A literary epoch began. Bicker, our authentic poet, and not an opportunist
like Mead, had been proposing a magazine for some little time past. On
a Saturday afternoon, he decided to produce the first number for the
Sunday following. The circulation was to be six: there being no aids
aboard such as the clay or hectograph, each copy had to be written by hand
throughout. Into this labour I, with the editor's satirical comments
upon my profession, was at once pressed. Material in prose and verse
was given to me, and filled three foolscap pages in a close handwriting.
I copied out these contributions, which scarcely stood the test of a
second reading, six times: and was rewarded with a vile headache. I
hoped the magazine would succeed, but only once. Bicker, like a born
editor, copied out his portion without feeling any the worse, and his
appreciation of the fare which he was providing grew with every copy.
The final details, however, delayed the appearance of the _Optimist_
until Sunday afternoon. Bicker said in self-protection that no Sunday
paper is available in the provinces before breakfast. When the _Optimist_
was published, there was no question of its being welcomed. It was of
the familiar kind, which seems to satisfy enough readers to satisfy its
promoters. A fable in a dialect generally considered a skilful parody of
the Old Testament, "Things we want to know," reports of the football
season at Buenos Aires, Answers to Correspondents, a poetical libel
beginning "It is an ancient Mariner," and much besides, principally from
the editor's pen, formed the bulk of it. There were columns devoted to
Amusements, and Advertisements of the principal business heads aboard. A
copy made its way aft to the bosun and his sea-dogs--the gentlemen who
were announced in it as the Chain Lightning Gang. Sitting on the poop in
Sunday neatness, they gave it a good reception. The bosun himself had
been ill, but was better after reading it.
With some copies a supplement was issued, and collectors will not need to
be advised to acquire these rarities. This supplement was a page of
drawings, by Mead, of common objects at Buenos Aires. The obese laundress,
Mme. Maria Maggi, was perhaps conspicuous among these (on another page
a report was printed that she had died, leaving L300,000 to her lean
charioteer). The watchman, with a label giving one of his typical
blasphemies, "Got-a-d---- b----" this, that, and the other, was seen at
full length. The altercation between the manager of the wharf (attached
to a balloon lettered YOU.ARE.USING.MY.BUCKETS. I.AM.THE.BANDOLIERO) and
Meacock, smoking as always and nevertheless replying YOU.BIG.STIFF _ore
rotundo_, was chronicled. And considering who the artist was, and his
recent poem, it was not surprising to find a malevolent caricature of one
still with us.
One afternoon, sleeping within my cabin, I heard the mate altering the
ship's course with "Hard a starboard" and so on, and feeling this to be
out of the ordinary I went out to see why. A mile off there was something
in the sea, which the apprentices declared to be a small boat with a
flag flying. I felt the light of adventure breaking in upon the murky
tramp. But as we drew nearer, the castaway proved to be nothing more
than a buoy, and visions of picking up a modern Crusoe faded suddenly. The
ship was put back to her course.
The breeze ahead grew stronger, and in the early morning, the sky being
quite grey, a slate-grey sea was running in sizable crests and valleys
and tossing the spray high aboard. "The devil's in the wind already."
"And the bread." The cook's reputation was gone at a blow. He, like a
wicket-keeper, did well without any notice taken; lapsed a moment, and
every one was barking. It seemed he had been unfortunate in the yeast
supplied him. There were sallies of wit: "Now's the time to pave the
alley," "Pass the holystone," over this doughy circumstance. For some
time, in the words of the Cambridge prize poet, the bread "was not
better, he was much the same," and ship's biscuits became unexpectedly
favourite. They were stiff but excellent eating; would have rejoiced
the soul of my late general, the noted "Admiral" H., alias "Monty,"
alias "The Schoolmaster," and other aliases. Can he ever be forgotten for
those diurnal and immortal questions of his, "Did your men have porridge
this morning?" and "Why did you not order your cook to give your men
duff to-day?" It wanted little imagination to picture him under his gold
oak leaves nibbling with dignity at a ship's biscuit and saying, "Very
good, Harrison, uncommonly tasty--I shall recommend them to Division."
