-night dinner and conversation both hang fire at our end
of the table, and I overhear from the other end where my cousin sits
interesting scraps about India, which is distinctly annoying; R. is
relating some of his experiences there that set his neighbours and my
niece and Mrs Deputy-Commissioner all chuckling.
[Illustration]
I gather that R. converted a certain Swiss. They lived near each other,
a lonely life on the "Black Cotton Soil," whatever that is. R. says it
blows about like snow. The Swiss lived in a little corrugated-iron house
with some hens, and no books, and he loved books, and hated his house
and hens, and the British Empire. R. had a nice bungalow and lots of
books, and he lent these to the Swiss, on condition that he would read
our newspapers! with the result that the Swiss ceased to believe in
British "methods of barbarism," said he admired the Empire, and got
quite to like his tin house and the black soil,--even his hens!
It is so quiet in the smoking-room to-night--not even bridge going on
yet, which perhaps accounts for the discursiveness of these rambling
notes on a quiet Saturday night at sea.
Now comes Sunday. "Come day go day, God send Sunday," as the
discontented sailor growls before the mast. The day of the month
unknown--I do not think it matters, in such notes as these, dates are
rather like ruled lines on sketching paper, only distracting.... We have
had such a pleasant time so far, that a Presbyterian lady was quite
surprised when at breakfast I told her the day of the week, as she had
not heard any clanging and clashing of bells, and as everybody seemed
quite cheerful and there were no black clothes, she could not realise it
was Sunday. But this afternoon it is not joyful for all! There is a
solemn grey sky sweeping over us from Spain, with a grandeur and breadth
that one only associates with Spanish skies, and there is a fresh
breeze, but warm from the land, and this big tub moves a little, enough
to make one realise the Sea is alive, her bosom heaves us along
slightly, a delightful motion for some of us, and intensely soothing,
but alas! there are empty places at our board. What a penance it is this
sea-sickness. In the words of Burns,
"It is a dizziness,
That will not let a body gang
About his business"
at all, at all.... I was a pale-faced student, a week out from Leith to
Antwerp, when I first felt this rudeness: we struck a fog-bank off St.
Abb's Head to begin with, and a sand-bank off Middlesborough, and
listened there to the cocks crowing on shore without seeing a foot ahead
for the thickness of the grey, wet mist. We cheered ourselves with
bagpipes, and the captain had a case of the very best brandy, the first
I think I ever tasted; and he could play some tunes on the practise
chanter. "Dinna think bonnie lassie, I'm goin' to leave you," I remember
was his best; it is a strathspey tune; I learned it from him. The
trouble came when it blew up hard off the Scheldt; but even when coming
over the bar, the "romance" of the sea qualified its pains a little. I
can feel the cold in my hands to-day of the barrels of the Winchesters
at the side of the couch, and to which I clung in my hour of trial, and
remembered they had been used in the steamer's very last trip against
_Real Pirates_ in the China Seas! And certainly there was the "romance"
of the sea in the change from the gale and black night outside the bar,
to the quiet morning on the wide river with the cathedral spire, violet
against the sunrise, dropping its silvery music "from heaven like dew;"
"Madame Angot," was the tune I think, with a note missing here and
there.
We saw a number of sea birds to-day, and two at least were skuas, black
looking thieves among their white cousins. I saw one try to make a gull
disgorge, driving up at it from below, to the gull's loudly-expressed
disgust. It is a strange arrangement of nature, and I can't understand
why a few gulls don't combine to defend themselves. I am sure each of
them must hate to give up the little meal they have earned with so much
tiring flight. There were shore birds too; we shipped some as
passengers, they were going south like ourselves, but by instinct not by
the card. I suppose they were on the road all right, and just needed to
rest their wings a little; two large black birds were on the bridge last
night, possibly crows, and we have starlings to-day, and I saw some
finches of sorts. At least one of these fragile boarders was eaten by
the ship's cat--I found its delicate remains, a few tiny feathers and a
dainty wing and its poor head.
The land is very faint on the horizon and the breeze is just going
down, such as it was; it's a momentary interest at the end of a somewhat
dull, grey day to most passengers.
R. and his wife, since one A.M., have had rather a poor time; their
cabin is far forward, and so they feel any motion more than we do
amidships; what with a little sea-sickness and the anchor chain loose in
its pipe, banging against their bunks, they had a disturbed night. We
raked out the bo'sun from his afternoon nap, and he and a withered old
lascar jammed a hemp fender between the chain and woodwork, so their
slumbers ought to be more peaceful; now they are getting a temporary
change to a berth amidship, which is unoccupied as far as Marseilles; in
it they will hardly feel the motion.
It was really considerate of the captain making a break in a dull, damp
Sunday afternoon--the horn went booming, and up we all jumped in the
smoking-room with some idea that someone had gone overboard, and up on
deck came the lascars grinning, a jolly string of colour, and away
forward they trotted and climbed into the forward life-boats from the
deck above us. It was very smartly done, but I would like to have seen
if their feet could reach the stretchers or their hands the oars; the
boats were not swung out, but everything seemed ready. I think my friend
the bo'sun must have had an inkling they were needed for he was working
about the davits and falls earlier in the afternoon. In the words of the
poet, Gilbert,
"It is little I know,
Of the ways of men of the sea,
But I'll eat my hand if I (don't) understand"
this part of their business; practice on a whaler tends to perfection at
getting away in the boats, and at getting on board again too, if you are
hungry--and faith if it isn't snowing it is fun!
To night the air is damp and warm from the S.E., and we smell
Spain--true bill--several of us noticed the aromatic smell. Scents at
sea carry great distances. "I know a man" who smelt burning wood or
heather, 250 nautical miles from land, and said so and was laughed at;
but he laughed last, for two or three days after his vessel beat up to
some islands, from which towered a vast column of brown and white smoke
from burning peat, and this floated south on a frosty northerly breeze,
and the chart showed the smoke was dead to windward at the time he
spoke.