Once more I am writing "homeward bound." Homeward bound! Outside the
Channel fog is coming down to enfold us, the wind is cold, my stock of
fruit, laid in at Las Palmas is done, and George the Fourth is
growling through the ventilator, "T' Longships, mister!"
Longships--that's twelve hours' run from the Mumble Head, the great
white lenticular lenses of which fling wide-sweeping spokes of light
across the tumbling waters of the Channel. The Skipper is cautious,
has been twenty-two hours on bridge and in chart-room; refuses to go
ahead until he can locate Lundy. We heard, in Grand Canary, that the
big White Star _Satanic_ is lying near the Lizard, back broken, total
loss, heroic passengers all safely landed. Wonderful people,
passengers. If they keep hysteria at a distance for a few hours, they
are bravoed from one end of the Empire to the other. The _Satanic's_
engineers? The Empire has overlooked them, I suppose, which is their
own peculiar glory.
Homeward bound! "Finishing," too, for three of us. Chief, Second, and
Fourth are leaving when we get in, and I shall be alone for a few
days. That means work, I fear, and no joyful run up to Paddington this
time. Well, well, next time _I_ finish, and we shall foregather in the
Walk once more. I was thinking, only a day or two back, that Chelsea
Embankment must be in its glory now, glory of early spring. That noble
line of granite coping and twinkling lights. How often have we walked
down past the Barracks from Knightsbridge, taken pot-luck at the
coffee-stall at the corner, and then fared homeward between the river
and the trees! Ah, me! To do it once again--that is what I long for.
In the meanwhile, the Longships are away astern, the Skipper has found
Lundy, a grey hump on the port bow in the morning light, and we are
"full ahead" for the Mumbles. Sailors' bags are drying on the
cylinder-tops, Chief, Second, and Fourth are fixing up a "blow-out" up
town to-morrow night; mess-room steward is polishing the brasswork
till it shines like gold; and I am writing to my very good friend. We
are all very cheerful, too; no "sailors' gloom" in our faces as we go
on watch. George the Fourth (I cannot imagine what the ship will be
like without him) is making himself ridiculous by doing everything for
"t' last time." "T' last time!" he mutters as he starts the evaporator
and adjusts the vapour-cock. He is taking the temperatures for the
last time. He is going up to South Shields for his "tickut," by which
he means a first-class certificate of competency issued by the Board
of Trade. That is George the Fourth's utmost ambition. He is a man
then; he is licensed to take any steamer of any tonnage into any sea
on the chart. He has, moreover, a certain prestige, has this skylarky
youth, when he gets his "chief's tickut." Ladies who preside over
saloon bars will try to lure him into matrimony. He will grow (I
hope) a little steadier, and fall really and truly in love.
My colleague the Second, he intends to work ashore and sleep at home.
The clergyman's daughter, I imagine, will come more and more into the
scheme of things, and the mother he loves so well will give him her
blessing. So each, you see, has a clearly defined plan, while I drift
along, planless, ambitionless, smoking many pipes. I have been trying
to think out something practicable. Am I to drift always about the
world, a mere piece of flotsam on Swansea tide? Or am I to sit down
once more in Chelsea, hand and brain running to seed, while the world
spins on outside? I must think out a plan. And I must school myself to
cancel all plans beginning "If she will--if only." Why cannot I rise
to some decent sense of self-respect, to say, as says the man in "The
Last Ride Together":
"_Take back the hope you gave,--I claim
Only a memory of the same._"
That's manly--pre-eminently English, in fact. But, meanwhile, I drift
planless.
The mighty Norseman, too, in his own sinewy Hyperborean style, is full
of joy. His jolly pasty face beams joyously upon me. He will be
"a passenger for one quid" from London to Gothenburg, thence to
Stockholm, and Marianna. The engine-room is bulging, in places, with
the contraband goods he is bringing home for Marianna. Pieces of silk
"for the Signorina," as the handsome old huxter-lady at Canary purrs
in our ears; bottles of Florida water, mule canaries, and Herrick's
own divine Canary Sack, to which he so often bade "farewell." All
these for the dainty maiden who indulges in German Script. God speed
you, oh, mighty Norseman! May your frescoed bosom never prove
unfaithful to your grey-eyed maiden. I, at least, have been the better
for having known you--a ship passing in the night.
And so we come to the Mumble Head.