binnacle with its swaying compass card, or down at the phosphorescent
water swirling and hissing past the ship's stern, the helmsman became as
one hypnotized. It seemed that he was not of this world, but an atom
hurtling through space. The temptation was to surrender himself to the
sensuous joy of it, a temptation resisted only by an almost painful
effort, and the knowledge that the lives of all aboard depend on his
keeping his leaden eyelids from closing down.
A four-hour watch as helmsman is too long. They do not allow it in the
mercantile marine; but what were we to do? Steve confessed to recalling
all the poetry that he knew, consisting of most of Kipling, the whole of
Omar Khayyam, and sundry doubtful limericks; then attempting to say them
backward. Peter hummed over her repertoire of songs, or thought out new
dishes for her week's cookment. As for me, I kept a marlinspike handy,
and when oblivion threatened used it.
It will be seen that a dream ship is not all dream. If it were, such is
the perversity of human nature, the dreamer would probably be tired of
it within a month.
"I can promise you the northeast 'trades' the whole way across," said
our friend of the five-masted schooner at Las Palmas, turning the pages
of his log. Also, the wind chart sported a reassuring number of
long-shafted arrows pointing from that quarter for the month of October.
These things may account for the fact that not one day's northeast wind
did we encounter on the Atlantic passage. It seems that the elements
have a rooted objection to being anticipated. We could have crossed in
an open boat for all of the weather, and three becalmed days in
mid-ocean we occupied in swimming round the ship, or diving to scrape
the barnacles off her copper.
But stark calms are a wearisome business. Every function of a ship has
ceased. It is as though she lay dead in a stagnant pool, and any
movement of spars or canvas were the rattling of her bones. Also, it is
an aggravation to the restless insect called man, adrift in a breathless
waste of waters, to know that leagues lie ahead of which he is incapable
of covering a yard.
An auxiliary engine is useless under such circumstances. To use it is
like hurrying on to catch a tram that is bound to overtake one in the
long run. What is a steaming radius of four hundred miles in a stretch
of three thousand? No, all one can do after satisfying himself that his
vessel is "as idle as a painted ship upon a painted sea," is to pass the
time as pleasantly as may be. We of the dream ship turned in and slept,
or broke the uncanny silence with fearsome noises on clarionet and
piano. Also, we fished, though with a lack of success that leads me to
believe that fish do not bite in mid-ocean. At night flying fish struck
the mainsail, and fell to the deck with a resounding thwack and a
flutter of "wings," but for the most part on occasions when we had
failed to hang a lantern in the rigging to attract them, which, as far
as I am concerned, explodes another fallacy.
As day succeeded day, and there was no sign of a change in our inert
condition, our thoughts turned again in the direction of the drinking
water. True, we had two hundred gallons aboard, but what was to prevent
us from being becalmed for a month, or being carried hundreds of miles
out of our course by a gale, according to the mood of the capricious
elements? We cut our daily allowance from a gallon to half a gallon per
head for all purposes and, as though in response to our frugality, a
breath came out of the southeast.
At the moment of its arrival Steve and I happened to be testing our
sense of direction by diving overboard, and trying to come up through a
lifebelt floating about ten yards distant. Steve had just conceived the
brilliant idea of moving the belt after the diver had taken the plunge,
and I had emerged from a lung-racking effort to locate it, when we
realized that the dream ship had moved, in fact was still moving, with a
noticeable wake in the direction of the horizon. The tiller was pegged
amidships, and there was nothing to stop her continuing the motion
indefinitely--except Peter, who was below. We prayed in that hour that
she was not asleep.
[Illustration: Swimming near boat]
I have often left home--perhaps too often--but this was the first
occasion on which home looked as if it were leaving _me_, and in
mid-Atlantic at that. Alternately we yelled and swam, but without
gaining a foot until to our infinite relief a small, pyjamaed figure
appeared on deck, threw up its arms in horror, and brought the dream
ship into the wind.
An hour later we were bowling along at seven knots, revelling in the
blessed motion of air, and planning what we should do when we reached
Barbados, a mere fifteen hundred miles distant.
