A work that aspires,
however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every
line. And art itself may be defined as a single-minded attempt to render the
highest kind of justice to the visible universe, by bringing to light the truth,
manifold and one, underlying its every aspect. It is an attempt to find in its
forms, in its colours, in its light, in its shadows, in the aspects of matter
and in the facts of life, what of each is fundamental, what is enduring and
essential--their one illuminating and convincing quality--the very truth of
their existence. The artist, then, like the thinker or the scientist, seeks the
truth and makes his appeal. Impressed by the aspect of the world the thinker
plunges into ideas, the scientist into facts--whence, presently, emerging they
make their appeal to those qualities of our being that fit us best for the
hazardous enterprise of living. They speak authoritatively to our common-sense,
to our intelligence, to our desire of peace or to our desire of unrest; not
seldom to our prejudices, sometimes to our fears, often to our egoism--but
always to our credulity. And their words are heard with reverence, for their
concern is with weighty matters: with the cultivation of our minds and the
proper care of our bodies; with the attainment of our ambitions; with the
perfection of the means and the glorification of our precious aims.
It is otherwise with
the artist.
Confronted by the same
enigmatical spectacle the artist descends within himself, and in that lonely
region of stress and strife, if he be deserving and fortunate, he finds the
terms of his appeal. His appeal is made to our less obvious capacities: to that
part of our nature which, because of the warlike conditions of existence, is
necessarily kept out of sight within the more resisting and hard
qualities--like the vulnerable body within the steel armour. His appeal is less
loud, more profound, less distinct, more stirring--and sooner forgotten. Yet
its effect endures for ever. The changing wisdom of successive generations
discards ideas, questions facts, demolishes theories. But the artist appeals to
that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom: to that in us which is
a gift and not an acquisition--and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He
speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery
surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the
latent feeling of fellowship with all creation--and to the subtle but
invincible, conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of
innumerable hearts: to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in
aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other,
which binds together all humanity--the dead to the living and the living to the
unborn.
It is only some such
train of thought, or rather of feeling, that can in a measure explain the aim
of the attempt, made in the tale which follows, to present an unrestful episode
in the obscure lives of a few individuals out of all the disregarded multitude
of the bewildered, the simple and the voiceless. For, if there is any part of
truth in the belief confessed above, it becomes evident that there is not a
place of splendour or a dark corner of the earth that does not deserve, if only
a passing glance of wonder and pity. The motive, then, may be held to justify
the matter of the work; but this preface, which is simply an avowal of
endeavour, cannot end here--for the avowal is not yet complete.
Fiction--if it at all
aspires to be art--appeals to temperament. And in truth it must be, like
painting, like music, like all art, the appeal of one temperament to all the
other innumerable temperaments whose subtle and resistless power endows passing
events with their true meaning, and creates the moral, the emotional atmosphere
of the place and time. Such an appeal, to be effective, must be an impression
conveyed through the senses; and, in fact, it cannot be made in any other way,
because temperament, whether individual or collective, is not amenable to
persuasion. All art, therefore, appeals primarily to the senses, and the
artistic aim when expressing itself in written words must also make its appeal
through the senses, if its high desire is to reach the secret spring of
responsive emotions. It must strenuously aspire to the plasticity of sculpture,
to the colour of painting, and to the magic suggestiveness of music--which is
the art of arts. And it is only through complete, unswerving devotion to the
perfect blending of form and substance; it is only through an unremitting,
never-discouraged care for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can
be made to plasticity, to colour; and the light of magic suggestiveness may be
brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surface of
words: of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of careless usage.
The sincere endeavour
to accomplish that creative task, to go as far on that road as his strength
will carry him, to go undeterred by faltering, weariness or reproach, is the
only valid justification for the worker in prose. And if his conscience is
clear, his answer to those who, in the fulness of a wisdom which looks for
immediate profit, demand specifically to be edified, consoled, amused; who
demand to be promptly improved, or encouraged, or frightened, or shocked, or
charmed, must run thus:--My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power
of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to
make you see. That--and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall
find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear,
charm--all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you
have forgotten to ask.
To snatch in a moment
of courage, from the remorseless rush of time, a sapping phase of life is only
the beginning of the task. The task approached in tenderness and faith is to
hold up unquestioningly, without choice and without fear, the rescued fragment
before all eyes and in the light of a sincere mood. It is to show its
vibration, its colour, its form; and through its movement, its form, and its
colour, reveal the substance of its truth--disclose its inspiring secret: the
stress and passion within the core of each convincing moment. In a single-minded
attempt of that kind, if one be deserving and fortunate, one may perchance
attain to such clearness of sincerity that at last the presented vision of
regret or pity, of terror or mirth, shall awaken in the hearts of the beholders
that feeling of unavoidable solidarity; of the solidarity in mysterious origin,
in toil, in joy, in hope, in uncertain fate, which binds men to each other and
all mankind to the visible world.
It is evident that he
who, rightly or wrongly, holds by the convictions expressed above cannot be
faithful to any one of the temporary formulas of his craft. The enduring part
of them--the truth which each only imperfectly veils--should abide with him as
the most precious of his possessions, but they all: Realism, Romanticism,
Naturalism, even the unofficial sentimentalism (which, like the poor, is
exceedingly difficult to get rid of); all these gods must, after a short period
of fellowship, abandon him--even on the very threshold of the temple--to the
stammerings of his conscience and to the outspoken consciousness of the
difficulties of his work. In that uneasy solitude the supreme cry of Art for
Art, even, loses the exciting ring of its apparent immorality. It sounds far
off. It has ceased to be a cry, and is heard only as a whisper, often
incomprehensible, but at times, and faintly, encouraging.
Sometimes, stretched at
ease in the shade of a roadside tree, we watch the motions of a labourer in a
distant field, and after a time, begin to wonder languidly as to what the
fellow may be at. We watch the movements of his body, the waving of his arms,
we see him bend down, stand up, hesitate, begin again. It may add to the charm
of an idle hour to be told the purpose of his exertions. If we know he is
trying to lift a stone, to dig a ditch, to uproot a stump, we look with a more
real interest at his efforts; we are disposed to condone the jar of his
agitation upon the restfulness of the landscape; and even, if in a brotherly
frame of mind, we may bring ourselves to forgive his failure. We understood his
object, and, after all, the fellow has tried, and perhaps he had not the
strength, and perhaps he had not the knowledge. We forgive, go on our way--and
forget.
And so it is with the
workman of art. Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off. And
thus, doubtful of strength to travel so far, we talk a little about the
aim--the aim of art, which, like life itself, is inspiring, difficult--obscured
by mists. It is not in the clear logic of a triumphant conclusion; it is not in
the unveiling of one of those heartless secrets which are called the Laws of
Nature. It is not less great, but only more difficult.
To arrest, for the
space of a breath, the hands busy about the work of the earth, and compel men
entranced by the sight of distant goals to glance for a moment at the
surrounding vision of form and colour, of sunshine and shadows; to make them
pause for a look, for a sigh, for a smile--such is the aim, difficult and
evanescent, and reserved only for a very few to achieve. But sometimes, by the
deserving and the fortunate, even that task is accomplished. And when it is
accomplished--behold!--all the truth of life is there: a moment of vision, a
sigh, a smile--and the return to an eternal rest.
Mr. Baker, chief mate
of the ship Narcissus, stepped in one stride out of his lighted cabin into the
darkness of the quarter-deck. Above his head, on the break of the poop, the
night-watchman rang a double stroke. It was nine o'clock. Mr. Baker, speaking
up to the man above him, asked:--‘Are all the hands aboard, Knowles?’
The man limped down the
ladder, then said reflectively:--
‘I think so, sir. All
our old chaps are there, and a lot of new men has come.....They must be all
there.’
‘Tell the boatswain to
send all hands aft,’ went on Mr. Baker; ‘and tell one of the youngsters to
bring a good lamp here. I want to muster our crowd.’
The main deck was dark
aft, but halfway from forward, through the open doors of the forecastle, two
streaks of brilliant light cut the shadow of the quiet night that lay upon the
ship. A hum of voices was heard there, while port and starboard, in the
illuminated doorways, silhouettes of moving men appeared for a moment, very
black, without relief, like figures cut out of sheet tin. The ship was ready for
sea. The carpenter had driven in the last wedge of the main-hatch battens, and,
throwing down his maul, had wiped his face with great deliberation, just on the
stroke of five. The decks had been swept, the windlass oiled and made ready to
heave up the anchor; the big tow-rope lay in long bights along one side of the
main deck, with one end carried up and hung over the bows, in readiness for the
tug that would come paddling and hissing noisily, hot and smoky, in the limpid,
cool quietness of the early morning. The captain was ashore, where he had been
engaging some new hands to make up his full crew; and, the work of the day
over, the ship's officers had kept out of the way, glad of a little
breathing-time. Soon after dark the few liberty-men and the new hands began to
arrive in shore-boats rowed by white-clad Asiatics, who clamoured fiercely for
payment before coming alongside the gangway-ladder. The feverish and shrill
babble of Eastern language struggled against the masterful tones of tipsy
seamen, who argued against brazen claims and dishonest hopes by profane shouts.
The resplendent and bestarred peace of the East was torn into squalid tatters
by howls of rage and shrieks of lament raised over sums ranging from five annas
to half a rupee; and every soul afloat in Bombay Harbour became aware that the
new hands were joining the Narcissus.
Gradually the
distracting noise had subsided. The boats came no longer in splashing clusters
of three or four together, but dropped alongside singly, in a subdued buzz of
expostulation cut short by a ‘Not a piece more! You go to the devil!’ from some
man staggering up the accommodation-ladder--a dark figure, with a long bag
poised on the shoulder. In the forecastle the newcomers, upright and swaying
amongst corded boxes and bundles of bedding, made friends with the old hands,
who sat one above another in the two tiers of bunks, gazing at their future
shipmates with glances critical but friendly. The two forecastle lamps were
turned up high, and shed an intense hard glare; shore-going hard hats were
pushed far on the backs of heads, or rolled about on the deck amongst the
chain-cables; white collars, undone, stuck out on each side of red faces; big
arms in white sleeves gesticulated; the growling voices hummed steady amongst
bursts of laughter and hoarse calls. ‘Here, sonny, take that bunk!.....Don't
you do it!.....What's your last ship?.....I know her......Three years ago, in
Puget Sound....This here berth leaks, I tell you!....Come on; give us a chance
to swing that chest!.... Did you bring a bottle, any of you shore toffs?....
Give us a bit of 'baccy....I know her; her skipper drank himself to death....He
was a dandy boy!....Liked his lotion inside, he did!....No!....Hold your row,
you chaps!.... I tell you, you came on board a hooker, where they get their
money's worth out of poor Jack, by--!....’
A little fellow, called
Craik and nicknamed Belfast, abused the ship violently, romancing on principle,
just to give the new hands something to think over. Archie, sitting aslant on
his sea-chest, kept his knees out of the way, and pushed the needle steadily
through a white patch in a pair of blue trousers. Men in black jackets and
stand-up collars, mixed with men bare-footed, bare-armed, with coloured shirts
open on hairy chests, pushed against one another in the middle of the
forecastle. The group swayed, reeled, turning upon itself with the motion of a
scrimmage, in a haze of tobacco smoke. All were speaking together, swearing at
every second word. A Russian Finn, wearing a yellow shirt with pink stripes,
stared upwards, dreamy-eyed, from under a mop of tumbled hair. Two young giants
with smooth, baby faces--two Scandinavians--helped each other to spread their
bedding, silent, and smiling placidly at the tempest of good-humoured and
meaningless curses. Old Singleton, the oldest able seaman in the ship, sat
apart on the deck right under the lamps, stripped to the waist, tattooed like a
cannibal chief all over his powerful chest and enormous biceps. Between the
blue and red patterns his white skin gleamed like satin; his bare back was
propped against the heel of the bowsprit, and he held a book at arm's length
before his big, sunburnt face. With his spectacles and a venerable white beard,
he resembled a learned and savage patriarch, the incarnation of barbarian
wisdom serene in the blasphemous turmoil of the world. He was intensely
absorbed, and, as he turned the pages an expression of grave surprise would
pass over his rugged features. He was reading ‘Pelham.’ The popularity of Bulwer
Lytton in the forecastles of Southern-going ships is a wonderful and bizarre
phenomenon. What ideas do his polished and so curiously insincere sentences
awaken in the simple minds of the big children who people those dark and
wandering places of the earth? What meaning can their rough, inexperienced
souls find in the elegant verbiage of his pages? What excitement?--what
forgetfulness?-- what appeasement? Mystery! Is it the fascination of the
incomprehensible?--is it the charm of the impossible? Or are those beings who
exist beyond the pale of life stirred by his tales as by an enigmatical
disclosure of a resplendent world that exists within the frontier of infamy and
filth, within that border of dirt and hunger, of misery and dissipation, that
comes down on all sides to the water's edge of the incorruptible ocean, and is
the only thing they know of life, the only thing they see of surrounding
land--those life-long prisoners of the sea? Mystery?
Singleton, who had
sailed to the southward since the age of twelve, who in the last forty-five
years had lived (as we had calculated from his papers) no more than forty
months ashore--old Singleton, who boasted, with the mild composure of long
years well spent, that generally from the day he was paid off from one ship
till the day he shipped in another he seldom was in a condition to distinguish
daylight--old Singleton sat unmoved in the clash of voices and cries, spelling
through ‘Pelham’ with slow labour, and lost in an absorption profound enough to
resemble a trance. He breathed regularly. Every time he turned the book in his
enormous and blackened hands the muscles of his big white arms rolled slightly
under the smooth skin. Hidden by the white moustache, his lips, stained with
tobacco-juice that trickled down the long beard, moved in inward whisper. His
bleared eyes gazed fixedly from behind the glitter of black-rimmed glasses.
Opposite to him, and on a level with his face, the ship's cat sat on the barrel
of the windlass in the pose of a crouching chimera, blinking its green eyes at
its old friend. It seemed to meditate a leap on to the old man's lap over the
bent back of the ordinary seaman who sat at Singleton's feet. Young Charley was
lean and long-necked. The ridge of his backbone made a chain of small hills
under the old shirt. His face of a street-boy--a face precocious, sagacious,
and ironic, with deep downward folds on each side of the thin, wide mouth--hung
low over his bony knees. He was learning to make a lanyard knot with a bit of
an old rope. Small drops of perspiration stood out on his bulging forehead; he
sniffed strongly from time to time, glancing out of the corners of his restless
eyes at the old seaman, who took no notice of the puzzled youngster muttering
at his work.
The noise increased. Little
Belfast seemed, in the heavy heat of the forecastle, to boil with facetious
fury. His eyes danced; in the crimson of his face, comical as a mask, the mouth
yawned black, with strange grimaces. Facing him, a half-undressed man held his
sides, and throwing his head back, laughed with wet eyelashes. Others stared
with amazed eyes. Men sitting doubled up in the upper bunks smoked short pipes,
swinging bare brown feet above the heads of those who, sprawling below on
sea-chests, listened, smiling stupidly or scornfully. Over the white rims of
berths stuck out heads with blinking eyes; but the bodies were lost in the
gloom of those places, that resembled narrow niches for coffins in a
white-washed and lighted mortuary. Voices buzzed louder. Archie, with compressed
lips, drew himself in, seemed to shrink into a smaller space, and sewed
steadily, industrious and dumb. Belfast shrieked like an inspired Dervish:--‘....So
I seez to him, boys, seez I, “Beggin' yer pardon, sorr,” seez I to that second
mate of that steamer--“beggin' your-r-r pardon, sorr, the Board of Trade must
'ave been drunk when they granted you your certificate!” “What do you say,
you--!” seez he, comin' at me like a mad bull....all in his white clothes; and
I up with my tarpot and capsizes it all over his blamed lovely face and his
lovely jacket...... “Take that!” seez I. “I am a sailor, anyhow, you nosing,
skipper-licking, useless, sooperfloos bridge-stanchion, you! That's the kind of
man I am!” shouts I.....You should have seed him skip, boys! Drowned, blind
with tar, he was! So....’
‘Don't 'ee believe him!
He never upset no tar; I was there!’ shouted somebody. The two Norwegians sat
on a chest side by side, alike and placid, resembling a pair of love-birds on a
perch, and with round eyes stared innocently; but the Russian Finn, in the
racket of explosive shouts and rolling laughter, remained motionless, limp and
dull, like a deaf man without a backbone. Near him Archie smiled at his needle.
A broad-chested, slow-eyed newcomer spoke deliberately to Belfast during an
exhausted lull in the noise:--‘I wonder any of the mates here are alive yet
with such a chap as you on board! I concloode they ain't that bad now, if you
had the taming of them, sonny.’
‘Not bad! Not bad!’
screamed Belfast. ‘If it wasn't for us sticking together.....Not bad! They
ain't never bad when they ain't got a chawnce, blast their black 'arts.....’ He
foamed, whirling his arms, then suddenly grinned and, taking a tablet of black
tobacco out of his pocket, bit a piece off with a funny show of ferocity.
Another new hand--a man with shifty eyes and a yellow hatchet face, who had
been listening open-mouthed in the shadow of the midship locker--observed in a
squeaky voice:--‘Well, it's a 'omeward trip, anyhow. Bad or good, I can do it
hall on my 'ed--s'long as I get 'ome. And I can look after my rights! I will
show 'em!’ All the heads turned towards him. Only the ordinary seaman and the
cat took no notice. He stood with arms akimbo, a little fellow with white
eyelashes, He looked as if he had known all the degradations and all the
furies. He looked as if he had been cuffed, kicked, rolled in the mud; he
looked as if he had been scratched, spat upon, pelted with unmentionable
filth....and he smiled with a sense of security at the faces around. His ears
were bending down under the weight of his battered hard hat. The torn tails of
his black coat flapped in fringes about the calves of his legs. He unbuttoned
the only two buttons that remained and every one saw he had no shirt under it.
It was his deserved misfortune that those rags which nobody could possibly be
supposed to own looked on him as if they had been stolen. His neck was long and
thin; his eyelids were red; rare hairs hung about his jaws; his shoulders were
peaked and drooped like the broken wings of a bird; all his left side was caked
with mud which showed that he had lately slept in a wet ditch. He had saved his
inefficient carcass from violent destruction by running away from an American
ship where, in a moment of forgetful folly, he had dared to engage himself; and
he had knocked about for a fortnight ashore in the native quarter, cadging for
drinks, starving, sleeping on rubbish-heaps, wandering in sunshine: a startling
visitor from a world of nightmares. He stood repulsive and smiling in the
sudden silence. This clean white forecastle was his refuge; the place where he
could be lazy; where he could wallow, and lie and eat--and curse the food he
ate; where he could display his talents for shirking work, for cheating, for
cadging; where he could find surely some one to wheedle and some one to
bully--and where he would be paid for doing all this. They all knew him. Is
there a spot on earth where such a man is unknown, an ominous survival
testifying to the eternal fitness of lies and impudence? A taciturn long-armed
shellback, with hooked fingers, who had been lying on his back smoking, turned
in his bed to examine him dispassionately, then, over his head, sent a long jet
of clear saliva towards the door. They all knew him! He was the man that cannot
steer, that cannot splice, that dodges the work on dark nights; that, aloft,
holds on frantically with both arms and legs, and swears at the wind, the
sleet, the darkness; the man who curses the sea while others work. The man who
is the last out and the first in when all hands are called. The man who can't
do most things and won't do the rest. The pet of philanthropists and
self-seeking landlubbers. The sympathetic and deserving creature that knows all
about his rights, but knows nothing of courage, of endurance, and of the
unexpressed faith, of the unspoken loyalty that knits together a ship's
company. The independent offspring of the ignoble freedom of the slums full of
disdain and hate for the austere servitude of the sea.
Some one cried at him: ‘What's
your name?’--‘Donkin,’ he said, looking round with cheerful effrontery.--‘What
are you?’ asked another voice.--‘Why, a sailor like you, old man,’ he replied,
in a tone that meant to be hearty but was impudent.--‘Blamme if you don't look
a blamed sight worse than a broken-down fireman,’ was the comment in a
convinced mutter. Charley lifted his head and piped in a cheeky voice: ‘He is a
man and a sailor’--then wiping his nose with the back of his hand bent down
industriously over his bit of rope. A few laughed. others stared doubtfully.
The ragged newcomer was indignant.--‘That's a fine way to welcome a chap into a
fo'c'sle,’ he snarled. ‘Are you men or a lot of 'artless cannybals?’--‘Don't
take your shirt off for a word, shipmate,’ called out Belfast, jumping up in
front, fiery, menacing, and friendly at the same time.--‘Is that 'ere bloke
blind?’ asked the indomitable scarecrow, looking right and left with affected
surprise. ‘Can't 'ee see I 'aven't got no shirt?’
He held both his arms out
crosswise and shook the rags that hung over his bones with dramatic effect.
‘'Cos why?’ he
continued very loud. ‘The bloody Yankees been tryin' to jump my guts hout 'cos
I stood up for my rights like a good'un. I ham a Henglishman, I ham. They set
upon me an' I 'ad to run. That's why. A'n't yer never seed a man 'ard up? Yah!
What kind of blamed ship is this? I'm dead broke. I 'aven't got nothink. No
bag, no bed, no blanket, no shirt--not a bloomin' rag but what I stand in. But
I 'ad the 'art to stand hup agin' them Yankees. 'As any of you 'art enough to
spare a pair of old pants for a chum?’
He knew how to conquer
the naive instincts of that crowd. In a moment they gave him their compassion,
jocularly, contemptuously, or surlily; and at first it took the shape of a
blanket thrown at him as he stood there with the white skin of his limbs
showing his human kinship through the black fantasy of his rags. Then a pair of
old shoes fell at his muddy feet. With a cry:--‘From under,’ a rolled-up pair
of trousers, heavy with tar stains, struck him on the shoulder. The gust of
their benevolence sent a wave of sentimental pity through their doubting
hearts. They were touched by their own readiness to alleviate a shipmate's
misery. Voices cried:--‘We will fit you out, old man.’ Murmurs: ‘Never seed
seech a hard case.....Poor beggar..... I've got an old singlet.....Will that be
of any use to you?.... Take it, matey.....’ Those friendly murmurs filled the
forecastle. He pawed around with his naked foot, gathering the things in a heap
and looked about for more. Unemotional Archie perfunctorily contributed to the
pile an old cloth cap with the peak torn off. Old Singleton, lost in the serene
regions of fiction, read on unheeding. Charley, pitiless with the wisdom of
youth, squeaked:--‘If you want brass buttons for your new unyforms I've got two
for you.’ The filthy object of universal charity shook his fist at the
youngster.--‘I'll make you keep this 'ere fo'c'sle clean, young feller,’ he
snarled viciously. ‘Never you fear. I will learn you to be civil to an able
seaman, you hignorant hass.’ He glared harmfully, but saw Singleton shut his
book, and his little beady eyes began to roam from berth to berth.--‘Take that
bunk by the door there--it's pretty fair,’ suggested Belfast. So advised, he
gathered the gifts at his feet, pressed them in a bundle against his breast,
then looked cautiously at the Russian Finn, who stood on one side with an unconscious
gaze, contemplating, perhaps, one of those weird visions that haunt the men of
his race. ‘Get out of my road, Dutchy,’ said the victim of Yankee brutality.
The Finn did not move--did not hear. ‘Get out, blast ye,’ shouted the other,
shoving him aside with his elbow. ‘Get out, you blanked deaf and dumb fool. Get
out.’ The man staggered, recovered himself, and gazed at the speaker in
silence.--‘Those damned furriners should be kept hunder,’ opined the amiable
Donkin to the forecastle. ‘If you don't teach 'em their place they put on you
like hanythink.’ He flung all his worldly possessions into the empty bed-place,
gauged with another shrewd look the risks of the proceeding, then leaped up to
the Finn, who stood pensive and dull.--‘I'll teach you to swell around,’ he
yelled. ‘I'll plug your eyes for you, you blooming square-head.’ Most of the
men were now in their bunks and the two had the forecastle clear to themselves.
The development of the destitute Donkin aroused interest. He danced all in
tatters before the amazed Finn, squaring from a distance at the heavy, unmoved
face. One or two men cried encouragingly: ‘Go it, Whitechapel!’ settling
themselves luxuriously in their beds to survey the fight. Others shouted: ‘Shut
yer row!....Go an' put yer 'ed in a bag!.... ’ The hubbub was recommencing.
Suddenly many heavy blows struck with a handspike on the deck above boomed like
discharges of small cannon through the forecastle. Then the boatswain's voice
rose outside the door with an authoritative note in its drawl:--‘D'ye hear,
below there? Lay aft! Lay aft to muster all hands!’
There was a moment of
surprised stillness. Then the forecastle floor disappeared under men whose bare
feet flopped on the planks as they sprang clear out of their berths. Caps were
rooted for amongst tumbled blankets. Some, yawning, buttoned waistbands.
Half-smoked pipes were knocked hurriedly against woodwork and stuffed under
pillows. Voices growled:--‘What's up?....Is there no rest for us?’ Donkin
yelped:--‘If that's the way of this ship, we'll 'ave to change hall that.....
You leave me alone.....I will soon.....’ None of the crowd noticed him. They
were lurching in twos and threes through the doors, after the manner of
merchant Jacks who cannot go out of a door fairly, like mere landsmen. The
votary of change followed them. Singleton, struggling into his jacket, came
last, tall and fatherly, bearing high his head of a weatherbeaten sage on the
body of an old athlete. Only Charley remained alone in the white glare of the
empty place, sitting between the two rows of iron links that stretched into the
narrow gloom forward. He pulled hard at the strands in a hurried endeavour to
finish his knot. Suddenly he started up, flung the rope at the cat, and skipped
after the black tom that went off leaping sedately over chain compressors, with
the tail carried stiff and upright, like a small flag pole.
