IN THE SOUTH SEAS
If I had not set myself down to write the story of Madame Gilbert in
relation to His Lordship the Cannibal I should entertain my readers with
full details of the _Humming Top's_ illicit enterprises. Abetted by
Captain Ching and Madame Gilbert, the capable Scot, Ewing, let himself
go. "It should never be said of me," he remarked, "that I encouraged the
vices of the Dagoes by making them inexpensive. They shall find their
sins a most costly luxury. In the eyes of the judeecious my operations
convey a strictly moral lesson." To dopes and drinks he added chemicals
and dyes of high commercial importance. "In brand they are Swiss, but in
parentage suspiciously German; the Dagoes will pay the more for them on
that account."
The stowage capacity of the _Humming Top_ filled him with admiration.
"The design of this boat," pronounced Ewing, "is vairy creditable to my
friend Ar-r-chie Denny of Dumbarton. He was not at the time she was
constructed the Baronet that he grew into; just plain Ar-r-chie. He is a
vairy far-sighted man, is Ar-r-chie Denny. When he designed that snug
wee hold below the main deck, so modest, so unobtrusive, so shrinking
from observation, yet so bountiful in capacity, he must have foreseen
that his yacht would find its way into gude judeecious Scots hands. He
is a vairy releegious man, is Ar-r-chie Denny. I shall chairge the
idolatrous Papists a price for the dopes and dyes which will gratify his
Presbyterian conscience. The Scots, you will observe, Madame, are a
grand God-fearing people."
"I am a Papist," whispered Madame. "It was not my fault, and I am not a
very good one."
"The better for that; the better for that," said Ewing, encouragingly.
"You need only a gude Scots Presbyterian husband and you would become a
pairfect wumman."
Ching entered with zeal into the lawless projects of the Scots Engineer.
His ancestors--and mine--had played the merry three-legged game a few
hundred years earlier, and, like all of true Devon stock, he was
unchangeable in temper. He was a smuggler by inheritance. Out of
Plymouth to the Slave Coast with beads and trumpery--the first leg. From
the Coast to the West Indies with a cargo of blackbirds--the second leg.
From the West Indies to Plymouth with rum and molasses--the third leg.
That was the merry three-legged game with hundreds per cent. profit at
the end of each leg. And in those righteous days no excess profits duty.
We of Devon played it, and the Pilgrim Fathers of Rhode Island played
it--with geographical modifications--and we remained citizens of the
highest repute. John Hawkins, who began it, became a Knight by the hand
of Queen Elizabeth, and Treasurer of the Royal Navy of England. We have
fallen upon soft times, but even now the Devon folk--and Scots like
friend Ewing--revert to ancestral types and practices. "A far-sighted
man is Ar-r-chie Denny," murmured Ewing again, as he stuffed packages
into the snug wee hold between the main deck and the ballast tanks. "He
would just love to be here to see how we appreciate his cunning
war-r-k."
Ewing speedily found that Plymouth was an unsympathetic base for his
illicit operations. In the old days Cawsand at the western entrance of
the Sound had been a famous smuggling centre, but its glory had
departed. Plymouth itself was hedged about with unromantic restrictions.
Ewing's Glasgow accomplices could pass down dyestuffs and chemicals in
gratifying quantity, but dopes, the glowing fount of profits, declined
to flow.
"The English," wailed Ewing, "give no encouragement to honest Scottish
enterprises. Their jealousy is just parochial. There was a time when one
could ship any damn thing out of Glasgow, but there is too much of the
Royal British fossilised old Navy about Plymouth. Those Keyham
blacksmiths did their wor-r-st to strip my turbines with their monkey
tricks when the _Humming Top_ was requisitioned, and the port
authorities are every bit as feckless as the Navy, all forms and Customs
regulations. Give me immoral belle France and worthy dishonest Spain."
He did better at Bordeaux, and best of all at Lisbon, to which
easy-going jumping-off place his Glasgow friends ordered Switzerland to
consign the soul-raising dopes which England had barred as immoral.
There are few scruples about Switzerland and fewer still about Portugal.
"We Scots are proud of our national institutions," remarked Ewing, when
Lisbon unfolded to him its charms as an abetter of crime, "until we
come to experience their rotten foolishness. We are too intolerant and
logical; give me the broadminded and wholly unscrupulous Dagoes for
business partners. We lack sympathy with human weakness, but the Dagoes
coin dollars out of it all the time. If I were a wee bit younger I would
turn Dago myself."
When at last the _Humming Top_ cast off at Lisbon and stretched away at
her leisurely eleven knots for Colon and the South Seas she was stuffed
with stores of "prodeegious richness," all insured.
