Captain Greening as he was called was a curious old patient of mine whom
I had to attend pretty regularly when I lived at Basingstoke. His title
of captain was derived from the fact that he had in his younger days
been captain of a barge plying along the canal. His was a chronic case
that was incurable, so I rarely called upon him at a busy time, for
nothing pleased the old fellow better than buttonholing me for a long
talk.
"Look ye here, doctor," he'd say, "I like you, and it's a pleasure to be
ill that it is, so as to have you to talk to."
I believe that any good return would have done as well but I did not say
so, and we remained the best of friends.
I called upon him one day at his cottage where he very comfortably
enjoyed the snug winter of his days, and found him so excited over a
newspaper that he forgot all about his asthma, and could only answer my
questions with others.
"Have you seen about this Regent's Park accident?" he exclaimed.
"Yes," I replied, "I read it all yesterday morning. Terrible affair."
"Awful, only it might have been so much worse. There sit down, doctor.
You know I used to have a canal boat--monkey boat we called 'em, because
they are so long and thin."
"Yes, I know it," I said.
"Ah, and I've had a load of powder scores o' times both in monkey boats
and lighters on the Thames. You ain't in a hurry to-day, doctor?"
"Not particularly," I said.
"That's good," said the old fellow. "Asthma's better. Look here,
doctor, I might have been blown up just as those poor chaps was at any
time, and I nearly was once."
"What, blown up by powder!"
"To be sure I was. Look here, I take my long clay pipe off the table--
so; I pulls the lead tobacco box towards me--so; I fills my pipe-bowl--
so; and then I pulls open this neat little box, made like somebody's
first idea of a chest of drawers, takes out one of these little splints
of wood, rubs it on the table, no good--on the floor, no good--on the
sole of my boot, no good; but when I gives it a snap on the side of a
box--fizz, there's a bright little light, the wood burns, and I am
holding it to the bowl of my pipe, drawing in the smoke and puffing it
out again, looking at you pleasantly through the thin blue cloud, and--
how are you?
"Times is altered since I was a lad, I can tell you. Why, as you know,
that there match wouldn't light not nowhere but on the box, so as to be
safe and keep children from playing with 'em and burning themselves, or
people treading on 'em and setting fire to places; and what I've got to
say is this, that it's a precious great convenience--so long as you've
got the box with you--and a strange sight different to what it was when
I was a boy.
"Now I'll just tell you how it was then, whether you know or whether you
don't know. Lor' bless you, I've seen my old aunt do it lots o' times.
There used to be a round, flat tin box, not quite so big as the top of
your hat; and the lid on it used to be made into a candlestick, with a
socket to hold a dip. Then into this box they used to stuff a lot of
old cotton rag, and set light to it--burn it till it was all black, and
the little sparkles was all a-running about in it, same as you've seen
'em chasing one another in a bit o' burnt paper. Down upon it would
come a piece o' flat tin and smother all the sparkles out, 'cos no air
could get to 'em; and then they'd put on the lid, and there was your
tinder-box full o' tinder.
"Next, you know, you used to have a piece o' soft iron, curled round at
each end, so as you took hold on it, and held it like a knuckle-duster;
and also you had a bit o' common flint, such as you might pick up in any
road as wasn't paved with granite; and, lastly, you had a bundle--not a
box, mind, but a bundle--of matches, and them was thin splints o' wood,
like pipe lights, pointed at the ends same's wood palings, and dipped in
brimstone. Them's what the poor people used to sell about the streets,
you know--a dozen of 'em spread out and tied like a lady's fan--in them
days, and made 'em theirselves, they did. A piece o' even splitting
wood and a penn'orth o' brimstone was a stock in trade then, on which
many a poor creetur lived--helped by a bit o' begging.
"Say, then, you wanted a light--mind, you know, those was the days when
the sojers used to carry the musket they called Brown Bess, as went off
with a flint and steel, long before the percushin cap times--well, say
you wanted a light, you laid your match ready, took your tinder-box off
the chimneypiece, opened it, took the bit o' flint in one hand and the
steel or iron in the other, and at it you went--nick, nick, nick, nick,
nick, with the sparks flying like fun, till one of 'em dropped on your
black tinder, and seemed to lie there like a tiny star. You were in
luck's way if you did that at the end of five minutes; and then you made
yourself into a pair o' human bellows, and blew away at that spark, till
it began to glow and get bigger, when you held to it one of the
brimstone matches, and that began to melt and burn blue, and flamed up;
when the chances was as the stifling stuff got up your nose, and down
your throat, and you choked, and sneezed, and puffed the match out, and
had to begin all over again.
