On the Sunday, among a party of men who were talking in our companion,
Steerage No. 2 and 3, we remarked a new figure. He wore tweed clothes,
well enough made if not very fresh, and a plain smoking-cap. His face
was pale, with pale eyes, and spiritedly enough designed; but though not
yet thirty, a sort of blackguardly degeneration had already overtaken his
features. The fine nose had grown fleshy towards the point, the pale
eyes were sunk in fat. His hands were strong and elegant; his experience
of life evidently varied; his speech full of pith and verve; his manners
forward, but perfectly presentable. The lad who helped in the second
cabin told me, in answer to a question, that he did not know who he was,
but thought, ‘by his way of speaking, and because he was so polite, that
he was some one from the saloon.’
I was not so sure, for to me there was something equivocal in his air and
bearing. He might have been, I thought, the son of some good family who
had fallen early into dissipation and run from home. But, making every
allowance, how admirable was his talk! I wish you could have heard him
tell his own stories. They were so swingingly set forth, in such
dramatic language, and illustrated here and there by such luminous bits
of acting, that they could only lose in any reproduction. There were
tales of the P. and O. Company, where he had been an officer; of the East
Indies, where in former years he had lived lavishly; of the Royal
Engineers, where he had served for a period; and of a dozen other sides
of life, each introducing some vigorous thumb-nail portrait. He had the
talk to himself that night, we were all so glad to listen. The best
talkers usually address themselves to some particular society; there they
are kings, elsewhere camp-followers, as a man may know Russian and yet be
ignorant of Spanish; but this fellow had a frank, headlong power of
style, and a broad, human choice of subject, that would have turned any
circle in the world into a circle of hearers. He was a Homeric talker,
plain, strong, and cheerful; and the things and the people of which he
spoke became readily and clearly present to the minds of those who heard
him. This, with a certain added colouring of rhetoric and rodomontade,
must have been the style of Burns, who equally charmed the ears of
duchesses and hostlers.
Yet freely and personally as he spoke, many points remained obscure in
his narration. The Engineers, for instance, was a service which he
praised highly; it is true there would be trouble with the sergeants; but
then the officers were gentlemen, and his own, in particular, one among
ten thousand. It sounded so far exactly like an episode in the rakish,
topsy-turvy life of such an one as I had imagined. But then there came
incidents more doubtful, which showed an almost impudent greed after
gratuities, and a truly impudent disregard for truth. And then there was
the tale of his departure. He had wearied, it seems, of Woolwich, and
one fine day, with a companion, slipped up to London for a spree. I have
a suspicion that spree was meant to be a long one; but God disposes all
things; and one morning, near Westminster Bridge, whom should he come
across but the very sergeant who had recruited him at first! What
followed? He himself indicated cavalierly that he had then resigned.
Let us put it so. But these resignations are sometimes very trying.
At length, after having delighted us for hours, he took himself away from
the companion; and I could ask Mackay who and what he was. ‘That?’ said
Mackay. ‘Why, that’s one of the stowaways.’
‘No man,’ said the same authority, ‘who has had anything to do with the
sea, would ever think of paying for a passage.’ I give the statement as
Mackay’s, without endorsement; yet I am tempted to believe that it
contains a grain of truth; and if you add that the man shall be impudent
and thievish, or else dead-broke, it may even pass for a fair
representation of the facts. We gentlemen of England who live at home at
ease have, I suspect, very insufficient ideas on the subject. All the
world over, people are stowing away in coal-holes and dark corners, and
when ships are once out to sea, appearing again, begrimed and bashful,
upon deck. The career of these sea-tramps partakes largely of the
adventurous. They may be poisoned by coal-gas, or die by starvation in
their place of concealment; or when found they may be clapped at once and
ignominiously into irons, thus to be carried to their promised land, the
port of destination, and alas! brought back in the same way to that from
which they started, and there delivered over to the magistrates and the
seclusion of a county jail. Since I crossed the Atlantic, one miserable
stowaway was found in a dying state among the fuel, uttered but a word or
two, and departed for a farther country than America.
