Following a roaster of day, with a slack wind astern covering the deck
forward with showers of cinders like shot, I admired the moonlight
and the sweet night air before I turned in to sleep soundly. I woke
thinking I heard the usual swabbing of decks beginning, but this was
incorrect. It was quite dark, and I began to think with gratitude of
a second innings of sleep; but when I looked at my watch it was after
seven. The din of water outside, mingled with the rushing of a mighty
wind, persuaded me to go to the door. In a few moments the storm was
at its height, the sea shrouded in a thick deluge almost to the ship's
side, and its waves beaten down by the rain into pallid foam-veined
inertia. An ashen grey light was about us, but the clouds of rain veiled
the poop from one's eyes amidships, and the siren trumpeted out its
warnings; while sheet-like lightning flamed through the vapours, and
bursts of deeper thunder than I had ever heard followed hard upon them.
The decks were racing with water from overhead covers and stairways, and
in each lifting of the storm the awning over the sailors' quarters aft
could be seen tearing at its tethers.
This fury soon slackened, and green and blue, pale as yet, returned to
the seas as they leapt away from the bows. Breakfast intervened. Attention
was requested from the storm by the appearance of a new and experimental
kind of ham.
"Yes. What d'ye think of the ham--tinned boneless smoked ham?"
"Well, I like it well enough; but it's boneless. If you take the bone away
from ham, you take away the nature of it."
This ham later on became much esteemed, but the ingenious mind was for
dissembling the fact: "We'd better not give a too enthusiastic report on
it or they'll only give it to the passenger boats" of the same company.
It was blowing still, from the coast of South America. "Smell the mould?"
asked Hosea, and I did; a strange frightening fragrance, of the earth
earthy, a heavy and swooning smell. It was so strong as to puzzle Bicker
even, in his watch; and its most unpleasant manifestation caused him to
look about for the carcass of a rat on the bridge deck.
We had come by this time into a highway of ships. The first that passed
us, a small steamer, was not much noticed; nor the next, which passed in
the night. "Her lamp gave a blink and then went out," said Bicker, and
wished he could have emulated a mate of his acquaintance who likewise
signalled to a passer-by in vain. "If you damn'd foreigners can't answer,"
he sent out as she came alongside presently, "why the hell don't you
keep out of sight? Good night!" But, on being pressed, he admitted that
the "foreigner" replied: "Thank you. And you're a lady."
Then, however, another ship belonging to the same company with the
_Bonadventure_ was seen afar through the afternoon. As the two drew
level, ceremony took place. The houseflag was dipped and raised and
dipped again by both; the red ensign was dipped; and the homeward-bound
sounded her monosyllable three times, to which our own whistle replied
in equal number. This, as old-fashioned a courtesy as could be wished,
excited several others aboard the _Bonadventure_ besides the tyro; and
as the chief engineer began his tea, he thus referred to the prevailing
spirit.
"--Well, so we passed one of _our_ ships again to-day! I was lying in my
hammock asleep, when the mess-room boy came running up, panting out:
'Sir, here's one of our ships!' And I mumbled out something like, 'All
right, John, there's room enough for us to pass, isn't there?' Everybody
was seemingly out on deck, peering up at the mate to see if he had
forgotten the flags; everybody was staring at the funnel with the eye of
expectancy, wondering 'When the hell's that damn'd whistle going?'--I
didn't get up for it. I suppose that's equivalent to contempt of court or
high treason."
The bland face of the sage lighted up with pleasure as he carefully gave
us this impression of his.
After the storm, the air was thunder-heavy all that day. Great
dragon-flies, and butterflies in sultry brown and red, and that must
have been borne out to sea on the strong breeze, were fluttering over the
decks and the water. At night, there was abundant lightning in the
distance: most of all on the eastern horizon, with its world of
waters, the flashes were of a dusky redness, and of vague mountainous
outline. They came fast and furious, until the moon at last seemed to
overawe such wild carouse, and in good earnest to govern the night;
while in a deep blue darkness, among the folds of white cloud, stars
shone with new clearness. Under this celestial content, the _Bonadventure_
moved over a gleaming sea.
Mead, on his watch, was troubled. He sought in his mind a life better
paid and more exciting. Every few moments, he would add some detail aloud
to a scheme for piracy in these waters, which he thought might be made
a profitable occupation. He pictured a coaster, duly registered, running
with ordinary cargo to and fro, but on the lines of a "Q" boat, a sort
of marine wolf in sheep's clothing, armed with torpedo tubes. In all
respects, himself being already chosen as captain, its crew should form
a co-operative society. The pirate should carry a wireless installation
of the noisiest sort. In brief, the whole scheme appealed to him so
warmly that he was ready, apart from details to be arranged, especially
a financier, to put it into practice. Me he would accept as purser,
not so much because I showed any promise as a book-keeper, as that I had
been in an infantry battalion in the Line.
