So we, who foregathered yesterday afternoon in the shipping office,
are lashed together for another four months. A motley group, my
friend. Outside I stood, note-book in hand, trying to find a spare
fireman who wanted a job. A mob of touts, sharks, and pimps crowded
round me, hustling each other, and then turning away from my call,
"Any firemen here?" In despair I go over to the "Federation Office,"
where all seamen are registered in the books of life insurance, where
they pay their premiums, and await possible engineers. I consult with
the grave, elderly man in the office, and he asks for firemen in the
bare, cold waiting-room. One man comes up, a pale, nervous chap,
clean-shaven and quiet. I take his "Continuous Discharge" book, flick
it open at the last entry--trawling! The last foreign-going voyage is
dated 1902, "S. Africa," "Voyage not completed." I hand it back.
"Won't do," I remark shortly, and look round for others. The man looks
at the grave, elderly person, who takes the book. "Give him a chance,"
says the latter, in his low, official voice. "Look--S. Africa. The
man's been serving his country. Give him a chance." "I would if he'd
promise not to get enteric when we reach port," I say. "Never 'ad it
yet, sir," says the man, and I take his book. "_Benvenuto_. Hurry up.
She's signing on now." He runs across the road, and I follow.
When I reach the shipping office they are waiting for me. Behind
the counter and seated beside the clerk is the Captain, writing
our "advance notes." The clerk asks if all are present; we shuffle
up closer, and he begins to read the articles to which we XXXX
subscribe--signing our death-warrants, we call it. No one listens to
him--he himself is paring his nails, or arranging some other papers
as he intones the sentences which are more familiar to him and to us
than the Lord's Prayer to a clergyman. Then, when he has finished,
each one comes up for catechism--carpenter, sailors, donkeyman,
fireman, all in due order. Then the officers. "Donkeyman!" calls the
clerk. A huge, muscular figure with a red handkerchief round his bull
throat ceases arguing with a fireman, plunges forward, and seizes the
pen. He is my friend of the last voyage, the mighty Norseman.
"What is your name?"
"Johann Nicanor Gustaffsen."
"Where were you born?"
"Stockholm."
"How old are you?"
"Thirty-two."
"Where do you live?"
"Ryder Street, Swansea."
"Any advance?"
"Yes."
And so on with each of us.
"Don't forget," says the clerk from the depths of a
three-and-a-half-inch collar, "to be on the ship at nine o'clock
to-morrow morning." And we troop out to make room for another crew,
meet yet another coming to be paid off at the other counter, wish we
were they, and eventually reach the ship.
Strange scenes sometimes, in that shipping office, or, for that
matter, in any shipping office. I shall not forget that forlorn little
lad we had once engaged for mess-room steward at two pounds five a
month, with his red little nose and the bullied look in his eyes. It
was when he went up to sign, and answer the questions given above.
What was his name? "_Christmas Hedge_." All turned and stared at the
snivelling urchin. Where was he born? "_In a field_."
The walls, too, interest a man like me. There are notices in all the
tongues of Europe on the walls--notices of sunken wrecks, of masters
fined for submerging their loaded discs, of white lights in the
China seas altered to green ones by the Celestial Government, of
transport-medals awaiting their owners, of how to send money home
from Salonika or Copenhagen or Yokohama or Singapore. Near the
door, moreover, is a plain wooden money-box with no appeal for alms
thereon--merely a printed slip pasted along the base of it: "_There is
sorrow on the sea._" And often and often I have seen grey chief
officers and beardless "fourths" drop their sixpences into the box,
for the sake of that sorrow on the sea.
And now it is night--our last night ashore. The Second Engineer
asks me to go up town with him. The Chief has gone to see his wife
home to Cardiff, and George goes on watch at eight-bells. So for the
last time I don a linen collar and shore clothes, and we go up town.
We meet sundry youth from the ship-yard; they are going to that
iridescent music-hall into which I plunged six weeks ago when we
came in. We pay our sixpences for two hours' high-speed enjoyment,
"early performance"; enjoyment being sold nowadays very much like
electricity--at a high voltage but small cost per unit. Scarcely my
sort, I fear, but what would you? I cannot be hypercritical on this
our last night ashore. And so I strive to feel as if I were sorry to
go away, as if parting were indeed that sweet sorrow I have heard it
called, as if I really cared a scrap for the things they care for.