It was in mid-Atlantic, too, that we received visitors. The first were
Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a devoted couple of fish about the size of a sprat,
each decorated similarly with vivid green bands on an electric blue
background. For four days they remained with us, swimming closely side
by side under our idle propeller, presumably for shade. To lie on deck
looking down into the limitless blue depths and watching our companions
became the king of pastimes aboard the dream ship. We even tried to
catch them with a minute hook and the tastiest of baits, but they would
suffer no nearer acquaintance. They were too busy getting somewhere for
some reason to swerve an iota from their course. During a squall we lost
them, or they lost us; in any case, we never saw them again, and I have
often wondered since what Mr. and Mrs. Smith are doing now.
The next guest was a black bird about the size of a crow, with webbed
feet, a wicked-looking beak, and white circles round the eyes. He was a
sick and sorry bird when he fluttered on to the rudder top during a rain
squall, edged slowly along the tiller, and over Peter's hand into her
lap, where she covered him with her oilskin and he lay content. But his
was a flying visit in more than one sense of the word, for he refused to
eat. Bread crumbs, morsels of flying fish, and meat were offered him,
but he spurned them all, and grew so weak that when carried into the
scuppers by the ship's lurching two days later, he rose in the air and
was carried off into the turmoil of wind and wave. The last we saw of
him was a bunch of black feathers on the face of a comber, still
struggling to rise.
What with weather ranging all the way from stark calms to vicious
squalls, and a correspondingly varied progress of anything from ten to
two hundred miles in the twenty-four hours, it took us thirty days to
cross the Atlantic, and when it was done we spent the best part of a day
trying to find the proof of our accomplishment in the island of
Barbados. Faulty navigation again? Yes, but it is not the easiest
thing in life to make a "bow on" landfall of a clod of earth twenty-one
miles by twelve after a three-thousand-mile jaunt to reach it. Also, we
suspected our chronometer.
When Barbados, after the fashion of Grand Canary, failed to materialize,
we of the dream ship held one of our now familiar board meetings. There
were two courses open: to emulate the mariner of old who knew nothing of
longitude, and cruise along our latitude until Barbados appeared; or to
head for Trinidad instead, and so have the coastline of South America as
a buffer if we failed to make it.
We had decided on the latter course, and were actually standing away for
Trinidad, when Barbados, a mere wraith of land that we scarce dared to
believe in, beckoned us from the southern horizon. We accepted the
invitation.
The first human face other than our own that we had seen for a solid
month was that of the "outside man" of Messrs. ---- & Co., and as a
change we welcomed it. He came to us in a natty whaleboat propelled by
a crew of hefty Negro oarsmen, showed us the best anchorage, and saw us
safely berthed before allowing the fact to emerge that he was an
"outside man," that his particular firm could do anything for a ship
cheaper, quicker, and better than any in Bridgetown, and that our
patronage was the one thing he had been craving ever since our approach
had been made known from the signal station. I shall be surprised on my
next visit to Barbados, which I hope will not be long delayed, if that
"outside man" is not a director of Messrs. ---- & Co.
I may add that our first care was to take our erring chronometer to be
readjusted, and the mainspring broke the next day. That is how near we
had been to disaster in the Atlantic.
While a new mainspring was being fitted and rated, we gladly surrendered
ourselves to the tender mercies of the most charming, hospitable people
one could wish to meet. My recollections of our two-weeks' sojourn are
a trifle vague owing to the rapidity with which one pleasure succeeded
another. I remember lying at anchor with awnings up in the most
beautiful bay it is possible to imagine, and sleeping twenty-four hours
on end. From then onward life consisted of "swizzles," car rides over a
fairy-island, and more swizzles, pony races to the accompaniment of
swizzles, surf bathing followed by swizzles, and evenings at the
Savannah Club, where conversation was punctuated and sometimes drowned
by the concoction of yet more swizzles by a hard-worked army of coloured
folk behind a gleaming mahogany bar.
There is no escaping the "swizzle" in Barbados--even if one wished to,
which personally I did not. It is a delightful, healthful drink composed
of the very best rum, angostura bitters, syrup, fresh lime, nutmeg, and
ice--the whole "swizzled" to the creamy consistency of---- But I forget
that I may be addressing a country in the grip of total abstinence, and
whatever my faults I have never been accused of making a man's mouth
water without supplying the deficiency.