The ship was slowing down, and the chief was worried. One morning he
offered me employment, "cleaning the tubes. You come round to my place." I
went round at about nine, when the ship's engines were stopped, and found
that he had as ever been amusing himself in his quiet way. He himself,
with the firemen, was now ready to act as the ship's chimney-sweeps.
After a full morning's work, masked in sweat and soot, they came up on
deck again from the job. I did not regret my earlier "disappointment."
Relieved of the clogging soot, the _Bonadventure_ ran with fresh speed,
against a tough head wind. For the first time for some days, one heard
the harsh drumming of the excess of steam escaping through its valve.
The wind drove the water, hereabouts of a jade green colour, into long
waves and their fine manes of spray, upon which the sun made many a
small and fleeting rainbow. With this head wind piping, and the cargo,
it seemed, having shifted lately, the ship had an uncomfortable list to
port and swayed as she went. "Here, you," cried Meacock to me, "your
extra weight on the port side's doing this." "Yes, it's perfectly plain he
is the Jonah of the voyage."
A dozen big black birds appeared as travelling companions, white-breasted
and easy-going. At a closer view, I found that they were not properly
black but of that dingy russet grey towards which old mushrooms grow.
They seemed never to clap their wings, but sailed as our gulls do on the
wind, wheeling and looping with a leisurely grace, and patrolling the sea
as closely as an owl beats a meadow without wetting a wing-tip.
Nor was this the only token of our nearing our first destination.
Shore-going suits and boots were out in the sun already. The steward's
usual attitude became that of a priest, as he carried the captain's
suits gingerly here and there.
But there was still time for trouble. A relapse in the sainted manner
of the old fellow occurred one day at breakfast. The most tremendous
roarings, himself and the offending donkeyman in turn or in chorus,
suddenly broke out, and ended in the steward's ascent with a complaint to
Hosea. Then, one evening, after my quiet enjoyment of the pure blue
sky after a shower, with its Southern Cross and the false cross and other
stars strange to me glittering marvellously keen, I went in to my cabin to
write, when I instantly perceived something in the air. A most pungent
aroma, indeed, had been instilled through the house; and going to inquire
I found Cyrano of Cardiff kneeling on the saloon floor, applying a
special kind of red paint. Properly, he said, it was used for the keels
of ships. I thought too that that was its proper application.
At dinner, too, events took a serious turn. When I had in previous
days heard spaghetti hailed as Wind-pipes, for instance, I had realized
the phrase as a humorous hyperbole. But now the tinned meat problem
presented itself to me in a more sinister light--I was not so sure!
There before me was a godless lump of briny red fat and stringy appendages
floating more or less in a thick brown liquid which demanded the
spectacles of optimism. A reinforcement of stony beans did not mend the
matter. The meat, as it fell out, wore a portion of skin, remarkable
for prickly excrescences, and hinting that I was about to batten on
the relics of a young porcupine, or at least peculiar pork. Presently
I asked Meacock what sort of flesh this was. He answered: "O Lord, _I_
don't know--it's--well, I don't think you can get beyond tinned _meat_."
Another incident affected the administration. An apprentice, whose stature
brought him, beyond the chance of escape, the nickname Little Tich, and
who was generally being bantered by someone or other, was cleaning the
brasswork of the compass in the wheel-house. Meacock went in to take a
bearing. The bearing he got nonplussed him, and he got Mead to try. Mead
also found the needle giving strange evidence. Suddenly it dawned upon
them that its delusion was due to a tremendous dagger worn by the very
small and keenly occupied Tich.
The _Bonadventure_ maintained her mended pace, and also her awkward
list, which conspired with a strong swell; thus it was that the "fiddle"
so necessary to the safety of cups and plates in the Bay of Biscay
reappeared at this late stage. The nights were beautiful, with their white
moon and moonlight far over the water, their stars, few, and of the
moon's glowing whiteness, the light veilings of cloud blown in silence
about the sky, and little else heard except the subdued measure of the
ship's engines, the lapping repulse of waves from the bows, and the
sharp call of birds ahead and astern. Well might Mead be glad of his
roving temperament, as on his watch we talked and smoked above the
expanse of rimpled water, and looked towards the sword-like lightnings
in the south.