When the stowaway appears on deck, he has but one thing to pray for: that
he be set to work, which is the price and sign of his forgiveness. After
half an hour with a swab or a bucket, he feels himself as secure as if he
had paid for his passage. It is not altogether a bad thing for the
company, who get more or less efficient hands for nothing but a few
plates of junk and duff; and every now and again find themselves better
paid than by a whole family of cabin passengers. Not long ago, for
instance, a packet was saved from nearly certain loss by the skill and
courage of a stowaway engineer. As was no more than just, a handsome
subscription rewarded him for his success: but even without such
exceptional good fortune, as things stand in England and America, the
stowaway will often make a good profit out of his adventure. Four
engineers stowed away last summer on the same ship, the _Circassia_; and
before two days after their arrival each of the four had found a
comfortable berth. This was the most hopeful tale of emigration that I
heard from first to last; and as you see, the luck was for stowaways.
My curiosity was much inflamed by what I heard; and the next morning, as
I was making the round of the ship, I was delighted to find the ex-Royal
Engineer engaged in washing down the white paint of a deck house. There
was another fellow at work beside him, a lad not more than twenty, in the
most miraculous tatters, his handsome face sown with grains of beauty and
lighted up by expressive eyes. Four stowaways had been found aboard our
ship before she left the Clyde, but these two had alone escaped the
ignominy of being put ashore. Alick, my acquaintance of last night, was
Scots by birth, and by trade a practical engineer; the other was from
Devonshire, and had been to sea before the mast. Two people more unlike
by training, character, and habits it would be hard to imagine; yet here
they were together, scrubbing paint.
Alick had held all sorts of good situations, and wasted many
opportunities in life. I have heard him end a story with these words:
‘That was in my golden days, when I used finger-glasses.’ Situation
after situation failed him; then followed the depression of trade, and
for months he had hung round with other idlers, playing marbles all day
in the West Park, and going home at night to tell his landlady how he had
been seeking for a job. I believe this kind of existence was not
unpleasant to Alick himself, and he might have long continued to enjoy
idleness and a life on tick; but he had a comrade, let us call him Brown,
who grew restive. This fellow was continually threatening to slip his
cable for the States, and at last, one Wednesday, Glasgow was left
widowed of her Brown. Some months afterwards, Alick met another old chum
in Sauchiehall Street.
‘By the bye, Alick,’ said he, ‘I met a gentleman in New York who was
asking for you.’
‘Who was that?’ asked Alick.
‘The new second engineer on board the _So-and-so_,’ was the reply.
‘Well, and who is he?’
‘Brown, to be sure.’
For Brown had been one of the fortunate quartette aboard the _Circassia_.
If that was the way of it in the States, Alick thought it was high time
to follow Brown’s example. He spent his last day, as he put it,
‘reviewing the yeomanry,’ and the next morning says he to his landlady,
‘Mrs. X., I’ll not take porridge to-day, please; I’ll take some eggs.’
‘Why, have you found a job?’ she asked, delighted.
‘Well, yes,’ returned the perfidious Alick; ‘I think I’ll start to-day.’
And so, well lined with eggs, start he did, but for America. I am afraid
that landlady has seen the last of him.
It was easy enough to get on board in the confusion that attends a
vessel’s departure; and in one of the dark corners of Steerage No. 1,
flat in a bunk and with an empty stomach, Alick made the voyage from the
Broomielaw to Greenock. That night, the ship’s yeoman pulled him out by
the heels and had him before the mate. Two other stowaways had already
been found and sent ashore; but by this time darkness had fallen, they
were out in the middle of the estuary, and the last steamer had left them
till the morning.
‘Take him to the forecastle and give him a meal,’ said the mate, ‘and see
and pack him off the first thing to-morrow.’
In the forecastle he had supper, a good night’s rest, and breakfast; and
was sitting placidly with a pipe, fancying all was over and the game up
for good with that ship, when one of the sailors grumbled out an oath at
him, with a ‘What are you doing there?’ and ‘Do you call that hiding,
anyway?’ There was need of no more; Alick was in another bunk before the
day was older. Shortly before the passengers arrived, the ship was
cursorily inspected. He heard the round come down the companion and look
into one pen after another, until they came within two of the one in
which he lay concealed. Into these last two they did not enter, but
merely glanced from without; and Alick had no doubt that he was
personally favoured in this escape. It was the character of the man to
attribute nothing to luck and but little to kindness; whatever happened
to him he had earned in his own right amply; favours came to him from his
singular attraction and adroitness, and misfortunes he had always
accepted with his eyes open. Half an hour after the searchers had
departed, the steerage began to fill with legitimate passengers, and the
worst of Alick’s troubles was at an end. He was soon making himself
popular, smoking other people’s tobacco, and politely sharing their
private stock delicacies, and when night came he retired to his bunk
beside the others with composure.
