A stirring and lively scene met my gaze as I emerged from the
companion-way. A great waste of roaring tumbling seas, their dull green
mountainous masses breaking off into foamy crests as they swooped down
upon us, only to swing under the keel and roar on afresh in a moving
mountain beyond. The sky, a great flying scud which glimpses of sickly
sunshine strove here and there to pierce. White gulls hovered and
darted, squealing; and, thrown out in a cloud of proud magnificence
against the inky sky to the westward, a homeward-bound ship, under a
full spread of canvas, was thundering over the boil of billows, dashing
the white spray before her in cataracts.
From the poop-deck I could see for the first time what manner of craft I
was in. The _Kittiwake_ was an iron steamer of just under two thousand
tons, brig rigged; and the water was pouring from her forecastle as she
dipped her nose into the meeting of the green seas. Some of the hands
were running up the foresail to the accompaniment of a shrill nautical
chant, and the broad red man, clad in oilskins, had just gone up to
relieve the second mate on the bridge. To a landsman's eye, the aspect
of the weather quarter looked black and threatening to the last degree,
and it hardly needed the captain's warning that a dusty time, which
would keep all hands busy, was in front of us.
"You were saying you had no incubus in the matter of family dependent on
you, Mr Holt," the captain remarked as we paced the short poop-deck,
which was literally, as he put it, fisherman's walk--three steps and
overboard. "But I hope you've left no one behind who'll be anxious
about you."
"Not a soul," I answered. "I have no friends, only relations, and their
only anxiety--at least, on the part of one of two of the nearest--will
be as to how soon they can file claims to what little I possess."
The other laughed drily at this, and there was a twinkle of sympathetic
fun in his eyes.
"After them, the most anxious person will be the man who let me the
boat," I said. "But I can compensate him, with interest, later on."
I thought of Bindley, and how my disappearance might possibly spoil his
holiday; but then, I didn't suppose it would. He was one of those men
who ought to go about by themselves; in fact, I wondered why he had
moved me to join him in this jaunt, seeing that his idea of
companionable travelling was to go to sleep most of the time or to read
the papers all through dinner. No, he wouldn't mind. On the contrary,
it would give him matter to oraculise upon.
The next three days were something to remember, and we spent most of
them and the corresponding nights either hove to or going dead slow. I
had been through rough weather before, but never such an experience as
that, and, to tell the truth, never do I want to again. Black darkness,
only qualified by a dim oil lamp--for the captain had insisted on my
remaining below--thunderous roaring, crashing and poundings as though
the ship were being ground in pieces between two mighty icebergs. And
then the inert uncertainty of it! Every upheave seemed to be followed
by a downward settling plunge, as though the ship were already on her
way to the bottom. The steward and I stole furtive looks at each other
from white faces as we moved about, nearly knee-deep in water, and I
think the same thought was in both our minds, that each sickening plunge
was going to be the last. Seriously, that momentary expectation of
death, condemned the while to utter inaction and surrounded by every
circumstance of appalling tumult and darkness and horror, is about as
unnerving a thing as can find place in any man's experience, and it was
long before the recollection of it passed from my mind.
Assuredly, too, I shall never forget the scene that greeted my first
appearance on deck, after the subsidence of the storm.
The steamer, which before, though lacking the spick-and-span smartness
of a crack liner, was, for a cargo boat, wonderfully clean and
ship-shape, now had all the appearance of a wreck. Everything movable
on her decks had been swept away. Three out of her four boats were
gone, and the green seas came pouring over the main deck, to run off
through a great breach in her bulwarks. Crates of poultry and a live
sheep alike had disappeared, and she wore the aspect of a woe-begone
hulk. However, we had weathered the gale, and the engines had stood out
nobly.
The captain and chief mate, too, looked hardly the same men. The former
was pale and sallow, and the latter, though still broad, could no longer
be described as red. The long spell of sleeplessness and terrible
anxiety had told upon them, and the eyes of both were dull and opaque.
I did not address them, as they were busily engaged in "shooting the
sun," it being the first time that luminary had been available for the
purpose since the beginning of the gale.
"Running down the Portuguese coast, and a sight nearer in than we ought
to be," said the captain, joining me. "Well, Mr Holt, you've had a new
experience, and I'm not sure I haven't myself, for I can hardly call to
mind a worse blow, especially with such a cargo, and loaded down as we
are. The boat won't rise properly, you see--hasn't a fair chance.
