I slept heavily, and when I got up, the _Bonadventure_ had moved into the
channel towards Ingeniero White, and was lying at anchor outside that
place. The scenery about us was of pleasing ugliness, worthy of George
Crabbe's poetical painting. To seaward there lay long stretches of mud,
or banks of a sort of grass--long layers of brown and green ending at
the frontier of a blue-grey rainy sky; and the land was low, featureless
(save for a mountain height in the hazy interior) and dark. Close to
our mooring was the assemblage of motley huts and tenements, galvanized
iron roofs, tall chimneys, and more notably the grain elevators, under
which several other steamers were lying. Above the salt marshes a rainbow
touched the clouds, and too soon the sun was pouring upon everything
a dazzling sultry heat.
At breakfast the fish which the pilot had brought aboard as a kindly
offering during the night were eaten, curried. This mode of serving them
displeased the Saloon. The steward, affecting to be in a philosophic
doze in his lair, could not fail to have heard such scathing remarks as
these:
"The nicest fish I've had down here."
"Yes, spoiled."
"Wasted."
"Why the devil must they go and camouflage it?"
"If it had been high we'd have had it neat."
"Must have curry and rice on Monday morning. Mustn't go outside the
routine."
"Well, you see, if they started on the wrong note on Monday they wouldn't
be able to pick up the tune for the rest of the week."
"O, it's easy. Steak, steak, steak."
We hurried our breakfast amid these criticisms, as the port authority was
expected. Towards nine o'clock, all hands being assembled amidships,
his launch came to the foot of the gangway. Eight sailors in white uniform
rowed this launch. He divested himself of his sword, came up, and went
inside Hosea's quarters to "talk things over"; whereupon, the parade
broke up. The next event was, we changed our mooring. As we passed to the
new tether, which was among several tramps as ladylike as ourselves, I
had my first experience of the groaning, screeching and gasping noise
which the machinery of a dredger can make, as its buckets come round
on the endless chain and empty themselves into the barge alongside. I
wonder these contrivances were not introduced during the Passchendaele
operations. They would have served two purposes, that of keeping a good
depth of water for the infantry to swim through; and that of demoralizing
the enemy.
We remained only a few minutes in this new position. Then we moved into a
dock, lined with warehouses as they appeared, under whose grey tin roofs
were stacked bags of grain in large profusion. With much shouting and
manipulating of ropes, we got in, behind the steamer _Caxambu_; alongside
a framework of piles. On these, even the less accessible slanting
timbers, many a ship's name scrawled in black or red paint, and often
followed by the date of the call, addressed the new-comer's eye. In
these inscriptions the S's, B's, D's, and 9's, had a tendency to be
reversed. I thought that the exotic poets and others who deny their
readers capital letters, apostrophes and so forth might here find another
inspiration. The medley of names included such as the _Trebarthan_, the
_King Arthur_, the _Alf_, the _Olive_, the _Bilbao_. And the _Keats_;
why _Keats_? Apart from this mystery, I could not help contrasting
many of the names with those of the figure-head days, and like the
posy of a ring, some of them came into my mind, from my reading, the
_John and Judith_, _Charming Nancy_, _Love and Unity_, _Lancashire Witch_.
Here, the heat seemed to redouble, and the flies to bite harder
accordingly. For some time nothing much happened. The Captain, after
being visited by the doctor, ship's chandler and others, but not such a
swarm as on our previous berthing, went ashore, leaving Bicker, who
prided himself upon his mathematical faculty, to wrestle with the
problems of the Customs manifest. I myself had handed over trench
stores; this looked a worse job, and there were the familiar dilemmas
of one thing with different names.
The ship was not here, it soon showed, to take her time. Loading began
after dinner. A leather band or rather gutter working on rollers was
lifted out from the wharf over each of several holds, and a spout fixed
at its extremity; the gang in charge spread sacking under the feeding
band and directed the spout as they wished. Then the machinery behind
began to drone, and the grain, like a gliding brook, to travel along
the leather band; whence, at the overturn, it leapt into the spout which
directed its descent into the hold, while a sort of idle snowstorm of
chaff and draff glistened thick in the sunlight. Many heads looked
over the rails to see this process at first, but there was a sameness
about it and the heads quickly found other occupation. Presently I went
to look at the activities behind the scenes, where a gang was taking
bags of grain from a railway truck and emptying them through a grating
into another travelling conduit, which duly under the flooring of the
building bore the wheat to the automatic machines. There, it seemed
to my inept wish to learn, it was amassed until a certain weight was
registered, and that point reached the heap was flung forward into
the feeder which ran up to the spout over our hold. Before the yellow
current arrived there, it had been sampled at intervals by a boy who
squatted beside, dipping a horn-shaped can on the end of a stick into
it, and filling thereby small labelled sacks convenient to him.