Outside the glare of
the steaming forecastle the serene purity of the night enveloped the seamen
with its soothing breath, with its tepid breath flowing under the stars that
hung countless above the mastheads in a thin cloud of luminous dust. On the
town side the blackness of the water was streaked with trails of light which
undulated gently on slight ripples, similar to filaments that float rooted to
the shore. Rows of other lights stood away in straight lines as if drawn up on
parade between towering buildings; but on the other side of the harbour sombre
hills arched high their black spines, on which, here and there, the point of a
star resembled a spark fallen from the sky. Far off, Byculla way, the electric
lamps at the dock gates shone on the end of lofty standards with a glow
blinding and frigid like captive ghosts of some evil moons. Scattered all over
the dark polish of the roadstead, the ships at anchor floated in perfect
stillness under the feeble gleam of their riding-lights, looming up, opaque and
bulky, like strange and monumental structures abandoned by men to an
everlasting repose.
Before the cabin door
Mr. Baker was mustering the crew. As they stumbled and lurched along past the
mainmast, they could see aft his round, broad face with a white paper before
it, and beside his shoulder the sleepy head, with dropped eyelids, of the boy,
who held, suspended at the end of his raised arm, the luminous globe of a lamp.
Even before the shuffle of naked soles had ceased along the decks, the mate
began to call over the names. He called distinctly in a serious tone befitting
this roll-call to unquiet loneliness, to inglorious and obscure struggle, or to
the more trying endurance of small privations and wearisome duties. As the
chief mate read out a name, one of the men would answer: ‘Yes, sir!’ or ‘Here!’
and, detaching himself from the shadowy mob of heads visible above the
blackness of starboard bulwarks, would step barefooted into the circle of
light, and in two noiseless strides pass into the shadows on the port side of
the quarter-deck. They answered in divers tones: in thick mutters, in clear,
ringing voices; and some, as if the whole thing had been an outrage on their
feelings, used an injured intonation: for discipline is not ceremonious in
merchant ships, where the sense of hierarchy is weak, and where all feel
themselves equal before the unconcerned immensity of the sea and the exacting
appeal of the work.
Mr. Baker read on
steadily:-- ‘Hanssen--Campbell--Smith--Wamibo. Now, then, Wamibo. Why don't you
answer? Always got to call your name twice.’ The Finn emitted at last an
uncouth grunt, and, stepping out, passed through the patch of light, weird and
gaudy, with the face of a man marching through a dream. The mate went on
faster:--‘Craik--Singleton--Donkin.... O Lord!’ he involuntarily ejaculated as
the incredibly dilapidated figure appeared in the light. It stopped; it
uncovered pale gums and long, upper teeth in a malevolent grin.--‘Is there
anything wrong with me, Mister Mate?’ it asked, with a flavour of insolence in
the forced simplicity of its tone. On both sides of the deck subdued titters
were heard.--‘That'll do. Go over,’ growled Mr. Baker, fixing the new hand with
steady blue eyes. And Donkin vanished suddenly out of the light into the dark
group of mustered men, to be slapped on the back and to hear flattering
whispers. Round him men muttered to one another:--‘He ain't afeard, he'll give
sport to 'em, see if he don't....Reg'lar Punch and Judy show.....Did ye see the
mate start at him?....Well! Damme, if I ever!....’
The last man had gone
over, and there was a moment of silence while the mate peered at his list.--‘'Sixteen,
seventeen,’ he muttered. ‘I am one hand short, bosun,’ he said aloud. The big
west-countryman at his elbow, swarthy and bearded like a gigantic Spaniard,
said in a rumbling bass:--‘There's no one left forward, sir. I had a look
round. He ain't aboard, but he may turn up before daylight.’--‘Ay. He may or he
may not,’ commented the mate;‘can't make out that last name. It's all a
smudge.....That will do, men. Go below.’
The indistinct and
motionless group stirred, broke up, began to move forward.
‘Wait!’ cried a deep,
ringing voice.
All stood still. Mr.
Baker, who had turned away yawning, spun round open-mouthed. At last, furious,
he blurted out:--‘What's this? Who said “Wait”? What....’
But he saw a tall
figure standing on the rail. It came down and pushed through the crowd,
marching with a heavy tread towards the light on the quarter-deck. Then again
the sonorous voice said with insistence:--‘Wait!’ The lamplight lit up the
man's body. He was tall. His head was away up in the shadows of lifeboats that
stood on skids above the deck. The whites of his eyes and his teeth gleamed
distinctly, but the face was indistinguishable. His hands were big and seemed
gloved.
Mr. Baker advanced
intrepidly. ‘Who are you? How dare you... ’ he began.
The boy, amazed like
the rest, raised the light to the man's face. It was black. A surprised hum--a
faint hum that sounded like the suppressed mutter of the word ‘Nigger’--ran
along the deck and escaped out into the night. The nigger seemed not to hear.
He balanced himself where he stood in a swagger that marked time. After a
moment he said calmly:--‘My name is Wait--James Wait.’
‘Oh!’ said Mr. Baker.
Then, after a few seconds of smouldering silence, his temper blazed out. ‘Ah!
Your name is Wait. What of that? What do you want? What do you mean, coming
shouting here?’
The nigger was calm,
cool, towering, superb. The men had approached and stood behind him in a body.
He overtopped the tallest by a half a head. He said: ‘I belong to the ship.’ He
enunciated distinctly, with soft precision. The deep, rolling tones of his
voice filled the deck without effort. He was naturally scornful, unaffectedly
condescending, as if from his height of six foot three he had surveyed all the
vastness of human folly and had made up his mind not to be too hard on it. He
went on:--The captain shipped me this morning. I couldn't get aboard sooner. I
saw you all aft and I came up the ladder, and could see directly you were
mustering the crew. Naturally I called out my name. I thought you had it on your
list, and would understand. You misapprehended.’ He stopped short. The folly
around him was confounded. He was right as ever, and as ever ready to forgive.
The disdainful tones had ceased, and breathing heavily, he stood still,
surrounded by all these white men. He held his head up in the glare of the
lamp--a head vigorously modelled into deep shadows and shining lights--a head
powerful and misshapen with a tormented and flattened face--a face pathetic and
brutal: the tragic, the mysterious, the repulsive mask of a nigger's soul.
Mr. Baker, recovering
his composure, looked at the paper close. ‘Oh, yes; that's so. All right, Wait.
Take your gear forward,’ he said.
Suddenly the nigger's
eyes rolled wildly, became all whites. He put his hand to his side and coughed
twice, a cough metallic, hollow, and tremendously loud; it resounded like two
explosions in a vault; the dome of the sky rang to it, and the iron plates of
the ship's bulwarks seemed to vibrate in unison; then he marched off forward
with the others. The officers lingering by the cabin door could hear him say:‘Won't
some of you chaps lend a hand with my dunnage? I've got a chest and a bag.’ The
words, spoken sonorously, with an even intonation, were heard all over the
ship, and the question was put in a manner that made refusal impossible. The
short, quick shuffle of men carrying something heavy went away forward, but the
tall figure of the nigger lingered by the main hatch in a knot of smaller
shapes. Again he was heard asking:‘Is your cook a coloured gentleman?’ Then a
disappointed and disapproving ‘Ah! h'm!’ was his comment upon the information
that the cook happened to be a mere white man. Yet, as they went all together
towards the forecastle, he condescended to put his head through the galley door
and boom out inside a magnificent ‘Good evening, doctor!’ that made all the
saucepans ring. In the dim light the cook dozed on the coal locker in front of
the captain's supper. He jumped up as if he had been cut with a whip, and
dashed wildly on deck to see the backs of several men going away laughing.
Afterwards, when talking about that voyage, he used to say:--‘The poor fellow
had scared me. I thought I had seen the devil.’ The cook had been seven years
in the ship with the same captain. He was a serious-minded man with a wife and
three children, whose society he enjoyed on an average one month out of twelve.
When on shore he took his family to church twice every Sunday. At sea he went
to sleep every evening with his lamp turned full up, a pipe in his mouth, and
an open Bible in his hand. Some one had always to go during the night to put
out the light, take the book from his hand, and the pipe from between his
teeth. ‘For’--Belfast used to say, irritated and complaining--‘some night, you
stupid cookie, you'll swallow your ould clay, and we will have no cook.--‘Ah!
sonny, I am ready for my Maker's call....wish you all were.’ the other would
answer with a benign serenity that was altogether imbecile and touching.
Belfast outside the galley door danced with vexation. ‘You holy fool! I don't
want you to die,’ he howled, looking up with furious, quivering face and tender
eyes. ‘What's the hurry? you blessed wooden-headed ould heretic, the divvle
will have you soon enough. Think of Us....of Us....of Us!’ And he would go
away, stamping, spitting aside, disgusted and worried; while the other,
stepping out, saucepan in hand, hot, begrimed, and placid, watched with a
superior, cock-sure smile the back of his ‘queer little man’ reeling in a rage.
They were great friends.
Mr. Baker, lounging
over the after-hatch, sniffed the humid night in the company of the second
mate.--‘Those West India niggers run fine and large--some of them....
Ough!....Don't they? A fine, big man that, Mr. Creighton. Feel him on a rope.
Hey? Ough! I will take him into my watch, I think.’ The second mate, a fair
gentlemanly young fellow, with a resolute face and a splended physique,
observed quietly that it was just about what he expected. There could be felt
in his tone some slight bitterness which Mr. Baker very kindly set himself to
argue away. ‘Come, come, young man,’ he said, grunting between the words. ‘Come!
Don't be too greedy. You had that big Finn in your watch all the voyage. I will
do what's fair. You may have those two young Scandinavians and I....Ough!....I
get the nigger, and will take that.... Ough! that cheeky costermonger chap in a
black frock-coat. I'll make him....Ough!....make him toe the mark, or my....
Ough!....name isn't Baker. Ough! Ough! Ough!’
He grunted thrice--ferociously.
He had that trick of grunting so between his words and at the end of sentences.
It was a fine, effective grunt that went well with his menacing utterance, with
his heavy, bull-necked frame, his jerky, rolling gait; with his big, seamed
face, his steady eyes, and sardonic mouth. But its effect had been long
discounted by the men. They liked him; Belfast, who was a favourite, and knew
it--mimicked him, not quite behind his back. Charley--but with greater
caution--imitated his walk. Some of his sayings became established daily
quotations in the forecastle. Popularity can go no farther! Besides, all hands
were ready to admit that on a fitting occasion the mate could ‘jump down a
fellow's throat in a reg'lar Western Ocean style.’
Now he was giving his
last orders. ‘Ough!.... You, Knowles! Call all hands at four. I
want....Ough!.... to heave short before the tug comes. Look out for the
Captain. I am going to lay down in my clothes....Ough!....Call me when you see
the boat coming. Ough!Ough!.... The old man is sure to have something to say
when he comes aboard’ he remarked to Creighton. ‘Well, good-night....Ough! A
long day before us to-morrow..... Ough!....Better turn in now. Ough! Ough!’
Upon the dark deck a
band of light flashed, then a door slammed, and Mr. Baker was gone into his
neat cabin. Young Creighton stood leaning over the rail, and looked dreamily
into the night of the East. And he saw in it a long country lane, a lane of
waving leaves and dancing sunshine. He saw stirring boughs of old trees
outspread, and framing in their arch the tender, the caressing blueness of an
English sky. And through the arch a girl in a clear dress, smiling under a
sunshade, seemed to be stepping out of the tender sky.
At the other end of the
ship the forecastle, with only one lamp burning now, was going to sleep in a
dim emptiness traversed by loud breathings, by sudden short sighs. The double
row of berths yawned black, like graves tenanted by uneasy corpses. Here and
there a curtain of gaudy chintz, half drawn, marked the resting-place of a
sybarite. A leg hung over the edge very white and lifeless. An arm stuck
straight out with a dark palm turned up, and thick fingers half closed. Two
light snores, that did not synchronise quarreled in funny dialogue. Singleton
stripped again--the old man suffered much from prickly heat--stood cooling his
back in the doorway, with his arms crossed on his bare and adorned chest. His
head touched the beam of the deck above. The nigger, half undressed, was busy
casting adrift the lashing of his box, and spreading his bedding in an upper
berth. He moved about in his socks, tall and noiseless, with a pair of braces
beating about his heels. Amongst the shadows of stanchions and bowsprit, Donkin
munched a piece of hard ship's bread, sitting on the deck with upturned feet
and restless eyes; he held the biscuit up before his mouth in the whole fist,
and snapped his jaws at it with a raging face. Crumbs fell between his
outspread legs. Then he got up.
‘Where's our
water-cask?’ he asked in a contained voice.
Singleton, without a
word, pointed with a big hand that held a short smouldering pipe. Donkin bent
over the cask, drank out of The tin, splashing the water, turned round and
noticed the nigger looking at him over the shoulder with calm loftiness. He
moved up sideways.
‘There's a blooming
supper for a man,’ he whispered bitterly. ‘My dorg at 'ome wouldn't 'ave it.
It's fit enouf for you an' me. 'Ere's a big ship's fo'c'sle.... Not a bloomin'
scrap of meat in the kids I've looked in all the lockers.....
The nigger stared like
a man addressed unexpectedly in a foreign language. Donkin changed his tone:--‘Giv'us
a bit of 'baccy, mate’ he breathed out confidentially, ‘I 'aven't 'ad a smoke
or chew for the last month. I am rampin' mad for it. Come on, old man'!’
‘Don't be familiar,’
said the nigger. Donkin started and sat down on a chest near by, out of sheer
surprise. ‘We haven't kept pigs together.’ continued James Wait in a deep
undertone. ‘Here's your tobacco.’ Then, after a pause, he asked:--‘What ship?’--‘Golden
State,’muttered Donkin indistinctly, biting the tobacco. The nigger whistled
low.--‘Ran?’ he said curtly. Donkin nodded: one of his cheeks bulged out.--‘In
course I ran,’ he mumbled. ‘They booted the life hout of one Dago chap on the
passage 'ere, then started on me. I cleared hout 'ere.’--‘Left your dunnage
behind?’--‘Yes, dunnage and money,’ answered Donkin, raising his voice a
little; ‘I got nothink. No clothes, no bed. A bandy-legged little Hirish chap
'ere 'as give me a blanket..... Think I'll go an' sleep in the fore topmast
staysail to-night.’
He went on deck
trailing behind his back a corner of the blanket. Singleton, without a glance,
moved slightly aside to let him pass. The nigger put away his shore togs and
sat in clean working clothes on his box, one arm stretched over his knees.
After staring at Singleton for some time he asked without emphasis:--‘What kind
of ship is this? Pretty fair? Eh?’
Singleton didn't stir.
A long while after he said, with unmoved face:--‘Ship!....Ships are all right.
It is the men in them!’
He went on smoking in
the profound silence. The wisdom of half a century spent listening to the
thunder of the waves had spoken unconsciously through his old lips. The cat
purred on the windlass. Then James Wait had a fit of roaring, rattling cough,
that shook him, tossed him like a hurricane, and flung him panting with staring
eyes headlong on his sea-chest. Several men woke up. One said sleepily out of
his bunk: ‘Struth! what a blamed row!’--‘I have a cold on my chest,’ gasped
Wait.--‘Cold! you call it,’ grumbled the man; ‘should think 'twas something
more.....’--‘Oh! you think so,’ said the nigger upright and loftily scornful
again. He climbed into his berth and began coughing persistently while he put
his head out to glare all round the forecastle. There was no further protest.
He fell back on the pillow, and could be heard there wheezing regularly like a
man oppressed in his sleep.
Singleton stood at the
door with his face to the light and his back to the darkness. And alone in the
dim emptiness of the sleeping forecastle he appeared bigger, colossal, very
old; old as Father Time himself, who should have come there into this place as
quiet as a sepulchre to contemplate with patient eyes the short victory of
sleep, the consoler. Yet he was only a child of time, a lonely relic of a
devoured and forgotten generation. He stood, still strong, as ever unthinking;
a ready man with a vast empty past and with no future, with his childlike
impulses and his man's passions already dead within his tattooed breast. The
men who could understand his silence were gone--those men who knew how to exist
beyond the pale of life and within sight of eternity. They had been strong, as
those are strong who know neither doubts nor hopes. They had been impatient and
enduring, turbulent and devoted, unruly and faithful. Well-meaning people had
tried to represent those men as whining over every mouthful of their food; as
going about their work in fear of their lives. But in truth they had been men
who knew toil, privation, violence, debauchery--but knew not fear, and had no
desire of spite in their hearts. Men hard to manage, but easy to inspire;
voiceless men--but men enough to scorn in their hearts the sentimental voices
that bewailed the hardness of their fate. It was a fate unique and their own;
the capacity to bear it appeared to them the privilege of the chosen! Their
generation lived inarticulate and indispensable, without knowing the sweetness
of affections or the refuge of a home--and died free from the dark menace of a
narrow grave. They were the everlasting children of the mysterious sea. Their
successors are the grown-up children of a discontented earth. They are less
naughty, but less innocent; less profane, but perhaps also less believing; and
if they had learned how to speak they have also learned how to whine. But the
others were strong and mute, they were effaced, bowed and enduring, like stone
caryatides that hold up in the night the lighted halls of a resplendent and
glorious edifice. They are gone now--and it does not matter. The sea and the
earth are unfaithful to their children: a truth, a faith, a generation of men
goes--and is forgotten, and it does not matter! Except, perhaps, to the few of
those who believed the truth confessed the faith--or loved the men.
A breeze was coming.
The ship that had been lying tide-rode swung to a heavier puff; and suddenly
the slack of the chain cable between the windlass and the hawse-pipe clinked,
slipped forward an inch, and rose gently off the deck with a startling
suggestion as of unsuspected life that had been lurking stealthily in the iron.
In the hawse-pipe The grinding links sent through the ship a sound like a low
groan of a man sighing under a burden. The strain came on the windlass, the
chain tautened like a string, vibrated--and the handle of the screw-brake moved
in slight jerks. Singleton stepped forward.
Till then he had been
standing meditative and unthinking, reposeful and hopeless, with a face grim
and blank--a sixty-year-old child of the mysterious sea. The thoughts of all
his lifetime could have been expressed in six words, but the stir of those
things that were as much a part of his existence as his beating heart called up
a gleam of alert understanding upon the sternness of his aged face. The flame
of the lamp swayed, and the old man, with knitted and bushy eyebrows, stood
over the brake, watchful and motionless in the wild saraband of dancing
shadows. Then the ship, obedient to the call of her anchor, forged ahead
slightly and eased the strain. The cable relieved, hung down, and after swaying
imperceptibly to and fro dropped with a loud tap on the hard wood planks.
Singleton seized the high lever, and, by a violent throw forward of his body,
wrung out another half-turn from the brake. He recovered himself, breathed
largely, and remained for awhile glaring down at the powerful and compact
engine that squatted on the deck at his feet, like some quiet monster--a
creature amazing and tame.
‘You....hold!’ he
growled at it masterfully, in the incult tangle of his white beard.
Next morning, at
daylight, the Narcissus went to sea.
A slight haze blurred
the horizon. Outside the harbour the measureless expanse of smooth water lay
sparkling lay sparkling like a floor of jewels, and as empty as the sky. The
short black tug gave a pluck to windward, in the usual way, then let go the
rope, and hovered for a moment on the quarter with her engines stopped; while
the slim, long hull of the ship moved ahead slowly under lower top-sails. The
loose upper canvas blew out in the breeze with soft round contours, resembling
small white clouds snared in the maze of ropes. Then the sheets were hauled home,
the yards hoisted, and the ship became a high and lonely pyramid, gliding, all
shining and white, through the sunlit mist. The tug turned short round and went
away towards land. Twenty-six pairs of eyes watched her low broad stern
crawling languidly over the beating water with fierce hurry. She resembled an
enormous and aquatic blackbeetle, surprised by the light, overwhelmed by the
sunshine, trying to escape with ineffectual effort into the distant gloom of
the land. She left a lingering smudge of smoke on the sky, and two vanishing
trails of foam on the water. On the place where she had stopped a round black
patch of soot remained undulating on the swell--an unclean mark of the
creature's rest.
The Narcissus left
alone, heading south, seemed to stand resplendent and still upon the restless
sea, under the moving sun. Flakes of foam swept past her sides; the water
struck her with flashing blows; the land glided away, slowly fading; a few
birds screamed on motionless wings over the swaying mastheads. But soon the
land disappeared, the birds went away; and to the west the pointed sail of an
Arab dhow running for Bombay, rose triangular and upright above the sharp edge
of the horizon, lingered, and vanished like an illusion. Then the ship's wake,
long and straight, stretched itself out through a day of immense solitude. The
setting sun, burning on the level of the water, flamed crimson below the
blackness of heavy rain clouds. The sunset squall, coming up from behind,
dissolved itself into the short deluge of a hissing shower. It left the ship
glistening from trucks to waterline, and with darkened sails. She ran easily
before a fair monsoon, with her decks cleared for the night; and, moving along
with her, was heard the sustained and monotonous swishing of the waves, mingled
with the low whispers of men mustered aft for the setting of watches; the short
plaint of some block aloft; or, now and then, a loud sigh of wind.
Mr. Baker, coming out
of his cabin, called out the first name sharply before closing the door behind
him. He was going to take charge of the deck. On the homeward trip according to
an old custom of the sea, the chief officer takes the first night-watch--from
eight till midnight. So Mr. Baker, after he had heard the last ‘Yes, sir!’ said
moodily, ‘Relieve the wheel and look-out;’ and climbed with heavy feet the poop
ladder to windward. Soon after Mr. Creighton came down, whistling softly, and
went into the cabin. On the doorstep the steward lounged, in slippers,
meditative, and with his shirt-sleeves rolled up to the armpits. On the main
deck the cook, locking up the galley doors, had an altercation with young
Charley about a pair of socks. He could be heard saying impressively, in the
darkness amidships: ‘You don't deserve a kindness. I've been drying them for
you, and now you complain about the holes--and you swear, too! Right in front
of me! If I hadn't been a Christian--which you ain't, you young ruffian--I
would give you a clout on the head.....Go away!’ Men in couples or threes stood
pensive or moved silently along the bulwarks in the waist. The first busy day
of a homeward passage was sinking into the dull peace of resumed routine. Aft,
on the high poop, Mr. Baker walked shuffling, grunted to himself in the pauses
of his thoughts. Forward, the look-out man, erect between the flukes of the two
anchors, hummed an endless tune, keeping his eyes fixed dutifully ahead in a
vacant stare. A multitude of stars coming out into the clear night peopled the
emptiness of the sky. They glittered, as if alive above the sea; they
surrounded the running ship on all sides; more intense than the eyes of a
staring crowd, and as inscrutable as the souls of men.
The passage had begun;
and the ship, a fragment detached from the earth, went on lonely and swift like
a small planet. Round her the abysses of sky and sea met in an unattainable
frontier. A great circular solitude moved with her, ever changing and ever the
same, always monotonous and always imposing. Now and then another wandering
white speck, burdened with life, appeared far off--disappeared; intent on its
own destiny. The sun looked upon her all day, and every morning rose with a
burning, round stare of undying curiosity. She had her own future; she was
alive with the lives of those beings who trod her decks; like that earth which
had given her up to the sea, she had an intolerable load of regrets and hopes.
On her lived timid truth and audacious lies; and, like the earth, she was
unconscious, fair to see--and condemned by men to an ignoble fate. The august loneliness
of her path lent dignity to the sordid inspiration of her pilgrimage. She drove
foaming to the southward, as if guided by the courage of a high endeavour. The
smiling greatness of the sea dwarfed the extent of time. The days raced after
one another, brilliant and quick like the flashes of a lighthouse, and the
nights, eventful and short, resembled fleeting dreams. The men had shaken into
their places, and the half-hourly voice of the bells ruled their life of
unceasing care. Night and day the head and shoulders of a seaman could be seen
aft by the wheel, outlined high against sunshine or starlight, very steady
above the stir of revolving spokes. The faces changed, passing in rotation.
Youthful faces, bearded faces, dark faces: faces serene, or faces moody, but
all akin with the brotherhood of the sea; all with the same attentive
expression of eyes, carefully watching the compass or the sails. Captain
Allistoun, serious, and with an old red muffler round his throat all day long
pervaded the poop. At night, many times he rose out of the darkness of the
companion, such as a phantom above a grave, and stood watchful and mute under
the stars, his night-shirt fluttering like a flag--then, without a sound, sank
down again. He was born on the shores of the Pentland Firth. In his youth he
attained the rank of harpooner in Peterhead whalers. When he spoke of that time
his restless grey eyes became still and cold, like the loom of ice. Afterwards
he went into the East Indian trade for the sake of change. He had commanded the
Narcissus since she was built. He loved his ship, and drove her unmercifully;
for his secret ambition was to make her accomplish some day a brilliantly quick
passage which would be mentioned in nautical papers. He pronounced his owner's
name with a sardonic smile spoke but seldom to his officers, and reproved
errors in a gentle voice, with words that cut to the quick. His hair was
iron-grey, his face hard and of the colour of pump-leather. He shaved every
morning of his life--at six--but once (being caught in a fierce hurricane
eighty miles south-west of Mauritius) he had missed three consecutive days. He
feared naught but an unforgiving God, and wished to end his days in a little
house, with a plot of ground attached--far in the country--out of sight of the
sea.
He, the ruler of that
minute world, seldom descended from the Olympian heights of his poop. Below
him--at his feet, so to speak--common mortals led their busy and insignificant
lives. Along the main deck Mr. Baker grunted in a manner bloodthirsty and
innocuous; and kept all our noses to the grindstone, being--as he once
remarked--paid for doing that very thing. The men working about the deck were
healthy and contented--as most seamen are, when once well out to sea. The true
peace of God begins at any spot a thousand miles from the nearest land; and
when He sends there the messengers of His might it is not in terrible wrath
against crime, presumption, and folly, but paternally, to chasten simple
hearts--ignorant hearts that know nothing of life, and beat undisturbed by envy
or greed.