Before the war the Barbados estate owner was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Now he is probably the most prosperous landed proprietor in the world.
It matters not whether he be white or black, or any one of the
intermediary shades, he is keeping up a luxurious establishment, driving
his car in a cloud of dust and dignity from one end of the island to the
other, or installing a manager (usually some hopeless wight who was
absent on duty during the war) and taking up residence in Park Lane or
Fifth Avenue according to taste. And "sugar" is the answer. Sugar is
king of Barbados, and it were easier for the proverbial camel to pass
through the needle's eye than for the outsider to buy, beg, borrow, or
steal a square foot of his domain.
It is difficult to see just what will happen to Barbados in the future
unless some outlet is found for the Negro population. Already this
minute island is the second most densely populated spot in the
world--the first being a certain district of China--and there seems no
other alternative than for it to populate itself into the sea. The
United States is imposing drastic restrictions on Negro immigration, as
evidenced by the surging and expectant, though mostly disappointed,
crowds that assemble outside the American Consulate in Bridgetown daily.
The self-governing British Dominions will have none of them. Where are
they to go? Meantime, they grow--Lord, how they grow!--in numbers and
insolence.
Hot foot from a ball at one of the hotels, we literally fled aboard ship
and sailed by stealth; otherwise I am convinced that we should be at
Barbados tennising, surfing, dancing, pony racing, and "swizzling" to
this day.
Even then we weighed anchor one evening only to drop it the next off
Soutrier, a town on the fairy island of St. Lucia where we had been
invited to stay on a plantation. Our host, as kindly a soul as ever
lived, insisted that it would do us all a power of good to leave the
dream ship in charge of one of his boys--or a dozen of them if we
preferred--and have a real rest and change at his house. And a rest and
change it undoubtedly was. From doing everything for ourselves, our
regime changed abruptly to one of being prevented by an army of
well-trained house-boys from so much as turning a hand.
The West Indian planter is a man to be envied. He lives in one of the
beauty spots of the world, and neither the servant problem nor "high
cost of living" affects him to anything like the same extent as others.
This home that we of the dream ship had invaded was a miracle of cool,
well-ordered comfort, set high on the wooded hillside, commanding by day
an endless vista of palm-clad mountain and sparkling Caribbean, and by
night encompassed with perfumed darkness, the glint of fireflies, and
the vocal efforts of the whistling frog--a nimble little fellow, green
as an emerald and no larger than a pea.
The plantation, which only five years previously had been virgin jungle,
was devoted to limes and cocoa, both of which grow to perfection in the
West Indies, and as a commercial enterprise threaten in time to dethrone
King Sugar. Here on St. Lucia, as elsewhere in the West Indies, there
is unlimited scope for the smaller man who stands no chance on Barbados
and the more thickly settled islands. Indeed, after having spent most of
my life roaming about the world, I can never understand why a man with
strictly limited capital will buy or lease land, however cheap, in the
furthermost corners of the earth, thousands of costly miles from his
market, and where he will most certainly have to pay anything from a
dollar to five dollars a day for indifferent labour, while in the West
Indies there is still land to be had as rich as any in the world,
plantation labour--and good labour at that--is a shilling per day per
head, and New York is five, and London ten days distant. I can only
attribute it to the lure of "green fields that are ever far off."
*THROUGH THE PANAMA CANAL*
_From Atlantic to Pacific, and the strange happenings
that intervened_
[Illustration: Chapter VII headpiece]
*CHAPTER VII*
_From Atlantic to Pacific, and the strange happenings
that intervened_
"Look out for the Caribbean Sea toward December," was another axiom of
our five-masted-schooner friend at Las Palmas, but he proved no less
fallible over the passage from Barbados to Colon than he had concerning
the Atlantic. In fact, I am thinking of in future asking advice of
weather prophets in order to anticipate the reverse.
A spanking wind on the quarter, with mainsail and squaresail set, and a
mighty following sea that flung the dream ship before it in a series of
exhilarating swoops, brought us within sight of land in seven days, a
distance of twelve hundred miles. But what land? For a time we were at
a loss. Comparing it with the chart and descriptions in "sailing
directions" revealed nothing. It was a low-lying, mist-enshrouded,
sinister-looking land, and we sailed along its coast for a day and a
night before we could tell whether we had passed Colon or hit the coast
to the eastward.