The Brazilian steamer ahead of us was receiving the grain in bags, which
looked oddly like pigs asleep as they were hurried along the endless band.
On this steamer, the _Caxambu_, real live pigs and sheep were routing
about over the forecastle. I was told that she was an ex-German. Anyway,
though in deshabille, she was a handsome ship. Her bell was the most
resonant; the _Bonadventure's_ was known still more surely for a thin
tinkler when that gong rang.
For the settlement beyond, it was not conspicuous. The spires of Bahia
Blanca showed up white some few miles inland; the nearer scene was one of
tin roofs, of railway coaches and wagons, small muddy decks and mud
flats. Naturally the steward was fishing. But nothing was biting. He
stood pensively gazing into heaven, even holding the line listlessly, when
the third mate having collected a good attendance crept up behind him
as quiet as a cat and jerked the line with the hungry violence of a
monster, contriving also to make his retreat out of sight before the aged
angler had quite decided that he was _not_ going to catch a huge bass.
This heartless deception was very popular. Something was necessary to
while away the evening despite its bright array of dewy-lighted clouds,
which suited the coolness of the air. The grumble of the machinery gave
place to "Cock Robin" and other classic opportunities for bawling; and
cards were brought out.
The next day, cold enough for every one, and proving that the English
climate is not alone in its uncertain habits, went on quietly. The party
who brought the sacks of grain to the door of the railway truck, the
man who there at singular speed cut away the string from the mouths of
the sacks, the lads who swept all loose grain from the truck and its
neighbourhood--all were working to load us as if their lives depended on
it. Actually, no doubt, this was the case. The _Bonadventure_ ceased to
tower aloft out of the water.
Bicker, Mead and the passenger-purser passed the evening in the village.
We went in and out of shops in a casual manner. There was one whose
contents were sufficiently varied for the sailors' fancy. On one wall
hung a large collection of crudely cured pelts, the fur of wild cats,
foxes, and other animals. From the ceiling hung, unpitied, many canaries
imprisoned in yellow cages; under the counters were displayed baskets made
of turtle shells, lined with pink sateen. Cigarettes of all nationalities,
boot polishes of uncertain price and utility, and in the window a regiment
of notes and coins advertising the money-changer's department, caught
my eye. There were even old books. As we were leaving two sailors
entered bearing a cage wrapped in paper. They accosted the fat and greasy
shopkeeper abruptly.
"Canary eh? died 'smornin' eh?"
(This "eh?" was the mainstay of our Anglo-Argentine intercourse.)
"Ah, Ah, no give monjay!"
"Yes, mucho plenty monjay."
The question in short was, what about giving us our money back?--but we
could not stop long enough to see the result. Further along, children's
sandals were ranged in a window. Mead thought that he would shine in a
pair like them; but the shopkeeper thought his inquiry for sandals size 9
a good joke.
At this stage, when Mead emerged, I was very sorry to have to call his
attention to a board in the window, which in his concentration on the
sandals he had overlooked. It was a board giving the numbers (announced
that day) of the winning lottery tickets. None of these numbers coincided
with that owned by Mead.
The disappointment quite naturally led us to the refreshment room at the
station and kept us there until the hour of closing. The angry Mead in
some measure became reconciled to the injustice which he had suffered, and
we all enjoyed the friendliness of the waiters. These, not being over
busy, played the fool, except one who behind the bar sat with pen and
ink and a folio blank-book laboriously copying an English exercise on the
ancient pattern: Have you seen my glove?--Yes, I have seen your glove,
&c. One endeavoured to persuade us that he was a Russian, and feigned
a horrid interest in a news paragraph about Lenin. The other indulged in
an anti-French speech, with gestures. "La Liberte!" he jeered, at the same
time grasping vigorously in all directions.
