An Ocean Tramp Part 7

"The secret of a joyful life is to live dangerously." Perhaps one may judge of a man's power by his reception of that aphorism. For me, at any rate, there is but unconditional a.s.sent. To live dangerously! How nauseous to me is the maternal anxiety of some of my friends. They are so anxious for me. It is such a dangerous trade. And so on.

I have been scanning a newspaper left in the mess-room, and it has provoked me to further thought. I see, in retrospect, those myriads of nicely dressed, G.o.d-fearing suburbans in their upholstered local trains, each with his face turned towards his daily sheet, each with his scaly hide of prejudice clamped about his soul, each placidly settling the world's politics and religion to his own satisfaction, each taking his daily dram of news from the same still. I look into my own copy and read on one page of a society bazaar where Lady So-and-So and the Hon. Alicia So-and-So "presided over a very tasteful stall of dwarf myrtle-trees," etc.

In another column I am informed that some person or other, of whom I have never heard, has gone to Wiesbaden. The leading article is devoted to a eulogium of some football team, the special article asks, "Can we live on twopence a day?" You cannot imagine how unutterably turbid all this appears to me, out on the green Atlantic. It is Sunday, and so we rest; but yesterday afternoon I was out in one of the lifeboats, line-fis.h.i.+ng for cod. The great green rollers came up from the south, and the boat rode the billows like a c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l. How I would like to have had some of those city folk with me in that up-ended lifeboat, their hands red with the cold sea water and scarred with the line as it ran through their fingers to the pull of a fourteen-pounder. Dwarf myrtle-trees! Wiesbaden! G.o.d! Let them come below with me, let me take them into our boilers and crush them down among those furred and salt-scarred tubes, and make them work. They used to tell me, when I said I loathed football, that I did not know I was alive. Do they, I wonder?

Yes, the newspaper came to me like a breath of foul city air. Very much in the same way I was affected by a remark made to me by my friend the Mate. "Where I live," said he, "one child won't play with another if its father gets five s.h.i.+llings a week more'n t'other's father." We were talking Socialism, if I remember rightly, and that was his argument against its feasibility. I did not notice the argument; I fell to thinking how odd it must be to live in such an atmosphere. How is it we never have it in Chelsea? I have never been the less welcome because my host or hostess has as many pounds a week as I have a year. My old friend of my 'prentice days--dear old Tom, the foreman, and Jack Williams, the slinger, they get no colder welcome from us because they live in Hammersmith or Whitechapel. Have we ourselves not seen in our rooms rich and poor, artist and mechanic, writer and labourer? Nay, have we not had German clerk and Chinese aristocrat, German baron and Russian nihilist? What is it that permits us to dispense with that sn.o.bbery which seems almost a necessary of life to the people where the old Mate lives! I think it is lack of imagination in our women-folk, and the fetish of the home. For surely the utter ant.i.thesis of "home" is that same "dangerous life." These young men who economise and grow stingy in their desperate endeavour to establish a "home nest," some "Acacia Villa" in Wood Green or Croydon--what can they know of living dangerously? Their whole existence is a fleeing from danger. Safe callings, safe investments, safe drainage, safe transit, safe morality, safe in the arms of Jesus.

_Is_ it lack of imagination?

XVI

So we, who foregathered yesterday afternoon in the s.h.i.+pping office, are lashed together for another four months. A motley group, my friend. Outside I stood, note-book in hand, trying to find a spare fireman who wanted a job. A mob of touts, sharks, and pimps crowded round me, hustling each other, and then turning away from my call, "Any firemen here?" In despair I go over to the "Federation Office,"

where all seamen are registered in the books of life insurance, where they pay their premiums, and await possible engineers. I consult with the grave, elderly man in the office, and he asks for firemen in the bare, cold waiting-room. One man comes up, a pale, nervous chap, clean-shaven and quiet. I take his "Continuous Discharge" book, flick it open at the last entry--trawling! The last foreign-going voyage is dated 1902, "S. Africa," "Voyage not completed." I hand it back.

