It blew from the north-east strong against us always, and we were
travelling more slowly. The sun returned, however, among those ethereal
white clouds which to perfection fulfil the poet's word "Pavilions";
we ran on into a dark sea ridged and rilled with glintering silver, yet
seemed never to reach it, remaining in a bright blue race of waters
scattered, port and starboard, with white wreaths, waters leaping from
the heavy flanks of the ship in a seethe of gossamer atoms and glass-green
cascade.
The immediate scene was one of painters and paint-pots, and linen flying
on the lines. "This wind's playing hell with my curls," said one or two.
The matter with me was, that my room was almost untenable. I opened the
port at my peril; to do so was to entertain billows of coal-dust from the
bunkers below. White paint, the order of the day, whether flat white or
white enamel, made progress about the ship by an amateur dangerous, too.
The apparition of the steward under the evening lamps dressed in a
smock--he was of ample make--and brandishing a paint-brush, was generally
enjoyed. In fact, several spectators came to take a careful look at
one who was too often denominated "the mouldy-headed old b----."
A more tenuous apparition was heard of, as we ran north. Whether a hoax
or not, I do not know. My first information of it came in the form of
a drawing by the apprentice Tich, showing the ship's bell being struck by
a hand who never was on land or sea, and the apprentice Lamb leaving
his hold of the wheel in horror, and even Mead shaking all over and
gaping. A poem appended said that the facts were what the picture made
out. The _Bonadventure_ was so new a ship--her old name, showing her war
origin, still stood on the bells and the blue prints in the chart-room and
elsewhere--that there seemed every likelihood against the story being
the truth. I asked Mead, and he told me what he maintained to be true.
On the first watch, the voyage before this, he had gone into the
wheel-house for a word with the apprentice at the wheel. A shadow,
indistinct, yet leaving impressed on his recollection a human shape,
slipped suddenly past the wheel-house windows, softly rang the bell
once, and swiftly departed. The frightened boy drops the wheel, lets
the ship swing round completely out of her course: Mead runs out, but
there is nothing to be seen. He sends for the two A.B.'s who might
have come up on the bridge, but they say that they have not done so,
nor indeed would they come without object. The firemen, if they have to
communicate with the bridge, never come higher than the stairway to the
bridge deck, and it proved that no one of them had been there. By the
wheel-house clock, it was noticed that the precise time of the visitation
was 10.15, an hour not hitherto regarded by ghosts, I believe, as
preferable to midnight.
And more. Still imagining that some practical joker was at work, Mead
brought a big stick with him on his watch. This was no remedy. The ghost
appeared again, at much the same hour, on several nights; it was remarked,
mostly when the apprentice who first saw it had the wheel. Trying to stop
so strange a bell-ringer, Mead was met by a sharp flap of wind, from a
dead still night, and the glimmering shadow was gone to the air. All
this happened north of the line.
This was Mead's story, but the boy's seemed to support it; and when in the
shadows of the bridge deck, earnestly and without trimming, he told it
me, it seemed very true. I glanced about me occasionally after hearing it.
The wind continued, but the heat was becoming intense. Painting went on
like the wind. The derricks received a terra-cotta coat and their trellis
work looked an amenity, against the general whiteness. The fervour for
redecoration even affected me: was not my hutch to share the common lot?
But, though the walls needed it, the matter was postponed, on account
of the limited accommodation.
The newspaper was to appear again, but its circulation was being cut down.
One copy only would now have to serve the public. It was passed to me,
and my aid with paragraphs requested. I could not regret the reduction
made in the number, even though if that one copy was lost,
We knew not where was that Promethean torch
That could its light relumine.
Bicker, the editor, instead of reviewing his admired literature in his
journal, lengthened breakfast by doing so there _viva voce_. He was all
for Boeotian situations, and, on occasion, his cold re-dishing was
tactfully ended by a relief conversation on religion, the keynote of
which was in the unironically meant remark: "He was darned religious,
but he was a darned good man." I began to know a certain captain, from
talk during the voyage, almost by sight; one who "went in for Sunday
Schools, and put on a crown of glory as soon as he reached Wales," but
once away again, it appears that "he fell."
Another matter for the columns of the _Optimist_ was obtruded upon the
breakfast table. It was a conundrum:
West was the wind, and West steered we,
West was the land. How could that be?
The answer, apart from such evasions as "You were entering port," was that
West was the name of the helmsman. It was understood that the poem went
on in this strain, but the chief's protest came in time.
