We did not get away so quickly as had been thought, and as every one
seemed to wish. Heavy skies came on, giving the slack waters a leaden
look. The air, though it was not hot, was close; and the fine dust from
the grain which carpeted all the decks began to sit heavy on the lungs.
Among the business outstanding remained that of stowing 7,500 bags in
the bunker hatch--slower work, clearly, than the loading in bulk which had
until now been the method with the _Bonadventure_. Bicker and Mead, as
they supervised the trimming of hatches that had been filled, wore a
melancholy look, nor was the entry at breakfast of two young men from the
Customs, though pleasant acquaintances, considered a relief. If clouds
disappeared, and left the day like a furnace, there was every facility
for doing nothing at all. Even at evening the cabins were filled with
tepid air and flies: and most of us might be found leaning over the
rails in silence, watching sunset's orange red colour to the prime and
die away again in the sky and the water below it, scarcely marked with
a ripple; and then the moon riding high above our bridge, itself not
unexalted, not ungraceful by its proximity to the warehouse. In such a
night comes Mead, and a consultation ends in my approaching Mouldytop
the steward with respectful petition for ship's biscuits. These soon
refreshed in my mind Solomon's choosing a dish of herbs and love over a
stalled ox and hatred.
The time now arrived when I was honourably appointed to a job of work. I
felt proud indeed when Meacock explained it to me. It was, to keep
count of the number of bags of grain shipped for the bunker hatch and
another one aft. The tallyman employed by the merchants kept his record,
shouting out his "Una, dos, tres" until each tally of bags was complete;
the ship's representative looked on at the descending bags and made his
oblique strokes in his book accordingly. This work in effect was not so
simple as it sounds; sometimes after a pause the bags would be let
loose suddenly and in quick succession, nor moreover was it possible to
question the other tallyman at the moments of disagreement, since he
spoke no English and I no Spanish.
This delivery of some thousands of bags was to be completed in the course
of a day, but was not. The arrangement of shoots for the bags to travel
down was as neat as a scenic railway: they slid down one, were deflected
by a fixed bag at the foot of it to another shoot at right angles to
it, and so on down to the caverns and the packers. The day's work ended,
but some thousands of bags remained to be put aboard, and I felt that I
was growing used to times and seasons nautical, "the ways of a ship," in
the cook's phrase. When a sergeant-major says, Parade at 8.30, he is
understood to have ordered a parade for 8.15; but I suspect that at sea,
should the tramp be expected away this week, next week is the actual
time of departure.
Newspapers reached the ship from Buenos Aires, one day old, and by that
time having an antiquarian value of twenty centavos, or fourpence. In
consequence we generally went without; yet somehow important news, such as
the result of Cardiff City versus Tottenham Hotspur, was quickly passed
round. Unimportant, such as the latest development in the Anglo-Irish
situation, was considered "politics," and its seeker ignored.
The wharves were haunted, it goes without saying, by rats; more publicly,
by dogs. One grey giant was regarded, especially by the mess-room boy,
with romantic fondness. His history, if his, was current. He was "a
Yankee," but had lost his passage in the North American ship to which he
belonged; and now, it was maintained, he made a complete round of all the
docks, boarded every ship that came in, and looked into the alleyways
to try and recognize his own. The dog did, I agree, wear a saddened
expression. But, discreetly, I did not feel sure about his sentimental
journey. It was "Mess-room" too who encouraged a cat to prepare for the
homeward voyage, and I cannot say that he at first appeared likely to
persuade the animal, which, shut in for the night, like Chips on a
recent occasion, gave vent to piercing miaows. Parrots and monkeys,
without which surely no sailor should ever return to his native village,
were alike scarce.
The subject of my future standing in the village tavern had already been
discussed when others failed. It now arose again. The saloon's ideas
of rural England were almost as broad as mine of sea life. They could
see or affected to see nothing else in agriculture but one large joke;
and its communities as so many tribes of gaping lads in smocks, with
churchwardens, clustering about the oldest inhabitant. I had told them
not once nor twice that no one in my village had any sense of distance,
or wish to travel, or to hear of travels. But still it was believed
that on my return I should be received at the inevitable "Green Cow" or
"Pig and Whistle" with roars of applause, all mouths in the shape of
O's, all attentions grappled to my lightest word. More probably, I
hinted, if I were to return and mention as a news item a voyage in a
tramp to South America, the patronage would preserve a chilling silence,
as who should say, "We are too old for these youthful frivolities. We are
not amused"; and would then resume the old buzz of 'sheening and jack
hares and the riches of the rich'-- But I was not heard.