"Won't do," I remark shortly, and look round for others. The man looks at the grave, elderly person, who takes the book. "Give him a chance,"

says the latter, in his low, official voice. "Look--S. Africa. The man's been serving his country. Give him a chance." "I would if he'd promise not to get enteric when we reach port," I say. "Never 'ad it yet, sir," says the man, and I take his book. "_Benvenuto_. Hurry up.

She's signing on now." He runs across the road, and I follow.

When I reach the s.h.i.+pping office they are waiting for me. Behind the counter and seated beside the clerk is the Captain, writing our "advance notes." The clerk asks if all are present; we shuffle up closer, and he begins to read the articles to which we x.x.xX subscribe--signing our death-warrants, we call it. No one listens to him--he himself is paring his nails, or arranging some other papers as he intones the sentences which are more familiar to him and to us than the Lord's Prayer to a clergyman. Then, when he has finished, each one comes up for catechism--carpenter, sailors, donkeyman, fireman, all in due order. Then the officers. "Donkeyman!" calls the clerk. A huge, muscular figure with a red handkerchief round his bull throat ceases arguing with a fireman, plunges forward, and seizes the pen. He is my friend of the last voyage, the mighty Norseman.

"What is your name?"

"Johann Nicanor Gustaffsen."

"Where were you born?"

"Stockholm."

"How old are you?"

"Thirty-two."

"Where do you live?"

"Ryder Street, Swansea."

"Any advance?"

"Yes."

And so on with each of us.

"Don't forget," says the clerk from the depths of a three-and-a-half-inch collar, "to be on the s.h.i.+p at nine o'clock to-morrow morning." And we troop out to make room for another crew, meet yet another coming to be paid off at the other counter, wish we were they, and eventually reach the s.h.i.+p.

Strange scenes sometimes, in that s.h.i.+pping office, or, for that matter, in any s.h.i.+pping office. I shall not forget that forlorn little lad we had once engaged for mess-room steward at two pounds five a month, with his red little nose and the bullied look in his eyes. It was when he went up to sign, and answer the questions given above.

What was his name? "_Christmas Hedge_." All turned and stared at the snivelling urchin. Where was he born? "_In a field_."

The walls, too, interest a man like me. There are notices in all the tongues of Europe on the walls--notices of sunken wrecks, of masters fined for submerging their loaded discs, of white lights in the China seas altered to green ones by the Celestial Government, of transport-medals awaiting their owners, of how to send money home from Salonika or Copenhagen or Yokohama or Singapore. Near the door, moreover, is a plain wooden money-box with no appeal for alms thereon--merely a printed slip pasted along the base of it: "_There is sorrow on the sea._" And often and often I have seen grey chief officers and beardless "fourths" drop their sixpences into the box, for the sake of that sorrow on the sea.

And now it is night--our last night ash.o.r.e. The Second Engineer asks me to go up town with him. The Chief has gone to see his wife home to Cardiff, and George goes on watch at eight-bells. So for the last time I don a linen collar and sh.o.r.e clothes, and we go up town.

We meet sundry youth from the s.h.i.+p-yard; they are going to that iridescent music-hall into which I plunged six weeks ago when we came in. We pay our sixpences for two hours' high-speed enjoyment, "early performance"; enjoyment being sold nowadays very much like electricity--at a high voltage but small cost per unit. Scarcely my sort, I fear, but what would you? I cannot be hypercritical on this our last night ash.o.r.e. And so I strive to feel as if I were sorry to go away, as if parting were indeed that sweet sorrow I have heard it called, as if I really cared a sc.r.a.p for the things they care for.

True, I feel the parting from my friend, and it is no sweet sorrow either. But that is at Paddington, when the train moves, and our hands are gripped tightly--a faint foretaste of that last terror, when he or I shall pa.s.s away into the shadows and the other will be left alone for ever. It is when I ponder upon that scene that I realize what our friends.h.i.+p has become, that I realize how paltry every other familiar or even relative appears by comparison. Let me treasure this friends.h.i.+p carefully, healthfully, old friend, for, by my love of life, it is rare enough in these our modern times.

