These towns of the Antipodes, not so great then as they are now, took an
interest in the shipping, the running links with “home,” whose numbers
confirmed the sense of their growing importance. They made it part and
parcel of their daily interests. This was especially the case in Sydney,
where, from the heart of the fair city, down the vista of important
streets, could be seen the wool-clippers lying at the Circular Quay—no
walled prison-house of a dock that, but the integral part of one of the
finest, most beautiful, vast, and safe bays the sun ever shone upon. Now
great steam-liners lie at these berths, always reserved for the sea
aristocracy—grand and imposing enough ships, but here to-day and gone
next week; whereas the general cargo, emigrant, and passenger clippers of
my time, rigged with heavy spars, and built on fine lines, used to remain
for months together waiting for their load of wool. Their names attained
the dignity of household words. On Sundays and holidays the citizens
trooped down, on visiting bent, and the lonely officer on duty solaced
himself by playing the cicerone—especially to the citizenesses with
engaging manners and a well-developed sense of the fun that may be got
out of the inspection of a ship’s cabins and state-rooms. The tinkle of
more or less untuned cottage pianos floated out of open stern-ports till
the gas-lamps began to twinkle in the streets, and the ship’s
night-watchman, coming sleepily on duty after his unsatisfactory day
slumbers, hauled down the flags and fastened a lighted lantern at the
break of the gangway. The night closed rapidly upon the silent ships
with their crews on shore. Up a short, steep ascent by the King’s Head
pub., patronized by the cooks and stewards of the fleet, the voice of a
man crying “Hot saveloys!” at the end of George Street, where the cheap
eating-houses (sixpence a meal) were kept by Chinamen (Sun-kum-on’s was
not bad), is heard at regular intervals. I have listened for hours to
this most pertinacious pedlar (I wonder whether he is dead or has made a
fortune), while sitting on the rail of the old _Duke of S—_ (she’s dead,
poor thing! a violent death on the coast of New Zealand), fascinated by
the monotony, the regularity, the abruptness of the recurring cry, and so
exasperated at the absurd spell, that I wished the fellow would choke
himself to death with a mouthful of his own infamous wares.
A stupid job, and fit only for an old man, my comrades used to tell me,
to be the night-watchman of a captive (though honoured) ship. And
generally the oldest of the able seamen in a ship’s crew does get it.
But sometimes neither the oldest nor any other fairly steady seaman is
forthcoming. Ships’ crews had the trick of melting away swiftly in those
days. So, probably on account of my youth, innocence, and pensive habits
(which made me sometimes dilatory in my work about the rigging), I was
suddenly nominated, in our chief mate Mr. B—’s most sardonic tones, to
that enviable situation. I do not regret the experience. The night
humours of the town descended from the street to the waterside in the
still watches of the night: larrikins rushing down in bands to settle
some quarrel by a stand-up fight, away from the police, in an indistinct
ring half hidden by piles of cargo, with the sounds of blows, a groan now
and then, the stamping of feet, and the cry of “Time!” rising suddenly
above the sinister and excited murmurs; night-prowlers, pursued or
pursuing, with a stifled shriek followed by a profound silence, or
slinking stealthily alongside like ghosts, and addressing me from the
quay below in mysterious tones with incomprehensible propositions. The
cabmen, too, who twice a week, on the night when the A.S.N. Company’s
passenger-boat was due to arrive, used to range a battalion of blazing
lamps opposite the ship, were very amusing in their way. They got down
from their perches and told each other impolite stories in racy language,
every word of which reached me distinctly over the bulwarks as I sat
smoking on the main-hatch. On one occasion I had an hour or so of a most
intellectual conversation with a person whom I could not see distinctly,
a gentleman from England, he said, with a cultivated voice, I on deck and
he on the quay sitting on the case of a piano (landed out of our hold
that very afternoon), and smoking a cigar which smelt very good. We
touched, in our discourse, upon science, politics, natural history, and
operatic singers. Then, after remarking abruptly, “You seem to be rather
intelligent, my man,” he informed me pointedly that his name was Mr.
Senior, and walked off—to his hotel, I suppose. Shadows! Shadows! I
think I saw a white whisker as he turned under the lamp-post. It is a
shock to think that in the natural course of nature he must be dead by
now. There was nothing to object to in his intelligence but a little
dogmatism maybe. And his name was Senior! Mr. Senior!