Lightning, a passion with me, grew bright and furious towards the end of
our stay, about the fall of darkness; in its blue flare, it was startling
to see how like a wreck a Swedish motor-ship, which had put in because
of a fire aboard, lay lonely at some distance from us. Presently the
rain came down and cooled the air; the night grew quiet then, the far
thunder dying out, or if there was noise, it was the cricket's cry, and
the gruff brief conversation of the ship's watchman with his comrade
on the wharf as he passed by.
Sunday came again, day of washing for Meacock and others; day of eggs and
bacon for the Saloon's breakfast, and with it special duff and crimson
sauce for dinner, tinned pineapple and cake for tea. Fortified thus,
Bicker and Mead and myself go a-fishing on the opposite quay, where some
Argentines have been catching fine fish. Now it is, to the best of my
memory, the fact that I have never yet caught one fish on Sunday; and
so I should have been wiser than to have joined in this excursion. Luck
stopped dead as soon as we began, and to make things worse, through a
sleepy reply of Bicker's I imagined the line to be made fast to the jetty,
and threw out the sinker with special success "far out at sea." That line
was not made fast. It had belonged to the steward. He, when he heard
the disaster, stood in a kind of _rigor_, gazing at high heaven as one
insensible to misfortune.
And now came our last day at Ingeniero White. Not too soon, it seemed;
the scenery of the port having but little of freshness, and the drama
of loading again lacking in situations. Mosquitoes here served me well
by arousing me in the early morning, as I was instructed to take a
hand at six with tallying the bags of grain. I was there to the moment,
but my duty proved to be that of standing by, enjoying life. At twelve,
all hands were mustered amidships and numbered by the port authority,
and one was missing. At length it was found out who, namely, one Towsle
the sleepiest of the apprentices, and where--in his bath, dozing unaware
of the parade outside the door. The pilot came aboard at three, and the
tug _Lydia_ presented herself to guide the _Bonadventure_ out: there was
much business with ropes fore and aft, and the ship swinging round was
free of the wharf about the top of the tide. The warehouses with their
stacks of bags, slippered blue-trousered handymen, surpliced overseers
with their sampling hollow bayonets, railway trucks and capstans,
ubiquitous dogs and all, began to recede. But we had not come more than a
couple of miles from the elevators, nor out of sight of the refugee-like
town behind them, when we anchored to await Hosea. At a considerable
space from the town, all alone, we saw as we waited the big drab square
building euphemistically known aboard as the "variety show." It was a
sad sight, and to me in its significance of some people's luck in this
world, a challenge to my random cheerful philosophy, which I have not yet
been able entirely to dismiss.
Presently from the land a storm began to foreshadow itself, and suddenly
there was a burst of wild piping wind, like a spiteful cry, that flung
sharp rain over us and in scarcely a minute had died down again. Its
short career sent every one interested scampering to take in the canvas
awnings, and left a breeze which when the captain arrived in a launch,
carrying some newspapers, blew them round him like a garment. He was
wearing a straw hat. He jammed it on with a will and hurried up the
rope ladder. With his return, we were at sea again, though not yet in
the open.
The evening was one of strange majesty. One saw clouds amassing in every
similitude of mountainous immensity and ascent, and wild lights everywhere
burning among them; but most of all, a tawny lion's colour mantled in a
great tract of the sky and below shone dim yet in a manner dazzling
from the darkening water. The heat of the day had been oven-like.
Lightnings began after a red weeping sunset, sheet lightnings often
veined with the fiercest forks of white flame, wreaths of golden fire,
volleys, cataracts, serpents; and these danced about the horizon until
daybreak, sometimes in silence, sometimes with deep but weary-sounding
thunderclaps. The light that these wanderers cast was often of an
intensity scarcely credible. A deluge of rain was always imminent, but
only towards dawn arrived.
The _Bonadventure_ had been, under these innumerable lights, making quiet
way down an avenue of buoys twinkling in their degree, and came into view
of the lightship beyond them. The pilot sounded the siren (for he was to
leave us here), and in reply to the second call of the siren the lamp of a
boat pulling out towards us appeared. It was good-bye to the pilot and
his bag, which on the end of a rope now caused a moment's interest; the
engines, stopped to let him depart, were started again, and the captain
fixed the ship's course. Mead's watch, as usually it was, shared by the
purser, engaged us in more recollections of the great war; and in the
glitter first of a swarm of dragon-flies, then presently the surly gleam
of the lightning, we talked on until midnight. I admired him for having
already forgotten all about his disappointment in the lottery, and begun
with new hopes according to his motto; _Quo fata vocant_.