Mug of hot water in hand, I pick my way aft among the derrick chains,
and descend to my room. Have I yet described it? Nine feet six by
seven wide by seven high At the for'ard end a bunk overtopped by two
ports looking out upon the main deck. At the after end a settee over
which is my book-case. A chest of drawers, a shelf, a mirror, a framed
photograph, a bottle-rack, and a shaving-strop adorn the starboard
bulkhead. A door, placed midway in the opposite side, is hung with
many clothes. A curtain screens my slumbers, and a ventilator in the
ceiling chills my toes when turned to the wind. Ceiling and walls are
painted dead white, with red wainscotting round the settee. Two
engravings grace the only vacant spots on my walls--one a wild piece
of wood and moorland, the road shining white after a late-autumn rain,
with a gypsy van showing sharp against the lowering sky; the other a
wintry lane with a waggon labouring in the snow. A patrol-jacket and a
uniform cap hang over a pillow-case half full of dirty clothes. Such
is my home at sea.
Look round while I shave. Quite possibly some may wonder that I should
affect such commonplace pictures. They cost me threepence each, in
Swansea. Well, I am not concerned with their merit as pieces of
decorative art. When I look at that wet road and rainy sky, I go back
in thought to the days when I lived near Barnet, and the world was
mine on Sunday. I recall how I was wont to throw off my morning
lethargy, get astride my bicycle, a pipe in one pocket and a book in
the other, and plunge into the open country beyond Hadley Heath. It
had rained, very likely, in the morning, and the roads were clean and
fresh, and the trees were sweet after their bath. And as the afternoon
closed in I would sit on a gate in some unfrequented lane and watch
the red fog darken over London town. I was happy then, as few lads
are, I think. Those long silences, those solitary communings; were
_mind-building_ all the time. So, when I came away from home and
settled in Chelsea, and heard men talk, I felt that I, too, had
something to say.
In like manner my snowscape takes me back to the time when I was a
mechanic, engine-building near Aylesbury. We lived half a mile from
the works, at an old inn, and we began at six o'clock. In winter time,
I remember, we would snuggle into the big back kitchen, with its huge
cauldron of pig-meat swinging over the open fire, and its barrels
containing evil things like stoats and ferrets, to put on our boots;
and when we opened the door, two feet of snow would fall in upon the
floor. How well I remember that silent trudge up the bleak Birmingham
Road to the works! There were always two broad ruts in the white
roadway--the mail-coach had passed silently, at two o'clock. Cold,
cold, cold! A white silence, save for our dark figures shuffling
softly through the snow. And then a long eleven-hour day.