I was awakened by something rattling outside my open window-port,
wakened to a small tragedy. A circular wire rat-trap, depending from a
line held by someone on the poop, and containing two frantic rats,
dangled against the opening. Alas! how they ran round and round and
round! The cause of all their agony, a piece of decayed fish and a
fragment of mouldy cheese, was left untouched as they dangled before
me. The voice of my friend the Mate is audible down my ventilator. He
is arguing with the Steward, one Nicholas, of whom you have heard.
Said Nicholas is protesting in his clickety Graeco-English fashion,
that the pelt of a drowned rat (_dronded raht_, Nicholas loquitur) is
worth less than that of one skinned alive. To which horrible doctrine
my friend the Mate opposes a blustering Irish humaneness issuing in
"Dammit, ye shan't!" Rats, meanwhile dangling, they as well as their
fate hanging uncertain. At last they are lowered. (The Mate talking,
I think, over his shoulder at Nicholas, who stands, probably in
contemplative fashion, legs apart, face serious, brain calculating
income derivable from rats skinned alive.) The line rising in a
minute, I turn on my elbow to witness the end. Alas! _Helas!! Ach
Himmel!!!_ How are the mighty fallen! Two grey shining lumps, each
with tapering tail dropped limply through the bottom; fish, cheese,
and rodents all on one dead level now, given over to corruption. Up,
up--I hear the trap grounded on the poop over my head. I sigh as I
climb out and wash. I rather like rats. The Grey One in the tunnel is
an old chum of mine. I have never killed one yet, though often even
Grey One has been chased up and down, in fun. He, sitting on a
stringer and twirling his whiskers, has "views," I think, about Men
with Sticks, _his_ conception of the Devil and all his angels.
John Thomas, bursting in with hot water for shaving and information
concerning breakfast in the cabin, interrupts my rat-reverie. It is
Sunday morning.
"Eight o'clock, sir. Steward say, sir, will you have breakfast with
the Chief Officer?"
"No one else aboard?"
"Second Officer's in the galley, sir."
"Where?"
"Galley, sir." A snigger from John Thomas. "Come aboard early, sir."
"Oh! Tell the Steward 'Yes, with pleasure.'"
So! I finish dressing leisurely, donning patrol-jacket and uniform
cap, and "turn out." It is a calm Sabbath morning. Not yet have the
mists rolled from the heights which frown upon us all around, but the
sun glitters on the docked shipping, silent save for the flapping of
sea gulls and the clank of some fresh-water pump. With a glance of
homage towards the sun, I go below for my inspection. Boilers, fires
banked in the donkey-boilers over weekend, bilges, sea-cocks all in
order; I am at liberty to enjoy my day of rest. Nicholas, in white
drill coat, shining silver buttons, and shore-boots of burnished
bronze hue, glides aft with a dish (held high, in the professional
manner) covered with a dome of gleaming pewter. Two youths on the
quay, fishing hopelessly for insignificant dock carp, watch with
open-mouthed awe. My own buttons of yellow metal, linen collar, and
badge _de rigueur_, pass a similar scrutiny as I follow him to the
saloon.
The saloon, compared with our own quarters, is sumptuously furnished.
Panelled in hard woods, white ceiling with shining nickel rods and
brackets, carpeted floor and ruby-plush upholstering--into such a
palace I step to take breakfast with my friend the Mate. He is already
entrenched behind the pewter dome, Nicholas gliding round giving the
final touch of art to the preparations. The subject of skinned rats
has vanished to make room for the serious business of his life.
"Good-mornin', Mr. McAlnwick. Sit there! We are alone to-day, as ye
see. Nicholas!"
Nicholas is a believer in ritual. He is tolling his little brass
hand-bell just as though everyone was here. In a minute he reappears.
"Sir?"
"Is Mr. Hammerton aboard?" A snigger from John Thomas, installed _pro
tem._ in the pantry as the Steward's aide-de-camp.
"'S in de galley, mister."
"Does he want any breakfast?"
"No, sir. 'S 'sleep in de galley." Another snigger.
"What's the matter with that boy?" thunders my friend the Mate,
lifting the dome from ham and eggs.
"He is merely cursed with a sense of humour, Mr. Honna," I observe,
and we avoid conversational rock and shoals until we are ensconced in
his private berth.