In the evening the
cleared decks had a reposeful aspect, resembling the autumn of the earth. The
sun was sinking to rest, wrapped in a mantle of warm clouds. Forward, on the
end of the spare spurs, the boatswain and the carpenter sat together with
crossed arms; two men friendly, powerful, and deep-chested. Beside them the
short, dumpy sailmaker--who had been in the Navy--related, between the whiffs
of his pipe, impossible stories about Admirals. Couples tramped backwards and
forwards, keeping step and balance without effort, in a confined space. Pigs
grunted in the big pigstye. Belfast, leaning thoughtfully on his elbow, above
the bars communed with them through the silence of his meditation. Fellows with
shirts open wide on sunburnt breasts sat upon the mooring bits, and all up the
steps of the forecastle ladders. By the foremast a few discussed in a circle
the characteristics of a gentleman. One said:--‘It's money as does it.’ Another
maintained:--‘No, it's the way they speak.’ Lame Knowles stumped up with an
unwashed face (he had the distinction of being the dirty man of the
forecastle), and, showing a few yellow fangs in a shrewd smile, explained
craftily that he ‘had seen some of their pants’ The backsides of them--he had
observed-- were thinner than paper from constant sitting down in offices, yet
otherwise they looked first-rate and would last for years. It was all
appearance. ‘It was,’ he said, ‘bloomin' easy to be a gentleman when you had a
clean job for life.’ They disputed endlessly, obstinate and childish; they
repeated in shouts and with inflamed faces their amazing arguments; while the
soft breeze, eddying down the enormous cavity of the foresail, that stood out
distended above their bare heads, stirred the tumbled hair with a touch passing
and light like an indulgent caress.
They were forgetting
their toil, they were forgetting themselves. The cook approached to hear, and
stood by, beaming with the inward consciousness of his faith, like a conceited
saint unable to forget his glorious reward; Donkin, solitary and brooding over
his wrongs on the forecastle-head, moved closer to catch the drift of the
discussion below him; he turned his sallow face to the sea, and his thin
nostrils moved, sniffing the breeze, as he lounged negligently by the rail. In
the glow of sunset faces shone with interest, teeth flashed, eyes sparkled. The
walking couples stood still suddenly, with broad grins; a man bending over a
washtub, sat up, entranced, with the soapsuds flecking his wet arms. Even the
three petty officers listened leaning back, comfortably propped, and with
superior smiles. Belfast left off scratching the ear of his favorite pig, and,
open-mouthed, tried with eager eyes to have his say. He lifted his arms,
grimacing and baffled. From a distance Charley screamed at the ring:--‘I know
about gentlemen morn'n any of you. I've been hintymate with 'em....I've blacked
their boots.’ The cook, craning his neck to hear better, was scandalized. ‘Keep
your mouth shut when your elders speak, you impudent young heathen--you.’ ‘All
right, old Hallelujah, I'm done,’ answered Charley, soothingly. At some opinion
of dirty Knowles, delivered with an air of supernatural cunning, a ripple of
laughter ran along, rose like a wave, burst with a startling roar. They stamped
with both feet; they turned their shouting faces to the sky; many, spluttering,
slapped their thighs; while one or two, bent double, gasped hugging themselves
with both arms like men in pain. The carpenter and the boatswain, without
changing their attitude, shook with laughter where they sat; the sailmaker,
charged with an anecdote about a Commodore, looked sulky; the cook was wiping
his eyes with a greasy rag; and lame Knowles, astonished at his own success,
stood in their midst showing a slow smile.
Suddenly the face of
Donkin leaning high-shouldered over the after-rail became grave. Something like
a weak rattle was heard through the forecastle door. It became a murmur; it
ended in a sighing groan. The washerman plunged both his arms into the tub
abruptly; the cook became more crestfallen than an exposed backslider; the
boatswain moved his shoulders uneasily; the carpenter got up with a spring and
walked away--while the sailmaker seemed mentally to give his story up, and
began to puff at his pipe with sombre determination. In the blackness of the
doorway a pair of eyes glimmered white, and big and staring. Then James Wait's
head protruding, became visible, as if suspended between the two hands that
grasped a doorpost on each side of the face. The tassel of his blue woollen
nightcap, cocked forward, danced gaily over his left eyelid. He stepped out in
a tottering stride. He looked powerful as ever, but showed a strange and
affected unsteadiness in his gait; his face was perhaps a trifle thinner, and
his eyes appeared rather startlingly prominent. He seemed to hasten the retreat
of departing light by his very presence; the setting sun dipped sharply, as
though fleeing from our nigger; a black mist emanated from him; a subtle and
dismal influence a something cold and gloomy that floated out and settled on
all the faces like a mourning veil. The circle broke up. The joy of laughter
died on stiffened lips. There was not a smile left among all the ship's
company. Not a word was spoken. Many turned their backs, trying to look
unconcerned; others, with averted heads, sent half-reluctant glances out of the
corners of their eyes. They resembled criminals conscious of misdeeds more than
honest men distracted by doubt; only two or three stared frankly, but stupidly,
with lips slightly open. All expected James Wait to say something, and, at the
same time, had the air of knowing beforehand what he would say. He leaned his
back against the doorpost, and with heavy eyes swept over us a glance
domineering and pained, like a sick tyrant overawing a crowd of abject but
untrustworthy slaves.
No one went away. they
waited in fascinated dread. He said ironically, with gasps between the words:--
‘Thank you....chaps.
You....are nice....and.... quiet....you are! Yelling so....before....the
door....’
He made a longer pause,
during which he worked his ribs in an exaggerated labour of breathing. It was
intolerable. Feet were shuffled. Belfast let out a groan; but Donkin above
blinked his red eyelids with invisible eyelashes, and smiled bitterly over the
nigger's head.
The nigger went on
again with surprising ease. He gasped no more, and his voice rang, hollow and
loud, as though he had been talking in an empty cavern. He was contemptuously angry.
‘I tried to get a wink
of sleep. You know I can't sleep o'nights. And you come jabbering near the door
here like a blooming lot of old women....You think yourselves good shipmates.
Do you?.... Much you care for a dying man!’
Belfast swung away from
the pigstye. ‘Jimmy,’ he cried tremulously, ‘if you hadn't been sick I would--’
He stopped. The nigger
waited awhile, then said, in a gloomy tone:--‘You would.....What? Go an' fight
another such one as yourself. Leave me alone. It won't be for long. I'll soon
die.....It's coming right enough!’
Men stood around very
still, breathing lightly, and with exasperated eyes It was just what they had
expected, and hated to hear, that idea of stalking death, thrust at them many
times a day like a boast and like a menace by this obnoxious nigger. He seemed
to take a pride in that death which, so far, had attended only upon the ease of
his life; he was overbearing about it, as if no one else in the world had ever
been intimate with such a companion; he paraded it unceasingly before us with
an affectionate persistence that made its presence indubitable, and at the same
time incredible. No man should be suspected of such monstrous friendship! Was
he a reality--or was he a sham--this ever-expected visitor of Jimmy's? We
hesitated between pity and mistrust, while, on the slightest provocation, he
shook before our eyes the bones of his bothersome and infamous skeleton. He was
for ever trotting him out. He would talk of that coming death as though it had
been already there, as if it had been walking the deck outside, as if it would
presently come in to sleep in the only empty bunk; as if it had sat by his side
at every meal. It interfered daily with our occupations, with our leisure, with
our amusements. We had no songs and no music in the evening, because Jimmy (we
all lovingly called him Jimmy, to conceal our hate of his accomplice) had
managed, with that prospective decease of his, to disturb even Archie's mental
balance. Archie was the owner of the concertina; but after a couple of stinging
lectures from Jimmy he refused to play any more. He said:--‘Yon's an uncanny
joker. I dinna ken what's wrang wi' him, but there's something verra wrang,
verra wrang. It's nae manner of use asking me. I won't play.’ Our singers
became mute because Jimmy was a dying man. For the same reason no chap--as
Knowles remarked--could ‘drive in a nail to hang his few poor rags upon,’
without being made aware of the enormity he committed in disturbing Jimmy's
interminable last moments. At night, instead of the cheerful yell, ‘One bell!
Turn out! Do you hear there? Hey! hey! hey! Show leg!’ the watches were called
man by man, in whispers, so as not to interfere with Jimmy's, possibly, last
slumber on earth. True, he was always awake, and managed, as we sneaked out on
deck, to plant in our backs some cutting remark that, for the moment, made us
feel as if we had been brutes, and afterwards made us suspect ourselves of
being fools. We spoke in low tones within that fo'c'sle as though it had been a
church. We ate our meals in silence and dread, for Jimmy was capricious with
his food, and railed bitterly at the salt meat, at the biscuits, at the tea as
at articles unfit for human consumption--‘let alone for a dying man!’ He would
say:--‘Can't you find a better slice of meat for a sick man who's trying to get
home to be cured--or buried? But there! if I had a chance, you fellows would do
away with it. You would poison me. Look at what you have given me! ’ We served
him in his bed with rage and humility, as if we had been the base couriers of a
hated prince; and he rewarded us by his unconciliating criticism. He had found
the secret of keeping for ever on the run the fundamental imbecility of
mankind; he had the secret of life, that confounded dying men, and he made
himself master of every moment of our existence. We grew desperate, and
remained submissive. Emotional little Belfast was for ever on the verge of
assault or on the verge of tears. One evening he confided to Archie:--‘for a
ha'penny I would knock his ugly block off the skulking dodger!’ And the
straight-forward Archie pretended to be shocked! Such was the infernal spell
which that casual St. Kitt's nigger had cast upon our guileless manhood! But
the same night Belfast stole from the galley the officers' Sunday fruit pie, to
tempt the fastidious appetite of Jimmy. He endangered not only his long
friendship with the cook but also--as is appeared--his eternal welfare. The
cook was over-whelmed with grief; he did not know the culprit but he knew that wickedness
flourished; he knew that Satan was abroad amongst those men, whom he looked
upon as in some way under his spiritual care. Whenever he saw three or four of
us standing together he would leave his stove, to run out and preach. We fled
from him; and only Charley (who knew the thief) affronted the cook with a
candid gaze which irritated the good man. ‘It's you, I believe,’ he groaned,
sorrowful, and with a patch of soot on his chin. ‘It's you. You are a brand for
burning! No more of your socks in my galley.’ Soon, unofficially, the
information was spread about that, should there be another case of stealing,
our marmalade (an extra allowance: half a pound per man) would be stopped. Mr.
Baker ceased to heap jocular abuse upon his favourites, and grunted suspiciously
at all. The captain's cold eyes, high up on the poop, glittered mistrustful, as
he surveyed us trooping in a small mob from halyards to braces for the usual
evening pull at all the ropes. Such stealing in a merchant ship is difficult to
check, and may be taken as a declaration by the men of their dislike for their
officers. It is a bad symptom. It may end in God knows what trouble. The
Narcissus was still a peaceful ship, but mutual confidence was shaken. Donkin
did not conceal his delight. We were dismayed.
Then illogical Belfast
approached our nigger with great fury. James Wait, with his elbow on the
pillow, choked, gasped out:--‘Did I ask you to bone the dratted thing? Blow
your blamed pie. It has made me worse--you little Irish lunatic, you!’ Belfast,
with scarlet face and trembling lips, made a dash at him. Every man in the
forecastle rose with a shout. There was a moment of wild tumult. Some one
shrieked piercingly:--‘Easy, Belfast! Easy!....’ We expected Belfast to
strangle Wait without more ado. Dust flew. We heard it through the nigger's
cough, metallic and explosive like a gong. Next moment we saw Belfast hanging
over him. He was saying plaintively:--‘Don't! Don't, Jimmy! don't be like that.
an angel couldn't put up with ye--sick as ye are.’ He looked round at us from
Jimmy 's bedside, his comical mouth twitching, and through tearful eyes; then
he tried to put straight the disarranged blankets. The unceasing whisper of the
sea filled the forecastle. Was James Wait frightened, or touched, or repentant?
He lay on his back with a hand to his side, and as motionless as if his
expected visitor had come at last. Belfast fumbled about his feet, repeating
with emotion:--‘Yes. We know. Ye are bad, but....Just say what ye want done,
and....We all know ye are bad--very bad.... ’No! Decidedly James Wait was not
touched or repentant. Truth to say, he seemed rather startled. He sat up with
incredible suddenness and ease. ‘Ah, you think I am bad, do you?’ he said
gloomily, in his clearest baritone voice (to hear him speak sometimes you would
never think t here was anything wrong with that man). ‘Do you?.... Well, act
according! Some of you haven't sense enough to put a blanket shipshape over a
sick man. There! Leave it alone'! I can die anyhow!’ Belfast turned away limply
with a gesture of discouragement. In the silence of the forecastle, full of
interested men, Donkin pronounced distinctly:--‘Well, I'm blowed!’ and
sniggered. Wait looked at him. He looked at him in a quite friendly manner.
Nobody could tell what would please our incomprehensible invalid: but for us
the scorn of that snigger was hard to bear.
Donkin's position in
the forecastle was distinguished but unsafe. He stood on the bad eminence of a
general dislike. He was left alone; and in his isolation he could do nothing
but think of the gales of the Cape of Good Hope and envy us the possession of
warm clothing and waterproofs. Our sea-boots, our oilskin coats, our
well-filled sea-chests, were to him so many causes for bitter meditation: he had
none of those things, and he felt instinctively that no man, when the need
arose, would offer to share them with him. He was impudently cringing to us and
systematically insolent to the officers. He anticipated the best results, for
himself, from such a line of conduct--and was mistaken. Such natures forget
that under extreme provocation men will be just--whether they want to be so or
not. Donkin's insolence to long-suffering Mr. Baker became at last intolerable
to us, and we rejoiced when the mate, one dark nigh, tamed him for good. I was
done neatly, with great decency and decorum, and with little noise. We had been
called--just before midnight--to trim the yards, and Donkin--as usual made--as
usual, made insulting remarks. We stood sleepily in a row with the forebrace in
our hands waiting for the next order, and heard in the darkness a scuffly
trampling of feet, an exclamation of surprise, sounds of cuffs and slaps,
suppressed, hissing whispers:--‘Ah! Will you!’....‘Don't!.... Don't!’....‘Then
behave.’...‘Oh! Oh!....’ Afterwards there were soft thuds mixed with the rattle
of iron things as if a man's body had been tumbling helplessly amongst the
main-pump rods. Before we could realise the situation, Mr. Baker's voice was
heard very near and a little impatient:--‘Haul away, men! Lay back on that
rope!’ And we did lay back on the rope with great alacrity. As if nothing had
happened, the chief mate went on trimming the yards with his usual and
exasperating fastidiousness. We didn't at the time see anything of Donkin, and
did not care. Had the chief officer thrown him overboard, no man would have
said as much as ‘Hallo! he's gone!’ But, in truth, no great harm was done--even
if Donkin did lose one of his front teeth. We perceived this in the morning,
and preserved a ceremonious silence: the etiquette of the forecastle commanded
us to be blind and dumb in such a case, and we cherished the decencies of our
life more than ordinary landsmen respect theirs. Charley, with unpardonable
want of savoir vivre, yelled out:--‘'Ave you been to your dentyst?.... Hurt ye,
didn't it?’ He got a box on the ear from one of his best friends. The boy was
surprised, and remained plunged in grief for at least three hours. We were
sorry for him, but youth requires even more discipline than age. Donkin grinned
venomously. From that day he became pitiless; told Jimmy that he was a ‘black
fraud’ ; hinted to us that we were an imbecile lot, daily taken in by a vulgar
nigger. And Jimmy seemed to like the fellow!
Singleton lived
untouched by human emotions. Taciturn and unsmiling, he breathed amongst us--in
that alone resembling the rest of the crowd. We were trying to be decent chaps,
and found it jolly difficult; we oscillated between the desire of virtue and
the fear of ridicule; we wished to save ourselves from the pain of remorse, but
did not want to be made the contemptible dupes of our sentiment. Jimmy's
hateful accomplice seemed to have blown with his impure breath undreamt-of
subtleties into our hearts. We were disturbed and cowardly. That we knew.
Singleton seemed to know nothing, understand nothing. We had thought him till
then as wise as he looked, but now we dared, at times, suspect him of being
stupid--from old age. One day, however, at dinner, as we sat on our boxes round
a tin dish that stood on the deck within the circle of our feet, Jimmy
expressed his general disgust with men and things in words that were
particularly disgusting. Singleton lifted his head. We became mute. The old
man, addressing Jimmy, asked:--‘Are you dying?’ Thus interrogated, Jame Wait
appeared horribly startled and confused. We were all startled. Mouths remained
open; hearts thumped; eyes blinked; a dropped tin fork rattled in the dish; a
man rose as if to go out, and stood still. In less than a minute Jimmy pulled
himself together.--‘Why? Can't you see I am?’ he answered shakily. Singleton
lifted a piece of soaked biscuit (‘his teeth’--he declared--‘had no edge on
them now’) to his lips.--‘Well, get on with your dying,’ he said with venerable
mildness: ‘don't raise a blamed fuss with us over that job. We can't help you.’
Jimmy fell back in his bunk, and for a long time lay very still wiping the
perspiration off his chin. The dinner-tins were put away quickly. On deck we
discussed the incident in whispers. Some showed a chuckling exultation. Many
looked grave. Wamibo, after long periods of staring dreaminess, attempted
abortive smiles; and one of the young Scandinavians, much tormented by doubt,
ventured in the second dog-watch to approach Singleton (the old man did not
encourage us much to speak to him) and ask sheepishly:--‘You think he will die?’
Singleton looked up.--‘Why, of course he will die.’he said deliberately. This
seemed decisive. It was promptly imparted to every one by him who had consulted
the oracle. Shy and eager, he would step up and with averted gaze recite his
formula:--‘Old Singleton says he will die.’ It was a relief! At last we knew
that our compassion would not be misplaced, and we could again smile without
misgivings--but we reckoned without Donkin. Donkin ‘didn't want to 'ave no
truck with 'em dirty furriners.’ When Neillssen came to him with the news: ‘Singleton
says he will die,’ he answered him by a spiteful ‘And so will you--you
fat-headed Dutchman. Wish you Dutchmen were hall dead--'stead comin' takin' our
money hinto your starvin' country.’ We were appalled. We perceived that after
all Singleton's answer meant nothing. We began to hate him for making fun of
us. All our certitudes were going; we were on doubtful terms with our officers;
the cook had given us up for lost; we had overheard the boatswain's opinion
that ‘we were a crowd of softies’ We suspected Jimmy, one another, and even our
very selves. We did not know what to do. At every insignificant turn of our
humble life we met Jimmy overbearing and blocking the way, arm-in-arm with his
awful and veiled familiar. It was a weird servitude.
It began a week after
leaving Bombay and came on us stealthily like any other great misfortune. Every
one had remarked that Jimmy from the first was very slack at his work; but we
thought it simply the outcome of his philosophy of life. Donkin said:--‘You put
no more weight on a rope than a bloody spurrer.’ He disdained him. Belfast,
ready for a fight, exclaimed provokingly:--‘You don't kill yourself, old man!’----‘Would
you?’ he retorted with extreme scorn--and Belfast retired. One morning, as we
were washing decks, Mr. Baker called to him:--‘Bring your broom over here,
Wait.’ He strolled languidly. ‘Move yourself! Ough!’ grunted Mr. Baker. ‘What's
the matter with y our hind legs?’ He stopped dead short. He gazed slowly with
eyes that bulged out, with an expression audacious and sad.--‘It isn't my legs,’
he said, ‘it's my lungs.’ Everybody listened.--‘What's....Ough....!’ ‘What's
wrong with them?’ inquired Mr. Baker. All the watch stood around on the wet
deck, grinning, with brooms or buckets in their hands. He said mournfully:--‘Going--or
gone. Can't you see I'm a dying man? I know it!’ Mr. Baker was disgusted.--‘Then
why the devil did you ship aboard here?--’ ‘I must live till I die--mustn't I?’
he replied. The grins became audible.--‘Go off the deck--get out of my sight,’
said Mr. Baker. He was nonplussed. It was an unique experience. James Wait,
obedient, dropped his broom, and walked slowly forward. A burst of laughter
followed him. It was too funny. All hands laughed.....They laughed!....Alas!’
He became the tormentor
of all our moments; he was worse than a nightmare. You couldn't see that there
was anything wrong with him: a nigger does not show. He was not very
fat--certainly--but then he was no leaner than other niggers we had known. He
coughed often, but the most prejudiced person could perceive that, mostly, he
coughed when it suited his purpose. he wouldn't, or couldn't, do his work--and
he wouldn't lie up. One day he would skip aloft with the best of them, and next
time we would be obliged to risk our lives to get his limp body down. He was
reported, he was examined; he was remonstrated with, threatened, cajoled,
lectured. He was called into the cabin to interview the captain. There were
wild rumours. It was said he had cheeked the old man; it was said he had
frightened him. Charley maintained that the ‘skipper, weepin' 'as giv' 'im 'is
blessin' an' a pot of jam.’ Knowles had it from the steward that the
unspeakable Jimmy had been reeling against the cabin furniture; that he had
groaned; that he had complained of general brutality and disbelief; and had
ended by coughing all over the old man's meteorological journals which were
then spread on the table. At any rate, Wait returned forward supported by the
steward. who, in a pained and shocked voice, entreated us:--‘Here! Catch hold
of him, one or you. He is to lie up.’ Jimmy drank a tin mugful of coffee, and,
after bullying first one and then another, went to bed. He remained there most
of the time, but when it suited him would come on deck and appear amongst us.
He was scornful and brooding; he looked ahead upon the sea; and no one could
tell what was the meaning of that black man sitting apart in a meditative
attitude and as motionless as a carving.
He refused steadily all
medicine; he threw sago and cornflour overboard till the steward got tired of
bringing it to him. He asked for paregoric. They sent him a big bottle; enough
to poison a wilderness of babes. He kept it between his mattress and the deal
lining of the ship's side; and nobody ever saw him take a dose. Donkin abused
him to his face, jeered at him while he gasped; and the same day Wait would
lend him a warm jersey. Once Donkin reviled him for half an hour; reproached
him with the extra work his malingering gave to the watch; and ended by calling
him ‘a black-faced swine.’ Under the spell of our accursed perversity we were
horror-struck. But Jimmy positively seemed to revel in that abuse. It made him
look cheerful--and Donkin had a pair of old sea boots thrown at him. ‘Here, you
East-end trash,’ boomed Wait, ‘you may have that.’
At last Mr. Baker had
to tell the captain that James Wait was disturbing the peace of the ship. ‘Knock
discipline on the head--he will, Ough,’ grunted Mr. Baker. As a matter of fact,
the starboard watch came as near as possible to refusing duty, when ordered one
morning by the boatswain to wash out their forecastle. It appears Jimmy
objected to a wet floor--and that morning we were in a compassionate mood. We
thought the boatswain a brute, and, practically, told him so. Only Mr. Baker's
delicate tact prevented an all-fired row: he refused to take us seriously. He
came bustling forward, and called us many unpolite names, but in such a hearty
and seamanlike manner that we began to feel ashamed of ourselves. In truth, we
thought him much too good a sailor to annoy him willingly: and after all Jimmy
might have been a fraud--probably was! The forecastle got a clean up that
morning; but in the afternoon a sick-bay was fitted up in the deck-house. It
was a nice little cabin opening on deck, and with two berths. Jimmy's
belongings were transported there, and then--notwithstanding his
protests--Jimmy himself. He said he couldn't walk. Four men carried him on a
blanket. He complained that he would have to die there alone, like a dog. We
grieved for him, and were delighted to have him removed from the forecastle. We
attended him as before. The galley was next door, and the cook looked in many
times a day. Wait became a little more cheerful. Knowles affirmed having heard
him laugh to himself in peals one day. Others had seen him walking about on
deck at night. His little place, with the door ajar on a long hook, was always
full of tobacco smoke. We spoke through the crack cheerfully, sometimes
abusively, as we passed by, intent on our work. He fascinated us. He would
never let doubt die. He overshadowed the ship. Invulnerable in his promise of
speedy corruption he trampled on our self-respect, he demonstrated to us daily
our want of moral courage; he tainted our lives. Had we been a miserable gang
of wretched immortals, unhallowed alike by hope and fear, he could not have
lorded it over us with a more pitiless assertion of his sublime privilege.
Meantime the Narcissus,
with square yards, ran out of the fair monsoon. She drifted slowly, swinging
round and round the compass, through a few days of baffling light airs. Under
the patter of short warm showers, grumbling men whirled the heavy yards from
side to sine; they caught hold of the soaked ropes with groans and sighs, while
their officers, sulky and dripping with rain water, unceasingly ordered them
about in wearied voices. During the short respites they looked with disgust
into the smarting palms of their stiff hands, and asked one another bitterly:--‘Who
would be a sailor if he could be a farmer?’ All the tempers were spoilt, and no
man cared what he said. One black night, when the watch, panting in the heat
and half-drowned with the rain, had been through four mortal hours hunted from
brace to brace, Belfast declared that he would ‘chuck going to sea for ever and
go in a steamer.’ This was excessive, no doubt. Captain Allistoun, with great
self-control, would mutter sadly to Mr. Baker:--‘It is not so bad--not so bad.’
when he had managed to shove, and dodge, and manoeuvre his smart ship through
sixty miles in twenty-four hours. From the doorstep of the little cabin, Jimmy,
chin in hand, watched our distasteful labours with insolent and melancholy
eyes. We spoke to him gently--and out of his sight exchanged sour smiles.
Then, again, with a
fair wind and under a clear sky, the ship went on piling up the South Latitude.
She passed outside Madagascar and Mauritius without a glimpse ot the land.