Our nights were disturbed by mosquitoes, not so ferocious as formerly,
and cats. Aboard, it still seemed cold; but ashore there was little
breeze, and my walks round the town were warm work. The outskirts of this
ramshackle place were dreary, but I liked them better than city streets.
They formed a loose encampment of tin, or plaster, or matchboard, in
which one would perhaps notice most the open drains, the chickens, goats
(some of them of most sheepish appearance), cows, pigs, cats, dogs of
the silly sort, sunflowers, and gentlemen in blue cotton trousers, about
the thresholds. Grumble as you may at militarism, most army camps
would have been better favoured in some respects: since here, despite the
prospects of mud suggested by the dust of the present season, no hut
seemed to have a raised approach, whether stone causeway or duck-walk.
I never walked into Bahia Blanca, though not far short of its tall
spires, but found these habitations a sufficient view; the way back to
the _Bonadventure_ might be over a moorish level, thickly grown over
with yellow flowering weed, and all sorts of drouthy "flora of the
marsh." Marsh, however, it was not, the soil being thoroughly baked and
cracked. Here were a few birds, that seemed to me the thrushes of the
place; a few butterflies; beetles, lying dead here and there; lizards
in greater number. But the fields hereabouts had all a solitary look.
Often the track was inches deep in dust.
On one of my walks, the wireless operator being with me, we were seen
going up from the wharf by the ship's carpenter, who, it afterwards
came out, had tried to attract our attention by shouting. The reason for
his attempt is interesting. He was, in fact, at that time in "calaboosh,"
having been haled thither during the night, according to a prophecy of
Mead's. Looking too long on the wine (three glasses, by his reckoning)
and the beer (one innocent glass), he had succeeded in arriving abreast
of the Brazilian next to us. At this point, he had the misfortune to
lose the way to the _Bonadventure_; and presently for his safety the
police took him to the cells. Thence, the next afternoon, Chips was
released, and that without even a fine. The winter wind is not so unkind
as this cadaverous man's ingratitude to the gendarmes for their kindly
act. Asked about it, he complained in loud and bitter terms that such
things should be, and
with swinish phrase
Soiled their addition.
This episode appeared to please the mate, Meacock, in no small degree.
He recounted other imprisonments; told of black sheep among crews newly
arrived from Sing Sing and similar haunts, for whose arrest a warrant
was always handed to the police as soon as the ship arrived in port;
described the difficulty of getting these incorrigibles from the ship to
the wharf, the police having no sanction to touch them on the ship; and
how the Brazilian police got the upper hand of bruisers towering above
them by lambasting them with the flat of their swords.
Lethargy and grain dust seemed to hang in our air together. The
exploration of Ingeniero White as an amusement became less liked as
time went on, and as sometimes the dull sky broke in a drizzle of rain.
One hatch was filled with wheat; the gang trimmed it quickly; and the
loading of the other hatches continued apace, so that our going to sea
again looked close at hand. The sailors and apprentices with pots of
paint were perched at various points above and beside the ship; and it
was no great surprise to me when one of the boys, much given to
recreation, suddenly appeared in a waterlogged state.
The town was not without its Mission to Sailors. It depended upon the
energies of a very small English community, of course, but they kept up
a comfortable room, where dancing and singing were entered upon in
the evenings; the standards of pastime required by Bicker and Mead,
however, were not reached. It pleased them to drift about; to call at
the refreshment room of the station and throw dice for drinks, to prowl
about the town with an independent air. The funds at the disposal of
this party were dwindling. It was therefore proposed to take to the
vile syrup known as _cana_ instead of whisky, and an ingenious logic
was discovered in favour of the plan, apart from the great cheapness of
the cana. As thus: Even at B.A. (did you but know it) you often had
turpentine sold you for whisky; in fact, here, if you asked for whisky,
ten to one that what you received was cana at four times its proper
price. Better ask for cana straight away. This reasoning in favour of an
adopted plan could not be answered except by sudden wealth. These
driftings were mainly spent in wondering what to do next. (The only real
prospect was, to get back to the ship.) If any decision was made, it was
a picturesque one. For instance, the town being abed, we went into a
general stores where there was a light showing the proprietor about to
close. Somewhat to his surprise, and after the first few moments to his
discontent, supper was taken, dog biscuits and cream cheese, washed
down with yellow cana--a more inflammatory distillation even than the
white. And so home.