The Loafer seems to have fancied the company of seamen a great deal. At
The Chequers few of the saltwater fellows fore-gathered, but when they
did our Loafer was never long in picking them up. Here is one of the
yarns which he heard. It is stuck in the Diary without reference to
date, place of hearing, or anything else.
Joe Glenn used to say that the queerest Christmas Day he ever spent fell
in 1883, the year of the great gale. In that year there was cruel
trouble, and the number of folks wearing mourning that one met in Hull
and Yarmouth, and the other places, was enough to make the most
light-hearted man feel miserable. Black everywhere--nothing but black at
every turn; and then the women's faces looked so wistful, and the
children seemed so quiet, that I couldn't bear to walk the streets. The
women would question any stranger that came from the quays, and they
scorned to think that there was not always a chance for their men; but
the dead seamen were swinging about in the ooze far down under the grey
waves, and the poor souls who went gaping and gazing day after day had
all their trouble for nothing.
Glenn towed out on the 20th of October, and he cried, "Good-bye, Sal;
back for Christmas!" as they surged away toward Gorleston. Joe was mate
of the Esperanza, and he was a very promising chap. He knew his way
about the North Sea blindfold, and all he didn't know about his trade
wasn't worth knowing. If you had asked him who Mr. Gladstone was he
would probably have said, "I've heerd on him," but he could not have
told you anything about Mr. Gladstone or any other statesman. So far as
the world ashore went, Joe was as ignorant as a five-year-old child, and
you would have laughed till you cried had you seen his delight when the
pictures in a nursery-book were explained to him. It is hardly possible
to imagine the existence of a grown man who is ignorant of things that
are known to a child in the infant school; but there are many such
knocking about at sea. What can you expect? They live amid the moaning
desolation of that sad sea all the year round; they never used to have
any schooling, and their world even now is limited by the blank horizon,
with the rail of their boat for inner barrier. Glenn could very nearly
read Moore's Almanac, and, as that great work was the only literature on
board, he often interpreted it, and he was counted a great scholar.
Then, he could actually use a sextant, and his way of working out his
latitude was chaste and picturesque. Supposing he made the sun 29 deg.
18 min., and the declination for the day was 6 deg. 34 min. 22 sec., then
he put down his figures this way:--
8948
2918
6300
634
5356
and when his chums saw him working out this profound calculation on the
side of a bucket or on the companion hatch, they would say, "He's a
wonnerful masterpiece. Yea, but he is, and nothin' but that."
Glenn was daring--but that is nothing to say, for all the fishermen seem
insensible to fear. He was only once scared, and that was when he found
a man leaning against the boat one pitch-dark night, just after the
fishers had hauled. Joe thought the fellow was loafing, so he hit him a
clout on the head, and made very uncomplimentary remarks. The victim of
the assault took it very coolly, and one of the crew shouted--
"Don't touch that theer! He come up in the net while you was below."
Then Joe looked at the face, and when he found he had been punching a
dead man he was sick.
But under any ordinary circumstances you couldn't shake the man's nerve,
and he was fit to go anywhere, and do anything so far as the sea was
concerned.
The Esperanza got up to her consorts, and then the usual toilsome
monotony of the fisherman's life began. At the end of a month Joe looked
a pretty object, for he had not washed himself all the time, and his
hair and beard were like rough felt matting. There isn't much time for
washing in the winter, and the fellows often go for a couple of months
without feeling any water, except from the seas that are shipped. After
the month was over the men began to pick up heart, and they notched off
the days on the beams with much enjoyment.
Joe was like most of the fishermen: he liked to talk to the gulls. You
see, when you are knocking around for a couple of months, you soon tire
of your own shipmates, and there is no one else to talk with. The sea
mostly makes it awkward to put out a boat except for purely business
purposes, and you gradually get into the way of taking delight in small
things. Joe would go aft, and call, "Kittee, Kittee--come, Kittee!" Then
with superb curves the lovely gulls swept round, and remained delicately
poised over the stern. Joe flung pieces of fish into the air, and kept
chatting volubly as his pets swooped and squabbled. "Go and tell them
we're coming, Kittee, my prittee. Only twenty days more and round she
goes. Tell them we're all well, you sluts, and you'll have plenty of
fish when we run out again." The gulls are the fisherman's friends, and
the men insist on crediting the beautiful, rapacious birds with an
accurate knowledge of human affairs.
