Is all this too bookish for an ocean tramp? Alas! I fear I grow too
cocksure of my literary attainments out here, with none to check me.
It is in London where a man finds his true level in the book world, as
Johnson shrewdly observed. In the evening, when we are gathered over
the fire, and opinions fly across and rebound, when one hears bookmen
talk of books, and painters talk of art--that is the time when I feel
myself so unutterably insignificant. Often I have looked across at
T----, or G----, or ----, someone I know even better than them, and I
feel discouraged. You men have _done_ things, while I--well, I talk
about doing things, and try, feebly enough, to make my talking good;
but to what end? T---- has his work in many a public building and
sacred edifice; G---- has his books on our tables and in the
circulating libraries; and you have done things, too, in dramatic
literature.
Meanwhile I am an engine-driver on the high seas! I know my work is in
the end as honourable and more useful than yours, but I cannot always
keep back a jealous feeling when I think of the years sliding by, and
nothing done. Nothing ever finished, not even--but there! That chapter
of my life is finished and done with, incomplete as the story will be
always. Often and often, under the stars at midnight, I think that if
she would stand by me, I could be nearer success--I could take hold of
life and wrench away the difficulties of it. And then again comes a
more valiant, manly mood. I say to myself, I will do something yet. I
will reach the heights, and show her that one man at least can stand
on his own feet. I will show her that she need have no need to be
ashamed of him, though no carpet-knight, only an engine-driver. And I
recall that brave song in the "Gay Pretenders":
"_I am not what she'd have me be,
I am no courtier fair to see;
And yet no other in the land,
I swear, shall take my lady's hand!_"
Well, that is my high resolve sometimes, and I will try to keep it in
front of me always, and so do something at last.
Well, well, this is sad talk for the day before Christmas! Come away
from books and trouble, out on deck, where there is a breeze. The
mighty Norseman is ready to cut my hair, and is waiting abaft the
engine-room under the awning.
It is the donkeyman's business, aboard this ship, to cut the officers'
hair. A marvellous man, a good donkeyman. And this one of ours is
multi-marvellous, for he can do anything. He speaks Swedish, Danish,
Russian, German, and excellent English. He has been a blacksmith,
butcher, fireman, greaser, tinsmith, copper-smelter, and now,
_endlich_, _enfin_, at last, a donkeyman. His frame is gigantic, his
strength prodigious. On his chest is a horrific picture of the
Crucifixion in red, blue, and green tattoo. Between the Christ and the
starboard thief is a great triangular scar of smooth, shiny skin. One
of his colossal knees is livid with scars. He tells me the story like
this, keeping time with the click of the scissors.
"When I was a kid I was a wild devil. Why, I ran away with a circus
that came to Stockholm, and my father he came after me and he nearly
kill me. Then, one day, I had on--what you call 'em, mister?--long
shoes, eight, ten feet long--ah! yes, we call 'em _ski_. Well, I go to
jump thirty, forty feet, and I am only twelve years old. The strap
come off my foot and I have not time to shift my balance to the other
foot, and I go over and over, like a stone. I come down on my knee,
and there are beer-bottles on the rocks. The English and Germans, they
drink beer on the rocks--beautiful Swedish beer, better than
Loewenbrau, hein! Well, they take out of my knee fifty pieces of
glass--you see the marks? And my chest it is smashed bad. They cut off
three rib and look inside; this is where they look into my chest. All
right! They put ribs back and box all up. Oh, I was a wild devil when
I was a kid!"
Such is Johann Nicanor Gustaffsen, with his huge strength, frescoed
chest, and pasty face with the jolly blue eyes. I think the women like
him, and, by the hammer of Thor! he can bend a bar of iron across his
knee!