The sea presently under a brightened sky grew to a rare intensity of
blue, that was at its most radiant in the overswirl of water sheered by
the bows. Gallant enough the _Bonadventure_ looked in the marvellous
expanse, having by dint of much early-morning swilling and swabbing thrown
the worst of her nighted colour off; but almost every day I heard bad
wishes to the designer of her, though on the score of utility, not the
pleasure of the eye. My fancy of a full-rigged ship bowing over these rich
seas was usually corrected with reference to "wind-bags"--not folks like
me, but ships.
Then there came rain, drizzling on doggedly hour after hour. The drops
hung on the railings like autumn dews on meadow fences. One of the effects
of such weather was that the cat, who had been induced after all to
make the trip, was driven to look about for a quiet, sheltered corner,
and having found one, was driven to look again. Finally she chose the
chart-room and settled upon the chart. South America was sodden with
rain and black with paw-marks when the second mate looked in, and that
cat, black or not, would have passed over, but for her being shortly to
become a mother. That fact also accounted for her worried expression,
voice, and manner, which I had misread as symptoms of sea-sickness.
And still the dull and rainy sky. When I went out one morning, the mate
leaned over the bridge rail and said, "You're the blooming Jonah! Now
look at that damn'd smoke." I looked at the customary coaly vapour flying
aft, but was unenlightened. "You Jonah," he went on, "you've brought
this wind, and it's carrying the cinders all over my new paint." Now,
I suspected the cat was the cause of the trouble; but my guilt was urged
by the chief also, as a current of a mile an hour was setting us back.
Not only the mariners of the _Bonadventure_ lived in suspense, awaiting
the football results.
"That fellow was funny this morning."
"Yes, you could see the excitement in his lamp."
"What was this?"
"Why, about four the So-and-so passed us, and the mate on watch signalled
us: 'Do you know the result of Tottenham v. Cardiff City?' So we sent back
that Cardiff had won but we didn't know the score. This fellow sent back:
'Oh, well done, Cardiff!' but he was that excited, he could scarcely hit
out a letter right. His first message had been--well, beautifully sent;
now his lamp was all over the place."
"We could almost see him dancing about the bridge!"
Spragg, the assistant steward, sometimes came to swab my cabin. He had
been in a battalion of the 38th Division, when my own Division relieved
them in January 1917 on the Canal Bank at Ypres; and he had been like
myself a witness and a part of the mammoth preparations of that summer,
which ended in such terrible failure. His manner and humorous way of
telling tales beside which the "Pit and Pendulum" appears to me an
idle piece of pleasantry, unspeakably brought back the queer times and
places which we had both seen. I saw him in my mind's eye, keen and
frank, standing behind his kit with "headquarters company"--those amiable
wits--at Elverdinghe Chateau (Von Kluck's rumoured country seat, for it
was never in my time bombarded); or with pick or shovel stooping along in
the Indian file of dark forms towards that vaunted, flimsy breastwork,
Pioneer Trench at Festubert.
But still my share of Mead's watch was my best recreation. Our talk was
disturbed but little; perhaps by the signals of some ship passing by, or
by some unusual noise, such as one evening we heard with a slight shock. A
succession of rifle-shots, it sounded; and the cause was evidently some
great fish departing by leaps and bounds from the approach of that
greater one the _Bonadventure_. The interruption over, he would go on
with plans for a future in Malay. "This life," he would say, "is killing
me." He was quite as healthy, mind and body, as any man aboard. I liked
his occasional rhapsodies, in which the smell of burning sandalwood
and of cotton trees, the clearings in sinister forests with the jewelled
birds, the rough huts, the dark ladies with the hibiscus flowers in
their hair, and the lone white settler (ex-digger Mead) thinking his
thoughts in the evening, all played their part. He wished the world
back in 1860; it had outdistanced him.