Extra lashings were put on the spare spars. Hatches were looked to. The steward
in his leisure moments and with a worried air tried to fit washboards to the
cabin doors. Stout canvas was bent with care. Anxious eyes looked to the
westward, towards the cape of storms. The ship began to dip into a south-west
swell, and the softly luminous sky of low latitudes took on a harder sheen from
day to day above our heads: it arched high above the ship, vibrating and pale,
like an immense dome of steel, resonant with the deep voice of freshening
gales. The sunshine gleamed cold on the white curls of black waves. Before the strong
breath of westerly squalls the ship, with reduced sail, lay slowly over,
obstinate and yielding. She drove to and fro in the unceasing endeavour to
fight her way through the invisible violence of the winds: she pitched headlong
into the dark smooth hollows; she struggled upwards over the snowy ridges of
great running seas; she rolled, restless, from side to side, like a thing in
pain. Enduring and valiant, she answered to the call of men; and her slim spars
waving for ever in abrupt semicircles, seemed to beckon in vain for help
towards the stormy sky.
It was a bad winter off
the Cape that year. The relieved helmsmen came off flapping their arms, or ran
stamping hard and blowing into swollen, red fingers. The watch on deck dodged
the sting of cold sprays or, crouching in sheltered corners, watched dismally
the high and merciless seas boarding the ship time after time in unappeasable
fury. Water tumbled in cataracts over the forecastle doors. You had to dash
through a waterfall to get into your damp bed. The men turned in wet and turned
out stiff to face the redeeming and ruthless extractions of their glorious and
obscure fate. Far aft, and peering watchfully to windward, the officers could
be seen through the mist of squalls. They stood by the weather-rail, holding on
grimly, straight and glistening in their long coats; then, at times, in the
disordered plunges of the hard-driven ship, they appeared high up, attentive,
tossing violently above the grey line of a clouded horizon, and in motionless
attitudes.
They watched the
weather and the ship as men on shore watch the momentous chances of fortune.
Captain Allistoun never left the deck, as though he had been part of the ship's
fittings. Now and then the steward, shivering, but always in shirt sleeves, would
struggle towards him with some hot coffee, half of which the gale blew out of
each cup before it reached the master's lips. He drank what was left gravely in
one long gulp, while heavy sprays pattered loudly on his oilskin coat, the seas
swishing broke about his high boots; and he never took his eyes off the ship.
He watched her every motion; he kept his gaze riveted upon here as a loving man
who watches the unselfish toil of a delicate woman upon the slender thread of
whose existence is hung the whole meaning and joy of the world. We all watched
her. She was beautiful and had a weakness. We loved her no less for that. We
admired her qualities aloud, we boasted of them to one another, as though they
had been our own, and the consciousness of her only fault we kept buried in the
silence of our profound affection. She was born in the thundering peal of
hammers beating upon iron, in black eddies of smoke, under a gray sky, on the
banks of the Clyde. The clamorous and sombre stream gives birth to things of beauty
that float away into the sunshine of the world to be loved by men. The
Narcissus was one of that perfect brood. Less perfect than many perhaps, but
she was ours, and consequently, incomparable. We were proud of her. In Bombay,
ignorant landlubbers alluded to her as that ‘pretty grey ship.’ Pretty! A
scurvy meed of commendation! We knew she was the most magnificent sea-boat ever
launched. We tried to forget that, like many good sea-boats, she was at times
rather crank. She was exacting. She wanted care in loading and handling, and no
one knew exactly how much care would be enough. Such are the imperfections of
mere men! The ship knew, and sometimes would correct the presumptuous human
ignorance by the wholesome discipline of fear. We had heard ominous stories
about past voyages. The cook (technically a seaman, but in reality no
sailor)--the cook, when unstrung by some misfortune, such as the rolling over
of a saucepan, would mutter gloomily while he wiped the floor:--‘There! Look at
what she has done! Some voy'ge she will drown all hands! You'll see if she
won't.’ To which the steward, snatching in the galley a moment to draw breath
in the hurry of his worried life, would remark philosophically:--‘Those that
see won't tell, anyhow. I don't want to see it.’ We derided those fears. Our
hearts went out to the old man when he pressed her hard so as to make her hold
her own, hold to every inch gained to windward; when he made her under reefed
sails, leap obliquely at enormous waves. The men, knitted together aft into a
ready group by the first sharp order of an officer coming to take charge of the
deck in bad weather:--‘Keep handy the watch,’ stood admiring her valiance.
Their eyes blinked in the wind; their dark faces were wet with drops of water
more salt and bitter than human tears; beards and moustaches, soaked, hung
straight and dripping like fine seaweed. They were fantastically misshapen; in
high boots, in hats like helmets, and swaying clumsily, stiff and bulky in
glistening oilskins, they resembled men strangely equipped for some fabulous
adventure. Whenever she rose easily to a towering green sea, elbows dug ribs,
faces brightened, lips murmured:--‘Didn't she do it cleverly,’ and all the
heads turning like one watched with sardonic grins the foiled wave go roaring
to leeward, white with the foam of a monstrous rage. But when she had not been
quick enough and, stuck heavily, lay over trembling under the blow, we clutched
at the ropes, and looking up at the narrow bands of drenched and strained sails
waving desperately aloft, we thought in our hearts--‘No wonder. Poor thing!’
The thirty-second day
out of Bombay began inauspiciously. In the morning a sea smashed one of the
galley doors. We dashed in through lots of steam and found the cook very wet
and indignant with the ship:--‘She's getting worse every day. She's trying to
drown me in front of my own stove!’ He was very angry. We pacified him, and the
carpenter, though washed away twice from there, managed to repair the door.
Through that accident our dinner was not ready till late, but it didn't matter
in the end because Knowles, who went to fetch it, got knocked down by a sea and
the dinner went over the side. Captain Allistoun, looking more hard and
thin-lipped than ever, hung on to full topsails and foresail, and would not
notice that the ship, asked to do too much, appeared to lose heart altogether
for the first time since we knew her. She refused to rise, and bored her way
sullenly through the seas. Twice running, as though she had been blind or weary
of life, she put her nose deliberately into a big wave and swept the decks from
end to end. As the boatswain observed with marked annoyance, while we were
splashing about in a body to try and save a worthless wash-tub:--‘Every
blooming thing in the ship is going overboard this afternoon.’ Venerable
Singleton broke his habitual silence and said with a glance aloft:--‘The old
man's in a temper with the weather, but it's no good bein' angry with the winds
of heaven.’ Jimmy had shut his door, of course. We knew he was dry and
comfortable within his little cabin, and in our absurd say were pleased one
moment, exasperated the next, by that certitude. Donkin skulked shamelessly,
uneasy and miserable. He grumbled:--‘I'm perishin' with cold houtside in
bloomin' wet rags, an' that 'ere black sojer sits dry on a blamed chest full of
bloomin' clothes; blank his black soul!’ We took no notice of him; we hardly
gave a thought to Jimmy and his bosom friend. There was no leisure for idle
probing of hearts. Sails blew adrift. Things broke loose. Cold and wet, we were
washed about the deck while trying to repair damages. The ship tossed about,
shaken furiously, like a toy in the hand of a lunatic. Just at sunset there was
a rush to shorten sail before the menace of a sombre hail cloud. The hard gust
of wind came brutal like the blow of a fist. The ship relieved of her canvas in
time received it pluckily: she yielded reluctantly to the violent onset; then,
coming up with a stately and irresistible motion, brought her spars to windward
in the teeth of the screeching squall. Out of the abysmal darkness of the black
cloud overhead white hail streamed on her, rattled on the rigging, leaped in
handfuls off the yards, rebounded on the deck--round and gleaming in the murky
turmoil like a shower of pearls. It passed away. For a moment a livid sun shot
horizontally the last rays of a sinister light between the hills of steep,
rolling waves. Then a wild night rushed in--stamped out in a great howl that
dismal remnant of a stormy day.
There was no sleep on
board that night. Most seamen remember in their life one or two such nights of
a culminating gale. Nothing seems left of the whole universe but darkness,
clamour, fury--and the ship. And like the last vestige of a shattered creation
she drifts, bearing an anguished remnant of sinful mankind, through the
distress, tumult, and pain of an avenging terror. No one slept in the
forecastle. The tin oil-lamp suspended on a long string, smoking, described
wide circles; wet clothing made dark heaps on the glistening floor; a thin
layer of water rushed to and fro. In the bed-places men lay booted, resting on
elbows and with open eyes. Hung-up suits of oilskin swung out and in, lively
and disquieting like reckless ghosts of decapitated seamen dancing in a
tempest. No one spoke and all listened. Outside the night moaned and sobbed to
the accompaniment of a continuous loud tremor as of innumerable drums beating
far off. Shrieks passed through the air. Tremendous dull blows made the ship
tremble while she rolled under the weight of the seas toppling on her deck. At
times she soared up swiftly as if to leave this earth for ever, than during
interminable moments fell through a void with all the hearts on board of her
standing still, till a frightful shock, expected and sudden, started them off
again with a big thump. After every dislocating jerk of the ship, Wamibo,
stretched full length, his face on the pillow, groaned slightly with the pain
of his tormented universe. Now and then, for the fraction of an intolerable
second, the ship, in the fiercer burst of a terrible uproar, remained on her
side, vibrating and still, with a stillness more appalling than the wildest
motion. Then upon all those prone bodies a stir would pass, a shiver of
suspense. A man would protrude his anxious head and a pair of eyes glistened in
the sway of light, glaring wildly. Some moved their legs a little as if making
ready to jump out. But several, motionless on their backs and with one hand
gripping hard the edge of the bunk, smoked nervously with quick puffs, staring
upwards; immobilised in a great craving for peace.
At midnight, orders
were given to furl the fore and mizen topsails. With immense efforts men
crawled aloft through a merciless buffeting, saved the canvas, and crawled down
almost exhausted, to bear in panting silence the cruel battering of the seas.
Perhaps for the first time in the history of the merchant service the watch,
told to go below, did not leave the deck, as if compelled to remain there by
the fascination of a venomous violence. At every heavy gust men, huddled
together, whispered to one another:--‘It can blow no harder’--and presently the
gale would give them the lie with a piercing shriek, and drive their breath
back into their throats. A fierce squall seemed to burst asunder the thick mass
of sooty vapours; and above the wrack of torn clouds glimpses could be caught
of the high moon rushing backwards with frightful speed over the sky, right
into the wind's eye. Many hung their heads, muttering that it ‘turned their
inwards out’ to look at it. Soon the clouds closed up, and the world again
became a raging, blind darkness that howled, flinging at the lonely ship salt
sprays and sleet.
About half-past seven
the pitchy obscurity round us turned a ghastly grey, and we knew that the sun
had risen. This unnatural and threatening daylight, in which we could see one
another's wild eyes and drawn faces, was only an added tax on our endurance.
The horizon seemed to have come on all sides within arm's length of the s hip.
Into that narrowed circle furious seas leaped in, stuck, and leaped out. A rain
of salt, heavy drops flew aslant like mist. The main-topsail had to be
goose-winged, and with stolid resignation every one prepared to go aloft once
more; but the officers yelled, pushed back, and at last we understood that no
more men would be allowed to go on the yard than were absolutely necessary for
the work. As at any moment the masts were likely to be jumped out or blown
overboard, we concluded that the captain didn't want to see all his crowd go
over the side at once. That was reasonable. The watch then on duty, led by Mr.
Creighton, began to struggle up the rigging. The wind flattened them against
the ratlines; then, easing a little, would let them ascent a couple of steps;
and again, with a sudden gust, pin all up the shrouds the whole drawling line
in attitudes of crucifixion. The other watch plunged down on the main deck to
haul up the sail. Men's heads bobbed up as the water flung them irresistibly
from side to side. Mr. Baker grunted encouragingly in our midst, spluttering
and blowing amongst the tangled ropes like an energetic porpoise. Favoured by
an ominous and untrustworthy lull, the work was done without any one being lost
either off the deck or from the yard. For the moment the gale seemed to take
off, and the ship, as if grateful for our efforts, plucked up heart and made
better weather of it.
At eight the men off
duty, watching their chance, ran forward over the flooded deck to get some
rest. The other half of the crew remained aft for their turn of ‘seeing her
through her trouble,’ as they expressed if. The two mates urged the master to
go below. Mr. Baker grunted in his ear:--‘Ough! surely
now....Ough!....confidence in us....nothing more to do....she must lay it out
or go. Ough! Ough!’ Tall young Mr. Creighton smiled down at him cheerfully:--‘....She's
right as a trivet! Take a spell, sir.’ He looked at them stonily with
bloodshot, sleepless eyes. The rims of his eyelids were scarlet, and he moved
his jaw unceasingly with a slow effort, as though he had been masticating a
lump of india-rubber. He shook his head. He repeated:--‘Never mind me. I must
see it out--I must see it out,’ but he consented to sit down for a moment on
the skylight, with his hard face turned unflinchingly to windward. The sea spat
at it--and stoical, it streamed with water as though he had been weeping. On
the weather side of the poop the watch, hanging on to the mizen rigging and to
one another, tried to exchange encouraging words. Singleton, at the wheel,
yelled out:--‘Look out for yourselves!’ His voice reached them in a warning
whisper. They were startled.
A big, foaming sea came
out of the mist; it made for the ship, roaring wildly, and in its rush it
looked as mischievous and discomposing as a madman with an axe. One or two,
shouting, scrambled up the rigging; most, with a convulsive catch of the
breath, held on where they stood. Singleton dug his knees under the wheel-box,
and carefully eased the helm to the headlong pitch of the ship, but without
taking his eyes off the coming wave. It towered close-to and high, like a wall
of green glass topped with snow. The ship rose to it as though she had soared
on wings, and for a moment rested poised upon the foaming crest, as if she had been
a great sea-bird. Before we could draw breath a heavy gust struck her, another
roller took her unfairly under the weather bow, she gave a toppling lurch, and
filled her decks. Captain Allistoun leaped up, and fell; Archie rolled over
him, screaming:--‘She will rise!’ She gave another lurch to leeward; the lower
deadeyes dipped heavily; the men's feet flew from under them, and they hung
kicking above the slanting poop. They could see the ship putting her side in
the water, and shouted all together:--‘She's going!’ Forward the forecastle
doors flew open, and the watch below were seen leaping out one after another,
throwing their arms up; and, falling on hands and knees, scrambled aft on all
fours along the high side of the deck, sloping more than the roof of a house.
From leeward the seas rose, pursuing them; they looked wretched in a hopeless
struggle, like vermin fleeing before a flood; they fought up the weather ladder
of the poop one after another, half naked and staring wildly; and as soon as
they got up they shot to leeward in clusters, with closed eyes, till they
brought up heavily with their ribs against the iron stanchions of the rail;
then, groaning, they rolled in a confused mass. The immense volume of water
thrown forward by the last scend of the ship had burst the lee door of the
forecastle. They could see their chests, pillows, blankets, clothing, come out
floating upon the sea. While they struggled back to windward they looked in
dismay. The straw beds swam high, the blankets, spread out, undulated; while
the chests, waterlogged and with a heavy list, pitched heavily, like dismasted
hulks, before they sank; Archie's big coat passed with outspread arms,
resembling a drowned seaman floating with his head under water. Men were
slipping down while trying to dig their fingers into the planks; others, jammed
in corners, rolled enormous eyes. They all yelled unceasingly;--‘The masts!
Cut! Cut!....’ A black squall howled over the ship, that lay on her side with
the weather yard-arms pointing to the clouds; while the tall masts, inclined
nearly to the horizon, seemed to be of an unmeasurable length. The carpenter
let go his hold, rolled against the skylight, and began to crawl to the cabin
entrance, where a big axe was kept ready for just such an emergency. At that
moment the topsail sheet parted, the end of the heavy chain racketed aloft, and
sparks of red fire streamed down through the flying sprays. The sail flapped
once with a jerk that seemed to tear our hearts out through our teeth, and
instantly changed into a bunch of fluttering narrow ribbons that tied
themselves into knots and became quiet along the yard. Captain Allistoun
struggled, managed to stand up with his face near the deck, upon which men
swung on the ends of ropes, like nest robbers upon a cliff. One of his feet was
on somebody's chest; his face was purple; his lips moved. He yelled also; he
yelled, bending down:--‘No! No!’ Mr. Baker, one leg over the binnacle-stand,
roared out:--‘Did you say no? Not cut?’ He shook his head madly. ‘No! No!’ Between
his legs the crawling carpenter heard, collapsed at once, and lay full length
in the angle of the skylight. Voices took up the shout--‘No! No!’ Then all
became still. They waited for the ship to turn over altogether, and shake them
out into the sea; and upon the terrific noise of wind and sea not a murmur of
remonstrance came out from those men, who each would have given ever so many
years of life to see ‘them damned sticks go overboard!’ They all believed it
their only chance, but a little hard-faced man shook his grey head and shouted ‘No!’
without giving them as much as a glance. They were silent, and gasped. They
gripped rails, they had wound ropes'-ends under their arms; they clutched
ring-bolts, they crawled in heaps where there was foothold; they held on with
both arms, hooked themselves to any thing to windward with elbows, with chins,
almost with their teeth: and some, unable to crawl away from where they had
been flung, felt the sea leap up striking against their backs as they struggled
upwards. Singleton had stuck to the wheel. His hair flew out in the wind; the
gale seemed to take its life-long adversary by the beard and shake his old
head. He wouldn't let go, and, with his knees forced between the spokes, flew
up and down like a man on a bough. As Death appeared unready, they began to
look about. Donkin, caught by one foot in a loop of some rope, hung, head down,
below us and yelled, with his face to the deck:--‘Cut! Don't mind that
murderin' fool! Cut, some of you!’ One of his rescuers struck him a back-handed
blow over the mouth; his head banged on the deck and he became suddenly very
quiet, with a white face, breathing hard, and with a few drops of blood
trickling from his cut lip. On the lee side another man could be seen stretched
out as if stunned; only the washboard prevented him from going over the side.
It was the steward. We had to sling him up like a bale, for he was paralysed
with fright. he had rushed up out of the pantry when he felt the ship go over,
and had rolled down helplessly, clutching a china mug. It was not broken. With
difficulty we tore it from him, and when he saw it in our hands he was amazed. ‘Where
did you get that thing?’ he kept on asking, in a trembling voice. His shirt was
blown to shreds; the ripped sleeves flapped like wings. Two men made him fast,
and, doubled over the rope that held him, he resembled a bundle of wet rags.
Mr. Baker crawled along the line of men, asking:--‘Are you all there?’ and
looking them over. Some blinked vacantly, others shook convulsively; Wamibo's
head hung over his breast; and in painful attitudes, cut by lashings, exhausted
with clutching, screwed up in corners, they breathed heavily. Their lips
twitched, and at every sickening heave of the overturned ship they opened them
wide as if to shout. The cook, embracing a wooden stanchion, unconsciously
repeated a prayer. In every short interval of the fiendish noises around he
could be heard there without cap or slippers, imploring in that storm the
Master of our lives not to lead him into temptation. Soon he also became
silent. In all that crowd of cold and hungry men, waiting wearily for a violent
death, not a voice was heard; they were mute, and in sombre thoughtfulness
listened to the horrible imprecations of the gale.
Hours passed. They were
sheltered by the heavy inclination of the ship from the wind that rushed in one
long unbroken moan above their heads, but cold rain showers fell at times into
the uneasy calm of their refuge. Under the torment of that new infliction a
pair of shoulders would writhe a little. Teeth chattered. The sky was clearing,
and bright sunshine gleamed over the ship. After every burst of battering seas,
vivid and fleeting rainbows arched over the drifting hull in the flick of
sprays. the gale was ending in a clear blow, which gleamed and cut like a
knife. Between two bearded shellbacks Charley, fastened with somebody's long
muffler to a deck ring-bolt, wept quietly, with rare tears wrung out by
bewilderment, cold, hunger, and general misery. One of his neighbours punched
him in the ribs, asking roughly :--‘What's the matter with your cheek? In fine
weather there's no holding you, youngster.’ Turning about with prudence he
worked himself out of his coat and threw it over the boy. The other man closed
up, muttering:--‘Twill make a bloomin' man of you, sonny.’ They flung their
arms over and pressed against him. Charley drew his feet up and his eyelids
dropped. Sighs were heard, as men, perceiving that they were not to be ‘drowned
in a hurry,’ tried easier positions. Mr. Creighton, who had hurt his leg, lay
amongst us with compressed lips. Some fellows belonging to his watch set about
securing him better. Without a word or a glance he lifted his arms one after
the other to facilitate the operation, and not a muscle moved in his stern,
young face. They asked him with solicitude:-- ‘Easier now, sir?’ He answered
with a curt:--‘That'll do.’ He was a hard young officer, but many of his watch
used to say they liked him well enough because he had ‘such a gentlemanly way
of damning us up and down the deck.’ Others, unable to discern such fine shades
of refinement, respected him for his smartness. For the first time since the
ship had gone on her beam ends Captain Allistoun gave a short glance down at
his men. He was almost upright--one foot against the side of the skylight, one
knee on the deck; and with the end of the vang round his waist swung back and
forth with his gaze fixed ahead watchful, like a man looking out for a sign.
Before his eyes the ship, with half her deck below water, rose and fell on
heavy seas that rushed from under her flashing in the cold sunshine. We began
to think she was wonderfully buoyant--considering. confident voices were heard
shouting:--‘She'll do, boys!’ Belfast exclaimed with fervour:--‘I would give a
month's pay for a draw at a pipe!’ One or two, passing dry tongues on their
salt lips, muttered something about a ‘drink of waterl.’ The cook, as if
inspired, scrambled up with his breast against the poop water-cask and looked
in. There was a little at the bottom. He yelled, waved his arms, and two men
began to crawl backwards and forwards with the mug. We had a good mouthful all
round. The master shook his head impatiently, refusing. When it came to Charley
one of his neighbours shouted:--‘That bloomin' boy's asleep.’ He slept as
though he had been dosed with narcotics. They let him be. Singleton held to the
wheel with one hand while he drank, bending down to shelter his lips from the
wind. Wamibo had to be poked and yelled at before he saw the mug held before
his eyes . Knowles said sagaciously:--‘It's better'n a tot o' rum.’ Mr. Baker
grunted:--‘Thank ye.’ Mr. Creighton drank and nodded. Donkin gulped greedily,
glaring over the rim. Belfast made us laugh when with grimacing mouth he
shouted:--‘Pass it this way. We're all taytottlers here.’ The master, presented
with the mug again by a crouching man, who screamed up at him:--‘We all had a
drink, captain,’ groped for it without ceasing to look ahead, and handed it
back stiffly as though he could not spare half a glance away from the ship.
Faces brightened. We shouted to the cook:--‘Well done, doctor!’ He sat to
leeward, propped by the water-cask and yelled back abundantly, but the seas
were breaking in thunder just then, and we only caught snatches that sounded
like: ‘Providence’ and ‘born again.’ He was at his old game of preaching. We
made friendly but derisive gestures at him, and from below he lifted one arm,
holding on with the other, moved his lips, he beamed up to us, straining his
voice--earnest, and ducking his head before the sprays.
Suddenly some one
cried:--‘Where's Jimmy?’ and we were appalled once more. On the end of the row
the boatswain shouted hoarsely:--‘Has anyone seed him come out?’ Voices
exclaimed dismally:--‘Drowned--is he?.... No! In his cabin!....Good
Lord!....Caught like a bloomin' rat in a trap.....Couldn't open his door....
....Aye! She went over too quick and the water jammed it....Poor beggar!....No
help for 'im.....Let's go and see....’ ‘Damn him, who could go?’ screamed Donkin.--‘Nobody
expects you to,’ growled the man next to him; ‘you're only a thing.’--‘Is there
half a chance to get at 'im?’ inquired two or three men together. Belfast
untied himself with blind impetuosity, and all at once shot down to leeward
quicker than a flash of lightning. We shouted all together with dismay; but
with his legs overboard he held and yelled for a rope. In our extremity nothing
could be terrible; so we judged him funny kicking there, and with his scared
face. some one began to laugh, and, as if hysterically infected with screaming
merriment, all those haggard men went off laughing, wild-eyed, like a lot of
maniacs tied up on a wall. Mr. Baker swung off the binnacle-stand and tendered
him one leg. He scrambled up rather scared, and consigning us with abominable
words to the ‘divvle.’ ‘You are....Ough! You're a foul-mouthed beggar, Craik,’
grunted Mr. Baker. He answered, stuttering with indignation:--‘Look at 'em,
sorr. The bloomin' dirty images! laughing at a chum gone overboard. Call themselves
men, too.’ But from the poop the boatswain called out:--‘Come along.’ and
Belfast crawled away in a hurry to join him. the five men, poised and gazing
over the edge of the poop, looked for the best way to get forward. They seemed
to hesitate. The others, twisting in their lashings, turning painfully, stared
with open lips. Captain Allistoun saw nothing; he seemed with his eyes to hold
the ship up in a superhuman concentration of effort. The wind screamed loud in
the sunshine; columns of spray rose straight up; and in the glitter of rainbows
bursting over the trembling hull the men went cautiously, disappearing from
sight with deliberate movements.
They went swinging from
belaying-pin to cleat above the seas that beat the half-submerged deck. Their
toes scraped the the planks. Lumps of cold green water toppled over the bulwark
and on their heads. They hung for a moment on strained arms, with the breath
knocked out of them, and with closed eyes--then, letting go with one hand,
balanced with lolling heads, trying to grab some rope or stanchion further
forward. The long-armed and athletic boatswain swung quickly, gripping things
with a fist hard as iron, and remembering suddenly snatches of the last letter
from his ‘old woman.’ Little Belfast scrambled rageously, muttering ‘cursed
nigger.’ Wamibo's tongue hung out with excitement; and Archie, intrepid and
calm, watched his chance to move with intelligent coolness.