Next day by afternoon, Lough Foyle being already far behind, and only the
rough north-western hills of Ireland within view, Alick appeared on deck
to court inquiry and decide his fate. As a matter of fact, he was known
to several on board, and even intimate with one of the engineers; but it
was plainly not the etiquette of such occasions for the authorities to
avow their information. Every one professed surprise and anger on his
appearance, and he was led prison before the captain.
‘What have you got to say for yourself?’ inquired the captain.
‘Not much,’ said Alick; ‘but when a man has been a long time out of a
job, he will do things he would not under other circumstances.’
‘Are you willing to work?’
Alick swore he was burning to be useful.
‘And what can you do?’ asked the captain.
He replied composedly that he was a brass-fitter by trade.
‘I think you will be better at engineering?’ suggested the officer, with
a shrewd look.
‘No, sir,’ says Alick simply.—‘There’s few can beat me at a lie,’ was his
engaging commentary to me as he recounted the affair.
‘Have you been to sea?’ again asked the captain.
‘I’ve had a trip on a Clyde steamboat, sir, but no more,’ replied the
unabashed Alick.
‘Well, we must try and find some work for you,’ concluded the officer.
And hence we behold Alick, clear of the hot engine-room, lazily scraping
paint and now and then taking a pull upon a sheet. ‘You leave me alone,’
was his deduction. ‘When I get talking to a man, I can get round him.’
The other stowaway, whom I will call the Devonian—it was noticeable that
neither of them told his name—had both been brought up and seen the world
in a much smaller way. His father, a confectioner, died and was closely
followed by his mother. His sisters had taken, I think, to dressmaking.
He himself had returned from sea about a year ago and gone to live with
his brother, who kept the ‘George Hotel’—‘it was not quite a real hotel,’
added the candid fellow—‘and had a hired man to mind the horses.’ At
first the Devonian was very welcome; but as time went on his brother not
unnaturally grew cool towards him, and he began to find himself one too
many at the ‘George Hotel.’ ‘I don’t think brothers care much for you,’
he said, as a general reflection upon life. Hurt at this change, nearly
penniless, and too proud to ask for more, he set off on foot and walked
eighty miles to Weymouth, living on the journey as he could. He would
have enlisted, but he was too small for the army and too old for the
navy; and thought himself fortunate at last to find a berth on board a
trading dandy. Somewhere in the Bristol Channel the dandy sprung a leak
and went down; and though the crew were picked up and brought ashore by
fishermen, they found themselves with nothing but the clothes upon their
back. His next engagement was scarcely better starred; for the ship
proved so leaky, and frightened them all so heartily during a short
passage through the Irish Sea, that the entire crew deserted and remained
behind upon the quays of Belfast.
Evil days were now coming thick on the Devonian. He could find no berth
in Belfast, and had to work a passage to Glasgow on a steamer. She
reached the Broomielaw on a Wednesday: the Devonian had a bellyful that
morning, laying in breakfast manfully to provide against the future, and
set off along the quays to seek employment. But he was now not only
penniless, his clothes had begun to fall in tatters; he had begun to have
the look of a street Arab; and captains will have nothing to say to a
ragamuffin; for in that trade, as in all others, it is the coat that
depicts the man. You may hand, reef, and steer like an angel, but if you
have a hole in your trousers, it is like a millstone round your neck.
The Devonian lost heart at so many refusals. He had not the impudence to
beg; although, as he said, ‘when I had money of my own, I always gave
it.’ It was only on Saturday morning, after three whole days of
starvation, that he asked a scone from a milkwoman, who added of her own
accord a glass of milk. He had now made up his mind to stow away, not
from any desire to see America, but merely to obtain the comfort of a
place in the forecastle and a supply of familiar sea-fare. He lived by
begging, always from milkwomen, and always scones and milk, and was not
once refused. It was vile wet weather, and he could never have been dry.
