With little to do, I fought a sort of pillow fight with Meacock, our
weapons being sacks well stuffed; he won, of course, but it was a popular
bout. Then there were acrobatic performances on the stays of the funnel.
The need I had for training appeared on our last night in Emden Port,
when my sleep was nipped in the bud by the entry of Bicker and Mead.
Both had the clear spirits raised, in two senses; both thickened voices
already thick enough. They were disguised (Mead's fancy, I warrant)
as members of the Ku-Klux-Klan; and besides their costume one bore a
revolver, the other an air gun impounded from an apprentice. I was
ordered out of bed, but wished to stop; we argued about it and by good
luck I hung on. After this, insidious, they declared that a lady who
knew me and wished to see me had come aboard. This flight of fancy and
flow of language went on until they sought variety, which they found
in painting the unfortunate Tich in the alley below in several colours.
The German police, green men and true, watched the ship closely. It was
rumoured that a shipping clerk and a young woman had eloped and were
aboard one of the tramps. "Love in a foc'sle," especially ours, was
considered no bad joke.
One more home circle was held in the starboard alleyway towards
midnight; gin very prevalent, and the steward also. He fell into a
sequence of army recollections, which (as the glass was thrust replenished
into his hand) began on this pattern, "Well, I'm telling you, Mister, at
three in the afternoon of March the twelfth 1873, we was parading
outside the Queen's pavilion...." Once more also Mead and myself made our
way into Emden. The old nooks of buildings and the vistas of narrow
thoroughfares and lazy waterways, the shops and the folk, all made a
kindly picture; after supper, we avoided a downpour of sleet in a cafe
with an orchestra, whose repertory of 4,000 pieces included two by
English composers, and his name was Sullivan. On our midnight way home,
we stopped at a Dutchman's bar and asked for and got a dozen hard-boiled
eggs for a second supper aboard. I was carrying a parcel in hand and
two bottles, or rather gas-cylinders, of gin in the lining of my
mackintosh when we reached the German sentry-box beside the Quay. He
puffed at his pipe as he felt the parcel and saw that all was well.
The iron in the ship began to sweat great drops, and the walls of one's
bunk glistened with damp. The glass was falling; the water of the basin
no longer lay smooth as oil but beat against the ship grudgingly. In
short, excellent Flanders weather ensued the old-established weather,
guaranteed to cure rabid individuals of war cant after one hour's trial
(unshelled) on sentry-go or at the ration dump. For the worst and even
hopeless cases, half an hour's trial on the banks of the Steenbeck was
confidently recommended--I was lucky now to have a roof leaking but
little. Phillips showed me the one dry corner in his room--a portion of
the settee about a foot square.
Hosea's wife joined us in the saloon, and not only by her genial presence
itself merited our best thanks, but also by her influence on the steward.
As if by magic, Ideal milk was added to our tinned pears (usually,
apricots); and the jam changed to strawberry.
At length the elevators ceased from troubling, and the supervisors from
dilating in _Platt Deutsch_ over the damage in the bilges. The bosun's
strangled noise timed the hoisting of the ship's boat, which had had
a busy holiday, to its normal place. The little broker made his last
appearance round the steward's precincts; and with the heaving up of the
gangway, the arrival of the tugs, the return of the wireless aerial to its
heights and the smoking funnel--it, no doubt, never looked better--we
were ready to depart.
It was twilight when our ropes fore and aft were loosed from the dolphins,
and the _Bonadventure_ slowly moved into the lock. Here while the port
authorities made a swift inspection for stowaways and concluded their
arrangements, we stopped a time, listening to the odd mixture of noise
from bleating of sheep and hooting of our whistle. Then we moved out to
sea, not without bumping into the lock wall and gashing the bow. The air
was intensely cold, and the iron frameworks against the last tinges of
sunset and the red and white lights were now all there was to see of
our port of discharge. That episode was over; after midnight, the ship
stopped at Borkum to put down the pilot, and then, on again. My voyage
was hurrying into memory.