Ultimately, a lighthouse gave us the clue, and we found that owing to a
current that has the unpleasant knack of running at anything from a half
to three knots we were still fifty miles from our objective, so we
headed for sea and hove to until daylight.
All night as we lay rolling in a heavy swell steamers passed us by,
floating palaces of light, and with the dawn we joined the procession of
giants making for the Panama Canal.
We wished to go through the canal? Very well; a measurer would be sent
off to decide our tonnage, and we must be ready to take the pilot aboard
at five o'clock the next morning.
That, in effect, is what the canal authorities said, and I answered it
with a smile that I trust was sufficiently engaging to hide the fact
that I was not at all sure we had enough money between us to pay the
tolls. It must be an expensive business, this passing from Atlantic to
Pacific. I had never thought of that. There was quite a lot I had not
thought about. What if the charges were altogether beyond us? It would
mean Cape Horn! Cape Horn or the abandonment of the dream! Which was
worse for one who, after sixty below zero on the Canadian prairie, four
below zero in France and Belgium, and something far worse in coalless
London, had taken a solemn oath never again to leave the forties of
latitude!
These terrifying reflections were cut short by a voice.
"I can't make it more than twelve tons."
"Twelve tons?"
The canal official deigned to exhibit surprise by a slight elevation of
the eyebrows, then smiled.
"The measurer has been aboard," he told me, "and you are twelve tons
net. The tolls will be fifteen dollars. Will you pay now, or at the
other end?"
Such was my relief that I paid on the spot, thereby reducing our united
capital to L20--or, at the then-prevailing rate of exchange,
seventy-eight dollars.
This brief interview with officialdom is typical of Panama Canal
methods. Speed, silence, efficiency; nothing else "goes" in "the Zone."
Things are done in a few seconds and utter silence here that would take
hours and pandemonium elsewhere. The entire miracle of passing a
ten-thousand-ton liner from Atlantic to Pacific through seven locks and
forty miles of tortuous, ever-threatening channels has been performed in
six and a half hours, and with a lack of fuss that is almost uncanny.
But the dream ship was twelve tons, and not ten thousand, and for that
reason it is probable that she gave more trouble than any craft since
the canal was opened. Yet on every hand we received the utmost courtesy
and kindness. Such treatment made us feel like pestiferous mosquitoes
being politely conducted to the door instead of squashed flat on the
spot as we deserved. But you shall see.
Punctually at five A.M., the pilot came aboard in his immaculate white
drill uniform and, without a smile at his surroundings, including
ourselves in variegated costume, took up his position in the bows. I
went below, and after a ten-minutes' wrestle with the auxiliary,
contrived to make three out of the four cylinders "go" sufficiently to
propel us at the dignified speed of three knots in the direction of the
canal.
"Is that the best she can do?" enquired the pilot.
I lifted an apologetic, perspiring, and begrimed face to him and
admitted that it was. Moreover, that we were very lucky to be doing
that.
"Ah, well, the day is young," he commented, cheerfully. "What about an
awning? We shall be baked alive before we've done."
Did I tell him that the reason we had not rigged an awning was that I
was more than half expecting the engine to break down, and that we
should have to hoist sail? I did not. Whoever heard of sailing through
the Panama Canal? An awning was rigged, and we entered Gatun Lock in
style, followed by two more liners.
The giant gates closed. There was an eruption of water seemingly under
our stern that caused the tiller to fly over and extract a groan of
anguish from Steve as it crushed him against the cock-pit wall; the aft
warp snapped, and the dream ship commenced to rise, more like an
elevator than a ship in a lock, until the blank, greasy wall ended, and
above it appeared a row of grinning faces.
"That's that," said the pilot; and it was.
By some miracle the engine carried us to the next lock, where the same
performance was gone through, with such slight variations as the loss of
a hat, three fenders, and the remainder of the port covering-board.
We passed out into Gatun Lake, a fairy place of verdure-clad islets and
mist-enshrouded reaches, where cranes flew low over the water, and
strange, wild cries came out of the bush.
