I borrowed a Shakespeare from the second chaplain at the Mission to
escape from what seemed the dullness of our stay in South Basin, Buenos
Aires. Mead had taken over my own copy of the Tragedies, and by this time
had most of _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ by heart, so that our conversation
frequently ran by tags. Of Bicker we saw little. Highly favoured, he would
depart on most afternoons to the English suburb, where he had friends;
and it was impossible not to regard him, as he regarded himself, as a man
of superior rank, who had personal friends in this town. Once or twice in
the evenings, nevertheless, he came with us to our accustomed table in
that convenient but inglorious place the British Bar; and while there, he
did his best to annoy one of the waiters with the oft-repeated slur, "Yah,
Patagonio," or "You b---- Patagonian Indian," or "Patagonio no bonio."
The fellow bore it at first with grinning patience; but one evening
suddenly danced with fury, and rushing out summoned the greasy little
proprietor, who came in scowling and snarling, took stock of us--and went
out again. The alleged Patagonian was after this understood to be
meditating a fearful revenge.
At evening sometimes the autumn sun, going down, a golden ball, behind
the great buildings, and dimmed with a calm transition in the distance
of that time of day, removed my mind entirely from these and similar
matters. An incomplete state of recollection, the more delightful to me
from the strangeness of my temporary lodging, a presence felt but
understood, a trouble in the pool whose surface bore the evidence of
neither windwave's running V nor bubble subtly appearing, took hold
of me. Unable to remain aware of this confused echo long, without
endeavouring to resolve it into communicable notes, I would soon find
myself counting up memories as plainly as the fellow on the other side
of the water was tallying the brown hides discharged into river barges
by the paddle-wheeler. It was this verging upon a vision, unknown but
longed for, and this inevitable falling back to known fact, which
perhaps depressed me and made the time pass all too slowly here.
The rattle of the cranes, so often interrupted, was all the more welcome;
the news of progress began to assume a better look; the incidents of
life in dock, from the angry officiousness of the wharf manager, a crude
foreigner, to the arrival of passenger boats and the swarm of gay-coloured
families to and from them, became worth attention again. Food, so
interesting at sea, lately become a burden, was reinstated; boiled eggs
for instance were welcomed, after a regime of steaks, by the whole
saloon. The whole saloon--no; Bicker, the man about town, refused his with
a criticism, likening them to plasticine. With his put-and-take top,
the youthful-spirited chaplain came more often, and often expressed
his regret that we were soon to be away.
Orders were not yet forthcoming. It was feared, and often urged upon
me with reference to my late troubles, that the _Bonadventure_ would
be sent up the river to Rosario. I made a great mistake about Rosario
and other possible destinations up the river, their names suggesting
ancient Spanish romantic traditions to me: I mentioned my feelings to
the assembled saloon. All the romance there, it seemed, was hidden
behind a cloud of patriarchal mosquitoes.
The discharge of coal was at last over and done. The day following, Hosea
sent for me and told me that the ship would shift at two, and perhaps--for
all he knew--straight out to sea. I told him I should not be clinging to
the stones of Buenos Aires at that hour.
But it was not our fate to depart altogether that day. Instead of going
out into the open water, when at three the pilot and the tugs brought the
_Bonadventure_ out from her Stygian berth at Wilson's Wharf and down to
the outer port, we now turned into an arm of the docks called Riachuelo.
There, between a steel sailing-ship which gave no sign of life and a
great black mechanical ferry or transporter, and further--there was no
doubt about this--beside a guano works, we were tied up for a time as
yet undefined.
The change was, partly on account of the neighbouring industry,
"uncertain if for bale or balm." I felt that we might even miss the
lively sight of the passenger boats coming and going, and all their
gilded press of friends and acquaintances about the landing-places;
their tiers of bright lamps at night rounding the bend between us and the
Roads. Perhaps the youths would no longer come by with their ship's
stores of macaroni, their jars of wine and panniers of onions and other
vegetables; nor the lighters, with their crews glaring in unwashed and
unchallenged independence in the whole world's face, and their yellow
mongrels scampering up and down the decks. The British Bar with the
Patagonian Indian and the giant but amicable cockroaches would be too far
away. However, we had the prospect of other monotonous distractions if
not those. For there were evidence of benefit; green swampy groves, a
sort of common with ragged horses at feed, and farther off the irregular
line of a landscape not unlike summer's horizon, gave the eye a
pleasant change. Football would now be possible on grass and not a
dust-heap. Sailor-town was on the opposite bank--a miscellany of ship's
chandlers' offices, gin palaces, untidy trams, and nondescript premises.