"Well, that's a long rigmarole about old ways of getting a light; but I
mention it because we'd got one o' them set-outs on board, and that's
the way we used to work. You know, after that came little bottles in
which you dipped a match, and lit it that way--in fosseros, I think you
call it. Next came what was a reg'lar wonder to people then--lucifers,
which in them days was flat-headed matches, which you put between a
piece of doubled-up stuff, like a little book cover, and pulled 'em out
smart. Soon after, some one brought out them as you rubbed on the
bottoms of the box on sand-paper, and they called them congreves; but by
degrees that name dropped out, and we got back to lucifers for name, and
now folks never says nothing but matches.
"In the days I'm telling you about, I was capen of a lighter--a big,
broad, flat barge, working on the Thames; not one of your narrow monkey
boats as run on the canals, though it was the blowing up of the
_Tilbury_ the other day as put me in mind of what I'm going to tell you
in my long-winded, roundabout fashion. But I s'pose you ain't in no
hurry, so let me go on in my own way.
"You see, your genuine lighterman ain't a lively sort of a chap, the
natur' of his profession won't lot him be; for he's always doing things
in a quiet, slow, easy-going fashion. Say he's in the river: well, he
tides up and he tides down, going as slow as you like, and only giving a
sweep now and then with a long oar, to keep the barge's head right, and
stay her from coming broadside on to the piers o' the bridges.
"Well, that's slow work, says you; and so it is. And it ain't no better
when your bargeman gets into a canal, for then he's only towed by a
horse as ain't picked out acause he's a lovely Arab as gallops fifty
mile an hour--one and a half or two's about his cut, and that ain't
lively. As for your new-fangled doing with your steam tugs, a-puffing,
and a-blowing, and as smoking, like foul chimneys on a foggy day, what I
got to say about them is as it's disgustin', and didn't ought to be
allowed. Just look at 'em on the river now, a-drawing half-a-dozen
barges full o' coal at once, and stirring up the river right to the
bottom! Ah! there warn't not no such doings when I was young, and a
good job too.
"Well, as I was going to tell you, I was capen of the _Betsy_--as fine a
lighter as you'd ha' found on the river in them days, and I'd got two
hands aboard with me. There was Billy Jinks--Gimlet we used to call
him, because he squinted so. I never did see a fellow as could squint
like Billy could. He'd got a werry good pair o' eyes, on'y they was odd
uns and didn't fit. They didn't belong to him, you know, and was
evidently put in his head in a hurry when he were made, and he couldn't
do nothing with 'em. Them eyes of his used to do just whatever they
liked, and rolled and twissened about in a way as you never did see; and
I've often thought since as it was them eyes o' Billy's as made him take
to drink--and drink he could, like a fish.
"T'other chap was Bob Solly--Toeboy they used to call him on the river,
acause of his lame foot and the thick sole he used to wear to make one
leg same length as t'other; and perhaps, after all, it was Bob's toe as
made him such a drinking chap, and not the example as Gimlet set him.
Anyhow, that there don't matter; only when I'm a-telling a thing I likes
to be exact, as one used to be with the inwoices o' the goods one had to
deliver up or down the river.
"Well, I was going up and down the river with all sorts o' goods, from
ships, and wharves, and places--sundry things, you know, for I never had
no dealings with coals--and one day, down the river, we loaded up with
barrels off a wharf down by Tilbury--not the Tilbury as was blowed up
the other day, 'cause that was only a monkey boat, but Tilbury down the
river, you know; where there's the fort, and soldiers, and magazines,
and all them sort o' things.
"Loaded up we were, and the little barrels all lying snug, and covered
up with tarpaulins, and us a-waiting for the tide to come--for we was
going up to Dumphie's Wharf, up there at Isleworth--when Bob Solly comes
up to me, and he says, says he--
"`Guv'nor,' he says, `we ain't got no taties.'
"`Well, Bob,' I says, `then hadn't you better get some?'
"`Yes,' he says, `I will.'
"And then Gimlet, who had been standing by, he says--
"`And we ain't got no herrins.'