I have been wondering why this is--I think it is money, or rather business. Have you noticed how business _dehumanises_ men? I count over in my mind dozens of men whom I know, men of age, experience, and wealth, who almost demand that I should envy them by the very way they walk the city streets. They are prosperous, they imagine. I, strolling idly through those same city streets, looking at the show, studying their faces, defied them, and said to myself, "You gentlemen are not human beings--you are business men." Not that I would tell them this; they would not understand, though they are guilty of occasional lucid intervals. They will admit, in a superior tone, that business cuts them off from a great deal. But it is evident they intend sticking to the irrefutable logic of the bank-balance. For them there is no friends.h.i.+p like ours. They could not afford it, bless you. How are they to know that you won't "do" them or borrow of them? No, no. The world, for them, is a place where they have a chance of besting you and me, of getting more money than you or I, of "prospering," as they call it, at another's expense.

If I say to one of these men, "I want no fortune; I have what I need now by working for it," he looks at me as though I were stark mad. If I say, to poor Sandy Jackson, for instance, who has only one lung and is mad on "getting more business"--if I say to him, "You advise me to go in for business on my own account, Sandy. Very good. What does that mean? It means that I must become _dehumanised_, or fail. I must have no friends who are of no use to me. I must waste no time reading or writing or dreaming dreams. I must eat no dinners abroad which are not likely to bring in business. I must toil early and late, go on spare regimen, drink little, dress uncomfortably, live respectably--for what, Sandy? For a few hundreds or thousands of pounds. May I let up then? Oh, no, Sandy, that is the business man's mirage, that letting up. He never lets up until he is let down--into the tomb. It would be against his principles. Well, Sandy, I see you're at it and apparently killing yourself by it, but I wish to be excused. It isn't good enough. I want my friends, my books, my dreams most of all. Take your business; I'll to my dreams again."

So, while we sit in the gaudy playhouse, I dream my dreams of the great books I want to write, the orations I want to deliver, the lessons I want to teach, and I wonder how long my time of probation will be. Strange that I should never make any allowance for the dangerous nature of my calling. This may be my last night ash.o.r.e for ever. What of it? Well, it will be a nuisance to leave those books, lectures, and lessons to be written, given, and taught by somebody else; but I don't really mind. I only want to go along steadily to the end, and when that comes shake my friend by the hand and say "Farewell." It is plain, is it not, that I am no business man?

I am still dreaming when our noisy little crowd elbow their way out and pa.s.s up the street into a tavern. Here my friend the Second is known. He pats the fair barmaid on the cheeks, chucks the dark one under the chin, calls the landlady "old dear," and orders drinks _in extenso_. I am introduced to one and all, and another girl, neither dark nor fair, emerges from an inner room for my especial regard. We are invited within, and with gla.s.s in hand and girl on knee, we toast our coming voyage. One by one the girls are kissed; the landlady jocularly asks why she is left out, and a sense of justice makes me salute her chastely. You see, old man, this is the last night ash.o.r.e.

We bid them "good-bye," they wish us good luck, and we depart to our own place once more. The Second is silent. He has said good-bye to his girl--he hung back a moment as we left the tavern. And there is something burning in my brain, just behind the eyeb.a.l.l.s. I have not said good-bye to my girl. Or rather I mean--but I cannot formulate to myself just what I do mean at the time. I only feel, as I turn in, that I ought to have told my friend all that happened when I met her, a month ago, and that, after all, nothing really matters, and the sooner I get away to sea again the better.

XVII

_Cleared for sea._ _s.s. Benvenuto, for S. Africa._

It is ten-thirty this clear, cold December day; the sun s.h.i.+nes on the turquoise patch of open Channel which I can see from the bridge where I am testing the whistle; the tide is rising; the last cases of general cargo are being lowered into Number Two Hold, and from all along the deck rise little jets of steam, for the Mate is already trying the windla.s.s. Once more we are "cleared for sea." In an hour's time the tug _Implacable_, mingling her frenzied little yelp with our deeper note, will pull us out into the middle of the dock, then round, and slowly through the big gates, into the locks. The hatches are already on the after combings, and sailors are spreading the tarpaulin covers over them and battening down with the big wood wedges.

"Steam for eleven o'clock," said the Chief last night. Right! The gauges are trembling over the 150 mark now--enough to get away with.

"Open everything out, Mr. McAlnwick," says the Second as he strolls round for a last look before going on deck. I carry out the order, glance at the water-level in the boilers, and then go for'ard to see how many of my firemen are missing. They should all be here by now.

