We crossed the line at six in the morning, and in drizzling rain. There
was not much comment, except upon the rain; the good thing about the
damp cloudy weather was that we were spared the more furious heat, though
the atmosphere had been oily and sultry. With the steamy clouds swarming
about us I could picture a past life hereabouts which might justly have
aroused man's wrath; the sailing days, when to take advantage of whatever
brief breeze might visit the sleepy doldrums, the sailors had to be
constantly running aloft in the drenching mist, and afterwards lay down in
their sweating glory-holes, in their soaked clothes, week after week.
The painting epidemic was not abated. Meacock and Mead camped out while
they made their rooms as white as ivory. Mead looked charming in a round
white cap, which he said a V.A.D. had given him. The steward, with his
experience of every sort of ship under the sun, had developed an artistic
eye: and, perhaps to relieve the whiteness, he decided upon a dado for
the saloon, which hitherto had been from ceiling to floor done in white
enamel. The dado was to be grained, in imitation of an actual wainscot.
He began his solemn task, applying by way of groundwork a brimstone
yellow and other sickly yellows which disturbed us at meals.
Meacock and Phillips varied these days with a discussion of firemen,
whether white or coloured firemen were the more difficult to manage?
Phillips was for his Africans, the excellent selection aboard at present
forming a contrast with his memories of ne'er-do-wells, "doctors,
remittance-men and all sorts," of English birth. Meacock was soon hard at
work describing with amusing mimicry a refractory negro, one of a
number of Somalis who, hearing of labour troubles in England, did their
best to be paid off in Africa. If they had succeeded, the ship would have
been without firemen for her return voyage; so their efforts were
resisted. The particular genius played the hand of "suicidal tendency."
Choosing a time when there were several people about the deck, he
climbed somewhat slowly up the bulwarks and prepared with gestures to
leap over the side. Meacock was a spectator of this piece of acting. The
actor was pulled back with some violence, and "about half-past four we
got the handcuffs on him. We would have had to turn the cook out of his
room aft to lock this fellow up, but I didn't want to do that, so I
fastened him up with the handcuffs round a stanchion in the poop. I
said, 'And the rats will probably eat you before the morning'; and I
really did expect to find him eaten by the morning; for there were some
monsters in the poop.
"Next day, he began saying 'Sick.'--'Sick? Where are you sick?'--'Sick all
over.' I had enough of this after a bit, and went and got the strongest
black draught I've yet known. He didn't want to drink it, and I said to
him, 'Now drink this up as quick as you can.' And so he did. After that,
whenever I looked in at the poop, this fellow would start waving his
arms and hollering out. In fact, he was mad; every time I got near
him, he was mad. That black draught was not popular, I think. When we
got to Cuxhaven, the medical authority put this man through a careful
examination. 'He's no more mad,' he said, 'than you or I. He's got a
slight touch of rheumatics in the arm. But,' he said, 'when you get to
Hamburg, you can satisfy yourself by sending this man to the asylum.' We
did. Two days--and he was back."
Meacock's laconic phrases were accompanied with grimaces which told the
tale to perfection.
The atmosphere had grown so literary that Mead now took pencil and
paper with him to his day watch as a matter of course. The pages of
the _Optimist_ were beginning to look somewhat laboured. He determined to
infuse a new vein. So a series of vividly coloured hoaxes came into
existence, the first of which, a harem story, was too much in its full
bloom for the editor's acceptance. Not surprised, and not dejected, Mead
offered "The Pirate," and it duly appeared. These fictions ended, as did
their successors, with a disillusionment:
"And then what happened?"
"The film broke."
It was about the period of hoaxes--April 1 arrived. Bicker appeared
at my cabin, where I was reading. "Meacock wants to see you." I went.
Bicker triumphed, and went his way convinced that he could beat the
intellectual at his own game, as the _Optimist_ had already shown him
he could.
A brighter sky and cooler wind came on. We were soon expected at Saint
Vincent. The new moon and calmer waters brought one evening of strange
watery beauty. Towards his setting the sun had hidden himself in black
clouds, whence he threw a silver light over sea spaces where sea and sky
were meeting: he sank, and left the heavens like green havens, with
these clouds slowly sailing through their utmost peace. The change soon
came; the head wind brought pale grey turbulent days, with the ship
playing at rocking-horses; over the head wind and rousing sea, the healthy
sun at length dawned on the Sunday of our arrival at Saint Vincent.
Sunday, without the voice of church bells or the sight of people going to
worship, seemed no Sunday despite its idle hours: at least, the mood
sometimes took me so.
The third engineer was acquiring no mean name as a cutter of hair, and I
felt the cold after I had been to his open-air chair, near the engine-room
staircase. While I sat to him, a characteristic of the mess-room boy was
borne on the air from the chief's room. It was his habit of replying
hastily to any observation, "Yes, yes," and this time the chief's voice
was heard: "Curse you, John, for a blasted nuisance." "Yes, yes, sir."
As the sun was stooping under the sea once more, land grew into sight
far ahead; mountain or cloud? The mountainous coast was mocked indeed
by great continents of cloud above, of its own grey hue. The wind blew
hard, but at ten o'clock we were running in under the rocky pinnacles
of Saint Vincent, against the blustering wind and the black racing sea. A
light or two, chiefly from other steamers, told something of the port. The
crescent moon, cloaked in a circling golden mist, was now near setting.
We anchored and spent the night in quiet.
A mile or so from our anchorage, in the morning's clear air, huddled
the pink unsightly little town. At distance the heights of rock looked
as unsubstantial as Prospero's magic; the clouds that swam over them and
across their steeps might have been solid, so phantasmal were those
rocks. Not so with the stony masses overpeering the town; those in their
iron-brown nakedness had the aspect of eternal immobility. The air
was cold and lucent; the water halcyon blue. Several tramps with rusty
black and red, and a sailing ship or two, lay around the _Bonadventure_;
barges of a rough old make clustered closer in to shore.
The invasion by natives began early. A dozen boats were tossing on the
waves alongside, with woolly heads and upward eyes seeking what or whom
they might devour, and quiet-footed rogues here and there on the decks
were trying to sell matches, cigarettes, and red bead handbags. To their
attempts, the politest answer was "No good." "No caree?" Nobody seemed
to care. Some of our firemen whose homes were here had gone ashore, with
the air of men allowing their old haunts to share their glory.
Two lighters, coppered below, bearded with dark green weed, blundered
alongside with bags of coal, and soon the gangs, a grimy and ragged
collection, were getting the bags aboard, and the winch grumbling
away. Yet it was now made known that we were not to pick up much coal
here, but to proceed to Las Palmas for the bulk of our wants. This was
unfortunate for the firemen who had gone home. All too soon the blue
peter at half-mast and the blowing of the hooter recalled them.
Now, too, it was rumoured that our port of discharge was to be Emden,
in Hanover: but of such arrangements it became more difficult to feel
assurance.
At midday we left. The most valued effect of our call at Saint Vincent
was the receipt of some giant flying-fishes, which we got, one apiece,
at tea. It was only by virtue of perseverance that a man could consume
his ration. They were good, if dry.
If I were a Bewick, I have in mind a little tailpiece for this chapter.
It would display, for the careful eye, the hatless Kelly filleting a
flying fish, against the bunker hatch, for his friend the cat, who should
be gazing up with cupboard love at her unshaven protector. The direction
of the wind, in true Bewick style, should be implied in a sprinkling of
coal-dust settling on the new paint of the "House."