"The long and the short on it was that them two chaps goes ashore to buy
some herrins and some taties, so as we could cook 'em aboard in the
cabin, where we bargees reg'lar kind o' lived, you know.
"I ought to ha' knowed better; but I'd got an old _Weekly Dispatch_, as
was the big paper in them days, and I was a-spelling it over about the
corrynation o' King George the Fourth, and the jolly row there'd been up
by Westminster Abbey when Queen Carryline went up to the doors and said
as she wanted to be crowned too. I might ha' knowed what ud follow, but
I was so wrapped up in that there old noosepaper, not being a fast
reader, that I never thought about it; and consequently, when it was
about low tide, and time for us to go, them two chaps was nowhere.
"`Seen anything o' my mates?' I hollers to a chap ashore, for I was now
out in the stream.
"`They're up at the Blue Posties,' he says. `Shall I fetch 'em?'
"`Yes, and be hanged to 'em!' I says; and I goes down to the cabin,
vexed like, gets hold o' the flint and steel and my pipe, and was going
to fill it, when I remembered what we took aboard, and I put 'em all
back in the cupboard.
"Quarter of an hour arter, just as the tide was beginning to turn, them
two chaps comes aboard, reg'lar tossicated, not to say drunk, and werry
wild I was, and made 'em go down into the cabin, thinking as they'd
sleep it off; and then, casting loose, I put out one of the sweeps, and
we began to float gently up the river.
"I got on very comfortably that afternoon, never fouling any of the
ships lying in the Pool, getting well under London Bridge, and old
Blackfriars with its covered-in seats like small domes of St. Paul's cut
in half, and so on and under Westminster Bridge, which was very much
like the one at Blackfriars, and on and on, till the tide was at its
height, when I let go the anchors and went to look at them two chaps;
when, instead of being all fight, I found as the money as ought to have
bought herrins and taties had gone in a bottle of stuff which one of 'em
had smuggled in under his jacket, and they was wuss than ever.
"Of course I was precious wild; but as it's waste o' words to talk to
men in that state, I saved it up for them, went forward, and rolled
myself up in my jacket, pulled a bit o' tarpaulin over me, wished for a
pipe, and then began to think.
"Now, I suppose that I got thinking too hard, as I sat there looking at
the lights, blinking here and there ashore, as the tide ran hissing down
by the sides of the barge; for after a time I got too tired to think,
and I must have gone off fast asleep, for I got dreaming of all sorts of
horrible things through being in an uncomfortable position, and among
others--I suppose all on account of twenty ton of gunpowder I had on
board--I dreamed as it had blown up, and I was in our little boat,
rowing about on the river amongst burnt wood and bits of barge and
powder barrels, picking up the pieces of myself.
"Yes, rowing about and picking up the pieces of myself; because, I said
to myself, I ought to be buried decently, and not be left to go floating
about up and down with the tide. I had a hard job, I remember--now
fishing up a foot, now a leg, and now pieces of my body. How it was I
never seemed to ask myself, that I could be rowing about and fishing
myself up; but there it was, and I got quite cross at last because my
head gave me so much trouble: for every time I reached at it with one of
the oars it bobbed under water, and came up again, and rolled over and
over, and seemed to laugh at and wink at me, till, in a passion, I gave
it a heavy tap with the oar, and it went under again, and came up on the
other side of the boat, bobbing up and down like a big apple.
"`Now what's the good of making a fool of yourself?' I says. `Why
don't you come in the boat along with the rest of the pieces?'
"Then it opened its mouth, and says out loud--
"`I'm as thirsty as a fish.'
"Now, the idea of that head of mine being thirsty, when it was
swallowing water out there in the river, so tickled me that I began to
laugh, and that laughing woke me, all of a cold shiver, to find it very
dark, and these words seeming still to be buzzing in my ears--
"`I'm as thirsty as a fish.'
"What followed seems to me now just like some horrible nightmare; for as
I sat there, in the forepart of the boat, I could just make out Bob
Solly and Gimlet bending over a little keg, evidently as drunk as owls;
and I saw in a flash that they'd been busy with an augur, and bored a
hole in it, thinking it was spirit of some kind, when it was fine grain
powder.