It was also the place where our engine refused its office peremptorily,
irrevocably. I was engineer of the dream ship, probably the worst on
earth, but still, the engineer, and for an agonized hour I wrestled with
lifeless scrap-iron. How the profession of marine motor engineering
ever attracts adherents it is beyond me to imagine. I know one man it
has sent to an asylum, and many others who to this day bear the marks of
having trifled with it--finger-nails that nothing short of cutting to
the quick and gouging with a shovel will render clean; hands, clothes,
and for some unknown reason face ingrained with ineradicable grime; a
permanently furrowed brow; and a wistful expression that goes to the
heart of the beholder.
[Illustration: Egret, crocodile]
In order to avoid such a fate I have made it a practice to try hard for
one solid hour and, failing to gain a response from the atrocity, leave
the matter in other, and perhaps more capable, hands. I communicated
this information to the pilot, and there and then the man's more human
side came to the surface. It was raining as it knows how to rain on the
Isthmus, he was soaked to the hide, his natty uniform resembled nothing
more closely than a dish rag, yet he smiled, and proceeded to remove his
jacket.
"Guess we'd better sail," he said.
Behold once more the dream ship sailing through the Panama Canal;
alternately scudding before rain squalls, lying becalmed, and making
tacks of fifty yards and less, a passage surely unique in the annals of
"the Zone." The pilot said he enjoyed it, and by the way he swigged on
halyards and gave us an old-time chanty to work by, I am inclined to
believe him. We were lucky in our pilot.
Toward evening, and during a stark calm, Steve dived overboard and made
us fast to a light-buoy, his jaw dropping perhaps half an inch, and a
thoughtful expression coming into his eyes, when a little later a log on
the muddy shore was suddenly imbued with life, and slipped into the
water with a whisk of a horny tail.
So it was that we had afternoon tea in comfort, some alleged music on
piano and clarionet, and a pleasant chat with the pilot concerning the
older and better days of the wind-jammer, while dainty egrettes watched
us from a tree fern, ungainly pelicans swooped and dived, and somewhere
ten-thousand-ton liners were being hustled through the Panama Canal.
We had no wireless, that was why it was impossible to summon a tug to
take us on our way, but finally a monstrous steamer passed so close that
it was possible to hail her, and a few hours later we were taken in tow
by an apparition of noiseless engines, shining varnish, and gleaming
brass.
It would cost us six dollars an hour, the pilot told us, and I sat back
to figure out just how long seventy-eight dollars would last under such
an onslaught. The result was alarming. We held a board meeting about
it in the bows, and decided there was nothing for it but to go on, and
keep going on, until we stopped. We had hoped to reach lands where
money was of secondary importance, but we were not there yet, that was
evident.
So we continued to race through the canal at the rate of six dollars an
hour until we reached the approaches to Pedro Miguel lock, where the
apparition tied us up and steamed off, still at six dollars an hour.
Something happened to us that night at Pedro Miguel. Looking back on it
all I can hardly persuade myself that it was not a dream. We met some
canal officials, tall, sun-burned youths with the mark of efficiency
upon them yet with a merry twinkle in the eye. We asked them aboard,
and they came and marvelled at what they saw. Their verdict was, as far
as I remember: "Some novelty!" Then they asked us ashore, and it was
our turn to marvel. One of our hosts was the chief operator of a lock,
and we saw the miracle of the Isthmus of Panama from behind. Futility
overwhelms me at the thought of trying to describe what we saw that
night, over the lock, under the lock, at the sides of the lock; besides,
you will find it all reduced to cold figures in technical journals if
you are that way inclined. It was the spirit of the thing that took
hold of me: a pigmy man sitting at a lever! What was not possible after
this?
We returned to the ship almost stupefied. One feels much the same when
he attempts to think in Westminster Abbey. We were in the process of
turning in when a cheerful head appeared through the skylight.
"We await your pleasure," quoth a voice.
I explained that the owner of the head was no doubt unconsciously
violating, but still violating, the sanctity of my sister's bedroom. It
made no difference. I protested that at that moment my sister's costume
consisted of a pair of ill-fitting pyjamas and a kimono; that Steve and
I had nothing to our backs but what we had worn all day--an undershirt
and a pair of football shorts; that we were all tired to death and
literally ached for our pillows; that his kindness was overwhelming but
that---- Nothing made any difference.