When above the side of
the house, they let go one after another, and falling heavily , sprawled,
pressing their palms to the smooth teak wood. Round them the backwash of waves
seethed white and hissing. All the doors had become trap-doors, of course. The
first was the galley door. The galley extended from side to side, and they
could hear the sea splashing with hollow noises in there. The next door was
that of the carpenter's shop. They lifted it, and looked down. The room seemed
to have been devastated by an earthquake. Everything in it had tumbled on the
bulkhead facing the door, and on the other side of that bulkhead there was
Jimmy, dead or alive. The bench, a half-finished meat-safe, saws, chisels, wire
rods, axes, crowbars, lay in a heap besprinkled with loose nails. A sharp adze
stuck up with a shining edge that gleamed dangerously down there like a wicked
smile. The men clung to one another peering. A sickening, sly lurch of the ship
nearly sent them overboard in a body. Belfast howled ‘Here goes!’ and leaped
down. Archie followed cannily, catching at shelves that gave way with him, and
eased himself in a great crash of ripped wood. There was hardly room for three
men to move. And in the sunshiny blue square of the door, the boatswain's face,
bearded and dark, Wamibo's face, wild and pale, hung over--watching.
Together they shouted: ‘Jimmy!
Jim!’ From above the boatswain contributed a deep growl: ‘You....Wait!’ In a
pause, Belfast entreated: ‘Jimmy, darlin' are ye aloive?’ The boatswain said: ‘Again!
All together boys!’ All yelled excitedly. Wamibo made noises resembling loud
barks. Belfast drummed on the side of the bulkhead with a piece of iron. All
ceased suddenly. The sound of screaming and hammering went on thin and
distinct--like a solo after a chorus. He was alive. He was screaming and
knocking below us with the hurry of a man prematurely shut up in a coffin. We
went to work. We attacked with desperation the abominable heap of things heavy,
of things sharp, of things clumsy to handle. The boatswain crawled away to find
somewhere a flying end of a rope; and Wamibo, held back by shouts:-- ‘Don't
jump!.... Don't come in here, muddle-head!’--remained glaring above us--all
shining eyes, gleaming fangs, tumbled hair; resembling an amazed and
half-witted fiend gloating over the extraordinary agitation of the damned. The
boatswain adjured us to ‘bear a hand,’ and a rope descended. We made things
fast to it and they went up spinning, never to be seen by man again. A rage to
fling things overboard possessed us. We worked fiercely, cutting our hands, and
speaking brutally to one another. Jimmy kept up a distracting row; he screamed
piercingly, without drawing breath, like a tortured woman; he banged with hands
and feet. The agony of his fear wrung our hearts so terribly that we longed to
abandon him, to get out of that place deep as a well and swaying like a tree,
to get out of his hearing, back on the poop where we could wait passively for
death in incomparable repose. We shouted to him to ‘shut up, for God's sake.’
He redoubled his cries. He must have fancied we could not hear him. Probably he
heard his own clamour but faintly. We could picture him crouching on the edge
of the upper berth, letting out with both fists at the wood, in the dark, and
with his mouth wide open for that unceasing cry. Those were loathsome moments.
A cloud driving across the sun would darken the doorway menacingly. Every
movement of the ship was pain. We scrambled about with no room to breathe, and
felt frightfully sick. The boatswain yelled down at us:--‘Bear a hand! Bear a
hand! We two will be washed away from here directly if you ain't quick!’ Three
times a sea leaped over the high side and flung bucketfuls of water on our
heads. Then Jimmy, startled by the shock, would stop his noise for a
moment--waiting for the ship to sink, perhaps--and began again, distressingly
loud, as if invigorated by the gust of fear. At the bottom the nails lay in a
layer several inches thick. It was ghastly. Every nail in the world, not driven
in firmly somewhere, seemed to have found its way into that carpenter's shop.
There they were, of all kinds, the remnants of stores from seven voyages.
Tin-tacks, copper tacks (sharp as needles), pump nails, with big heads, like
tiny iron mushrooms; nails without any heads (horrible); French nails polished
and slim. They lay in a solid mass more inabordable than a hedgehog. We
hesitated yearning for a shovel, while Jimmy below us yelled as though he had
been flayed. Groaning, we dug our fingers in, and very much hurt, shook our
hands, scattering nails and drops of blood. We passed up our hats full of
assorted nails to the boatswain, who, as if performing a mysterious and
appeasing rite, cast them wide upon a raging sea.
We got to the bulkhead
at last. Those were stout planks. She was a ship, well finished in every
detail--the Narcissus was. They were the stoutest planks ever put into a ship's
bulkhead--we thought--and then we perceived that, in our hurry, we had sent all
the tools overboard. Absurd little Belfast wanted to break it down with his own
weight, and with both feet leaped straight up like a springbok, cursing the
Clyde shipwrights for not scamping their work. Incidentally he reviled all
North Britain, the rest of the earth, the sea--and all his companions. He
swore, as he alighted heavily on his heels, that he would never, never any more
associate with any fool that ‘hadn't savee enough to know his knee from him
elbow.’ He managed by his thumping to scare the last remnant of wits out of
Jimmy. We could hear the object of our exasperated solicitude darting to and
fro under the planks, now here, now there, in a puzzling manner. He squeaked as
he dodged the invisible blows. It was more heartrending even than his yells.
Suddenly Archie produced a crowbar. He had kept it back; also a small hatchet.
We howled with satisfaction. He struck a mighty blow and small chips flew at
our eyes. The boatswain above shouted:--‘Look out! Look out there. Don't kill
the man. Easy does it!’ Wamibo, maddened with the excitement hung head down and
insanely urged us:--‘Hoo! Strook 'im! Hoo! Hoo!’ We were afraid he would fall in
and kill one of us and, hurriedly, we entreated the boatswain to ‘shove the
blamed Finn overboard.’ Then, all together, we yelled down at the planks:--‘Stand
from under! Get forward.’ and listened. We only heard the deep hum and moan of
the wind above us, the mingled roar and hiss of the seas. The ship, as if
overcome with despair, wallowed lifelessly, and our heads swam with that
unnatural motion. Belfast clamoured:--‘For the love of God, Jimmy, where are
ye?....Knock! Jimmy darlint!....Knock! You bloody black beast! Knock!’ He was
as quiet as a dead man inside a grave; and, like men standing above a grave, we
were on the verge of tears--but with vexation, the strain, the fatigue; with
the great longing to be done with it, to get away, and lay down to rest
somewhere where we could see our danger and breathe, Archie shouted:--‘Gi'e me
room!’ We crouched behind him, guarding our heads, and he struck time after
time in the joint of the planks. They cracked. Suddenly the crowbar went
halfway in through a splintered oblong hole. It must have missed Jimmy's head
by less than an inch. Archie withdrew it quickly, and that infamous nigger
rushed at the hole, put his lips to it, and whispered ‘Help’ in an almost
extinct voice; he pressed his head to it, trying madly to get out through that
opening one inch wide and three inches long. In our disturbed state we were
absolutely paralysed by his incredible action. It seemed impossible to drive
him away. Even Archie at last lost his composure. ‘If ye don't clear oot I'll drive
the crowbar thro' your head.’ he shouted in a determined voice. He meant what
he said, and his earnestness seemed to make an impression on Jimmy. He
disappeared suddenly, and we set to prising and tearing at the planks with the
eagerness of men trying to get at a mortal enemy, and spurred by the desire to
tear him limb from limb. The wood split, cracked, gave way. Belfast plunged in
head and shoulders and groped viciously. ‘I've got 'im! Got 'im,’ he shouted. ‘Oh!
There!....He's gone; ;I've got 'im!....Pull at my legs!....Pull!’ Wamibo hooted
unceasingly. The boatswain shouted directions:--‘Catch hold of his hair,
Belfast; pull straight up, you two!.... Pull fair!’ We pulled fair. We pulled
Belfast out with a jerk, and dropped him with disgust. In a sitting posture,
purple-faced, he sobbed despairingly:--‘How can I hold on to 'is blooming short
wool?’ Suddenly Jimmy's head and shoulders appeared. He stuck half-way, and
with rolling eyes foamed at our feet. We flew at him with brutal impatience, we
tore the shirt off his back, we tugged at his ears, we panted over him; and all
at once he came away in our hands as though somebody had let go his legs. With
the same movement, without a pause, we swung him up. His breath whistled, he
kicked our upturned faces, he grasped two pairs of arms above his head, and he
squirmed up with such precipitation that he seemed positively to escape from
our hands like a bladder full of gas. Streaming with perspiration, we swarmed
up the rope, and, coming into the blast of cold wind, gasped like men plunged
into icy water. With burning faces we shivered to the very marrow of our bones.
Never before had the gale seemed to us more furious, the sea more mad, the
sunshine more merciless and mocking, and the position of the ship more hopeless
and appalling. Every movement of her was ominous of the end of her agony and of
the beginning of ours. We staggered away from the door, and, alarmed by a
sudden roll, fell down in a bunch. it appeared to us that the side of the house
was more smooth than glass and more slippery than ice. There was nothing to
hang on to but a long brass hook used sometimes to keep back an open door.
Wamibo held on to it and we held on to Wamibo, clutching our Jimmy. He had
completely collapsed now. He did not seem to have the strength to close his
hand. We stuck to him blindly in our fear. We were not afraid of Wamibo letting
go (we remembered that the brute was stronger than any three men in the ship),
but we were afraid of the hook giving way, and we also believed that the ship
had made up her mind to turn over at last. But she didn't. A sea swept over us.
The boatswain spluttered:--‘Up and away. There's a lull. Away aft with you, or
we will all go to the devil here.’ We stood up surrounding Jimmy. We begged him
to h old up, to hold on, at least. He glared with his bulging eyes, mute as a
fish, and with all the stiffness knocked out of him. He wouldn't stand; he
wouldn't even as much as clutch at our necks; he was only a cold black skin
loosely stuffed with soft cotton wool; his arms and legs swung jointless and
pliable; his head rolled about; the lower lip hung down, enormous and heavy. We
pressed round him, bothered and dismayed; sheltering him we swung here and
there in a body; and on the very brink of eternity we tottered all together
with concealing and absurd gestures, like a lot of drunken men embarrassed with
a stolen corpse.
Something had to be
done. We had to get him aft. A rope was tied slack under his armpits, and,
reaching up at the risk of our lives, we hung him on the foresheet cleet. He
emitted no sound; he looked as ridiculously lamentable as a doll that had lost
half its sawdust, and we started on our perilous journey over the main deck,
dragging along with care that pitiful, that limp, that hateful burden. He was
not very heavy, but had he weighed a ton he could not have been more awkward to
handle. We literally passed him from hand to hand. Now and then we had to hang
him up on a handy belaying-pin, to draw a breath and reform the line. Had the
pin broken he would have irretrievably gone into the Southern Ocean, but he had
to take his chance of that; and after a little while, becoming apparently aware
of it, he groaned slightly, and with a great effort whispered a few words. We
listened eagerly. He was reproaching us with our carelessness in letting him
run such risks: ‘Now, after I got myself from there,’ he breathed out weakly. ‘There’
was his cabin. And he got himself out. We had nothing to do with it
apparently!....No matter.....We went on and let him take his chances, simply
because we could not help it; for though at that time we hated him more than
ever--more than anything under heaven--we did not want to lose him. We had so
far saved him; and it had become a personal matter between us and the sea. We
meant to stick to him. Had we (by an incredible hypothesis) undergone similar
toil and trouble for an empty cask, that cask would have become as precious to
us as Jimmy was. More precious, in fact, because we would have had no reason to
hate the cask. And we hated James Wait. We could not get rid of the monstrous
suspicion that this astounding black-man was shamming sick, had been
malingering heartlessly in the face of our toil, of our scorn, of our
patience--and now was malingering in the face of our devotion--in the face of
death. Our vague and imperfect morality rose with disgust at his unmanly lie.
But he stuck to it manfully--amazingly. No! It couldn't be. He was at all
extremity. His cantankerous temper was only the result of the provoking invincibleness
of that death he felt by his side. Any man may be angry with such a masterful
chum. 'But, then, what kind of men were we--with our thoughts! Indignation and
doubt grappled within us in a scuffle that trampled upon the finest of our
feelings. And we hated him because of the suspicion; we detested him because of
the doubt. We could not scorn him safely--neither could we pity him without
risk to our dignity. So we hated him, and passed him carefully from hand to
hand. We cried, ‘Got him?--‘Yes, all right. Let go.’ and he swung from one
enemy to another, showing about as much life as an old bolster would do. His
eyes made two narrow white slits in the black face. He breathed slowly, and the
air escaped through his lips with a noise like the sound of bellows. We reached
the poop ladder at last, and it being a comparatively safe place, we lay for a
moment in an exhausted heap to rest a little. He began to mutter. We were
always incurably anxious to hear what he had to say. This time he mumbled
peevishly. ‘It took you some time to come. I began to think the whole smart lot
of you had been washed overboard. What kept you back? Hey? Funk?’ We said
nothing. With sighs we started again to drag him up. The secret and ardent
desire of our hearts was to beat him viciously with our fists about the head
and we handled him as tenderly as though he had been made of glass.
The return on the poop
was like the return of wanderers after many years amongst people marked by the
desolation of time. Eyes were turned slowly in their sockets glancing at us.
Faint murmurs were heard. ‘Have you got 'im after all?’ The well-known faces
looked strange and familiar; they seemed faded and grimy; they had a mingled
expression of fatigue and eagerness. They seemed to have become much thinner
during our absence, as if all these men had been starving for a long time in
their abandoned attitudes. The captain, with a round turn of a rope on his
wrist, and kneeling on one knee, swung with a face cold and stiff but with
living eyes he was still holding the ship up heeding no one, as if lost in the
unearthly effort of that endeavour. We fastened up James Wait in a safe place.
Mr. Baker scrambled along to lend a hand. Mr. Creighton, on his back, and very
pale, muttered, ‘Well done,’ and gave us, Jimmy and the sky, a scornful glance,
then closed his eyes slowly. Here and there a man stirred a little, but most
remained apathetic, in cramped positions, muttering between shivers. The sun
was setting. A sun enormous, unclouded and red, declining low as if bending
down to look in their faces. The wind whistled across long sunbeams that,
resplendent and cold, struck full on the dilated pupils of staring eyes without
making them wink. The wisps of hair and the tangled beards were grey with the
salt of the sea. The faces were earthy, and the dark patches under the eyes
extended to the ears, smudged into the hollows of sunken cheeks. The lips were
livid and thin, and when they moved it was difficulty, as though they had been
glued to the teeth. Some grinned sadly in the sunlight, shaking with cold.
Others were sad and still. Charley, subdued by the sudden disclosure of the
insignificance of his youth, darted fearful glances. The two smooth-faced
Norwegians resembled decrepid children, staring stupidly. To leeward, on the
edge of the horizon, black seas leaped up towards the glowing sun. It sank
slowly, round and blazing, and the crests of waves splashed on the edge of the
luminous circle. One of the Norwegians appeared to catch sight of it, and,
after giving a violent start, began to speak. His voice, startling the others,
made them stir. They moved their heads stiffly, or turning with difficulty,
looked at him with surprise, with fear, or in grave silence. He chattered at
the setting sun, nodding his head, while the big seas began to roll across the
crimson disc; and over miles of turbulent waters the shadows of high waves
swept with a running darkness the faces of men. A crested roller broke with a
loud hissing roar, and the sun, as if put out disappeared. The chattering voice
faltered, went out together with the light. There were sighs. In the sudden
lull that follows the crash of a broken sea a man said wearily, ‘Here's that
bloomin' Dutchman gone off his chump.’ A seaman, lashed by the middle, tapped
the deck with his open hand with unceasing quick flaps. In the gathering
greyness of twilight a bulky form was seen rising aft, and began marching on
all fours with the movements of some big cautious beast. It was Mr. Baker
passing along the line of men. He grunted encouragingly over every one, felt
their fastenings. Some, with half-open eyes, puffed like men oppressed by heat;
others, mechanically and in dreamy voices answered him, ‘Aye! aye! sir!’ He
went from one to another grunting, ‘ Ough!....See her through it yet;’ and
unexpectedly, with loud angry outbursts, blew up Knowles for cutting off a long
piece from the fall of the relieving tackle. ‘Ough!--Ashamed of
yourself--Relieving tackle--Don't you know better!--Ough!--Able seaman! Ough!’
The lame man was crushed. He muttered, ‘Get som'think for a lashing for myself,
sir.’--‘Ough!Lashing--yourself. Are you a tinker or a sailor--What?Ough!--May
want that tackle directly--Ough!More use to the ship than your lame carcass.
Ough!--Keep it!Keep it, now you've done it.’ He crawled away slowly, muttering
to himself about some men being ‘worse than children.’ It had been a comforting
row. Low exclamations were heard: ‘Hallo....Hallo....’ Those who had been
painfully dozing asked with convulsive starts, ‘What's up?....What is it?’ The
answers came with unexpected cheerfulness:‘The mate is going bald-headed for
lame Jack about something or other.’ ‘No!....’‘What 'as he done?’ Some even
chuckled. It was like a whiff of hope, like a reminder of safe days. Donkin,
who had been stupefied with fear, revived suddenly and began to shout:--‘'Ear
'im; that's the way they tawlk to hus. Vy donch 'ee 'it 'im--one ov yer? 'It
'im. 'It 'im! Comin' the mate hover hus. We are as good men as 'ee! We're hall
goin' to 'ell now. We 'ave been starved in this rotten ship, an' now we're
goin' to be drowned for them black-'earted bullies! 'it 'im!’ He shrieked in
the deepening gloom, he blubbered and sobbed, screaming:--‘'It 'im! 'It 'im!’
The rage and fear of his disregarded right to live tried the steadfastness of
hearts more than the menacing shadows of the night that advanced through the
unceasing clamor of the gale. From aft Mr. Baker was heard:--‘Is one of you men
going to stop him--must I come along?cq. ‘Shut up!....’ ‘Keep quiet!’ cried
various voices, exasperated, trembling with cold.--‘You'll get one across the
mug from me directly.’ said an invisible seaman, in a weary tone, ‘I won't let
the mate have the trouble.’ He ceased and lay still with the silence of
despair. On the black sky the stars, coming out, gleamed over an inky sea that,
speckled with foam, flashed back at them the evanescent and pale light of a
dazzling whiteness born from the black turmoil of the waves. Remote in the
eternal calm they glittered hard and cold above the uproar of the earth; they
surrounded the vanquished and tormented ship on all sides: more pitiless than
the eyes of a triumphant mob and as unapproachable as the hearts of men.
The icy south wind
howled exultingly under the sombre splendour of the sky. The cold shook the men
with a restless violence as though it had tried to shake them to pieces. Short
moans were swept unheard off the stiff lips. Some complained in mutters of ‘not
feeling themselves below the waist’; while those who had closed their eyes, imagined
they had a block of ice on their chests. Others, alarmed at not feeling any
pain in their fingers, beat the deck feebly with their hands--obstinate and
exhausted. Wamibo stared vacant and dreamy. The Scandinavians kept on a
meaningless mutter through chattering teeth. The spare Scotchmen, with
determined efforts, kept their lower jaws still. The West-country men lay big
and stolid in an invulnerable surliness. A man yawned and swore in turns.
Another breathed with a rattle in his throat. Two elderly hard-weather
shellbacks, fast side by side, whispered dismally to one another about the
landlady of a boarding-house in Sunderland, whom they both knew. They extolled
her motherliness and her liberality; they tried to talk about the joint of beef
and the big fire in the downstairs kitchen. The words dying faintly on their
lips, ended in light sighs. A sudden voice cried into the cold night, ‘Oh Lord!’
No one changed his position or took any notice of the cry. One or two passed,
with a repeated and vague gesture, their hand over their faces, but most of
them kept very still. In the benumbed immobility of their bodies they were
excessively wearied by their thoughts, that rushed with the rapidity and
vividness of dreams. Now and then, by an abrupt and startling exclamation, they
answered the weird hail of some illusion; then, again, in silence contemplated
the vision of known faces and familiar things. They recalled the aspect of
forgotten shipmates and heard the voice of dead and gone skippers. They
remembered the noise of gaslit streets, the steamy heat of tap-rooms, or the
scorching sunshine of calm days at sea.
Mr. Baker left his
insecure place, and crawled, with stoppages, along the poop. In the dark and on
all fours he resembled some carnivorous animal prowling amongst corpses. At the
break, propped to windward of a stanchion, he looked down on the main deck. It
seemed to him that the ship had a tendency to stand up a little more. The wind
had eased a little, he thought, but the sea ran as high as ever. The waves
foamed viciously, and the lee side of the deck disappeared under a hissing
whiteness as of boiling milk, while the rigging sang steadily with a deep
vibrating note, and, at every upward swing of the ship, the wind rushed with a
long-drawn clamour amongst the spars. Mr. Baker watched very still. A man near
him began to make a blabbing noise with his lips, all at once and very loud, as
though the cold had broken brutally through him. He went on:‘Ba--ba--ba--brrr--brr--ba
-- ba--’ ‘Stop that!’ cried Mr. Baker, groping in the dark. ‘Stop it!’ He went
on shaking the leg he found under his hand.--‘What is it, sir?’ called out
Belfast, in the tone of a man awakened suddenly:‘we are looking after that 'ere
Jimmy.’--‘Are you? Ough! Don't make that row then. Who's that near you?’--‘It's
me--the boatswain, sir,’ growled the West-country man; ‘we are trying to keep
life in that poor devil.’--‘Aye, aye!’ said Mr. Baker, ‘Do it quietly, can't
you.’--‘He wants us to hold him up above the rail,’ went on the boatswain, with
irritation, ‘says he can't breathe here under our jackets.’--‘If we lift 'im,
we drop 'im overboard,’ said another voice, ‘we can't feel our hands with cold.’--‘I
don't care. I am choking!’ exclaimed James Wait in a clear tone.--‘Oh, no, my
son,’ said the boatswain, desperately, ‘you don't go till we all go on this
fine night.’--‘You will see yete many a worse,’ said Mr. Baker, cheerfully.--‘It's
no child's play, sir!’ answered the boatswain. ‘Some of us further aft, here,
are in a pretty bad way.’--‘If the blamed sticks had been cut out of her she
would be running along on her bottom now like any decent ship, an' giv' us all
a chance,’ said some one, with a sigh.--‘The old man wouldn't have it.... much
he cares for us,’ whispered another.-- ‘Care for you!’ exclaimed Mr. Baker,
angrily. ‘Why should he care for you? Are you a lot of women passengers to be
taken care of? We are here to take care of the ship--and some of you ain't up
to that. Ough!.... What have you done so very smart to be taken care of? Ough!....Some
of you can't stand a bit of a breeze without crying over it.’--‘Come, sorr. We
ain't so bad,’ protested Belfast, in a voice shaken by shivers; ‘we
ain't....brrr....’--‘Again,’ shouted the mate, grabbing at the shadowy form; ‘again!....Why,
you're in your shirt! What have you done?’--‘I've put my oilskin and jacket
over that half-dead nayggur--and he says he chokes,’ said Belfast,
complainingly.--‘You wouldn't call me nigger if I wasn't half dead you Irish
beggar!’ boomed James Wait, vigorously.--‘You....brrr....You wouldn't be white
if you were ever so well....I will fight you....brrr.... in fine
weather....brrr....with one hand tied behind my back....brrr....’--‘I don't
want your rags--I want air,’ gasped out the other faintly, as if suddenly exhausted.
The sprays swept over
the whistling and pattering. Men disturbed in their peaceful torpor by the pain
of quarrelsome shouts, moaned, muttering curses. Mr. Baker crawled off a little
way to leeward where a water-cask loomed up big, with something white against
it. ‘Is it you, Podmore?’ asked Mr. Baker. He had to repeat the question twice
before the cook turned, coughing feebly.--‘Yes, sir. I've been praying in my
mind for a quick deliverance; for I am prepared for any call.....I--’--‘Look
here, cook,’ interrupted Mr. baker, ‘the men are perishing with cold.’--‘Cold!’
said the cook, mournfully; ‘they will be warm enough before long.’--‘What?’
asked Mr. Baker, looking along the deck into the faint sheen of frothing
water.--‘They are a wicked lot,’ continued the cook solemnly, but in an
unsteady voice, ‘about as wicked as any ship's company in this sinful world!
Now, I’--he trembled so that he could hardly speak; his was an exposed place,
and in a cotton shirt, a thin pair of trousers, and with his knees under his
nose, he received, quaking, the flicks of stinging, salt drops; his voice
sounded exhausted--‘now, I--any time....My eldest youngster, Mr. Baker....a
clever boy....last Sunday on shore before this voyage he wouldn't go to church,
sir. Says I, “You go and clean yourself or I'll know the reason why!” What does
he do?....Pond, Mr. Baker--fell into the pond in his best rig, sir!....
Accident?....“Nothing will save you, fine scholar though you are!” says
I.....Accident!....I whopped 'im!’ he repeated, rattling his teeth; then, after
a while, let out a mournful sound that was half a groan, half a snore. Mr.
Baker shook him by the shoulders. ‘Hey! Cook! Hold up, Podmore! Tell me--is
there any fresh water in the galley tank? The ship is lying along less, I
think; I would try to get forward. A little water would do them good. Hallo!
Look out! Look out!’ The cook struggled.--‘Not you, sir--not you!’ He began to
scramble to windward. ‘Galley!....my business!’ he shouted.-- ‘Cook's going
crazy now,’ said several voices. He yelled:--‘Crazy, am I? I am more ready to
die than any of you, officers incloosive--there! As long as she swims I will
cook! I will get you coffee.’--‘Cook, ye are a gentleman!’ cried Belfast. But
the cook was already going over the weather ladder. He stopped for a minute to
shout back on the poop:--‘'as long as she swims I will cook!’ and disappeared
as though he had gone overboard. The men who had heard sent after him a cheer
that sounded like a wail of sick children. An hour or more afterwards some one
said distinctly: ‘He's gone for good.’--‘Very likely,’ assented the boatswain; ‘even
in fine weather he was as smart about the deck as a milch-cow on her first
voyage. We ought to go and see.’ Nobody moved. As the hours dragged slowly through
the darkness Mr. Baker crawled back and forth along the poop several times.
