The shipping office itself left no clear impression upon me, the next
morning, when I attended the business of signing on; but the visit
gave me my first view of the crew of the _Bonadventure_, which was
welcome. Many of them were coloured men, as ever, dressed in eye-catching
smartness. I reflected on the extent to which the market of boots of two
colours must depend on these firemen. Among the others, a Cornishman of
odd automatic gait, whose small head balanced a squarish black hat,
moved about with an inconsequence suggestive of some clever comedian. He
gave, however, no evidence of humorous abilities. The wooden-faced
man, to whom I have referred, answered the call of "Cook." Sitting on
the bench in the corner, I felt a curious stare upon me, and looking
across the room, saw its owner, a tough customer by the expression he
wore. For some peculiarity of conduct, this sailor was the next evening
removed from the _Bonadventure_ by the police, with no passive resistance,
as I vaguely heard. The police recovered.
Two youths sat by me, their good nature showing itself in their talk. They
painted my near future. The heat we should soon be feeling, 130 in the
shade; the troubled Biscay, where "seven seas meet, which causes a great
upheaval," chequered the vista. The function of crossing the Line was
described as bygone, even in its less inconvenient traditions, such as
giving the greenhorn binoculars through which a (hair) "Line" was plain
enough.
My name was called, and I went to the front. The captain conferred with
the clerk. For technical purposes, as I supposed, I was put down "purser."
The rank was given, but not the talents.
Now, the hour of the _Bonadventure's_ sailing being imminent, the
ship's officers who had been away were returning. The chief engineer,
obviously regarded as a wise man; the second mate, full of stories; the
wireless operator, youthful and brilliantined, appeared at the cabin
table. The captain's wife drew up matrimonial plans for the third mate,
who was not beyond blushing over his late tea--the not impossible, but
improbable, She was evidently a recognized memory of Hamburg. The
captain was striving to get at the facts when a doctor came in, summoned
to see an apprentice; and he left his meal to hear the diagnosis.
Reappearing, he said, "The only bit of luck we've had. The boy's got
appendicitis." This was not euphemism; what might have happened had
the ship left before the boy's illness was known for what it was, both
to boy and authorities, he went on to hint. This piece of recognition
was due to the mate.
We were not leaving that evening, though loading ceased. I walked into
Barry, and found its cinematograph programme somewhat worse than is
the average. This, and the change of the weather from keen to mizzling,
persuaded me back to my cabin for the rest of the evening; and after the
night's rest, broken sometimes by sounds of "mighty workings," I looked
through my porthole to discover that the ship had left the tips. She
was now lying, under a cloudy, showery sky, well out to the middle of
the water, and the buildings round the Docks Station, dwarfed somewhat
by the large sign of "WARD, BUTCHER," were in sight. We should soon be
away.
The solidity of ship's breakfast was an early fact among those I was
gleaning. Yesterday, an ample steak, with potatoes--and onions--had
been set before me, after the preparatory porridge; this day, two tough
sausages, with potatoes--and onions--were provided. Yet I fell to with
an appetite, and only hoped I should feel as able in the days to come.
The inert morning seemed suited to the curious quiet of the ship.
That quiet was, however, disturbed in undertone. The incessant tramp of
feet and sometimes the banging of gear were echoing. The final period,
in the main "all serene," could not be without its thousand and one
adjustments; though the holds, trimmed, I suppose, even to the steward's
satisfaction--he had been in high choler the night before at the attempted
delivery of meat to a store just made inaccessible by the delivery of
coal--now were covered with tarpaulins. I had time to meditate, and the
cold air recommended my cabin as the place.
To the Plate and back again, in a cargo ship! (To the Somme and back
again--that had seemed less surprising.) The voyage, no doubt, would be
more arduous than that in the leave-boat from Boulogne to Folkestone.
Would my resolution be equal to the greater strain on the system? I
suspected that the first few days might find me groaning within myself;
asking why I had left my draughty study, which was at least stationary?
what I had found amiss with the array of books for review--pleasant,
unjustly despised labour? Landlord, insurance agent, general dealer,
rags-and-bones, watch-and clock-repairer, bricklayer come to fix the
chimney, carpenter to take measurements for far-off bookshelves, secretary
of football for subscriptions, and many another familiar--in the middle
of an attempt to answer the question, "What is Poetry?"--should I be
considering them as unhonoured privileges? Repent, repent.
From the mild exercise, and a book, I was aroused by the brown skull-cap
of the steward, who in some pain of feature uttered round the door a
solemn "Well, I declare!" I had disregarded his bell--Jim had rung it; he
had rung it--for dinner.
There were friendly visitors afterwards. I was wished a good voyage, and
a better room--one more artistic, I think, was in the speaker's mind.
But comfort was cordially anticipated. The ship was not one of the older
sort that roll. The captain, too, said that his ship did not roll. The
shore captain grinned, but said nothing, except that, if I had been over
to France, I should find the voyage just the same. It was the captain's
turn to grin. Next, the second mate came, book in hand, and entered the
name of my next-of-kin.
During the afternoon the funnel of the _Bonadventure_ had sent forth
smoke, and the hooter, hoots; the cold increased, and, having heard
that we were to go out at about six, for all my apprehensions I felt
eager for that hour. The surroundings were gloomy. The _Bonadventure_
lay in a row of coal-carrying steamers, with something grim about their
iron flatness; the _Phryne_, _Marie Nielsen_, _Sandvik_, many another,
their cold colours reminding me of the huge blue-painted unexploded
shell which once I ventured to help remove from a trench at Givenchy.
The grey-green pool swilled sulkily about them: and the red bricks in
the background offered no relief to an unprogressive eye. Sooty, hard
and bleak, the scene itself urged my impatience to be gone.
A call announced the arrival of the pilot; and, at ten minutes to six,
in obedience to a process of which I gathered little, the ship began to
move gently out of the dock. The shouts of the pilot on the bridge, his
"Hard-a-port," his "Hard-a-starboard," were taken up from the forepart
of the ship, where a number of substantial figures were at work with
winch and cable. The _Bonadventure_ was guided with nice gradation into
a channel not much exceeding her own width; on the quay beside men
were shouting and scampering; the wireless clerk leaning over against all
gravity grabbed a bag of "mail" from one of them; and out we passed.
The wind livened. The lights of the town slowly dwindled behind us.
Into the channel close after the _Bonadventure_ came the green lamp of
another ship. Soon the _Bonadventure_ was definitely, at a growing
speed, running down the Bristol Channel, under a veiled sky through
which the moon always seemed about to emerge, and among the scattered
lights of other ships going into Barry, or waiting in readiness to go in.
The thing had never occurred to me before, and I may be pardoned for
reflecting, while I stood watching, in a manner somewhat grandiose. The
energy of Man, maker of cathedrals, high-roads, aqueducts, railroads, was
passing before me; and this one manifestation of it seemed perhaps the
most surprising. The millions of times that this restless creature Man
had weighed his anchor and in cockle-shell or galleon or clipper or tramp
set out to ferry over the seas at his own sweet will! This matter was
now put in a more prosaic light by the wireless clerk, who, beckoning
me to a place out of the wind, informed me that at a charge he could,
as soon as the _Bonadventure_ was out of touch of land, transmit any
message I had for home. With this youngster I tried to speak on his own
province, in which I had made some elementary excursions in Flanders
times: but this intrusion upon his mysteries appeared to affect him,
and I learned only that the modern wireless was different.
The doleful tolling of a bell, later on, with its suggestion of the
Inchcape Rock, reached me in my bunk, where, noticing the oscillations
of the ship, I had early withdrawn.