So the days flew by, and the time came when sugar--the seaman's luxury
in winter--began to run short. That was enough to make the fellows sick
for home, and they were ready to dance for joy when the gay flag was
hoisted at last. Gaily the Esperanza rattled through the fleet, and
envious men cried "What cheer!" in a doleful manner. After a twelve
hours' run the wind fell away, and the sky began to look funny. Hoarse
vague noises came over the sea, and it seemed as if certain sounds were
growing weary and swooning away. Little breaths of air came softly--oh,
so softly, and so deadly cold!--but the tiny puffs were hardly enough to
send a feather far. The birds wailed a good deal, and when the ducks
began to cry "Karm, kah-ah-arm," the men shouted, "Billee, run, Billee;
or I'll bring the policeman!" for all the chaps hate to hear the ducks
yawping.
Clouds of haze moved around, and when the moon came up she seemed to be
glowering from her shroud. Joe was anxious to take in something, but the
skipper said, "Don't think there'll be much of it. We can reef her when
it comes away. I want to be home." All the night it seemed as though
something evil were in the air, and even the men below were depressed.
Sometimes it happens that if you work long in a lonely house, you find
yourself at night living in dread of some vague ill, and every crack of
the woodwork is like an ominous message. It is just that way at sea
before a bad gale.
When Joe saw the moon beginning to paint the clouds with leprous hues,
and the great ring grew wider and wider, he looked at the mainsail, and
wished the trouble over. At midnight there came a sigh; then a rattle of
blocks, and then a big, silent wave came pouring along. Something was
astir somewhere, and before long the Esperanza's crew knew what was the
matter. The last glare of wild-fire flushed the sky, and then down came
the breeze. The Esperanza was as stiff as a house, but it made her lie
over a little, and she roared along in fine style. In two hours the
vessel was putting her lee rail nearly under, and a single sharp squall
would have hove her down, so the hands were called up to reef her. Joe
was out on the boom, getting the reef-earrings adrift, when the first of
the chapter of accidents came. A man sang out, "Look out for a drop o'
water!" and a black mountain smashed over the Esperanza in an instant
after. Joe saw the third hand slip, and the next second the man was
whisked overboard. The Esperanza was still smothered, and a stab of pity
went through Joe's heart as he saw his shipmate wallowing. But he had no
time for sentiment; he grabbed the reef-earring with his left hand, and
clutched at the man with his right. When the vessel shook herself, both
good fellows came inboard, and hung on panting. "No time to lose," said
Joe; and indeed there wasn't. The spoondrift began to fly so that you
could not see the moon, and the wind was enough to choke you if you
faced it. I have heard Joe say that small shot couldn't have hit you
very much harder than the drift when you looked to windward. Then the
sea was growing worse every minute, until at last every man on board
except the skipper wanted to let her ride. But the worthy captain said,
"If she's got to be smothered, she'll be smothered moving. The nearer to
home the nearer to help, and she shall go." So the Esperanza tore on
throughout the awful night with all four of her reefs in, and it was a
mercy, that she was never badly hit. At dawn the rushing hills of water
were travelling like lightning. It was just as though some mighty power
had set an Alpine district moving, and when a vessel soared over the
crown of a grey mountain she looked like a mere seabird. In the valleys
of this mad, winding mountain range the whistling hurricane raved and
whirled, and the drift that was plucked looked like smoke from some
hellish cauldron. And still the grizzled old skipper would go on, though
it was touch-and-go every time a sequence of strong seas came howling
down. The foresail went, and that was bad; but those fine seamen do not
ever come to the end of their resources so long as life lasts, and they
got ready to set another as soon as the wind showed the least sign of
fining off. The Esperanza tore onward, lunging violently, and shaking as
though she dreaded the grip of some savage pursuer. No wonder the seamen
speak of a vessel as if she had intelligence; there is something so
strangely vivid in the expression of a ship that it cannot be expressed
in words, and I shall not try.