"But go careful, Ching, if you love me," implored Ewing. "I have covered
the lot on board of us at Lloyd's, but a claim won't bear looking into.
If we do get wrecked this side of Valparaiso, it has got to be a
thorough casualty. A total loss. A sunk ship tells no tales."
"We are not going to be lost," promised the Skipper.
"Speak softly, man," whispered Ewing. "Speak soft. Rub wood. Ye carry
Cæsar and his fortunes. There is sair peril in boastfulness at sea."
To Madame the flagrant abuse of Sir John Toppys' marine hospitality was
a rich jest, packed with many a subtle stimulus to laughter. One
remorseless Fate--in the person of the late Hon. William Toppys--had
given a coloured Head to an ultra-respectable and unimaginative English
Family. A second Fate--in the person of naughty Madame Gilbert--had
corrupted the virtue of the Family Yacht, and set her rollicking across
the seas as a flagrantly unchaste smuggler. The private list of her
"soul-raising" stores, designed to pander to the degenerate tastes of
South American Dagoes, almost staggered Madame herself, and she turned
for the solace of her seasoned conscience to the blameless manifest
craftily prepared by Captain Ching for the edification of the Panama
Canal Board.
"You are sure there will be no examination?" she asked the Skipper.
"Sure," he said confidently. "We are landing nothing in the Canal Zone,
and the Board doesn't care two pins what we carry through."
"If that is so," murmured Madame; "if we get through without scandal, I
will tell Sir John Toppys all about it. He is a white man, Captain
Ching, who trusted me. One owes something," added Madame virtuously, "to
a white man who really trusts one."
Confession after crime was to Madame--and I am afraid also to the
"grandly releegious" Ewing--greatly to be preferred to weak repentance
before hand.
"It is the golden rule of life," said Ewing, "not to repent too soon.
There is a time and season for all things."
That very up-to-date yacht the _Humming Top_ carried a wireless plant
and a Marconi operator. Aerials hung between the slim masts, and their
range of contact with the outside world extended for five hundred
miles--by day. By night it was much wider. The operator, as they hummed
along, picked up the news of the day for Madame's edification; it cannot
be said that he was overworked.
I think Madame's state room--it really was worthy of that abused
epithet--must have been designed for the use of Sir John Toppys and his
departed lady, in the days when space at sea was a new luxury. With its
appurtenances--a dressing-room at one end and a bathroom at the
other--it was thirty feet long, and it contained, as has been said, a
spring bedstead hung hammock-wise. The bed gave discreetly to the roll
of the ship. In the dressing-room which had a door of direct
communication, was installed Madame's maid, a French girl who detested
the sea and did not conceal her hatred. She became reconciled to the
months of sea travel by the gratifying circumstance that she and Madame
were two lone women in a man-infested ship. Marie could do with a large
surplusage of Man.
The saloon on the upper deck was the Mess of Madame and the chief
officers; to the two junior deck officers and the two assistant
Engineers was assigned the Mess Room aft on the main deck out of which
their cabins opened, and to them, at their own request, was added the
society at meals of Marie.
"How many?" enquired Madame, when Ching diffidently communicated the
invitation. "Four of them? Marie could keep a dozen busy. She will make
four hop pretty briskly." In spite of bouts of sea-sickness I fancy that
Marie enjoyed her voyage.
Between Madame Gilbert and her companions grew up a close friendship.
She talked freely with them except upon the purpose of her travels. That
was maintained for the present as a Family Secret. They, simple
creatures, sometimes wondered why Sir John Toppys should spend so much
money upon Madame's pleasures and refrain from sharing them with her.
His absence was grateful in their sight--for did they not between them
monopolise a most gracious and entertaining lady?--but they often
wondered at his lack of enterprise.
"Ching," said Ewing confidentially, "you are married as tightly as I am,
and both of us are faithful--in reason--to our wedded wives. But if you
had the chance of an unlawful holiday cruise with our beautiful Madame
Gilbert, would you not jump at it?"
"Ewing," said Ching, as confidentially, "I am a sinful man. I should."
"Sir John Toppys must be a meeracle," declared Ewing, after a long
pause.
"Perhaps it is Madame who is the miracle," observed the Skipper
shrewdly.
The ripe flavour of Ewing's Scottish character was not appreciated by
Madame Gilbert until a conversation took place off Valparaiso, for the
contraband cargo had all been disposed of--at cash prices--and Ching and
Ewing were counting up their gains in Madame's presence. Half the
profits were set aside for the Owner of the _Humming Top_, and were
safely locked up with the ship's gold in the Captain's safe.
"It's an awful sum of money to pay over to the idle rich," wailed Ewing.