Well, we shan't get any more of it, unless we come in for a dusting off
the Cape coast."
We ran into lovely weather--day after day of cloudless skies and glassy
seas; but the heat on the line was something to remember, and we had
none of the luxuries of a first-class passenger ship--no long drinks or
iced lager, or cool salads and oranges. Salt provisions and ship
biscuit and black tea, with a tot of grog before turning in, constituted
our luxurious fare, and the heat had brought out innumerable
cockroaches, which did their level best to contribute towards its
seasoning. But there were compensations. For instance, I had made up
my mind to leave all care and anxiety behind, to throw it off utterly,
and trust to luck; and having done this, in spite of drawbacks, I began
to enjoy the situation amazingly.
I had long since come to the conclusion that the captain was one of the
nicest fellows I had ever met. He was utterly unlike any preconceived
and conventional idea of the merchant skipper. He never swore or
hustled his crew, or laid down the law, or did any of those things which
story has immemorially associated with his cloth. And he was refined
and cultured, and could talk well on matters outside his professional
experience. He was rather a religious man, too, though he never put it
forward, but I frequently saw him reading books of Catholic authorship
or compilation, so guessed at his creed. As an Irishman, too, he was
quite outside the preconceived type in that he was neither
quick-tempered nor impulsive, and in his speech it was difficult to
detect anything but the faintest trace of brogue. Chadwick, the first
mate, who soon recovered all his original redness, was a rough diamond,
whose table manners perhaps might not have been appreciated in the
saloon of a first-class liner, yet he was an excellent fellow, and the
same held good of the chief engineer. But the second mate, King, I own
to disliking intensely. He was a dark-bearded, sallow-faced young man,
with a cockney drawl and an infallible manner. He was certainly the
most argumentative fellow I have ever met. There was no subject under
heaven on which he would not undertake to set us all right. The captain
bore with him in good-humouredly contemptuous silence. Chadwick used to
sledgehammer him with a growl and a flat contradiction, but it was like
sledge-hammering a flea on an eider-down cushion. He hopped up livelier
than ever, with a challenge to his superior to prove his contradiction.
One day he had been trying my patience to the very utmost, when duty
called him elsewhere. I turned to the chief engineer, who had formed
one of the group, with something like relief.
"Upon my word, McBean, that messmate of yours is appropriately named."
"Who? King?"
"Yes."
"And why?"
"Because he `can do no wrong.'"
"Ay," said the Scot. "And do ye thenk the king can do no wrang?"
I looked at McBean. But the rejoinder was perfectly and innocently
serious.
I do not propose to dwell further on the voyage, for it was uneventful,
and therefore like a score of other such voyages. But to myself it was
very enjoyable, in spite of passing drawbacks, and more so than ever
when one night Chadwick pointed out the Agulhas light--very far away,
for we had given that perilous coast particularly wide sea room--and I
knew that a few days would see us at our destination.
For the said few days we could see the loom of the coast line on our
port beam, high, in parts mountainous, but indistinct, for the skipper
knew enough of that coast to appreciate the value of sea room. Finally
we drew in nearer, and I could make out green stretches sloping upward
from the shore and intersected here and there by strips of dark jungle.
A dull unceasing roar was borne outward, denoting that the lines of
white water lashing this mysterious-looking coast represented heavy
surf. Then in the distance there hove in sight a squat lighthouse and
the roofs of a few houses.
"There's your land of promise, Holt," said the captain, joining me. "We
shall be at anchor by three o'clock. Meanwhile you'd better go down to
dinner."
Strange to say, I felt disinclined to do anything of the kind. The
voyage was over, and I had a distinct and forlorn feeling that I was
about to be literally turned adrift, and I believe at that moment I
would have decided to return by the _Kittiwake_ even as I had come; but
such a course was impossible, for after she had discharged she was to
leave for Bombay, in ballast. So I leaned over the side, gazing
somewhat resentfully at this fair land, with its infinite range of
possibilities, of which at that moment I was hardly thinking at all.
For over and above the impending farewells, I was wondering how on earth
I was going to get along in a strange land where I knew not a soul, with
seven pounds nine and a half penny as my present assets.