THE hotel paper had a somewhat misguiding “Comfort” as its telegraphic
address. Upon the walls were reproductions of sporting prints by Leech,
depicting scions of the British aristocracy taking their pleasures not so
very sadly after all, and easily demonstrating their superiority to
several smock-frocked rustics by galloping close past them, and shouting
“Tally-ho,” holding their left ear between their thumb and finger to
emphasize the note. Apollinaris and whisky splits, Fritz Rupprecht’s
“Special,” with other advertisements of a like nature, filled up the
blanks between the oleographs. _Iron and Commerce_, with the _Cook’s
Excursionist and Engineering_, lay untouched upon the tables, serving to
show that if some books be not real books at all, there are newspapers
which are, as it were, but dummies, holding no police news, football
specials, murders, assaults on women, divorce cases, and other items
which the educated public naturally expects within their sheets.
Slipshod and futile, but attentive German waiters, went about bringing
hot whisky, whisky and soda, whisky and lemonade, and whisky neat to the
belated customers. Upon the tables glasses had made great rings,
commercial travellers had left their pigskin satchels in a heap, and, by
the fire, a group of travellers sat silently drinking after the Scottish
fashion, and spitting in the grate. Twelve o’clock, half-past twelve,
then one by one they dropped away murmuring good-night, and setting down
their glasses with an air of having worked manfully for a good night’s
repose.
Still I sat on gazing into the fire, and almost unaware that on the other
side sat a companion of my vigil, till at last he said, “Do you know
Yambo, sir?” and to my vague assent rejoined, “Yambo on the Arabian
coast, just opposite Hodeida, where vessels in the pilgrim trade
discharge their ‘niggers.’ It’s the port for Mecca, that is, the
‘Sambaks’ used to put in there, but now we do the traffic right from
Mogador.” I looked with interest at the man, liking his Demosthenic
style of opening remarks. Tall and broad-shouldered, dressed in navy
blue, boots like small packing-cases, and a green necktie in which was
stuck a cairngorm pin; he wore a silver watch-chain with a small
steering-wheel attached to it; not quite a sailor, yet a look of the sea
about his clothes; he had a face open and innocent, yet wrinkled round
the eyes like a young elephant, and struck me as being, perhaps not
foolish, certainly not wise, but with a tinge of worldly wisdom gathered
in seaport towns, at music-halls, and other places where those who go
down to the sea in ships gain their experience of life. “Yambo,” I said;
“I thought that Jeddah was the port the pilgrims landed at.” “Well, so
it is,” he said, “but I was thinking about Yambo, been there a many
times, used to run arms for the tribes to fight the Turks, when I was
fourth engineer in the old _Pyramus_. Yes, yes, I’ve been at sea most
all my life, though my old dad keeps a slap-up hotel at
Weston-super-Mare. No need to go to sea, no, but you know some folks
would go to hell for pleasure, and I suppose I’m one. Dad, you know—now
were you ever at Weston-super-Mare?—is fond of literature, does a bit
himself, Chambers you know; mostly upon the conchology and the fossils of
the South Devon coast; awfully fond of it, and so am I, nothing I like
better than, after getting out of the engine-room, to lie on deck and
read one of Bulwer’s books or Dickens’s, both of them stunning. No, I
never write myself. Can’t make out what set me thinking about Yambo.
What! you won’t? Well, waiter, waiter, Garçong, as we used to say at
Suez, another whisky, slippy, you know. I’ve always been a temperate
man, but like a nightcap before turning in. Perim ain’t so far off from
Yambo; ah yes, now I remember what it was I had to say. You know them
Galla girls? prime, ain’t they? But Perim, I remember being Shanghaied
there, nothing to do, a beastly hole; sand, beastly, gets in your socks,
gets in your hair, makes you feel dirty, no matter how you wash. Well,
you know, there were about two hundred of us there, some kind of
Government work was going on, and I was left there out of my ship, kind
of loaned off, you see, to help the Johnnies at the condensing works.
I’ve been at Suez, Yambo as I told you, Rangoon, down at Talcahuano on
the Chilean coast, wrecked in Smythe’s Channel, and been about a bit, but
Perim fairly takes the cake, not even a sheet of blotting-paper between
it and hell. As I was saying, then, we were cooped up, and not a woman
in the place; even the Government saw it at last, thought maybe worse
would happen if they did nothing, and sent and got six of them Galla
girls. Leastwise, if they didn’t send for them, they let a Levantine,
Mirandy was his name, introduce them on the strict Q.T. Well, you know,
the thing was like this, sir—you know them Galla girls, black as a boot
and skins always as cool as ice, even in a khamsin; some people says they
are better than white girls; but not in mine; but anyhow they’ve got no
‘Bookay d’Afreek’ about them, it always turns me sick. As I was saying,
I thought I’d have a ‘pasear’ one evening, so I lemonaded up to the
‘Mansion,’ and began talking to one of them girls, sort of to pass the
time. Serpent upon the rocks, eh? well, that old Solomon knew something
about girls. Now here comes in the curious thing, it always strikes me
just as if I’d read it in a book; Dickens now or Thackeray could have
’andled it, Bulwer would ’ave made it a little loosious. Just as the gal
was taking off her things—oh, no offence, captain, I’m telling you the
thing just as it happened—I saw she had a crucifix a-hanging round her
neck. Papist? Oh no, not much; father, he sat under Rev. Hiles
Hitchens, light of the Congregationalists. No, no, nothing to do with
Rome, never could bear the influence of the confessor in a family. A
little free myself, especially below latitude forty, but at ’ome and in
the family I like things ship-shape. Well, as I said, round her black
neck she had a silver crucifix, contrast of colour made the thing stand
out double the size. Ses I, ‘What’s that?’ and she says, ‘Klistian girl,
Johnny, me Klistian all the same you.’ That was a stopper over all, and
I just reached for my hat, says, ‘Klistian are yer,’ and I gave her two
of them Spanish dollars and a kiss, and quit the place. What did she
say? Why, nothing, looked at me and laughed, and says, ‘You Klistian,
Johnny, plenty much damn fool.’ No, I don’t know what she meant, I done
my duty, and that’s all I am concerned about.
“Another half, just a split whisky and Apollinaris. Well, if you won’t,
good-night;” and the door slammed, leaving me gazing at the
fast-blackening fire.