The cat (last heard of in disgrace), which was under the especial care
of the mess-room boy, was no doubt pleased hereabouts by our reaching
the regions of flying-fishes; but nevertheless continued, on the gospel
truth of Kelly, to take a chair in the engineer's mess at the critical
hours of twelve and five. I myself saw her there at twelve once or twice,
judging the time, no doubt, by the parade of table-cloth and cutlery.
Without any abatement of the stuffy heat inside our cabins, we ran into
a rainy area. The sea was overcast, and the showers splashed us well.
Meanwhile, the wind had veered round more to the east, and besides
bringing the grey vapours of rain tumultuously towards us thence, set
the spray flying over the lower decks and kept us on the roll. Blowing
on the beam, however, it seemed to please Phillips, ever anxious about
the hourly ten knots, which seemed too high an expectation. Squalls
threatened; it was a tropical April mood. The rolling influenced my
sleep, in which I fancied myself manipulating the airiest pleasure-boats,
overcrowded with passengers who refused to sit down, on an angry
flooded river.
The peaceful disposition of the four apprentices began to weigh upon
Mead's mind. A very happy and orderly set they were, although the current
_Optimist_ contained an illustrated article on the bosun's tyranny, as:
"YOUSE take them two derricks for'ard."
"YOUSE jes' pick up that ventilator, you flat-nosed son of a sea-cook."
The drawings of the well-known walrus head under the antique, unique grey
(_ne_ white) one-sided sugar-loaf hat, were admirable. But to proceed.
The four boys were of the best behaviour, occasionally, indeed, laughing
or playing mouth-organs at unpopular hours, or even after the nightly exit
of the cook making flap-jacks, otherwise pancakes, from his properties
in the galley. When I joined Mead on his watch, one Sunday evening, he
began to "wonder what the boys are coming to." They were not like the
boys of his time. He delved into his own apprentice autobiography, and
rediscovered an era, a blissful era of whirling fists, blood, and booby
traps.
A day followed remarkable for the weather. A swell caused the ship to
roll with a will all day, but, as was expected in the doldrums, the
wind slackened. After a few hours of this lull, there was a piping and
groaning through all the scanty rigging that the steamer owned, and from
farther out to sea the grey obscurity of violent rainstorm, much as it
had done on our way south, bore down upon us. Soon the ship was cloaked
close in a cloud of rain pale as snow, which flecked the icy-looking
sea, veined white alongside us, with dark speckling bubbles. Then it
was time to sound the whistle, and its doleful groan went out again and
again (the wind still varying its note from a drone to a howl) until the
fiercer sting of the rain was spent, and distance began to grow ahead of
the ship. This storm lacked thunder and lightning; and yet, when Sparks
invited me to listen to his "lovely X-s," there was a continuous and
furious rolling uproar in the phones. Then, as strange again, as if
at a nod that din came to a sudden stop, leaving in the phones a lucid
calm in which ship-signals rang out clear.
At sunset of a day which washed off the new paint as soon as (in the
intervals) it had been put on, a thin red fringe glowed along the horizon,
making me long for green hills and white spires; at night, the stars
from Southern Cross to Charles's Waggon were gleaming, but the sea
lay profoundly black, and upon it all round us came and went glory after
glory of water-fire. The next day, however, it rained in the same dismal
style, and the sun's eclipse and the passing of Fernando Noronha were
but little heeded. I was called a Jonah by every one.
A mollyhawk, that evening, created some excitement. He first spent some
time in flying on an oval course round the ship, for his recreation, it
looked. His beautiful curves must have pleased him as they did me, for he
persuaded (or so it appeared) another mollyhawk to make the circuit with
him. Meacock and myself heard one of these strike against the wireless
aerial, and thought that it would have scared them away; but no, a few
minutes later we heard a croaking and a flapping while we stood in the lee
of the wheel-house, and there was a mollyhawk. He had struck some low
rope or fixture. He was prevented by his webbed feet from rising again,
and I had fears for his future which were by no means necessary; for
Meacock followed him, an awkward but speedy walker, down to the lower
bridge deck, and, fearing the swift white stabbing bill, waiting his
chance, suddenly caught at his nearest wing and launched him into the
air. If his speed could show it, that bird was relieved.
This incident was a welcome verification of some of the saloon's bird
anecdotes; and though it was nearly dark and the bird was only aboard for
two or three minutes, his release was watched by a very good gathering,
representative of engineers, firemen, the galley, sailors, and apprentices.