Some men fancied they had heard him exchange murmurs with the master, but at
that time the memories were incomparably more vivid than anything actual, and
they were not certain whether the murmurs were heard now or many years ago.
They did not try to find out. A mutter more or less did not matter. It was too
cold for curiosity, and almost for hope. They could not spare a moment or a
thought from the great mental occupation of wishing to live. And the desire of
life kept them alive, apathetic, and enduring, under the cruel persistence of
wind and cold; while the bestarred black dome of the sky revolved slowly above
the ship, that drifted, bearing their patience and their suffering, through the
stormy solitude of the sea.
Huddled close to one
another, they fancied themselves utterly alone. They heard sustained loud
noises and again bore the pain of existence through long hours of profound
silence. In the night they saw sunshine, felt warmth, and suddenly, with a
start, thought that the sun would never rise upon a freezing world. Some heard
laughter, listened to songs; others, near the end of the poop, could hear loud
human shrieks, and, opening their eyes, were surprised to hear them still,
though very faint, and far away. The boatswain said:-- ‘Why, it's the cook,
hailing ’ from forward I think.’ He hardly believed his own words or recognised
his own voice. It was a long time before the man next to him gave a sign of
life. He punched hard his other neighbour and said:--‘The cook's shouting!’
Many did not understand, others did not care; the majority further aft did not
believe. But the boatswain and another men had the pluck to crawl away forward
to see. They seemed to have been gone for hours, and were soon forgotten. Then
suddenly men that had been plunged in a hopeless resignation became as if
possessed with a desire to hurt. They belaboured one another with fists. In the
darkness they struck persistently anything soft they could feel near, and, with
a greater effort than for a shout, whispered excitedly:--‘They've got some hot
coffee..... Bosun got it.....’ ‘No!....Where?’.... ‘It's coming! Cook made it.’
James Wait moaned. Donkin scrambled viciously, caring not where he kicked, and
anxious that the officers should have none of it. It came in a pot, and they
drank in turns. It was hot, and while it blistered the greedy palates, it
seemed incredible. The men sighed out parting with the mug:--‘'How 'as he done
it?’ Some cried weakly--‘Bully for you, doctor!’
He had done it somehow.
Afterwards Archie declared that the thing was ‘meeraculous.’ For many days we
wondered, and it was the one ever-interesting subject of conversation to the
end of the voyage. We asked the cook, in fine weather, how he felt when he saw
his stove ‘reared up on end.’ We inquired, in the north-east trade and on
serene evenings, whether he had to stand on his head to put things right
somewhat. We suggested he had used his bread-board for a raft, and from there comfortably
had stoked his grate; and we did our best to conceal our admiration under the
wit of fine irony. He affirmed not to know anything about it, rebuked our
levity, declared himself, with solemn animation, to have been the object of
special mercy for the saving of our unholy lives. Fundamentally he was right,
no doubt; but he need not have been so offensively positive about it--he need
not have hinted so often that it would have gone hard with us had he not been
there, meritorious and pure, to receive the inspiration and the strength for
the work of grace. Had we been saved by his recklessness or his agility, we
could have at length become reconciled to the fact; but to admit our obligation
to anybody's virtue and holiness alone was as difficult for us as for any other
handful of mankind. Like many benefactors of humanity, the cook took himself
too seriously, and reaped the reward of irreverence. We were not ungrateful,
however. He remained heroic. His saying--the saying of his life--became
proverbial in the mouths of men as are the sayings of conquerors or sages.
Later on, whenever one of us was puzzled by a task and advised to relinquish
it, he would express his determination to persevere and to succeed by the
words:--‘As long as she swims I will cook!’
The hot drink helped us
through the bleak hours that precede the dawn. The sky low by the horizon took
on the delicate tints of pink and yellow like the inside of a rare shell. And
higher, where it glowed with a pearly sheen, a small black cloud appeared, like
a forgotten fragment of the night set in a border of dazzling gold. The beams
of light skipped on the crests of waves. The eyes of men turned to the
eastward. The sunlight flooded their weary faces. They were giving themselves
up to fatigue as though they had done for ever with their work. On Singleton's
black oilskin coat the dried salt glistened like hoar frost. He hung on by the
wheel, with open and lifeless eyes. Captain Allistoun, unblinking, faced the
rising sun. His lips stirred, opened for the first time in twenty-four hours,
and with a fresh firm voice he cried, ‘Wear ship!’
The commanding sharp
tones made all these torpid men start like a sudden flick of a whip. Then
again, motionless where they lay, the force of habit made some of them repeat
the order in hardly audible murmurs. Captain Allistoun glanced down at his
crew, and several, with fumbling fingers and hopeless movements, tried to cast
themselves adrift. He repeated impatiently, ‘Wear ship. Now then, Mr. Baker,
get the men along. What's the matter with them?’--‘Wear ship. Do you hear
there?--Wear ship!’thundered out the boatswain suddenly. His voice seemed to
break through the deadly spell. Men began to stir and crawl,--‘I want the
fore-top-mast stay-sail run up smartly,’ said the master, very loudly; ‘if you
can't manage it standing up you must do it lying down--that's all. Bear a hand!’--‘Come
along! Let's give the old girl a chance.’ urged the boatswain.--‘Aye! aye! Wear
ship!’ exclaimed quavering voices. The forecastle men, with reluctant faces,
prepared to go forward. Mr. Baker pushed ahead grunting on all fours to show
the way, and they followed him over the break. The others lay still with a vile
hope in their hearts of not being required to move till they got saved or
drowned in peace.
After some time they
could be seen forward appearing on the forecastle head, one by one in unsafe
attitudes; hanging on to the rails; clambering over the anchors; embracing the
cross-head of the windlass or hugging the fore-capstan. They were restless with
strange exertions, waved their arms, knelt, lay flat down, staggered up, seemed
to strive their hardest to go overboard. Suddenly a small white piece of canvas
fluttered amongst them, grew larger, beating. Its narrow head rose in
jerks--and at last it stood distended and triangular in the sunshine.--‘They
have done it!’ cried the voices aft. Captain Allistoun let go the rope he had
round his wrist and rolled to leeward headlong. He could be seen casting the
lee main braces off the pins while the backwash of waves splashed over him.--‘Square
the main yard!’ he shouted up to us--who stared at him in wonder. We hesitated
to stir. ‘The main brace, men. Haul! haul anyhow! Lay on your backs and haul!’he
screeched, half drowned down there. We did not believe we could move the main
yard, but the strongest and the less discouraged tried to execute the order.
Others assisted half-heartedly. Singleton's eyes blazed suddenly as he took a
fresh grip of the spokes. Captain Allistoun fought his way up to the
windward.--‘Haul men! Try to move it! Haul, and help the ship.’ His hard face
worked suffused and furious. ‘Is she going off, Singleton?’ He cried.--‘Not a
move yet, sir,’ croaked the old seaman in a horribly hoarse voice.--‘Watch the
helm, Singleton.’ spluttered the master. ‘Haul men! Have you no more strength
than rats? Haul, and earn your salt.’ Mr. Creighton, on his back, with a
swollen leg and a face as white as a piece of paper, blinked his eyes, his
bluish lips twitched. In the wild scramble men grabbed at him, crawled over his
hurt leg, knelt on his chest. He kept perfectly still, setting his teeth
without a moan, without a sigh. The master's ardour, the cries of that silent man
inspired us. We hauled and hung in bunches on the rope. We heard him say with
violence to Donkin, who sprawled abjectly on his stomach,--‘I will brain you
with this belaying pin if you don't catch hold of the brace,’ and that victim
of men's injustice, cowardly and cheeky, whimpered;--‘Are you going ter murder
hus now?’ While, with sudden desperation he grabbed the rope. Men sighed,
shouted, hissed meaningless words, groaned. The yards moved, came slowly square
against the wind, that hummed loudly on the yard-arms.--‘Going off, sir,’
shouted Singleton, ‘she's just started.’--‘Catch a turn with that brace. Catch
a turn!’ clamoured the master. Mr. Creighton, nearly suffocated and unable to
move, made a mighty effort, and with his left hand managed to nip the rope.--‘All
fast!’ cried someone. He closed his eyes as if going off into a swoon, while
huddled together about the brace we watched with scared looks what the ship
would do now.
She went off slowly as
though she had been weary and disheartened like the men she carried. She paid
off very gradually, making us hold our breath till we choked, and as soon as
she had brought the wind abaft the beam she started to move, and fluttered our
hearts. It was awful to see her, nearly overturned, begin to gather way and
drag her submerged side through the water. The dead-eyes of the rigging churned
the breaking seas. The lower half of the deck was full of mad whirlpools and
eddies; and the long line of the ice rail could be seen showing black now and
then in the swirls of a field of foam as dazzling and white as a field of snow.
The wind sang shrilly amongst the spars; and at every slight lurch we expected
her to slip to the bottom sideways from under our backs. When dead before it
she made the first distinct attempt to stand up, and we encouraged her with a
feeble and discordant howl. A great sea came running up aft and hung for a
moment over us with a curling top; then crashed down under the counter and
spread out on both sides into a great sheet of bursting froth. Above its fierce
hiss we heard Singleton's croak:--‘She is steering!’ He had both his feet now
planted firmly on the grating, and the wheel spun fast as he eased the helm.--‘Bring
the wind on the port quarter and steady her!’ called out the master, staggering
to his feet, the first man up from amongst our prostrate heap. One or two
screamed with excitement:--‘She rises!’ Far away forward, Mr. Baker and three
others were seen erect and and black on the clear sky, lifting their arms, and
with open mouths as though they had been shouting all together. The ship
trembled, trying to lift her side, lurched back, seemed to give up with a
nerveless dip, and suddenly with an unexpected jerk swung violently to
windward, as though she had torn herself out from a deadly grasp. The whole
immense volume of water, lifted by her deck, was thrown bodily across to
starboard. Loud cracks were heard. Iron ports breaking open thundered with
ringing blows. The water topped over the starboard rail with the rush of a
river falling over a dam. The sea on deck, and the seas on every side of her,
mingled together in a deafening roar. She rolled violently. We got up and were
helplessly run or flung about from side to side. Men, rolling over and over,
yelled.--‘The house will go!’--‘She clears herself!’ Lifted by a towering sea
she ran along with it for a moment, spouting thick streams of water through
every opening of her wounded sides. The ice braces having been carried away or
washed off the pins, all the ponderous yards on the fore swung from side to
side and with appalling rapidity at every roll. The men forward were seen
crouching here and there with fearful glances upwards at the enormous spars
that whirled about over their heads. The torn canvas and the ends of broken
gear streamed in the wind like wisps of hair. Through the clear sunshine, over
the flashing turmoil and uproar of the seas, the ship ran blindly, dishevelled
and headlong, as if fleeing for her life; and on the poop we spun, we tottered
about, distracted and noisy. We all spoke at once in a thin babble; we had the
aspect of invalids and the gestures of maniacs. Eyes shone, large and haggard,
in smiling, meaagre faces that seemed to have been dusted over with powdered
chalk. We stamped, clapped our hands, feeling ready to jump and do anything,
but in reality hardly able to keep on our feet. Captain Allistoun, hard and
slim, gesticulated madly from the poop at Mr. Baker; ‘Steady these fore-yards!
Steady them the best you can!’ On the main deck, men excited by his cries,
splashed, dashing aimlessly here and there with the foam swirling up to their
waists. Apart, far aft, and alone by the helm, old Singleton had deliberately
tucked his white beard under the top button of his glistening coat. Swaying
upon the din and tumult of the seas, with the whole battered length of the ship
launched forward in a rolling rush before his steady old eyes, he stood rigidly
still, forgotten by all, and with an attentive face. In front of his erect
figure only the two arms moved crosswise with a swift and sudden readiness, to
check or urge again the rapid stir of circling spokes. He steered with care.
On men reprieved by its
disdainful mercy, the immortal sea confers in its justice the full privilege of
desired unrest. Through the perfect wisdom of its grace they are not permitted
to meditate at ease upon the complicated and acrid savour of existence, lest
they should remember and, perchance, regret the reward of a cup of inspiring
bitterness, tasted so often, and so often withdrawn from before their
stiffening but reluctant lips. They must without pause justify their life to
the eternal pity that commands toil to be hard and unceasing, from sunrise to
sunset, from sunset to sunrise: till the weary succession of nights and days
tainted by the obstinate clamour of sages, demanding bliss and an empty heaven,
is redeemed at last by the vast silence of pain and labour, by the dumb fear
and the dumb courage of men obscure, forgetful, and enduring.
The master and Mr.
Baker coming face to face stared for a moment, with the intense and amazed
looks of men meeting unexpectedly after years of trouble. Their voices were
gone, and they whispered desperately at one another.--‘Any one missing?’ asked
Captain Allistoun.--‘No, All there.’--‘Anybody hurt?’--‘Only the second mate.’--‘I
will look after him directly. We're lucky.’--‘Very,’ articulated Mr. Baker,
faintly. He gripped the rail and rolled bloodshot eyes. The little grey man
made an effort to raise his voice above a dull mutter, and fixed his chief mate
with a cold gaze, piercing like a dart.--‘Get sail on the ship,’he said,
speaking authoritatively, and with an inflexible snap of his thin lips. ‘Get
sail on her as soon as you can. This is a fair wind. At once, sir--Don't give
the men time to feel themselves. They will get done up and stiff, and we will
never....We must get her along now’...He reeled to a long heavy roll; the rail
dipped into the glancing hissing water. He caught a shroud, swung helplessly
against the mate....‘now we have a fair wind at last.--Make--sail.’ His head
rolled from shoulder to shoulder. His eyelids began to beat rapidly. ‘And the
pumps--pumps, Mr. Baker.’ He peered as though the face within a foot of his
eyes had been half a mile off. ‘Keep the men on the move to--to get her along.’
he mumbled in a drowsy tone, like a man going off into a doze. He pulled
himself together suddenly. ‘Mustn't stand. Won't do,’ he said with a painful
attempt at a smile. He let go his hold, and, propelled by the dip of the ship,
ran aft unwillingly, with small steps, till he brought up against the binnacle
stand. Hanging on there he looked up in an objectless manner at Singleton, who,
unheeding him, watched anxiously the end of the jib-boom--‘Steering gear works
all right?’ he asked. There was a noise in the old seaman's throat, as though
the words had been rattling there together before they could come out.--‘Steers....like
a little boat,’ he said, at last, with hoarse tenderness, without giving the
master as much as half a glance--then, watchfully, spun the wheel down,
steadied, flung it back again. Captain Allistoun tore himself away from the
delight of leaning against the binnacle, and began to walk the poop, swaying
and reeling to preserve his balance.....
The pump-rods,
clanking, stamped in short jumps, while the fly-wheels turned smoothly, with
great speed, at the foot of the mainmast, flinging back and forth with a
regular impetuosity two limp clusters of men clinging to the handles. They
abandoned themselves, swaying from the hip with twitching faces and stony eyes.
The carpenter, sounding from time to time, exclaimed mechanically:‘Shake her
up! Keep her going!’ Mr. Baker could not speak, but found his voice to shout;
and under the goad of his objurgations, men looked to the lashings, dragged out
new sails; and thinking themselves unable to move, carried heavy blocks
aloft--overhauled the gear. They went up the rigging with faltering and
desperate efforts. Their heads swam as they shifted their hold, stepped blindly
on the yards like men in the dark; or trusted themselves to the first rope to
hand with the negligence of exhausted strength. The narrow escape from the
falls did not disturb the languid beat of their hearts; the roar of the seas
seething far below them sounded continuous and faint like an indistinct noise
from another world; the wind filled their eyes with tears, and with heavy gusts
tried to push them off from where they swayed in insecure positions. With
streaming faces and blowing hair they flew up and down between sky and water,
bestriding the ends of yard-arms, crouching on foot-ropes, embracing lifts to
have their hands free, or standing up against chain ties. Their thoughts
floated vaguely between the desire of rest and the desire of life, while their
stiffened fingers cast off head-earrings, fumbled for knives, or held with
tenacious grip against the violent shocks of beating canvas. They glared
savagely at one another, made frantic signs with one hand while they held their
life in the other, looked down on the narrow strip of flooded deck, shouted
along to leeward:‘ Light-to!’....‘Haul out!’....‘Make fast!’. Their lips moved,
their eyes started, furious and eager with the desire to be understood, but the
wind tossed their words unheard upon the disturbed sea. In an unendurable and
unending strain they worked like men driven by a merciless dream to toil in an
atmosphere of ice or flame. They burnt and shivered in turns. Their eyeballs
smarted as if in the smoke of a conflagration; their heads were ready to burst
with every shout. Hard fingers seemed to grip their throats. At every roll they
thought; Now I must let go. It will shake us all off--and thrown about aloft
they cried wildly: ‘Look out there--catch the end.’....‘Reeve clear’....‘Turn
this block.....’ They nodded desperately; shook infuriated faces. ‘No! No! From
down up.’ They seemed to hate one another with a deadly hate. The longing to be
done with it all gnawed at their breasts, and the wish to do things well was a
burning pain. They cursed their fate, contemned their life, and wasted their
breath in deadly imprecations upon one another. The sailmaker, with his bald
head bared, worked feverishly, forgetting his intimacy with so many admirals.
The boatswain, climbing up with marlinspikes and bunches of spunyarn rovings,
or kneeling on the yard and ready to take a turn with the midship-stop, had
acute and fleeting visions of his old woman and the youngsters in a moorland
village. Mr. Baker, feeling very weak, tottered here and there, grunting and
inflexible, like a man of iron. He waylaid those who, coming from aloft, stood
gasping for breath. He ordered, encouraged, scolded. ‘Now then--to the top
mainsail now! Tally on to that gantline. Don't stand about there!’--‘Is there
no rest for us?’ muttered voices. He spun round fiercely, with a sinking
heart.--‘No! No rest till the work is done. Work till you drop. That's what
you're here for.’ A bowed seaman at his elbow gave a short laugh.--‘Do or die,’
he croaked bitterly, then spat into his broad palms, swung up his long arms,
and grasping the rope high above his head sent out mournful, wailing cry for a
pull all together. A sea boarded the quarter-deck and sent the whole lot
sprawling to leeward. Caps, handspikes floated. Clenched hands, kicking legs,
with here and there a spluttering face, stuck out of the white hiss of foaming
water. Mr. Baker, knocked down with the rest, screamed--‘Don't let go that
rope! Hold on to it! Hold!’And sorely bruised by the brutal fling, they held on
to it, as though it had been the fortune of their life. The ship ran, rolling
heavily, and the topping crests glanced past port and starboard flashing their
white heads. Pumps were freed. Braces were rove. The three topsails and
foresail were set. She spurted faster over the water, outpacing the swift rush
of waves. The menacing thunder of distanced seas rose behind her--filled the
air with the tremendous vibrations of its voice. And devastated, battered, and
wounded she drove foaming to the northward, as though inspired by the courage
of a high endeavour.....
The forecastle was a
place of damp desolation. They looked at their dwelling with dismay. It was
slimy, dripping; it hummed hollow with the wind, and was strewn with shapeless
wreckage like a half-tide cavern in a rocky and exposed coast. Many had lost
all they had in the world, but most of the starboard watch had preserved their
chests; thin streams of water trickled out of them, however. The beds were
soaked; the blankets spread out and saved by some nail squashed under foot.
They dragged wet rags from evil-smelling corners, and, wringing the water our,
recognised their property. Some smiled stiffly. Others looked round blank and
mute. There were cries of joy over old waistcoats, and groans of sorrow over
shapeless things found amongst the black splinters of smashed bed boards. One
lamp was discovered jammed under the bowsprit, Charley whimpered a little.
Knowles stumped here and there, sniffing, examining dark places for salvage. He
poured dirty water out of a boot, and was concerned to find the owner. Those
who, overwhelmed by their losses, sat on the forepeak hatch, remained elbows on
knees, and, with a fist against each cheek, disdained to look up. He pushed it
under their noses. ‘Here's a good boot. Yours?’ They snarled, ‘No--get out.’
One snapped at him, ‘Take it the hell out of this.’ He seemed surprised. ‘Why?
It's a good boot,’ but remembering suddenly that he had lost every stitch of
his clothing, he dropped his find and began to swear. In the dim light cursing
voices clashed. A man came in and, dropping his arms, stood still, repeating
from the doorstep, ‘Here's a bloomin' old go! Here's a bloomin' old go!’ A few
rooted anxiously in flooded chests for tobacco. They breathed hard, clamoured
with heads down, ‘Look at that, Jack!’....‘Here! Sam! Here's my shore-going rig
spoilt for ever.’ One blasphemed tearfully holding up a pair of dripping
trousers. No one looked at him. The cat came out from somewhere. He had an
ovation. They snatched him from hand to hand, caressed him in a murmur of pet
names. They wondered where he had ‘weathered it out;’ disputed about it. A
squabbling argument began. Two men came in with a bucket of fresh water, and
all crowded round it; but Tom, lean and mewing, came up with every hair astir
and had the first drink. A couple of men went aft for oil and biscuits.
Then in the yellow
light and in the intervals of mopping the deck they crunched hard bread,
arranging to ‘worry through somehow.’ Men chummed as to beds. Turns were
settled for wearing boots and having the use of oilskin coats. They called one
another ‘old man’ and ‘sonny’ in cheery voices. Friendly slaps resounded. Jokes
were shouted. One or two stretched on the wet deck, slept with heads pillowed
on their bent arms, and several, sitting on the hatch, smoked. Their weary
faces appeared through a thin blue haze, pacified and with sparkling eyes. The
boatswain put his head through the door. ‘Relieve the wheel. one of you’--he
shouted inside--‘it's six. Blamme if that old Singleton hasn't been there
more'n thirty hours. You are a fine lot.’ He slammed the door again. ‘Mate's
watch on deck,’ said some one. ‘Hey, Donkin, it's your relief!’ shouted three
or four together. He had crawled into an empty bunk and on wet planks lay
still. ‘Donkin, your wheel.’ He made no sound. ‘Donkin's dead,’ guffawed some
one. ‘Sell 'is bloomin' clothes,’ shouted another. ‘Donkin, ifye don't go to
the bloomin' wheel they will sell your clothes--d'ye hear?’ jeered a third. He
groaned from his dark hole. He complained about pains in all his bones, he
whimpered pitifully. ‘He won't go,’ exclaimed a contemptuous voice, ‘your turn,
Davies.’ The young seaman rose painfully squaring his shoulders. Donkin stuck
his head out, and it appeared in the yellow light, fragile and ghastly. ‘I will
giv' yer a pound of tobaccer,’ he whined in a conciliating voice, ‘so soon as I
can draw it from haft. I will‘I will--s'help me.....’ Davies swung his arm
backhanded and the head vanished. ‘I'll go, he said, but you will pay for it.’
He walked unsteady but resolute in the door. ‘So I will,’ yelped Donkin,
popping out behind him. ‘So I will--s'elp me....three bob they chawrge.’ ‘You
will pay my price....in fine weather.’ he shouted over his shoulder. One of the
men unbuttoned his wet coat rapidly, threw it at his head. ‘Here, Taffy--take
that, you thief!’ ‘Thank you!’ he cried from the darkness above the swish of
rolling water. He could be heard splashing; a sea came on board with a thump. ‘He's
got his bath already,’ remarked a grim shellback. ‘Aye, aye!’ grunted the
others. Then, after a long silence, Wamibo made strange noises. ‘Hallo, what's
up with you?’ said one grumpily. ‘He says he would have gone for Davy,’
explained Archie, who was the Finn's interpreter generally. ‘I believe him!’
cried voices....‘Never mind, Dutchy.... You'll do, muddle-head....Your turn
will come soon enough.... You don't know when ye're well off.’ They ceased, and
all together turned their faces to the door. Singleton stepped in, made two
paces, and stood swaying slightly. The sea hissed, flowed roaring past the
bows, and the forecastle trembled, full of a deep rumour; the lamp flared,
swinging like a pendulum. He looked with a dreamy and puzzled stare, as though
he could not distinguish the still men from their restless shadows. There were
awe-struck murmurs:--‘Hallo, hallo’....‘How does it look outside now,
Singleton?’ Those who sat on the hatch lifted their eyes in silence, and the
next oldest seaman in the ship (those two understood one another, though they
hardly exchanged three words in a day) gazed up at his friend attentively for a
moment, then taking a short clay pipe out of his mouth, offered it without a
word. Singleton put out his arm towards it, missed, staggered, and suddenly
fell forward, crashing down, stiff and headlong like an uprooted tree. There
was a swift rush. Men pushed, crying:--‘He's done!’....‘Turn him over!’.... ‘Stand
clear there!’ Under a crowd of startled faces bending over him he lay on his
back, staring upwards in a continuous and intolerable manner. In the breathless
silence of a general consternation, he said in a grating murmur:--‘I am all
right,’ and clutched with his hands. They helped him up. He mumbled
despondently:--‘I am getting old....old.’--‘Not you,’ cried Belfast, with ready
tact. Supported on all sides, he hung his head.--‘Are you better?’ they asked.
He glared at them from under his eyebrows with large black eyes, spreading over
his chest the bushy whiteness of a beard long and thick.--‘Old! old!’ he
repeated sternly. Helped along, he reached his bunk. There was in it a slimy
soft heap of something that smelt like does at dead low water a muddy
foreshore. It was his soaked straw bed. With a convulsive effort he pitched
himself on it, and in the darkness of the narrow place could be heard growling
angrily, like an irritated and savage animal uneasy in its den:--‘Bit of
breeze....small thing....can't stand up....old!’ He slept at last. He breathed
heavily, high-booted, sou'wester on head, and his oilskin clothes rustled, when
with a deep sighing groan he turned over. men conversed about him in quiet
concerned whispers. ‘This will break 'im up’....‘Strong as a horse’.... ‘Aye.