The gangway was lowered, the donkeyman was seen at once going ashore with
his mandoline, and we ourselves of the football persuasion followed with
the Football. We returned in time to see the steward's patience nominally
rewarded with a small yellow catfish, who showed the greatest wrath at
the trick which had been played on him, stiffening his poisonous fin and
actually barking.
The next morning, despite the odour of the guano, was a better one than
those in South Basin. For all its mud, the river looked cheerful; its
many small craft, as yellow as vermilion or as green as paint could make
them, lying quiet or passing by, caught the early sun. Even the dredgers'
barges, with their hue of Thiepval in November, showed the agreeable
activities of a new day, and breakfast.
But we were not to be long in Riachuelo. About midday it became known
that the _Bonadventure_ was to leave before evening for Bahia Blanca,
a three days' journey to the south. The further orders, what cargo was
to be received, and where it was to be delivered, were as yet withheld.
Phillips, the chief engineer, was disappointed at this departure--his son
would have been able to meet him in town within a day or two. To leave a
message for him in charge of the Mission, he proposed that I should go
with him in the afternoon, and that I was happy to do.
Meanwhile, awaiting dinner, we strolled along the waterside. It was
sultry and glaring. We passed shipping of all sorts and conditions,
old junk, discarded masts, boilers eaten through with rust, anchors
imbedded in the ground, even a torpedo-boat gone to ruin, nameless;
saw an incredibly old man with his beard done in a knot, whittling away
at a piece of wood in the sun, tribes of mongrel dogs, and the casual
population of the tin town which rambled here drowsy and malodorous,
down to the water's edge. The purple trumpet-like flowers that climbed the
ragged woodwork seemed not more gay, nevertheless, than the young men
and women who crowded to and from the transporter between this shipping
parish and Buenos Aires.
From Buenos Aires itself, what but the hastiest impression could I take
away with me? Melancholy it was to me to find so little apparent survival
of the town as it must have been in its first centuries. My last walk
did not altogether revise my picture of bar-tobacconist-bar-tobacconist;
of powdered Venuses, over-dressed Adonises; of shops without display,
receding obscurely; of cinematograph theatres crudely decorated with
notices of rank buckjumping "dramas"; of innumerable tramways, here, there
and everywhere; of green sunny courtyards at the end of passages
between dismal shuttered facades; of trees with drooping foliage before
flat roofs with flimsy chimneys--mere drain-pipes--at the top of high
white dead walls; of bonneted policemen with their hands on their
swords; of boys teasing horses; of whizzing taxis, and dray-horses
fighting for a start on the inimical cobbles; of pavements suitable for
tight-rope walkers; of the power of money; of living for the present,
or the day after to-morrow; of a straw-hat existence. But I must
admit that my scantiest notions of a town refer in temper to the
quality of its second-hand bookshops.
So then, the ship being under orders to leave at four, soon after five
the port authorities held a sort of roll-call amidships, and the pilots
and the tugs arrived. The port authorities consisted of a young officer
who looked likely to trip himself up with his beautiful sword, a lanky
humorist, with sergeant's chevrons, at his heels, and one or two other
attendants. Soon after these vigilants had gone down the ladder again,
the _Bonadventure_ began to move, and the bags of guano were a tyranny
that is overpast. That channel into which I had been pleased to see
the _Bonadventure_ come I now watched her leave without remorse. The
dredgers fall behind our course, the fishing-boats, and the perches of
the sea-eagles. We met a breeze, surprisingly strong, which made even
these slothful waters choppy. The sun went out in a colder sky, beyond
the outlines of the great chimneys and transporters; and presently a
line of dwindling lights, surmounted by one or two more conspicuous,
stood for Buenos Aires. Meantime the wind blew hard and loud. When
the first pilot went to make his way home, the tug coming up for him
was flung against the sides of the ship two or three times, and he was
obliged to jump from his swaying rope ladder, "judging the time." We
ran on, with many red and yellow lights flashing around our track. The
taste of coal-dust, let alone the feel of it as a garment, made me
wish the wind an early good night.