On Easter Day the sun--it was an old proverb--will dance; and this time
he was in the mood. We lay in a basin like other tramps; beyond, there
clustered red roofs with blessed ungainly angles, a pleasing sight after
those southern flat ones of grey. Farther off, the church spire climbed
above the trees, and though many people in their Sunday dress were walking
that way, more were taking their rounds beside these docks.
It was as certainly good to be here as that spring was here. The chirrup
of sparrows, jubilate of larks, noises of poultry, bleating of lambs
from an enclosure of young fruit trees close at hand, and the play of
children, were all comely and reviving.
Alas! that the Easter gift of the ship's officers should have been so out
of tune. An old gentleman of the same outlook as Polonius, the broker,
brought a packet of letters aboard at breakfast, and among these were the
wrong kind of Easter tidings--statements of their reductions in wages.
They accepted this falling off without murmur, save for a few dry remarks.
A motor-boat came bringing the stores, and, to the disgust of the cook
and other watchers, a great stack of long loaves, altogether leathery
in external appearance. Most of these were returned. The ship's chandler
must have thought we were arriving in force. Our own boat was tied at the
foot of the gangway, and the apprentices told off as ferrymen for the time
being.
Next day the larks were aloft again, and their melody, marvellous after
long absence from it, came dropping from heaven as undiminished, one
would say, as raindrops falling. So clear it sounded there even when they
were in the clouds. Meanwhile the bosun and party were getting the winches
and derricks into trim, with less silver voices: "H-h-hup, H-h-hup: Let
go a little: Here, youse...."
It was not unwelcome when the evening came, and Mead, Bicker, and their
friend so soon to be returned to duty set out up the cobbled road to
Emden; most bitter was the east wind blowing down the long colonnades
of trees, and we hastened into the sheltering streets of the little town.
We found it a quiet and beautiful place of ornamentation, and gables
and high houses, with a canal in the midst. Masterly seemed its spire,
stretching up into the sky with unexpected height and charming ease. It
was Easter Monday, and many folks were walking out--we looked curiously
about us, and while none were anything but tidy and decent, none had
any of the symptoms of much and to spare. They were evidently poor, but
far from poor in spirit.
We were puzzled by the Sabbath look of things to find a place to sit
down and apply some antidote to the effects of that rawish east wind. We
began drifting as usual, when an old fellow in black coat and Homburg
hat pushed past us, mumbling something. A light came swiftly into the
eyes of Mead and Bicker; the old fellow was fragrant with good beer.
We asked him for directions. He was off at once in a loud, hard voice:
"By Jesus Christ and General Jackson," he began (and _da capo_), "the
two best men in America. You come to my house." Following him, and coping
with his repeated invocations of the Messiah and the General, and requests
for an opinion of his English speech, we arrived by and by. He was an
innkeeper, and (by Jesus Christ) "an old sailing man himself."
The inn parlour was most excellently warm, free and easy. We set to with
hot grog, the brimmer being rebrimmed (if my memory serves me) not once
nor twice. The room was not one which depressed. Around it hung daubs
of full-rigged ships of Batavia in the fifties and sixties; there was an
automatic weighing machine, a most magnificent penny-in-the-slot piano,
and another apparatus for extracting copper from the air, dressed up as a
blue windmill, but I did not inquire what it was expected to yield. And
the wall-paper was tapped with an ample border, in which one saw smooth
waters, placid smacks, and more windmills.
The other occupants of the room were the quiet set at the tables, a
drunken Finn seaman with one arm in bandages, a dark-haired musician,
the landlord and his wife and their good-looking daughter; while from the
private house other members of the family came and went at need, as
will be seen.
We provided the landlord with grog. He melted with gratitude, rose,
and set his horrible piano going, whose wicked hammers champed upon some
of the harshest wires outside of the barbed-wire dumps. And what is
more, whenever the piano began, our friend the Finn thought his hour
had come to shine, and essayed a sort of stamping, stooping dance across
the floor. This led to persuasion. The landlord persuaded, the landlady
persuaded, unclassified assistants persuaded, and presently the dancer
was pleased to be seated once more, exclaiming, "When I come aboard he
says to me, he says, 'All right, Captain, all right, all right.'" No
sooner did the music begin afresh than this enthusiast would rise up
relentlessly as though hypnotized (by the paean) and perhaps stamp out
a bar or two before being replaced by combined efforts. This kept on
happening.