The "Idle Rich," as Madame and Ching pointed out, had not only provided
the vessel for their illicit trading operations, but had also paid
handsome wages to the crew--including their noble selves. Incidentally
his idle wealth purchased the tons of oil fuel--at steadily advancing
prices--which they drew aboard at Colon and purposed to take in at
Auckland. The "Idle Rich" supplied the Capital and working expenses;
Ching, Madame, and Ewing the unscrupulous Labour. Madame, it may be
observed, received nothing: Ewing and Ching drew fifty per cent. between
them.
"Was not that fair?" enquired Madame.
"As a matter of metapheesical exactitude," replied Ewing cautiously, "I
would not deny that the Owner's half-profit is defensible. From the
point of view, mar-r-k my wor-r-ds, of the Idle Capeetalist. But the
Spirit of the Age, Madame, is not concairned solely with--with the
boodle. The news which flickers in over our most efficient wireless
apparatus indicates that the Wor-r-kers of the Wor-r-ld are all on the
Grab. I am a wor-r-ker, Ching is a wor-r-ker, you, Madame, are a
wor-r-ker. Sir John Toppys is not a wor-r-ker. I don't suppose that the
little man has ever sweated in his life-except maybe at the gowf. To the
wor-r-kers belong the profits. That means Ching and me."
"But I am also a wor-r-ker," put in Madame slyly.
Ewing shuffled uneasily. "I have said so, and I bide by what I have
said. But you have waived your rights, Madame. Ching will bear witness."
Madame laughed. Then an idea struck her, and she gleefully cast it in
Ewing's voracious teeth.
"I have waived my rights. But your officers and men have not waived
theirs. They are wor-r-kers. They have navigated the ship which has
sailed the seas and carried the goods which Ewing and Ching and
Madame--and those friends of yours in Glasgow--have bought and sold. By
comparison with the junior officers and the humble men, you and I are
little better than idle rich ourselves. We just give the orders; they
do the hard uninteresting wor-r-k. We loll smoking here while they
sweat. Surely they should have their share of the boodle."
Horror competed with exasperation on the harsh red face of the Chief
Engineer. With difficulty he awaited the end of her speech and then
burst out:
"Is it possible, Madame Gilbert, that you are a Socialist? I could not
have believed it of you if I had not hair-r-d your terrible wur-r-ds
with my own ears."
"I am more than a Socialist," said Madame proudly. "I am a Bolshevist
where the humble poor are concerned."
Ewing shuddered. "I could not have believed it. It is just peetiful
trash that you speak. And you in other respects a maist sensible wumman.
What is ceevilisation?" Ewing flung out this large inquiry, and an
answer not being offered, proceeded to supply one himself.
"Ceevilisation is brains, Madame. Capital is not brains; it is gilded
idleness levying toll on the honest wor-r-ker. Toilsome sweat is not
brains; it just stupidly does what it is told by superior intelligences.
Sir John Toppys is not ceevilisation. The men who obey our or-r-ders
above deck and in the engine-room are not ceevilisation. WE are
ceevilisation. Ching and I--and you, Madame, who have waived your claim
to a share. And quite right, too. In strict economic justice, I,
Alexander Ewing, should draw a lairger dividend from the boodle than
Rober-r-t Ching. And for why? Because I have the mair brains. The
oreeginal idea of this smuggling plant was mine. But I say nothing about
that," he added generously. "Share and share alike. But if," he went on
with vicious emphasis, "any of my engine-room hands, or my Engineers,
peer their noses into my private enterprises I will sor-r-t their fat
car-r-cases with a coal shovel. Ceevilisation is brains, Madame. Don't
for peety's sake tell you fearsome Socialism to me any more. I just
canna bear it."
The plunder was all in fat United States dollars, a noble currency which
towers like a mountain peak amidst the wreckage of European depreciated
paper. Ewing saw to that. He dribbled out his highly demanded stores in
quantities that rather added to than diminished the exuberant buoyancy
of the market. He was a Scotsman who had made a Corner, next perhaps to
a Scotsman on the Make the most noble Wor-r-k of God. Dagoes of varied
hues, and of more than doubtful parentage, came and went; they were
closeted with Ewing in the saloon, and departed stripped. They got their
dyes and their chemicals and their naughty dopes, but what a
hair-raising price they were compelled to pay!
"I am no profiteer," declared Ewing. "Just a plain, honest Scottish
mairchant. I chairge no mair than the mar-r-ket will bear. And I have a
suspeecion that there will be no excess profits duty paid on this deal.
We are private persons engaged in honourable professions, not traders or
registered partners. Besides we are out of the jurisdiction of the
wucked English income tax. We are patriots, too, employed upon the noble
wor-r-k of reconstructing the trade of the British Empire."
When one combines lofty patriotism with some five hundred per cent.
profit, the result cannot fail to be profoundly gratifying.