By night he walked the streets, and by day slept upon Glasgow Green, and
heard, in the intervals of his dozing, the famous theologians of the spot
clear up intricate points of doctrine and appraise the merits of the
clergy. He had not much instruction; he could ‘read bills on the
street,’ but was ‘main bad at writing’; yet these theologians seem to
have impressed him with a genuine sense of amusement. Why he did not go
to the Sailors’ House I know not; I presume there is in Glasgow one of
these institutions, which are by far the happiest and the wisest effort
of contemporaneous charity; but I must stand to my author, as they say in
old books, and relate the story as I heard it. In the meantime, he had
tried four times to stow away in different vessels, and four times had
been discovered and handed back to starvation. The fifth time was lucky;
and you may judge if he were pleased to be aboard ship again, at his old
work, and with duff twice a week. He was, said Alick, ‘a devil for the
duff.’ Or if devil was not the word, it was one if anything stronger.
The difference in the conduct of the two was remarkable. The Devonian
was as willing as any paid hand, swarmed aloft among the first, pulled
his natural weight and firmly upon a rope, and found work for himself
when there was none to show him. Alick, on the other hand, was not only
a skulker in the grain, but took a humorous and fine gentlemanly view of
the transaction. He would speak to me by the hour in ostentatious
idleness; and only if the bo’s’un or a mate came by, fell-to languidly
for just the necessary time till they were out of sight. ‘I’m not
breaking my heart with it,’ he remarked.
Once there was a hatch to be opened near where he was stationed; he
watched the preparations for a second or so suspiciously, and then,
‘Hullo,’ said he, ‘here’s some real work coming—I’m off,’ and he was gone
that moment. Again, calculating the six guinea passage-money, and the
probable duration of the passage, he remarked pleasantly that he was
getting six shillings a day for this job, ‘and it’s pretty dear to the
company at that.’ ‘They are making nothing by me,’ was another of his
observations; ‘they’re making something by that fellow.’ And he pointed
to the Devonian, who was just then busy to the eyes.
The more you saw of Alick, the more, it must be owned, you learned to
despise him. His natural talents were of no use either to himself or
others; for his character had degenerated like his face, and become pulpy
and pretentious. Even his power of persuasion, which was certainly very
surprising, stood in some danger of being lost or neutralised by
over-confidence. He lied in an aggressive, brazen manner, like a pert
criminal in the dock; and he was so vain of his own cleverness that he
could not refrain from boasting, ten minutes after, of the very trick by
which he had deceived you. ‘Why, now I have more money than when I came
on board,’ he said one night, exhibiting a sixpence, ‘and yet I stood
myself a bottle of beer before I went to bed yesterday. And as for
tobacco, I have fifteen sticks of it.’ That was fairly successful
indeed; yet a man of his superiority, and with a less obtrusive policy,
might, who knows? have got the length of half a crown. A man who prides
himself upon persuasion should learn the persuasive faculty of silence,
above all as to his own misdeeds. It is only in the farce and for
dramatic purposes that Scapin enlarges on his peculiar talents to the
world at large.
Scapin is perhaps a good name for this clever, unfortunate Alick; for at
the bottom of all his misconduct there was a guiding sense of humour that
moved you to forgive him. It was more than half a jest that he conducted
his existence. ‘Oh, man,’ he said to me once with unusual emotion, like
a man thinking of his mistress, ‘I would give up anything for a lark.’
It was in relation to his fellow-stowaway that Alick showed the best, or
perhaps I should say the only good, points of his nature. ‘Mind you,’ he
said suddenly, changing his tone, ‘mind you that’s a good boy. He
wouldn’t tell you a lie. A lot of them think he is a scamp because his
clothes are ragged, but he isn’t; he’s as good as gold.’ To hear him,
you become aware that Alick himself had a taste for virtue. He thought
his own idleness and the other’s industry equally becoming. He was no
more anxious to insure his own reputation as a liar than to uphold the
truthfulness of his companion; and he seemed unaware of what was
incongruous in his attitude, and was plainly sincere in both characters.