None the less, the landlord, who had apparently spent the day in liquid
rejoicings, was swallowing grog and growing taleful. He claimed all
sorts of sea service and seemed to know what he was talking about,
posed even my expert friends with the sailing-ship question: What's
the difference in build between a Scotch ship, a Nova Scotian, and a
Yankee? Boxing too was in his line: "Scholar of John L. Sullivan," he
assured us, and directed admiration to his fist, which was normal. From
taleful he waxed tuneful. "I'm a chanty-man, y'know," and wiping back
his gingery-white whiskers he groaned out "Blow the man down," and "The
streams of our native Australia," in dreadful style. After these, finding
himself strangely appreciated, he offered and began "a real English song,
y'know--exchoose me, y'know, if I don't speak the plain English." It was
"The Maid of the Mill." His rendering was a strain on our tact, and too
much for one of the young ladies of the house, who was smitten with a fit
of giggling most right and justifiable. At that, the old villain flew
into a ridiculous passion, jumped up, and was for hitting this girl.
He was restrained.
After this unwanted diversion, he returned and (with starts of rage)
barked out the rest of his song. His wolfhound began, and we began, to
find the vocalist a nuisance; and as the evening wore on, I thought the
authentic musician, who played the violin, was beginning to resent our
presence and success. The daughter of the house foolishly sat at our
table. The musician, however, was soothed with an honorarium, and with
much "Auf wieder-sehen!" we went. Even now, however, it was thought
unseemly to reach the ship in one journey, so halts were called twice;
and once aboard, the usual arguments kept us out of our beds until four
or so in the morning.
The two grain-elevators in the port were still busy with a Greek steamer,
so that, apart from painting, the _Bonadventure_ was idle, and there was
little to do but row over to the canteens and return with undreamed-of
quantities of chocolate and cigarettes. Cigars were, to us, as lightly
bought as matches. As to the painting, it was again mysterious that
two of the apprentices fell off the stage on which they were working
alongside; they were soon dressed in borrowed plumage. Suddenly in the
evening our discharge began.
Lighters of the local type, very long and narrow, were already alongside
when the tugs swung the first elevator into his place. The huge floating
turret looked somewhat like a smock mill. The stevedores quickly made
fast their tackle: four large drain-pipe tubes were let down into the
chosen hold, and the suckers commenced. There was a drumming boom of
machinery, mixed with the swish of the ingulfing of the grain and its
disgorging through broader conduits on the other side of the elevator
into the river barges. It grew dark, the red and green railway lights
burned fiercely in brisk air against the last of an orange sunset. But
the elevator was kept at work, and arc lights hung over the hold showed
the novel scene of the sliding grain and its trimmers.
One effect of the late-continued drone and thud of the elevator was to
torment me with war dreams. First I was in an attack, among great rocks,
under a violent barrage; then, on one of those unforgettable raw, dark
mornings, I was at the window of a great ruined house behind the line,
watching the bleary effulgence of the Very lights starting up here and
there and expecting the worst from a nasty silence, only pierced by single
shell-bursts. Then, beside the elevator, an infuriated and intoxicated
bargee stood on the landing-stage about midnight bawling for a boat which
didn't come. His patience was, however, considerable; he bawled for a
long hour. In consequence, I suppose, of these matters I arrived very
late at breakfast amid the usual cries of "You Jonah, you!"
The second elevator arrived, and, like some great iron insect with many
beaks, began to swallow up the grain from the holds aft. The ship shook
with the speed and power of the pumping machinery; the long lighters with
their great round-table steering wheels filled up, battened down, and
swung away. In one of the holds there were the bags put in at Ingeniero
White; under them again lay the yellow grain in mass. The elevator's
proboscis dipped into that grain, while the trimmers unstowed, slit and
emptied the sacks; so the ship began to lighten, and her bow already
stood high out of the water.
The red evening sky was smoky with cold; then the stars sparkled with
frost; and a small gathering enjoyed the oil stove in Bicker's room.
The steward, in unusual radiance, came in presently, and sang a long
song concerning a tramp who was flung off a freight train by a brakesman.
"Because he was only a tramp" (_dying fall_).
This might have been a comment on Mr. W. H. Davies' Autobiography.
Warmed with his singing and other helps, the steward began to recall
his acquaintance (on guard) with Royalty, and spun off at tangents with
affairs half a century more recent: "That b---- flaming butcher-- I
was going to hit him with a box of matches," and other incidents. I
was sorry to hear the lank Chips, the next morning, bawling at the
entrance of the saloon a complaint about the toughness of his meat; the
steward's new mood deserved anything but that sort of damper.