A most placid morning. The sky ahead was silvered with the smoke of unseen
Buenos Aires, the water so gleaming that the flat coast lined with trees,
to starboard, appeared to be midway suspended between one mother-of-pearl
heaven and another. The new pilot arrived in this early tranquillity,
and the ship resumed her way up the channel marked out by buoys of several
shapes.
The sun increased in power all too fast. I stood on the bridge to hear the
pilot and the mates giving their directions: we came to a couple of
tugs told off to escort the _Bonadventure_ in. Ropes leapt aboard us,
tossed up in the adroitest way and caught as cleverly by our sailors; the
bigger cables were attached to them, drawn aboard the tugs and made fast;
and so we went on with tugboats fore and aft. The peculiar beauty of the
morning mist over Buenos Aires soon began to thin away and disclose
great buildings. And now we were almost at our journey's end; and in
hurrying ease, drew past fishing boats and small sailing craft into
the harbour mouth. On our port side, on a sort of palisade running out
into the estuary, a host of sea-eagles perched yelping, their lean black
bodies sharply designed in the white light. Their motto I took to be:
Multitude and solitude. Beyond their grand stand appeared a green grove
of downward foliage, the gaudy precinct of what, I was informed by the
wireless operator, who began to act the guide-book, was a destructor for
the frozen meat industry. He went on to specify the number of animals
daily converted and to give other details which interested him, as an
ex-wielder of the pole-axe; but my attention was distracted by the ships
swinging into an approach crowded with dredgers and their ugly barges
swilling mud, with motor-boats and lighters and as it looked to me
every sort of medium for water traffic, bright and drab, proud and
lowly in a confusion.
The waterway divides. To our left, a channel lies under giant steel
bridges. Our course is not there: we are piloted towards a dock for
passenger and cargo ships, and entering it in a hot glare, and colouring
that almost sears, of sky and water and paint, we make our berth,
wallowing once over the water's breadth to the anger of lesser navigators,
who go by in their boats bawling at the bridge in general. The handsome
passenger boats with their great paddle-wheels and their red awnings lie
opposite our plebeian resting-place: beside a grimy wharf, where small
cranes and coal carts seem to multiply.
Of an expectant company there on Wilson's Wharf, the chief feature was
by immediate common consent recognized in an old lady in a heliotrope
dress, tightly girdled--and she was of mountainous shape. The demure inch
of petticoat revealed below the hem of her well-hitched skirt was not
overlooked. Beside this beldame, a long thin youth, a very reed straw by
comparison, puffed at a cherry cigarette-holder, vacantly but fixedly
eyed the ship and seemed to await her instructions. A laundry cart, with
an insufficient animal in the shafts, stood behind them and showed what
they too stood for, emblems peculiar.
Scarcely had the _Bonadventure_ come to rest before a swarm of anxious
sallow ruffians were aboard for the "ship's orders." The rooms of Hosea
himself were not free from their invasion; not free that is, for a
moment. Their intruding faces caused him to roar in the most frightful
fashion; at which, hesitating as if before an injustice, they got out,
but still hung about the gangways. When, presently, he went ashore to pay
his official respects to the ship's agents, we saw a trail of these
indefatigables close on his heels, and on his return he said that four of
them had followed him all the way. I now perceived quite plainly why,
when I a stranger appeared aboard the _Bonadventure_ at Barry Dock and
desired to find the captain, there was no eager answer to my query.
Tailors, bootmakers (one with a motor-tyre or a piece of one over his
shoulder), engineers and I don't know who else formed the polysyllabic
cordon.
Meanwhile, the _Bonadventure_ was hauled in close to the edge of the
quay, and a gang of dock hands came on deck bearing ropes and pulley
blocks. The ship's derricks having been lifted, these made the first
preparations for discharging the cargo. The hatches were laid open, and
the planks covering them pitched aside much as though they were so many
walking-sticks. I was not the only one deluded by this despatch into
thinking our discharge likely to be over in a few days.
Buenos Aires; a tremendous town, a "southern Paris," a New-World epitome.
So much, so little I knew of it. It lay here, its heart not a half-hour's
walk from our mooring. But the vastness of the rumoured hive, the heat,
I daresay indolence too, prevented me from taking this first opportunity
for walking into the strange streets. It was excessively hot, and that
settled the matter. There was plenty to watch on the river and alongside:
it would have been odd, if it had not proved so. So, swollen somewhat
with the feeling that I was now a considerable seafarer, and not
unpleased to be mistaken for one by the miscellaneous visitors who had
by this examined the decks and accommodation--all doors locked--somewhat
fruitlessly, but still loitered, I stayed idle.
Trenches will recur to their old inhabitants. The small coal in the yards
here stood walled in with a breastwork of sandbags, built with tolerable
skill upon the old familiar pattern of headers and stretchers and as I
happened to be remarking upon this fact to the wireless man, interrupting
his propaganda about a strike in which he personally would resist to
the last, a little launch chanced past with the name _Ypres_ on her bows.
She was but one of an endless to and fro of small craft. The tall and airy
passenger boats, at intervals, came by in brilliance. When there was a
pause in this coming and going, and nothing more happening on the water
than the snapping of the small yellow catfish at bread floating below the
ship, I still felt a quiet and languid gratitude for the novelty of being
where I was.
That gratitude was to be tempered soon. The plague of the mosquitoes of
the docks had been painted dark enough for me during the days of approach;
and when I got to bed, the threatened invasion had begun. Determining
not to consider the question at all, I read deep in my pocket copy of
Young's _Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality_, as in worse
quarters many a time, and duly went to sleep like a philosopher.