I feel this is delicate ground, even allowing for the natural warmth
of a man who has twins, so I am silent.
"Sometimes," Cook continues, growing pensive as the dough grows stiff,
"sometimes I feel as though I could jump over the side with a ''ere
goes nothink' and a bit of fire-bar in me 'ip-pocket. Same blasted
work, day after day. Monday curry an' rice, fresh meat an' two veg.,
''arriet lane' and spuds. Toosday, salt meat ditto. Wednesday, bully
soup an' pastry. Thursday, similar. Friday, kill a pig an' clean the
galley. Sat'day, ''arriet lane' an' spuds, fresh meat, two veg., an'
tart. Sunday, similar with eggs an' bacon aft. What good do it do?
Who's the better for it all? Not me. ''Ere goes nothink!'"
He stabs the fire savagely through a rivet-hole in the door, and
pushes his cauldrons about. To one who knows Cook all this is merely
the safety-valve lifting. The ceaseless grind tells on the hardest
soul, and you behold the result. In an hour or so he will be smiling
again, and telling me how nearly he married a laundryman's daughter in
Tooley Street, a favourite topic which he tries to invest with pathos.
It appears that, after bidding the fair _blanchisseuse_ good-night, he
chanced one evening to take a walk up and down Liverpool Street, where
he fell into conversation with a girl of prepossessing appearance.
Quite oblivious of the fact that Mademoiselle Soap-Suds had followed
him, "just to see if he was as simple as he looked," he enjoyed
himself immensely for some twenty minutes, and then ran right into
her. He assures me he was "'orror-struck." Like a man, he admitted
that he was conversing with "that--that there." I always like this
part of the tale. His confession seems to him to have been the
uttermost depths of mortal self-abnegation. Alas, the heiress of
Soap-Suds Senior had no appreciation of the queenly attribute of
forgiveness. She boxed his ears, and he never saw her again. "She was
allus a spiteful cat," he observes pensively; "so p'raps the wash 'us
'ud ha' been dear at the price. Still, it _was_ a nice little
business, an' no kid."
As I raise my pot of shaving-water a huge head and shoulders fill up
the upper half of the galley doorway. The mighty Norseman has come for
some "crawfish legs." Like Mr. Peggotty and the crustacea he desires
to consume, he has gone into hot water very black, and emerges very
red. His flannel shirt only partially drapes his illuminated chest--I
see the livid scar plainly. He beams upon me, and asks for a match.
"Well, Donkey," says Cook, "'ow goes it?"; "Donkey" is the mighty
Norseman's professional title aboard ship.
"Aw reet, mon," says he with the fiendish aptitude of his race for
idiom. "How is the Kuck?"
"Oh, splendid. Stand out o' the way, and let me make thy daily bread."
"Daily!" screams the Donkeyman. "Tell that to the marines. I have one
loaf sof' bread three times a week, an' there are seven days to a
week. Daily! Tell that----"
"Find another ship, me man, find another ship if the _Benvenuto_ don't
suit!" And the Mate passes on to the chart-house, where are many dogs.
"Ay, will I, when we get to Swansea," says the Donkey man to me,
beaming. "There are more ships than parish churches, eh? Mister, I
want to speak to you. Come out here." I go outside in the moonlight,
and the mighty Norseman takes hold of the second button of my
patrol-jacket.
"Well, Donkey?"
"I 'ave had a letter from Marianna," he whispers.
"Ah! And so she is----"
"She is Marianna, always Marianna now. A good letter--two and a half
page. See, in German, mister. She write it very well, Marianna." And I
behold a letter in German script.
Tastes differ. I am compelled to believe that passion can flow even
through German script--aye, when it is written by a Swedish maiden of
uncertain caligraphy. Heavenly powers! I turn the sheet to the light
from the galley. Surely no mortal can decipher such a farrago of
alphabetical obscurity. And I do so want to know what Marianna says
for herself. I love Marianna, for the mighty Norseman says she
is small and dainty, and her eyes are grey, and--and--well, the
resemblance doesn't end there; so when I tell my friend, he may laugh
as much as he pleases. But there had been a quarrel (in German
script), and the mighty Norseman had grown mightily misogynistic. His
jolly pasty face had been as long as my arm most of the way out, and
his sentiments, confided to me each day at seven bells, were
discourteous to the sex. But now, behold the cloud lifted: German
script has undone its own villainy, and Johann Nicanor Gustaffsen
beams.
"I will go 'ome this time, mister," he says, folding up the
reconciling hieroglyphics.
"How, Donkey--work it?"
"Not much, you bet. I go to London and take a Swedish boat from
Royal Albert Docks to Gothenburg, train from Gothenburg to Marianna.
Seventeen knots quadruple twin screw. I will be a passenger for one
quid."
"Donkey, did you ever hear of Ibsen--Henrik Ibsen?"
"Ibsen? Noa. What ship is he Chief of, mister?"
"A ship that passes in the night, Donkey."
"What's that, mister?"
How small a thing is literary fame, after all! When one considers the
density of the human atmosphere, the darkness in which the millions
live, is not Ibsen to them a ship passing in the night indeed, a
mysterious light afar off, voyaging they know not where? Perhaps that
is what I meant.
"He wrote plays, Donkey--_Schauspielschreiber_, you know."
"_Oa! Ich hatte nicht daran gedacht!_ 'Ave you a bit of paper and
envelope, mister, please? I will write to Marianna."
"Give her my love, Donkey."
"Oh-a-yes, please! I'll watch it! What? You cut me out?" A rumbling
laugh comes up from that mighty chest, he beams upon me, and plunges
into the galley for his crawfish legs.