No, two short still. Old Androwsky rears himself up and points with the stem of his pipe at the quay. The s.h.i.+p has moved away, and the two men with sailors' bags and mattresses are watching us. They will get aboard in the locks.

The Skipper is in uniform on the bridge, and the Mate is, as usual, in a hurry. The mooring winch is groaning horribly as she hauls on a cable running from the stern to the quay while the tug pulls our head slowly round. Right down to the centre of the loading disc now. The Second Mate rushes to the fiddle-top, and shouts for "more steam"--the winch has stuck--and a howl from below tells him that the donkeyman is doing his best. As I go below again the sharp clang of the telegraph strikes my ear--"_Stand by._"

The steam is warming the engine-room, and there is, in the atmosphere down here, a peculiar pungent smell, always present when getting away.

It is, I suppose, the smell of steam, if steam has any smell. "Give 'er a turn, Mr. McAlnwick." The Chief looks down from the deck-door, and I answer "All right, sir." We are moving into the locks now, and as I start the little high-speed reversing engine the telegraph pointer moves round to "Slow ahead" with a sharp clang. "Ash-pit dampers off!" cries George the Fourth, and runs to close the drain-c.o.c.ks. There is a sudden loud hammering as I open the throttle, and she moves away under her own steam. Then she sticks on a dead-centre, _a point du mort_, as the French _mecaniciens_ say, and George rushes to open the intermediate valve, kicking open the water-service c.o.c.k as he goes past it. At last she goes away, slow, solemn, and steamy, three pairs of eyes watching every link and bar for "trouble." "All right?" asks the Chief from above, and the Second, standing by the staircase, answers "All right, sir." Then "clang" goes the telegraph round to "Stop," and I close the throttle. "We're in the locks," says George, fiddling with an oil-cup which is loose on the intermediate pressure rod. "We're in the locks, and we soon shall cross the bar." And as he busies himself with one thing and another he hums the tune which has swept over Swansea like some contagious disease of late:

"_When there isn't a girl about, You do feel lonely!

When there isn't a girl about To call your only!

You're absolutely on the shelf, Don't know what to do with yourself, When there isn't a girl about!_"

"Said good-bye to her, Mac?" he asks. I nod evasively. He has been home to Sunderland since we got in, and I found him asleep on the gallery floor, with his head in the ash-pit, the night of his return.

He is better now, and since I know he has brought back a photograph from the north, I am in hopes of his having fallen in love. (_Clang!

Slow ahead._) It is high time, I think. His const.i.tution won't stand everything, you know. And it seems such a pity for a fine young chap to----(_Clang! Stop._) George is recording the bridge orders on the black-board on the bunker bulkhead, and I wonder----(_Clang! Slow ahead._) A pause; then--_Clang! FULL AHEAD._

"Let her go away gradually, mister," says the Second as he goes round to have a look at the pumps. Cautiously the stop-valve is opened out, and the engines get into their sixty-two per-minute stride. The firemen are at it now, trimmers are flogging away the wedges from the bunker doors, and the funnel damper is full open. And then, and then--how shall I describe the sensation of that first delicate rise and fall of the plates. I experience a feeling of buoyant life under my feet! It means we are out at sea, that we have crossed the bar. The Chief and Second have gone to get washed for dinner, George is on deck shutting off steam and watching the steering engine for defects, and I am left alone below with a greaser. I experience a feeling of exultation as I watch my engines settle down for their seven-day run to the Canary Islands. How can I explain how beautiful they are?

"_All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful, The Lord G.o.d made them all!_"

Yes, that is how I feel just now as I pace round and round, alert for a leaky joint or a slackened nut. The solemn music of the plunging rods is all the sweeter for that I have not heard it for six weeks. We are out at sea!

And now George comes down again, and I go on deck to get my dinner. We are crossing Swansea Bay, among the brown-sailed trawlers and the incoming steams.h.i.+ps. The sun s.h.i.+nes brightly on us as we bear away southward towards Lundy, and I stare out silently across the broad Channel, thinking. Oh, my friend, stand by me now, in this my hour of need! How foolis.h.!.+ I am alone at sea, and my friend is in London, puzzling over my behaviour to him.