But he ain't what he used to be’.... In sad murmurs they gave him up. Yet at
midnight he turned out to duty as if nothing had been the matter, and answered
to his name with a mournful ‘Here!’ He brooded alone more than ever, in an
impenetrable silence and with a saddened face. For many years he had heard
himself called ‘Old Singleton,’ and had serenely accepted the qualification,
taking it as a tribute of respect due to a man who through half a century had
measured his strength against the favours and the rages of the sea. He had
never given a thought to his mortal self. He lived unscathed, as though he had
been indestructible, surrendering to all the temptations, weathering many
gales. He had panted in sunshine, shivered in the cold; suffered hunger,
thirst, debauch; passed through many trials--known all the furies. Old! It
seemed to him he was broken at last. And like a man bound treacherously while
he sleeps, he woke up fettered by the long chain of disregarded years. He had
to take up at once the burden of all his existence, and found it almost too
heavy for his strength. Old! He moved his arms, shook his head, felt his limbs.
Getting old.... and then? He looked upon the immortal sea with the awakened and
groping perception of its heartless might; he saw it unchanged, black and
foaming under the eternal scrutiny of the stares; he heard its impatient voice
calling for him out of a pitiless vastness full of unrest, of turmoil, and of
terror. He looked afar upon it, and he saw an immensity tormented and blind,
moaning and furious, that claimed all the days of his tenacious life, and, when
life was over, would claim the worn-out body of its slave.
This was the last of
the breeze. It veered quickly, changed to a black south-eastern and blew itself
out, giving the ship a famous shove to the northward into the joyous sunshine
of the trade. Rapid and white she ran homewards in a straight path, under a
blue sky and upon the plain of a blue sea. She carried Singleton's completed
wisdom, Donkin's delicate susceptibilities, and the conceited folly of us all.
The hours of ineffective turmoil were forgotten; the fear and anguish of these
dark moments were never mentioned in the glowing peace of fine days. Yet from
that time our life seemed to start afresh as though we had died and been
resuscitated. All the first part of the voyage, the Indian Ocean on the other
side of the Cape, all that was lost in a haze, like an ineradicable suspicion
of some previous existence. It had ended--then there were blank hours; a livid
blur--and again we lived! Singleton was possessed of sinister truth; Mr.
Creighton of a damaged leg; the cook of fame--and shamefully abused the
opportunities of his distinction. Donkin had an added grievance. He went about
repeating with insistence:--‘'E said 'e would brain me-- did you hear? They
hare goin' to murder hus now for the least little thing.’ We began at last to
think it was rather awful. And we were conceited! We boasted our pluck, of our
capacity foe work, of our energy. We remembered honourable episodes: our
devotion, our indomitable perseverance--and were proud of them as though they
had been the outcome of our unaided impulses. We remembered our danger, our
toil--and conveniently forgot our horrible scare. We decried our officer--who
had done nothing--and listened to the fascinating Donkin, His care for our
rights, his disinterested concern for our dignity, were not discouraged by the
invariable contumely of our words, by the disdain of our looks. Our contempt
for him was unbounded-- and we could unbounded--and we could not but listen
with interest to that consummate artist. He told us we were good men-- a ‘bloomin'
condemned lot of good men.’ ‘ Who thanked us? Who took any notice of our
wrongs? Didn't we lead a ‘dorg's loife for two poun'ten a month?’ Did we think
that miserable pay enough to compensate us for the risk to our lives and for
the loss of our clothes? ‘We've lost hevery rag!’ he cried. He made us forget
that he, at any rate, had lost nothing of his own. The younger men listened,
thinking--this 'ere Donkin's a long-headed chap, though no kind of man, anyhow.
The Scandinavians were frightened at his audacities; Wamibo did not understand;
and the older seamen thoughtfully nodded their heads making the thin gold
earrings glitter in the fleshy lobes of hairy ears. Severe, sun-burnt faces
were propped meditatively on tattooed forearms. Veined, brown fists held in their
grip the dirty white clay of smoldering pipes. They listened, impenetrable,
broad-backed, with bent shoulders, and in grim silence. He talked with ardour,
despised and irrefutable. His picturesque and filthy loquacity flowed like a
troubled stream from a poisoned source. His beady little eyes danced, glancing
right and left, ever on the watch for the approach of an officer. Sometimes Mr.
Baker going forward to take a look at the head sheets would roll with his
uncouth gait through the sudden stillness of the men; or Mr. Creighton limped
along, smooth-faced, youthful, and more stern than ever piercing our short
silence with a keen glance of his clear eyes. Behind his back Donkin would
begin again darting stealthy, sidelong looks.--‘'Ere's one of'em. Some of
yer'as made 'im fast that day. Much thanks yer got for hit. Ain't 'ee a-drivin'
yer wusse'n hever?....Let 'im slip hover-board....Vy not? It would 'ave been
less trouble. Vy not?’ He advanced confidentially, backed away with great
effect; he whispered, he screamed, waved his miserable arms no thicker than
pipe-stems--stretched his lean neck--spluttered--squinted. In the pauses of his
impassioned orations the wine sighed quietly aloft, the calm sea unheeded
murmured in a warning whisper along the ship's side. We abominated the creature
and could not deny the luminous truth of his contentions. It was all so
obvious. We were indubitably good men; our deserts were great and our pay
small. Through our exertions we had saved the ship and the skipper would get
the credit of it. What had he done? we wanted to know. Donkin asked:--‘What 'ee
could do without hus?’ and we could not answer. We were oppressed by the
injustice of the world, surprised to perceive how long we had lived under its
burden without realising our unfortunate state, annoyed by the uneasy suspicion
of our undiscerning stupidity. Donkin assured us it was all our ‘good
'eartedness,’ but we would not be consoled by such shallow sophistry. We were
men enough to courageously admit to ourselves our intellectual shortcomings;
though from that time we refrained from kicking him, tweaking his nose or from
accidentally knocking him about, which last, after we had weathered the Cape,
had been rather a popular amusement. Davies ceased to talk at him provokingly
about black eyes and flattened noses. Charley, much subdued since the gale, sis
not jeer at him. Knowles deferentially and with a crafty air propounded
questions such as:--‘Could we all have the same grub as the mates? Could we all
stop ashore till we got it? What would be the next thing to try for if we got
that?’ He answered readily with contemptuous certitude; he strutted with
assurance in clothes that were much too big for him as though he had tried to
disguise himself. These were Jimmy's clothes most--though he would accept
anything from anybody; but nobody, except Jimmy, had anything to spare. His
devotion to Jimmy was unbounded. He was for ever dodging in the little cabin,
ministering to Jimmy's wants, humoring his whims, submitting to his exacting
peevishness, often laughing with him. Nothing could keep him away from the
pious work of visiting the sick, especially when there was some heavy hauling
to be done on deck. Mr. Baker had on two occasions jerked him out of there by
the scruff of the neck to our inexpressible scandal. Was a sick chap to be left
without attendance? Were we to be ill-used for attending a shipmate?--‘What?’
growled Mr. Baker, turning menacingly at the mutter, and the whole half-circle
like one man stepped back a pace. ‘Set the topmast stunsail. Away aloft Donkin,
overhaul the gear.’ ordered the mate inflexibly. ‘Fetch the sail along; bend
the down-haul clear. Bear a hand.’ Then, the sail set, he would go slowly aft
and stand looking at the compass for a long time, careworn, pensive, and
breathing hard as if stifled by the taint o unaccoutable ill-will that pervaded
the ship. ‘What's up amongst them?’ he thought. ‘Can't make out this hanging
back and growling. A good crowd, too, as they go nowadays.’ On deck the men
exchanged bitter words, suggested by a silly exasperation against something
unjust and irremediable that would not be denied, and would whisper into their
ears long after Donkin had ceased speaking. Our little world went on its curved
and unswerving path carrying a discontented and aspiring population. They found
comfort of a gloomy kind in an interminable and conscientious analysis of their
unappreciated worth; and inspired by Donkin's hopeful doctrines they dreamed
enthusiastically of the time when every lonely ship would travel over a serene
sea, manned by a wealthy and well-fed crew of satisfied skippers.
It looked as if it
would be a long passage. The south-east trades, light and unsteady, were left
behind; and then, on the equator and under a low grey sky, the ship, in close
heat, floated upon a smooth sea that resembled a sheet of ground glass. Thunder
squalls hung on the horizon, circled round the ship, far off and growling
angrily, like a troop of wild beasts afraid to charge home. The invisible sun,
sweeping above the upright masts, made on the clouds a blurred stain of rayless
light, and a similar patch of faded radiance kept pace with it from east to
west over the unglittering level of the waters. At night, through the
impenetrable darkness of earth and heaven, broad sheets of flame waved
noiselessly; and for half a second the becalmed craft stood out with its masts
and rigging, with every sail and every rope distinct and black in the centre of
a fiery outburst, like a charred ship enclosed in a globe of fire. And, again,
for long hours she remained lost in a vast universe of night and silence where
gentle sighs wandering here and there like forlorn souls, made the still sails
flutter as in sudden fear, and the ripple of a beshrouded ocean whisper its
compassion afar--in a voice mournful, immense, and faint.....
When the lamp was put
out, and through the door thrown wide open, Jimmy, turning on his pillow, could
see vanishing beyond the straight line of top-gallant rail, the quick, repeated
visions of a fabulous world made up of leaping fire and sleeping water. The
lightning gleamed in his big sad eyes that seemed in a red flicker to burn
themselves out in his black face, and then he would lay blinded and invisible
in the midst of an intense darkness. He could hear on the quiet deck soft
footfalls, the breathing of some man lounging on the doorstep; the low creak of
swaying masts; or the calm voice of the watch-officer reverberating aloft, hard
and loud, amongst the unstirring sails. he listened with avidity, taking a rest
in the attentive perception of the slightest sound from the fatiguing
wanderings of his sleeplessness. He was cheered by the rattling of blocks,
reassured by the stir and murmur of the watch, soothed by the slow yawn of some
sleepy and weary seaman settling himself deliberately for a snooze on the
planks. Life seemed an indestructible thing. It went on in darkness, in
sunshine. in sleep; tireless, it hovered affectionately round the imposture of
his ready death. It was bright, like the twisted flare of lightning, and more
full of surprises than the dark night. It made him safe, and the calm of its
overpowering darkness was as precious as its restless and dangerous light.
But in the evening, in
the dog-watches, and even far into the first night-watch, a knot of men could
always be seen congregated before Jimmy's cabin. They leaned on each side of
the door, peacefully interested and with crossed legs; they stood astride the
doorstep discoursing, or sat in silent couples on his sea-chest; while against
the bulwark along the spare topmast, three or four in a row stared
meditatively, with their simple faces lit up by the projected glare of Jimmy's
lamp. The little place, repainted white, had, in the night, the brilliance of a
silver shrine where a black idol, reclining stiffly under a blanket, blinked
its weary eyes and received our homage. Donkin officiated. He had the air of a
demonstrator showing a phenomenon, a manifestation bizarre, simple, and
meritorious, that, to the beholders, should be a profound and an everlasting
lesson. ‘Just look at 'im, 'e knows what's what--never fear!’ he exclaimed now
and then, flourishing a hand hard and fleshless like the claw of a snipe.
Jimmy, on his back, smiled with reserve and without moving a limb. He affected the
languor of extreme weakness, so as to make it manifest to us that our delay in
hauling him out from his horrible confinement, and then that night spent on the
poop among out selfish neglect of his needs, had ‘done for him.’ He rather
liked to talk about it, and of course we were always interested. He spoke
spasmodically, in fast rushes with long pauses between, as a tipsy man
walks.....‘Cook had just given me a pannikin of hot coffee....Slapped it down
there, on my chest--banged the door to..... I felt a heavy roll coming; tried
to save my coffee, burnt my fingers....and fell out of my bunk.....She went
over so quick.....Water came in through the ventilator.....I couldn't move the
door to.....dark as a grave....tried to scramble up into the upper berth.....Rats....a
rat bit my finger as I got up.....I could hear him swimming below me.....I
thought you would never come.....I thought you were all gone overboard....of
course....could hear nothing but the wind.....Then you came....to look for the
corpse, I suppose. A little more and....’
‘Man! but ye made a
rare lot of noise in here,’ observee Archie, thoughtfully.
‘You chaps kicked up
such a confounded row above.....Enough to scare any one.....I didn't know what
you were up to.....Bash in the blamed planks....my head.....Just what a silly,
scary gang of fools would do.....Not much good to me anyhow.....Just as
well....drown.....Pah.’
He groaned, snapped his
big white teeth, and gazed with scorn. Belfast lifted a pair of dolorous eyes,
with a broken-hearted smile, clenched his fists stealthily; blue-eyed Archie
caressed his red whiskers with a hesitating hand;; the boatswain at the door
stared a moment, and brusquely went away with a loud guffaw. Wamibo
dreamed.....Donkin felt all over his sterile chin for the few rare hairs, and
said, triumphantly, with a sidelong glance at Jimmy:--‘Look at 'im! Wish I was
'arf as 'ealthy has 'e his--I do.’ He jerked a short thumb over his shoulder
towards the after end of the ship. ‘That's the blooming way to do 'em!’ he yelped,
with forced heartiness. Jimmy said:--‘Don't be a dam' fool,’ in a pleasant
voice. Knowles, rubbing his shoulder against the doorpost, remarked shrewdly:--‘We
can't all go an' be took sick--it would be mutiny.’--‘Mutiny--gawn!’ jeered
Donkin; ‘there's no bloomin' law against bein' sick.’--‘There's six weeks' hard
for refoosing dooty,’ argued Knowles, ‘I mind I once seed in Cardiff the crew
of an overloaded ship--leastways she weren't overloaded, only a fatherly old
gentleman with a white beard and an umbreller came along the quay and talked to
the hands. Said as how it was crool hard to be drownded in winter just for the
sake of a few pounds more for the owner--he said. Nearly cried over them--he
did; and he had a square mainsail coat, and a gaff-topsail hat too--all proper.
So they chaps they said they wouldn't go to be drownded in winter-- depending
upon that 'ere Plimsoll man to see 'em through the court. They thought to have
a bloomin' lark and two or three days spree. And the beak giv' 'em six weeks--coss
the ship warn't overloaded. Anyways they made it out in court that she wasn't.
There wasn't one overloaded ship in Penarth Dock at all. 'Pears that old coon
he was only on papy and allowance from some kind people, under orders to look
for overloaded ships, and he couldn't see no further than the length of his
umbreller. Some of us in the boarding-house, where I live when I'm looking for
a ship in Cardiff, stood by to duck that old weeping sponger in the dock. We
kept a good look out, too--but he topped his boom directly he was outside the
court.....Yes. They got six weeks' hard.....’
They listened, full of
curiosity, nodding in the pauses their rough pensive faces. Donkin opened his
mouth once or twice, but restrained himself. Jimmy lay still with open eyes and
not at all interested. A seaman emitted an opinion that after a verdict of
atrocious partiality ‘the bloomin' beaks go an' drink at the skipper's expense.’
Others assented. It was clear, of course, Donkin said:--‘Well, six weeks hain't
much trouble. You sleep hall night in, reg'lar, in chokey. Do it hon my 'ead.’ ‘You
are used to it ainch'ee, Donkin?’ asked somebody. Jimmy condescended to laugh.
It cheered every one wonderfully. Knowles, with surprising mental agility,
shifted his ground. ‘If we all went sick what would happen to the ship? eh?’ He
posed the problem and grinned all round.--‘Let 'er go to 'ell,’ sneered Donkin.
‘Damn 'er. She ain't yourn.’--‘What? Just let her drift?’ insisted Knowles in a
tone of unbelief.--‘Aye! Drift an' be blowed,’ affirmed Donkin with fine
recklessness. The other did not see it--meditated.--‘The stores would run out,’
he muttered, ‘and....never get anywhere....and what about pay-day?’ he added
with greater assurance.--‘Jack likes a good pay-day,’ exclaimed a listener on
the doorstep. ‘Aye, because then the girls put one arm round his neck an'
t'other in his pocket, an' call him ducky. Don't they, Jack?’--‘Jack, you're a
terror with the gals.’--‘He takes three of 'em in tow to once, like one of 'em
Watkinses two-funnel tugs waddling away with three schooners behind.’--‘Jack,
you're a lame scamp.’--‘Jack, tell us about that one with a blue eye and a
black eye. Do’--‘There's plenty of girls with one black eye along the Highway
by.... ’--‘No, that's a speshul one--come Jack.’ Donkin looked severe and
disgusted; Jimmy very bored; a grey-haired sea-dog s hook his head slightly,
smiling at the bowl of his pipe, discreetly amused. Knowles turned about
bewildered; stammered first at one, then at another.--‘No!.... I never!....can't
talk sensible sense amidst you..... Always on the kid.’ He retired
bashfully--muttering and pleased. They laughed hooting in the crude light,
around Jimmy's bed, where on a white pillow his hollowed black face moved to
and fro restlessly. A puff of wind came, made the flame of the lamp leap, and
outside, high up, the sails fluttered, while near by the block of the foresheet
struck a ringing blow on the iron bulwark. A voice far off cried, ‘Helm up!’
another, more faint, answered, ‘Hard up, sir!’ They became silent--waiting
expectantly. The grey-haired seaman knocked his pipe on the doorstep and stood
up. The ship leaned over gently and the sea seemed to wake up, murmuring
drowsily. ‘Here's a little wind comin',’said some one very low, Jimmy turned
over slowly to face the breeze. The voice in the night cried loud and
commanding:--‘Haul the spanker out.’ The group before the door vanished out of
the light. They could be heard tramping aft while they repeated with various
intonations:--‘Spanker out!....’ ‘Out spanker, sir!’ Donkin remained alone with
Jimmy. There was a silence. Jimmy opened and shut his lips several times as if
swallowing draughts of fresher air; Donkin moved the toes of his bare feet and
looked at them thoughtfully.
‘Ain't you going to
give give them a hand with the sail?’ asked Jimmy.
‘No. Hif six ov 'em
hain't 'nough beef to set that blamed, rotten spanker, they hain't fit to live,’
answered Donkin in a bored, faraway voice, as though he had been talking from
the bottom of a hole. Jimmy considered the conical, fowl-like profile with a
queer kind of interest; he was leaning out of his bunk with the calculating,
uncertain expression of a man who reflects how best to lay hold of some strange
creature that looks as though it could sting or bite. But he said only:--‘The
mate will miss you--and there will be ructions.’
Donkin got up to go. ‘I
will do for 'im hon some dark night, see hif I don't,’ he said over his
shoulder.
Jimmy went on
quickly:--‘You're like a poll-parrot, like a screechin' poll-parrot.’ Donkin
stopped and cocked his head attentively on one side. His big ears stood our,
transparent and veined, resembling the thin wings of a bat.
‘Yuss?’ he said, with
his back towards Jimmy.
‘Yes! Chatter out all
you know--like....like a dirty white cockatoo.’
Donkin waited. He could
hear the other's breathing, long and slow; the breathing of a man with a
hundredweight or so on the breast-bone. Then he asked calmly:--‘What do I know?’
‘What?....What I tell
you....not much. What do you want....to talk about my health so....’
‘Hit's a bloomin'
himposyshun. A bloomin', stinkin', first-class himposyshun--but hit don't tyke
me hin. Not hit.’
Jimmy kept still.
Donkin put his hands in his pockets, and in one slouching stride came up to the
bunk.
‘I talk--what's the
hodds. They hain't men here--sheep they hare. A driven lot of sheep. I 'old you
hup.... Vy not? you're well hoff.’
‘I am....I don't say
anything about that.....’
‘Well, Let 'em see hit.
Let 'em larn what a man can do. I ham a man. I know hall about yer..... ’Jimmy
threw himself further away on the pillow; the other stretched out his skinny
neck, jerked his bird face down at him as though pecking at the eyes. ‘I ham a
man. I've seen the hinside of every chokey in the Colonis rather'n give hup my
rights.....’
‘You are a jail-prop,’
said Jimmy weakly.
‘I ham....an' proud of
it too. You! You 'aven't the bloomin' nerve--so you hinvented this 'ere
dodge.....’ He paused, then with marked afterthought accentuated slowly:--‘Yer
ain't sick--hare yer?’
‘No,’ said Jimmy
firmly. ‘Been out of sorts now and again this year,’ he mumbled with a sudden
drop in his voice.
Donkin closed one eye,
amicable and confidential. He whispered:--‘Ye 'ave done it afore--aven'tchee?’
Jimmy smiled--then as if unable to hold back he let himself go:--‘Last
ship--yes. I was out of sorts on the passage. See? It was easy. They paid me
off in Calcutta, and the skipper made no bones about it either.....I got my
money all right. Laid up fifty-eight days! The fools! O Lord! The fools! Paid
right off.’ He laughed spasmodically. Donkin chummed giggling. Then Jimmy
coughed violently. ‘I am as well as ever,’ he said, as soon as he could draw
breath.
Donkin made a derisive
gesture. ‘In course,’ he said profoundly, ‘hany one can see that.’--‘They
don't.’ said Jimmy, gasping like a fish.----‘They would swallow any yarn,’
affirmed Donkin.--‘Don't you let on too much,’ admonished Jimmy in an exhausted
voice.--‘Your little gyme? Eh?’ commented Donkin jovially. Then with sudden
disgust: ‘Yer hall for yerself, s'long has ye're right.....’
So charged with egoism
James Wait pulled the blanket up to his chin and lay still for awhile. His
heavy lips protruded in an everlasting black pout. ‘Why are you so hot on
making trouble?’ he asked without much interest.
‘Cos hit's a bloomin'
shayme. We hare put hon....bad food, bad pay.... I want hus to kick up a
bloomin' row; a blamed 'owling row that would make 'em remember! Knocking
people habout....brain hus....hindeed! Ain't we men?’ His altruistic
indignation blazed. Then he said calmly;--‘I've been a-hairing of yer clothes’--‘All
right,’ said Jimmy languidly, ‘bring them in.’--‘Giv' us the key of your chest,
I'll put 'em away for yer,’ said Donkin with friendly eagerness.--‘Bring 'em
in, I will put them away myself.’ answered James Wait with severity. Donkin
looked down, muttering.....‘What d'you say? What d'you say?’ inquired Wait
anxiously,--‘Nothink. The night's dry, let 'em 'ang out till the morning,’ said
Donkin, in a strangely trembling voice, as though restraining laughter or rage.
Jimmy seemed satisfied.--‘Give me a little water for the night in my
mug--there,’he said. Donkin took a stride over the doorstep.--‘Git it yerself,’
he replied in a surly tone. ‘You can do it, hunless you haresick.’--‘Of course
I can do it,’ said Wait, ‘only....’--‘Well, then, do it.’ said Donkin
viciously, ‘if yer can look hafter yer clothes, yer can look hafter yerself.’
He went on deck without a look back.
Jimmy reached out for
the mug. Not a drop. He put it back gently with a faint sigh--and closed his
eyes. He thought:--That lunatic Belfast will bring me some water if I ask.
Fool. I am very thirsty.....It was very hot in the cabin, and it seemed to turn
slowly round, detach itself from the ship, and swing out smoothly into a
luminous arid space where a black sun shone, spinning very fast. A place
without any water! No water! A policeman with the face of Donkin drank a glass
of beer by the side of an empty well, and flew away flapping vigorously. A ship
whose mastheads protruded through the sky and could not be seen, was
discharging grain, and the wind whirled the dry husks in spirals along the quay
of a dock with no water in it. He whirled the dry husks in spirals along with
the husks--and more dry. He expanded his hollow chest. The air streamed in
carrying away in its rush a lot of strange things that resembled houses, trees,
people, lamp-posts..... No more! There was no more air--and he had not finished
drawing his long breath. But he was in gaol! They were locking him up. A door
slammed. They turned the key twice, flung a bucket of water over him--Phoo!
What for?
He opened his eyes,
thinking the fall had been very heavy for an empty man--empty--empty. He was in
his cabin. Ah! All right! His face was streaming with perspiration, his arms
heavier than lead. He saw the cook standing in the doorway, a brass key in one
hand and a bright tin hook-pot in the other.
‘I have been locking up
for the night,’ said the cook, beaming benevolently. ‘Eight-bells just gone. I
brought you a pot of cold tea for your night's drinking, Jimmy. I sweetened it
with some white cabin sugar, too. Well--it won't break the ship.’
He came in, hung the
pot on the edge of the bunk, asked perfunctorily, ‘How goes it?’ and sat down
on the box.--‘H'm,’ grunted Wait inhospitably. The cook wiped his face with a
dirty cotton rag, which, afterwards, he tied around his neck.--‘That's how them
firemen do in steamboats,’ he said serenely, and much pleased with himself. ‘My
work is as heavy as theirs--I'm thinking--and longer hours. did you ever see
them down the stokehold? Like fiends they look--firing--firing--firing--down
there.’
He pointed his
forefinger at the deck. Some gloomy thought darkened his shining face,
fleeting, like the shadow of a traveling cloud over the light of a peaceful
sea. The relieved watch tramped noisily forward, passing in a body across the
sheen of the doorway. Some one cried, ‘Good night!’ Belfast stopped for a
moment and looked in at Jimmy, quivering and speechless as if with repressed
emotion. He gave the cook a glance charged with dismal foreboding, and
vanished. The cook cleared his throat, Jimmy stared upwards and kept as still
as a man in hiding.
The night was clear,
with a gentle breeze. The ship heeled over a little, slipping quietly over a
sombre sea towards the inaccessible and festal splendor of a black horizon
pierced by points of flickering fire. Above the mastheads the resplendent curve
of the Milky Way spanned the sky like a triumphant arch of eternal light,
thrown over the dark pathway of the earth. On the forecastle head a man
whistled with loud precision a lively jig, while another could be heard
faintly, shuffling and stamping in time. There came from forward a confused
murmur of voices, laughter--snatches of song. The cook shook his head, glanced
obliquely at Jimmy, and began to mutter. ‘Aye. Dance and sing. That's all they
think of. I am surprised the Providence don't get tired.....They forget the day
that's sure to come....but you.....’