"The fact is, Mr. McAlnwick, Mr. Hammerton's a very foolish young
feller. Help yourself to some tobacco. Knowin' as I do that when he
went ashore last night he had twenty-six pounds ten in his cash
pocket, I wonder he isn't lyin' at the bottom o' the dock instead of
in the galley. He will not bank his surplus. And he _will_ get drunk."
"What's at the bottom of it all, Mr. Honna?"
"I'll show ye!" With a hoarse whisper he rises, tip-toes swiftly along
the corridor to the Second Officer's room, and returns with a
photograph.
Baby! Is she another milestone nearer to Alsatia, then? My pipe
remains unlit as I gaze at the cheap provincial photograph of a girl
with large eyes and a sensuous mouth.
Mr. Honna pushes his cap back and stares at me.
"What! D'ye know her?"
"It's Baby," I answer, laying the thing down. "Baby!"
"He's engaged to her."
"Since when?"
"Since--Gawd knows--last Monday, I believe."
I reach for the matches, and recount to the Mate my knowledge of Baby.
His nose wrinkles up, his eyes diminish to steel-blue points of fire,
and he nods his head slowly to my tale.
"Same old yarn. Oh, Mr. McAlnwick, are there not queer things come in
with the tide? Now listen, while I tell ye. 'Tis what they all do.
They dangle round bars, all at loose ends, they get their master's
tickets, and they marry barmaids. Then when the command comes along,
the woman keeps the man down in the mud. 'Twas with me, too. I was
engaged to a Nova Scotia girl--two Nova Scotia girls--different times.
I'd roll round town, givin' 'em to understand I was master, take 'em
out drivin' in a buggy Sunday evenin', makin' a fool o' meself fine.
When the crash came--oh, Mr. McAlnwick, make use of your advantages
now yer're at sea!--when the crash came, we were just ready to sail,
an' I stayed by the ship. But next time 'twould be the same. I
couldn't be acquainted with a girl for a week without proposin'
matrimony! Mr. McAlnwick, ye mustn't laugh. 'Tis the truth. Even
now--but why talk? Ye know my sympathetic nature. But this seems to be
serious. So she's the barmaid at the Stormy Petrel, is she? Humph!"
"His brains must be addled," I observe, "not to see----"
"Ah! but ye're young, Mr. McAlnwick! _That's_ no hindrance in the
worrld to--to such as him. _Oh_, dear no!"
"Then such as he have a very low standard of morality."
"Mr. McAlnwick, now listen. When ye've been sent to sea at twelve year
old as apprentice, an' ploughed the oceans of the worrld for five
years in the foc'sle, when ye've been bullied an' damned by fifty
different skippers on fifty different trades as third and second mate,
when ye've split yer head studyin' for yer ticket, when ye've got it
and ye're glad to go second mate at seven pounds ten a month, when ye
see men o' less merit promoted because they marry skippers' daughters
while you are walkin' the bridge--what 'ud ye do?"
"I don't know, mister." I am taken aback by the velocity of the
question, by the Mate's earnestness.
"Ye'd turn callous or religious, or go mad! Ye see, Mr. McAlnwick,
there's a lot ye miss, though ye won't admit it. Ye come to sea and ye
meet the cloth, but ye don't realise their trainin'. Ye laugh at us
for our queer ways, such as never walkin' on the poop over the
Skipper's head, never askin' for another helpin', never arguin' the
point, an' such like. But consider that man's trainin'! Ye cannot?
Ye've been brought up ashore, ye've had opportunities for studyin' and
conversin' with edyecated people, an' ye're frettin' for some young
lady, as I can see--don't deny it, I saw Postie bring the letter--and
ye wouldn't touch the likes o' _this_ with a pair o' tongs. But with
Mr. Hammerton 'tis different, do ye not see?"
"Yes, I see, a little. But you yourself, now----"
"Me? Oh, 'twas a special providence preserved me, Mr. McAlnwick. I was
waitin' for a command at the time, and I was unable to get out o' the
bargain. But ye know my wife."
Now, there is no doubt in my mind, after some thought, that the Chief
Officer was right in insisting on the unspanned gulf between the old
style officer and the men of our sphere. Heavenly powers! What have I
not seen, now that the Mate has reminded me? The fatuous ignorance,
the bigoted conceit, the nauseous truckling to "the Old Man," the
debased intellect. And yet the Second Officer does not always lie in
drunken stupor on the galley bench. I call to mind a time when he took
a violin and played to me as the sun went down across the foam-flecked
sea. Let us remember him by that rather than by his present state, and
leave the rest to God.