True, I feel the parting from my friend, and it is no sweet sorrow
either. But that is at Paddington, when the train moves, and our hands
are gripped tightly--a faint foretaste of that last terror, when he or
I shall pass away into the shadows and the other will be left alone
for ever. It is when I ponder upon that scene that I realize what our
friendship has become, that I realize how paltry every other familiar
or even relative appears by comparison. Let me treasure this
friendship carefully, healthfully, old friend, for, by my love of
life, it is rare enough in these our modern times.
I have been wondering why this is--I think it is money, or rather
business. Have you noticed how business _dehumanises_ men? I count
over in my mind dozens of men whom I know, men of age, experience, and
wealth, who almost demand that I should envy them by the very way they
walk the city streets. They are prosperous, they imagine. I, strolling
idly through those same city streets, looking at the show, studying
their faces, defied them, and said to myself, "You gentlemen are not
human beings--you are business men." Not that I would tell them this;
they would not understand, though they are guilty of occasional lucid
intervals. They will admit, in a superior tone, that business cuts
them off from a great deal. But it is evident they intend sticking to
the irrefutable logic of the bank-balance. For them there is no
friendship like ours. They could not afford it, bless you. How are
they to know that you won't "do" them or borrow of them? No, no. The
world, for them, is a place where they have a chance of besting you
and me, of getting more money than you or I, of "prospering," as they
call it, at another's expense.
If I say to one of these men, "I want no fortune; I have what I need
now by working for it," he looks at me as though I were stark mad. If
I say, to poor Sandy Jackson, for instance, who has only one lung and
is mad on "getting more business"--if I say to him, "You advise me to
go in for business on my own account, Sandy. Very good. What does that
mean? It means that I must become _dehumanised_, or fail. I must have
no friends who are of no use to me. I must waste no time reading or
writing or dreaming dreams. I must eat no dinners abroad which are not
likely to bring in business. I must toil early and late, go on spare
regimen, drink little, dress uncomfortably, live respectably--for
what, Sandy? For a few hundreds or thousands of pounds. May I let up
then? Oh, no, Sandy, that is the business man's mirage, that letting
up. He never lets up until he is let down--into the tomb. It would be
against his principles. Well, Sandy, I see you're at it and apparently
killing yourself by it, but I wish to be excused. It isn't good
enough. I want my friends, my books, my dreams most of all. Take your
business; I'll to my dreams again."
So, while we sit in the gaudy playhouse, I dream my dreams of the
great books I want to write, the orations I want to deliver, the
lessons I want to teach, and I wonder how long my time of probation
will be. Strange that I should never make any allowance for the
dangerous nature of my calling. This may be my last night ashore for
ever. What of it? Well, it will be a nuisance to leave those books,
lectures, and lessons to be written, given, and taught by somebody
else; but I don't really mind. I only want to go along steadily to the
end, and when that comes shake my friend by the hand and say
"Farewell." It is plain, is it not, that I am no business man?
I am still dreaming when our noisy little crowd elbow their way out
and pass up the street into a tavern. Here my friend the Second is
known. He pats the fair barmaid on the cheeks, chucks the dark one
under the chin, calls the landlady "old dear," and orders drinks _in
extenso_. I am introduced to one and all, and another girl, neither
dark nor fair, emerges from an inner room for my especial regard. We
are invited within, and with glass in hand and girl on knee, we toast
our coming voyage. One by one the girls are kissed; the landlady
jocularly asks why she is left out, and a sense of justice makes me
salute her chastely. You see, old man, this is the last night ashore.
We bid them "good-bye," they wish us good luck, and we depart to our
own place once more. The Second is silent. He has said good-bye to his
girl--he hung back a moment as we left the tavern. And there is
something burning in my brain, just behind the eyeballs. I have not
said good-bye to my girl. Or rather I mean--but I cannot formulate to
myself just what I do mean at the time. I only feel, as I turn in,
that I ought to have told my friend all that happened when I met her,
a month ago, and that, after all, nothing really matters, and the
sooner I get away to sea again the better.