It was not surprising that he should take an interest in the Devonian,
for the lad worshipped and served him in love and wonder. Busy as he
was, he would find time to warn Alick of an approaching officer, or even
to tell him that the coast was clear, and he might slip off and smoke a
pipe in safety. ‘Tom,’ he once said to him, for that was the name which
Alick ordered him to use, ‘if you don’t like going to the galley, I’ll go
for you. You ain’t used to this kind of thing, you ain’t. But I’m a
sailor; and I can understand the feelings of any fellow, I can.’ Again,
he was hard up, and casting about for some tobacco, for he was not so
liberally used in this respect as others perhaps less worthy, when Alick
offered him the half of one of his fifteen sticks. I think, for my part,
he might have increased the offer to a whole one, or perhaps a pair of
them, and not lived to regret his liberality. But the Devonian refused.
‘No,’ he said, ‘you’re a stowaway like me; I won’t take it from you, I’ll
take it from some one who’s not down on his luck.’
It was notable in this generous lad that he was strongly under the
influence of sex. If a woman passed near where he was working, his eyes
lit up, his hand paused, and his mind wandered instantly to other
thoughts. It was natural that he should exercise a fascination
proportionally strong upon women. He begged, you will remember, from
women only, and was never refused. Without wishing to explain away the
charity of those who helped him, I cannot but fancy he may have owed a
little to his handsome face, and to that quick, responsive nature, formed
for love, which speaks eloquently through all disguises, and can stamp an
impression in ten minutes’ talk or an exchange of glances. He was the
more dangerous in that he was far from bold, but seemed to woo in spite
of himself, and with a soft and pleading eye. Ragged as he was, and many
a scarecrow is in that respect more comfortably furnished, even on board
he was not without some curious admirers.
There was a girl among the passengers, a tall, blonde, handsome,
strapping Irishwoman, with a wild, accommodating eye, whom Alick had
dubbed Tommy, with that transcendental appropriateness that defies
analysis. One day the Devonian was lying for warmth in the upper
stoke-hole, which stands open on the deck, when Irish Tommy came past,
very neatly attired, as was her custom.
‘Poor fellow,’ she said, stopping, ‘you haven’t a vest.’
‘No,’ he said; ‘I wish I ’ad.’
Then she stood and gazed on him in silence, until, in his embarrassment,
for he knew not how to look under this scrutiny, he pulled out his pipe
and began to fill it with tobacco.
‘Do you want a match?’ she asked. And before he had time to reply, she
ran off and presently returned with more than one.
That was the beginning and the end, as far as our passage is concerned,
of what I will make bold to call this love-affair. There are many
relations which go on to marriage and last during a lifetime, in which
less human feeling is engaged than in this scene of five minutes at the
stoke-hole.
Rigidly speaking, this would end the chapter of the stowaways; but in a
larger sense of the word I have yet more to add. Jones had discovered
and pointed out to me a young woman who was remarkable among her fellows
for a pleasing and interesting air. She was poorly clad, to the verge,
if not over the line, of disrespectability, with a ragged old jacket and
a bit of a sealskin cap no bigger than your fist; but her eyes, her whole
expression, and her manner, even in ordinary moments, told of a true
womanly nature, capable of love, anger, and devotion. She had a look,
too, of refinement, like one who might have been a better lady than most,
had she been allowed the opportunity. When alone she seemed preoccupied
and sad; but she was not often alone; there was usually by her side a
heavy, dull, gross man in rough clothes, chary of speech and gesture—not
from caution, but poverty of disposition; a man like a ditcher, unlovely
and uninteresting; whom she petted and tended and waited on with her eyes
as if he had been Amadis of Gaul. It was strange to see this hulking
fellow dog-sick, and this delicate, sad woman caring for him. He seemed,
from first to last, insensible of her caresses and attentions, and she
seemed unconscious of his insensibility. The Irish husband, who sang his
wife to sleep, and this Scottish girl serving her Orson, were the two
bits of human nature that most appealed to me throughout the voyage.
On the Thursday before we arrived, the tickets were collected; and soon a
rumour began to go round the vessel; and this girl, with her bit of
sealskin cap, became the centre of whispering and pointed fingers. She
also, it was said, was a stowaway of a sort; for she was on board with
neither ticket nor money; and the man with whom she travelled was the
father of a family, who had left wife and children to be hers. The
ship’s officers discouraged the story, which may therefore have been a
story and no more; but it was believed in the steerage, and the poor girl
had to encounter many curious eyes from that day forth.