"What did I do? Nothing; but come all over of a cold sweat, the big
drops ran down my face, and I felt as if I couldn't move. I knew well
enough what they'd done--they'd pulled up the tarpaulin, and dragged out
a cask, and were going as they thought to drink; and as I saw them
struggle along towards the cabin, I thought of my dream, and felt that
the barge would be blown to pieces.
"I wanted to jump overboard, and swim for my life; and even then I
remember smiling, and wondering whether I should go in a boat and pick
myself up. Then I tried to go after them, to shout, to do something;
but the bones seemed to have been taken out of my body, and for the
first time in my life I knew what it was to be in a horrible state of
fear.
"That went, though, at last, and I stood up shivering and made for the
side. I looked at our distance from shore--about fifty yards--and
kicked off my boots. I raised my hands, and in another moment I should
have plunged overboard, when something seemed to say to me `You coward!'
and I stopped short.
"Of course: I was capen, and if I deserted the barge up she must go, and
Lord help the poor people ashore.
"But if I stayed?
"Well, I might save 'em.
"I ran aft along the side of the barge, feeling sure that it was all a
dream, for the men were out of sight; but when I reached the cabin
hatchway I heard words as chilled me right through.
"`It's awful queer, Bob,' Gimlet hiccupped; `the stuff's running out all
over my hands, and yet it ain't wet, and it tastes salt.'
"`We'll soon see what it's made on, lad,' says Gimlet, thickly; and then
I had the old nightmare feeling come over me, and couldn't stir--
couldn't speak, only listen, with the thought of twenty ton of powder
aboard and there, with the loose powder running all over them, was my
mate Gimlet busy with tinder-box, flint, and steel.
"Nick--nick--nick--nick!
"And I couldn't move.
"Nick--nick--nick--nick!
"I tried to get down the hatchway, but hadn't a muscle that would work.
"Nick--nick--nick--nick!
"There was a stoppage--a faint glow, as of a man blowing the tinder, and
I became myself again, and mad with fear, I crawled through the trap.
"Then there was the sputtering and blue burning of a brimstone match;
and I saw the faces of the two men quite plain.
"The splint blazed up.
"`We'll soon see what it's like now,' said Gimlet, thickly. And he
lowered the burning match, and in that one moment I saw the barrel at
one side of the cabin, and the powder that had run out of the hole they
had bored running about over the white floor zig-zag, like a black
snake, and making a reg'lar train.
"At that same moment a burnt piece fell from the burning match, the
train fired and began to run over the floor, and I threw myself between
it and the barrel flat on the planks.
"I can't tell you how it was, only that some one uttered a horrible
yell, there was the sharp flash and hiss of the powder, my face was
scorched as I lay flat, and the place was full of smoke and as dark as
pitch.
"It seemed to be an hour, it may only have been a few seconds, when I
heard them two rush up on the little deck; then there were two heavy
splashes, and I knew that they were swimming ashore and I was alone.
"I daren't move, for the powder cask was touching me, and, for aught I
knew, there might be scores of sparks on my clothes. And so I lay
there, expecting my dream to come true each moment, till I could bear it
no more, for a giddy feeling came over me, and I suppose I fainted.
"When I came to, the smoke had cleared away, but, all the same, I
daren't move for long enough; and at last, when my sense--what was
left--told me that if there had been any danger it would have been over
before now, I roused myself and edged a little away. I felt ready to
faint again; but by degrees I got away, went on deck and threw my coat
into the river, looked myself all over, and then, fighting hard against
the wish to jump over and swim ashore, I forced myself to the hatchway,
looked down to see all black there as pitch, and then I knelt down on
that bit of a deck and said the first prayer to God as I'd said for
years.
"At daylight next morning I went below again; and I could see how we
were saved; for my throwing myself down had driven the light dust two
ways, and what with that and my body, the train when fired had not gone
within two feet of the barrel.
"It was a horrible shock, though; and I didn't get over it for years. I
used to dream night after night about trying to get that bobbing head of
mine into the boat, and then I used to cry out and fancy I saw the
flash; but I got over it in time, and seldom had the horrible dream any
more. But I had it the night after the _Tilbury_ went, for I thought a
good deal that day about my lucky escape, and that upset me more than it
did Toeboy and Gimlet, for they went ashore that night, and next day
were tossicated as ever.
"It's dangerous work, though, with that powder; and, speaking as an old
man, I say thank God I'm out of the trade."