The position had its drawbacks, however. One wintry, blustering, dark
night in July, as I stood sleepily out of the rain under the break of the
poop something resembling an ostrich dashed up the gangway. I say
ostrich because the creature, though it ran on two legs, appeared to help
its progress by working a pair of short wings; it was a man, however,
only his coat, ripped up the back and flapping in two halves above his
shoulders, gave him that weird and fowl-like appearance. At least, I
suppose it was his coat, for it was impossible to make him out
distinctly. How he managed to come so straight upon me, at speed and
without a stumble over a strange deck, I cannot imagine. He must have
been able to see in the dark better than any cat. He overwhelmed me with
panting entreaties to let him take shelter till morning in our
forecastle. Following my strict orders, I refused his request, mildly at
first, in a sterner tone as he insisted with growing impudence.
“For God’s sake let me, matey! Some of ’em are after me—and I’ve got
hold of a ticker here.”
“You clear out of this!” I said.
“Don’t be hard on a chap, old man!” he whined pitifully.
“Now then, get ashore at once. Do you hear?”
Silence. He appeared to cringe, mute, as if words had failed him through
grief; then—bang! came a concussion and a great flash of light in which
he vanished, leaving me prone on my back with the most abominable black
eye that anybody ever got in the faithful discharge of duty. Shadows!
Shadows! I hope he escaped the enemies he was fleeing from to live and
flourish to this day. But his fist was uncommonly hard and his aim
miraculously true in the dark.
There were other experiences, less painful and more funny for the most
part, with one amongst them of a dramatic complexion; but the greatest
experience of them all was Mr. B—, our chief mate himself.
He used to go ashore every night to foregather in some hotel’s parlour
with his crony, the mate of the barque _Cicero_, lying on the other side
of the Circular Quay. Late at night I would hear from afar their
stumbling footsteps and their voices raised in endless argument. The
mate of the _Cicero_ was seeing his friend on board. They would continue
their senseless and muddled discourse in tones of profound friendship for
half an hour or so at the shore end of our gangway, and then I would hear
Mr. B— insisting that he must see the other on board his ship. And away
they would go, their voices, still conversing with excessive amity, being
heard moving all round the harbour. It happened more than once that they
would thus perambulate three or four times the distance, each seeing the
other on board his ship out of pure and disinterested affection. Then,
through sheer weariness, or perhaps in a moment of forgetfulness, they
would manage to part from each other somehow, and by-and-by the planks of
our long gangway would bend and creak under the weight of Mr. B— coming
on board for good at last.
On the rail his burly form would stop and stand swaying.
“Watchman!”
“Sir.”
A pause.
He waited for a moment of steadiness before negotiating the three steps
of the inside ladder from rail to deck; and the watchman, taught by
experience, would forbear offering help which would be received as an
insult at that particular stage of the mate’s return. But many times I
trembled for his neck. He was a heavy man.
Then with a rush and a thump it would be done. He never had to pick
himself up; but it took him a minute or so to pull himself together after
the descent.
“Watchman!”
“Sir.”
“Captain aboard?”
“Yes, sir.”
Pause.
“Dog aboard?”
“Yes, sir.”
Pause.
Our dog was a gaunt and unpleasant beast, more like a wolf in poor health
than a dog, and I never noticed Mr. B— at any other time show the
slightest interest in the doings of the animal. But that question never
failed.
“Let’s have your arm to steady me along.”
I was always prepared for that request. He leaned on me heavily till
near enough the cabin-door to catch hold of the handle. Then he would
let go my arm at once.
“That’ll do. I can manage now.”
And he could manage. He could manage to find his way into his berth,
light his lamp, get into his bed—ay, and get out of it when I called him
at half-past five, the first man on deck, lifting the cup of morning
coffee to his lips with a steady hand, ready for duty as though he had
virtuously slept ten solid hours—a better chief officer than many a man
who had never tasted grog in his life. He could manage all that, but
could never manage to get on in life.
Only once he failed to seize the cabin-door handle at the first grab. He
waited a little, tried again, and again failed. His weight was growing
heavier on my arm. He sighed slowly.
“D—n that handle!”
Without letting go his hold of me he turned about, his face lit up bright
as day by the full moon.
“I wish she were out at sea,” he growled savagely.
“Yes, sir.”
I felt the need to say something, because he hung on to me as if lost,
breathing heavily.
“Ports are no good—ships rot, men go to the devil!”