Jimmy drank a gulp of
tea, hurriedly, as though he had stolen it, and shrank under his blanket,
edging away towards the bulkhead. The cook got up, closed the door, then sat
down again and said distinctly:--
‘Whenever I poke my
galley fire I think of you chaps--swearing, stealing, lying, and worse--as if
there was no such thing as another world.....Not bad fellows, either, in a way,’
he conceded slowly; then, after a pause of regretful musing he went on in a
resigned tone:--‘Well, well. they will have a hot time of it. Hot! Did I say?
The furnaces of one of them White Star boats ain't nothing to it.’ He kept
quiet for a while. There was a great stir in his brain; an addled vision of
bright outlines; an exciting row of rousing songs and groans of pain. He
suffered, enjoyed, admired, approved. He was delighted, frightened,
exalted--like on that evening (the only time in his life--twenty-seven years
ago; he loved to recall the number of years) when as a young man he
had--through keeping bad company--become intoxicated in an East-end music-hall.
A tide of sudden feeling swept him clean out of his body. He soared. He
contemplated the secret of the hereafter. It commended itself to him. It was
excellent; he loved it, himself, all hands, and Jimmy. His heart overflowed
with tenderness with comprehension, with the desire to meddle, with anxiety for
the soul of that black man, with the pride of possessed eternity, with the
feeling of might. Snatch him up in his arms and pitch him right into the middle
of salvation....the black soul--blacker--body--rot--Devil. No!
Talk--strength--Samson..... There was a great din as of cymbals in his ears; he
flashed through an ecstatic jumble of shining faces, lilies, prayer-books,
unearthly joy, white shirts, gold harps, black coats, wings. He saw flowing
garments, clean shaved faces, a sea of light----a lake of pitch. There were
sweet scents, a smell of sulphur--red tongues of flame licking a white mist. An
awesome voice thundered!....It lasted three seconds.
‘Jimmy!’ he cried in an
inspired tone. Then he hesitated. A spark of human pity glimmered yet through
the infernal fog of his supreme conceit.
‘What?’ said James
Wait, unwillingly. There was a silence. He turned his head just the least bit
and stole a cautious glance. The cook's lips moved inaudibly; his face was rapt
his eyes turned up. He seemed to be mentally imploring deck beams, the brass
hook of the lamp, two cockroaches.
‘Look here,’ said James
Wait, ‘I want to go to sleep. I think I could.’
‘This is no time for
sleep!’ exclaimed the cook, very loud. He had prayerfully divested himself of
the last vestige of his humanity. He was a voice--a fleshless and sublime
thing, as on that memorable night--the night when he went over the sea to make
coffee for perishing sinners. ‘This is no time for sleeping,’ he repeated with
exaltation. ‘I can't sleep.’
‘Don't care damn,’ said
Wait, with factitious energy. ‘I can. go an' turn in.’
‘Swear....in the very
jaws!....In the very jaws! Don't you see the fire....don't you feel it? Blind,
chock-full of sin! I can see it for you. I can't bear it. I hear the call to
save you. Night and day. Jimmy let me save you!’ The words of entreaty and
menace broke out of him in a roaring torrent. The cockroaches ran away. Jimmy
perspired, wriggling stealthily under his blanket. The cook yelled.....‘Your
days are numbered!....’--‘Get out of this,’ boomed Wait, courageously.--‘Pray
with me!....’--‘I won't!....’the little cabin was as hot as an oven. It
contained an immensity of fear and pain; an atmosphere of shrieks and moans;
prayers vociferated like blasphemies and whispered curses. Outside, the men
called by Charley , who informed them in tones of delight that there was a row
going on in Jimmy's place, pushed before the closed door, too startled to open
it. All hands were there. The watch below had jumped up, asked:--‘What is it?’
Others said:--‘Listen!’ The muffled screaming went on:--‘On your knees! On your
knees!’--Shut up!--‘Never! You are delivered into my hands.....Your life has
been saved.....Purpose.....Mercy..... Repent.’--‘You are a crazy fool!....’--‘Account
of you.... you....Never sleep in this world, if I....’--‘Leave off.’--‘No!....stokehold....only
think!....’ Then an impassioned screeching babble where words pattered like
hail.--‘No!’ shouted Jim.--‘Yes. You are!....No help.....Everybody says so.’--‘You
lie!’ --‘I see you dying this minnyt!....before my eyes....as good as dead now.’--‘Help!’
shouted Jimmy, piercingly.--‘Not in this valley....look upwards,’ howled the
other.--‘Go away! Murder!Help!’ clamoured Jimmy. His voice broke. There were
moanings, low mutters, a few sobs.
‘What's the matter now?’
said a seldom-heard voice.--‘Fall back, men! Fall back, there!’ repeated Mr.
Creighton sternly, pushing through--‘Here's the old man.’ whispered some.--‘The
cook's in there, sir’ exclaimed several, backing away. The door clattered open;
a broad stream of light4 darted out on wondering faces; a warm whiff of
vitiated air passed. The two mates towered head and shoulders above the spare,
grey-headed man who stood revealed between them, in shabby clothes, stiff and
angular like a small carved figure, and with a thin, composed face. The cook
got up from knees. Jimmy sat high in the bunk, clasping his drawn-up legs. The
tassel of the blue nightcap almost imperceptibly trembled over his knees. They
gazed astonished at his long, curved back, while the white corner of one eye
gleamed blindly at them. He was afraid to turn his head, he shrank within
himself; and there was an aspect astounding and animal-like in the perfection
of his expectant immobility. A thing of instinct--the unthinking stillness of a
scared brute.
‘What are you doing
here?’ asked Mr. Baker, sharply.--‘My duty,’ said the cook, with ardour.--‘Your....
what?’began the mate. Captain Allistoun touched his arm lightly.--‘I know his
caper,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘Coome out of that, Podmore,’ he ordered
aloud.
The cook wrung his
hands, shook his fists above his head, and his arms dropped as if too heavy.
For a moment he stood distracted and speechless.--‘Never,’ he stammered, ‘I....he....I.’
--‘What--do--you--say?’ pronounced Captain Allistoun. ‘Come out at once--or....’--‘I
am going.’ said the cook, with a hasty and sombre resignation. He strode over
the doorstep firmly--hesitated--made a few steps. They looked at him in
silence.--‘I make you responsible!’ he cried desperately, turning half round. ‘That
man is dying. I make you....’--‘You there yet?’ called the master in a
threatening tone.--‘No, sir,’ he exclaimed hurriedly in a startled voice. The
boatswain led him away by the arm; some one laughed; Jimmy lifted his head for
a stealthy glance, and in one unexpected leap sprang out of his bunk; Mr. Baker
made a clever catch and felt him very limp in his arms; the group at the door
grunted with surprise.--‘He lies,’ gasped Wait. ‘He talked about black
devils--he is a devil--a white devil--I am all right.’ He stiffened himself,
and Mr. Baker, experimentally, let him go. He staggered a pace or two; Captain
Allistoun watched him with a quiet and penetrating gaze; Belfast ran to his
support. He did not appear to be aware of any one near him; he stood silent for
a moment, battling single-handed with a legion of nameless terrors amidst the
eager looks of excited men who watched him far off, utterly alone in the
impenetrable solitude of his fear. Heavy breathings stirred the darkness. The
sea gurgled through the scuppers as the ship heeled over to a short puff of
wind.
‘Keep him away from me,’
said James Wait at last in his fine baritone voice, and leaning with all his
weight on Belfast's neck. ‘I've been better this last week....I am well....I
was going back to duty.... --now if you like--Captain.’ Belfast hitched his
shoulders to keep him upright.
‘No,’ said the master,
looking at him fixedly.
Under Jimmy's armpit
Belfast's red face moved uneasily. A row of eyes gleaming stared on the edge of
light. They pushed one another with elbows, turned their heads, whispered. Wait
let his chin fall on his breast and, with lowered eyelids, looked round in a
suspicious manner.
‘Why not?’ cried a
voice from the shadows, ‘the man's all right, sir.’
‘I am all right,’ said
Wait with eagerness. ‘Been sick....better....turn-to now.’ He sighed.--‘Howly
Mother!’ exclaimed Belfast with a heave of the shoulders, ‘stand up, Jimmy.’--‘Keep
away from me then,’ said Wait, giving Belfast a petulant push, and reeling
against the door-post. His cheek-bones glistened as though they had been
varnished. He snatched off his night-cap, wiped his perspiring face with it,
flung it on the deck. ‘I am coming out,’ he said without stirring.
‘No. You don't,’ said
the master curtly. Bare feet shuffled, disapproving voices murmured all round;
he went on as if he had not heard:--‘You have been skulking nearly all the
passage and now you want to come out. You think you are near enough to the
pay-table now. Smell the shore, hey?’
‘I've been sick.....
now--better,’ mumbled Wait glaring in the light.--‘You have been shamming sick,’
retorted Captain Allistoun with severity: ‘Why....’ he hesitated for less than
half a second. ‘Why, anybody can see that. There's nothing the matter with you,
but you choose to lie-up to please yourself--and now you shall lie-up to please
me. Mr. baker, my orders are that this man is not to be allowed on deck to the
end of the passage.’
There were exclamations
of surprise, triumph, indignation. The dark group of men swung across the
light. ‘What for?’ ‘Told you so....’ ‘Bloomin' shame.... ’--‘We've got to say
something habout that,’ screeched Donkin from the rear.--‘Never mind, Jim--’--‘We'll
see you righted,’ called several together. An elderly seaman stepped to the
front. ‘D'ye mean to say, sir,’ he asked ominously, ‘that a sick chap ain't
allowed to get well in this 'ere hooker?’ Behind him Donkin whispered excitedly
amongst a staring crowd where no one spared him a glance, but Captain Allistoun
shook a forefinger at the angry bronzed face of the speaker.--‘You--you hold
your tongue,’ he said warningly.--‘This isn't the way,’ clamoured two or three
younger men. ‘Hare we bloomin' masheens?’ inquired Donkin in a piercing tone,
and dived under the elbows of the front rank.--‘Soon show'im we ain't boys....’--‘The
man's a man if he is black.’--‘We ain't goin' to work this bloomin' ship
shorthanded if Snowball's all right....’--‘He says he is.’--‘Well then, strike,
boys, strike!’--‘That's the bloomin' ticket.’ Captain Allistoun said sharply to
the second mate:‘Keep quiet, Mr. Creighton,’ and stood composed in the tumult,
listening with profound attention to mixed growls and screeches, to every
exclamation and every curse of the sudden outbreak. Somebody slammed the cabin
door to with a kick; the darkness full of menacing mutters leaped with a short
clatter over the streak of light, and the men became gesticulating shadows that
growled, hissed, laughed excitedly. Mr. Baker whispered:--‘Get away from them,
sir.’ The big shape of Mr. Creighton hovered silently about the slight figure
of the master.--‘We have been hymposed upon all this voyage,’ said a gruff
voice, ‘but this 'ere fancy takes the cake.’--‘That man is a shipmate.’--‘Are
we bloomin' kids?’--‘The port watch will refuse duty.’ Charley carried away by
his feelings whistled shrilly, then yelped:--‘Giv' us our Jimmy!’ This seemed
to cause a variation in the disturbance. There was a fresh burst of squabbling
uproar. A lot of quarrels were going on at once.--‘Yes’--‘No.’--‘N ever been
sick.’--‘Go for them to once.’--‘Shut yer mouth, youngster--this is men's work.’--‘Is
it?’ muttered Captain Allistoun bitterly. Mr. Baker grunted:‘Ough! They're gone
silly. They've been simmering for the last month.’--‘I did notice,’ said the
master.--‘They have started a row amongst themselves now,’ said Mr. Creighton
with disdain, ‘better get aft, sir. We will soothe them.’--‘Keep your temper,
Creighton,’ said the master. And the three men began to move slowly towards the
cabin door.
In the shadows of the
fore rigging a dark mass stamped eddied, advanced, retreated. There were words
of reproach, encouragement, unbelief, execration. The elder seamen, bewildered
and angry, growled their determination to go through with something or othere;
but the younger school of advanced thought exposed their and Jimmy's wrongs
with confused shouts, arguing amongst themselves. They clustered round that
moribund carcass, the fit emblem of their aspirations. and encouraging one
another they swayed, they tramped on one spot, shouting that they would not be ‘put
upon’ Inside the cabin, Belfast, helping Jimmy into his bunk, twitched all over
in his desire not to miss all the row, and with difficulty restrained the tears
of his facile emotion. James Wait flat on his back under the blanket, gasped
complaints.--‘We will back you up, never fear,’ assured Belfast, busy about his
feet.--‘I'll come out tomorrow--skipper or no skipper.’ He lifted one arm with
great difficulty, passed the hand over his face; ‘Don't you let that cook....’
he breathed out.--‘No, no,’ said Belfast, turning his back on the bunk, ‘I will
put a head on him if he comes near you.’--‘I will smash his mug!’ exclaimed
faintly Wait, enraged and weak; ‘I don't want to kill a man, but....’ He panted
fast like a dog after a run in sunshine. Some one just outside the door
shouted, ‘He's as fit as any ov us!’ Belfast put his hand on the door-handle.--‘Here!’
called James Wait hurriedly and in such a clear voice that the other spun round
with a start. James Wait, stretched out black and deathlike in the dazzling
light, turned his head on the pillow. His eyes stared at Belfast, appealing and
impudent. ‘I am rather weak from lying-up so long,’ he said distinctly. Belfast
nodded. ‘Getting quite well now,’ insisted Wait.--‘Yes, I noticed you getting
better this....last month,’ said Belfast looking down. ‘Hallo! What's this?’ he
shouted and ran out.
He was flattened
directly against the side of the house by two men who lurched against him. A
lot of disputes seemed to be going on all round. He got clear and was three
distinct figures standing alone in the fainter darkness under the arched foot
of the mainsail, that rose above their heads like a convex wall of a high
edifice. Donkin hissed:--‘Go for them.... it's dark!’ The crowd took a short
run aft in a body--then there was a check. Donkin, agile and thin flitted past
with his right arm going like a windmill--and then stood still suddenly with
his arm pointing rigidly above his head. The hurtling flight of some small
heavy object was heard; it passed between the heads of the two mates, bounded
heavily along the deck, stuck the after hatch with a ponderous and deadened
blow. The bulky shape of Mr. Baker grew distinct. ‘Come to your senses, men!’
he cried, advancing at the arrested crowd. ‘Come back, Mr. Baker!’ called the
master's quiet voice. He obeyed unwillingly. There was a minute of silence,
then a deafening hubbub arose. Above it Archie was heard energetically:--‘If ye
do oot ageen I wull tell!’ There were shouts. ‘Don't!’ ‘Drop it!’--‘We ain't
that kind!’ The black cluster of human forms reeled against the bulwark, back
again towards the house. Shadowy figures could be seen tottering, falling,
leaping up. Ringbolts rang under stumbling feet.--‘Drop it!’ ‘Let me!’--‘No!’--‘Curse
you!.... hah!’ Then sounds as of some one's face being slapped; a piece of iron
fell on the deck; a short scuffle, and some one's shadowy shadowy body scuttled
rapidly across the main hatch before the shadow of a kick. A raging voice
sobbed out a torrent of filthy language....--‘Throwing things--good God!’
grunted Mr. Baker in dismay.--‘That was meant for me,’ said the master quietly;
‘I felt the wind of that thing; what was it--an iron belaying-pin?’--‘By Jove!’
muttered Mr. Creighton. The confused voices of men talking amidships mingled
with the wash of the sea, ascended between the silent and distended
sails--seemed to flow away into the night, further than the horizon, higher
than the sky. The stars burned steadily over the inclined mastheads. Trails of
light lay on the water, broke before the advancing hull, and, after she had
passed, trembled for a long time as if in awe of the murmuring sea.
Meantime the helmsman,
anxious to know what the row was about, had let go the wheel, and, bent double,
ran with long stealthy footsteps to the break of the poop. The Narcissus, left
to herself, came up gently to the wind without any one being aware of it. She
gave a slight roll, and the sleeping sails woke suddenly, coming all together
with a mighty flap against the masts, then filled again one after another in a
quick succession of loud reports that ran down the lofty spars, till the
collapsed mainsail flew out last with a violent jerk. The ship trembled from
trucks to keel; the sails kept on rattling like a discharge of musketry; the
chain sheets and loose shackles jingled aloft in a thin peal; the gin blocks
groaned. It was as if an invisible hand had given the ship an angry shake to
recall the men that peopled her decks to the sense of reality, vigilance and
duty.--‘Helm up!’ cried the master sharply. ‘Run aft, Mr. Creighton, and see
what that fool there is up to.’--‘Flatten in the head sheets. Stand by the
weather fore-braces,’ growled Mr. Baker. Startled men ran swiftly repeating the
orders. The watch below, abandoned all at once by the watch on deck, drifted
towards the forecastle in twos and threes, arguing noisily as they went.--‘We
shall see to-morrow!’ cried a loud voice, as if to cover with a menacing hint
an inglorious retreat. And then only orders were heard, the falling of heavy
coils of rope, the rattling of blocks. Singleton's white head flitted here and
there in the night, high above deck, like the ghost of a bird.--‘Going off,
sir!’ shouted Mr. Creighton from aft.--‘Full again.’--‘All right....’--‘Ease
off the head sheets. That will do the braces. Coil the ropes,’ grunted Mr.
Baker, bustling about.
Gradually the tramping
noises, the confused sound of voices, died out, and the officers, coming
together on the poop discussed events. Mr. Baker was bewildered and grunted;
Mr. Creighton was calmly furious; but Captain Allistoun was composed and
thoughtful. He listened to Mr. Baker's growling argumentation, to Creighton's
interjected and severe remarks, while looking down on the deck he weighed in
his hand the iron belaying-pin--that a moment ago had just missed his head--as
if it had been the only tangible fact of the whole transaction. He was one of
those commanders who speak little, seem to hear nothing, look at no one--and
know everything, hear every whisper, see every fleeting shadow of their ship's
life. His two big officers towered above his lean, short figure; they talked
over his head; they were dismayed, surprised, and angry, while between them the
little quiet man seemed to have found his taciturn serenity in the profound
depths of a larger experience. Lights were burning in the forecastle; now and
then a gust of babbling chatter came from forward, swept over the decks, and
became faint, as if the unconscious ship gliding gently through the great peace
of the sea, had left behind and for ever the foolish noise of turbulent
mankind. But it was renewed again and again. Gesticulating arms, profiles of
heads with open mouths appeared for a moment in the illuminated squares of
doorways; black fists darted--withdrew.....‘Yes. It was most damnable to have
such an unprovoked row sprung on one,’ assented the master.....A tumult of
yells rose in the light, abruptly ceased.....He didn't think there would be any
further trouble just then..... A bell was struck aft, another, forward,
answered in a deeper tone, and the clamour of ringing metal spread round the
ship in a circle of wide vibrations that ebbed away into the immeasurable night
of an empty sea..... Didn't he know them! Didn't he! In past years. Better men,
too. Real men to stand by one in a tight place. Worse than devils too
sometimes--downright, horned devils. Pah! This--nothing. A miss as good as a
mile.....The wheel was being relieved in the usual way.--‘Full and by,’ said,
very loud, the man going off.--‘Full and by,’ repeated the other, catching hold
of the spokes.--‘This head wind is my trouble,’ exclaimed the master, stamping
his foot in sudden anger; ‘head wind! all the rest is nothing.’ He was calm
again in a moment. ‘Keep them on the move to-night, gentlemen; just to let them
feel we've got hold all the time--quietly, you know. Mind you keep your hands
off them, Creighton. To-morrow I will talk to them like a Dutch Uncle. A crazy
crowd of tinkers! Yes, tinkers! I could count the real sailors amongst them on
the fingers of one hand. Nothing will do but a row--if--you--please.’ He
paused. ‘Did you think I had gone wrong there Mr. Baker?’ He tapped his
forehead, laughed short. ‘When I saw him standing there, three parts dead and
so scared--black amongst that gaping lot--no grit to face what's coming to us
all--the notion came to me all at once, before I could think. Sorry for him--like
you would be for a sick bruter. If ever a creature was in a mortal funk to
die!....I thought I would let him go out in his own way. Kind of impulse. It
never came into my head, those fools.....H'm! Stand to it now--of course.’ He
stuck the belaying-pin in his pocket, seemed ashamed of himself, then
sharply:--‘If you see Podmore at his tricks again tell him I will have him put
under the pump. Had to do it once before. The fellow breaks out like that now
and then. Good cook tho'.’ He walked away quickly, came back to the companion.
The two mates followed him through the starlight with amazed eyes. He went down
three steps, and changing his tone, spoke with his head near the deck:--‘I
shan't turn in to-night. in case of anything; just call out if... Did you see
the eyes of that sick nigger, Mr. Baker? I fancied he begged me for something.
What? Past all help. One lone black beggar amongst the lot of us, and he seemed
to look through me into the very hell. Fancy, this wretched Podmore! Well, let
him die in peace. I am master here after all. Say what I like. Let him be. He
might have been half a man once....Keep a good look-out.’ He disappeared below,
leaving his mates facing one another, and more impressed than if they had seen
a stone image shed a miraculous tear of compassion over the incertitudes of
life and death.....
In the blue mist
spreading from twisted threads that stood upright in the bowls of pipes, the
forecastle appeared as vast as a hall. Between the beams a heavy cloud
stagnated; and the lamps surrounded by halos burned each at the core of a
purple glow in two lifeless flames without rays. Wreaths drifted in denser
wisps. Men sprawled about on the deck, sat in negligent poses, or, bending a
knee, drooped with one shoulder against a bulkhead. Lips moved, eyes flashed,
waving arms made sudden eddies in the smoke. The murmur of voices seemed to
pile itself higher and higher as if unable to run out quick enough through the
narrow doors. The watch below in their shirts, and striding on long white legs
resembled raving somnambulists; while now and then one of the watch on deck
would rush in, looking strangely over-dressed, listen a moment, fling a rapid
sentence into the noise and run out again; but a few remained near the door,
fascinated, and with one ear turned to the deck.--‘Stick together, boys,’
roared Davis. Belfast tried to make himself heard. Knowles grinned in a slow,
dazed way. A short fellow with a thick clipped beard kept on yelling
periodically:--‘Who's afeard? Who's afeard?’ Another one jumped up, excited,
with blazing eyes, sent out a sting of unattached curses and sat down quietly.
Two men discussed familiarly, striking one another's breast in turn, to clinch
arguments. Three others, with their heads in a bunch, spoke all together with a
confidential air, and at the top of their voices. It was a stormy chaos of
speech where intelligible fragments tossing, struck the ear. One could hear:--‘In
the last ship’--‘Who cares? Try it on any one of us if--.’ ‘Knock under’--‘Not
a hand's turn’-- ‘He says he is all right’-- ‘I always thought’--‘Never
mind.....’ Donkin, crouching all in a heap against the bowsprit, hunched his
shoulder-blades as high as his ears, and hanging a peaked nose, resembled a
sick vulture with ruffled plumes. Belfast, straddling his legs, had a face red
with yelling, and with arms thrown up, figured a Maltese cross. The two
Scandinavians, in a corner, had the dumbfounded and distracted aspect of men
gazing at a cataclysm. And, beyond the light, Singleton stood in the smoke, monumental,
indistinct, with his head touching the beam; like a statue of heroic size in
the gloom of a crypt.
He stepped forward,
impassive and big. The noise subsided like a broken wave: but Belfast cried
once more with uplifted arms:--‘The man is dying I tell ye!’ then sat down
suddenly on the hatch and took his head between his hands. All looked at
Singleton, gazing upwards from the deck staring out of dark corners, or turning
their heads with curious glances. They were expectant and appeased as if that
old man, who looked at no one, had possessed the secret of their uneasy
indignations and desires, a sharper vision, a clearer knowledge. And indeed
standing there amongst them, he had the uninterested appearance of one who had
seen multitudes of ships, had listened many times to voices such as theirs, had
already seen all that could happen on the wide seas. They heard his voice
rumble in his broad chest as though the words had been rolling towards them out
of a rugged past. ‘What do you want to do?’ he asked. No one answered. Only
Knowles muttered--‘Aye, aye,’ and somebody said low:--‘It's a bloomin' shame.’
He waited made a contemptuous gesture.--‘I have seen rows aboard ship before
some of you were born,’ he said slowly, ‘for something or nothing; but never
for such a thing.--’ ‘The man is dying, I tell ye,’ repeated Belfast woefully,
sitting at Singleton's feet.--‘And a black fellow, too,’ went on the old
seaman, ‘I have seen them die like flies.’ He stopped, thoughtful, as if trying
to recollect gruesome things, details of horrors, hecatombs of niggers. They
looked at him fascinated. He was old enough to remember slavers, bloody
mutinies, pirates perhaps; who could tell through what violences and terrors he
had lived! What would he say? He said:--‘You can't help him; die he must.’ He
made another pause. His moustache and beard stirred. He chewed words, mumbled
behind white hairs; incomprehensible and exciting, like an oracle behind a
veil.....--‘Stop ashore--sick.--Instead--bringing all this head wind. Afraid.
The sea will have her own.--Die in the sight of land. Always so. They know
it--long passage--more days, more dollars.--you keep quiet.--What do you want?
Can't help him.’ He seemed to wake up from a dream. ‘You can't help your
selves,’ he said austerely, ‘Skipper's no fool. He has something in his mind.
Look out--I say! I know 'em!’ With eyes fixed in front he turned his head from
right to left, from left to right, as if inspecting a long row of astute
skippers.--‘He said 'e would brain me!’ cried Donkin in a heartrending tone.
Singleton peered downwards with puzzled attention, as though he couldn't find
him.--‘Damn you!’ he said vaguely, giving it up. He radiated unspeakable
wisdom, hard unconcern, the chilling air of resignation. Round him all the listeners
felt themselves somehow completely enlightened by their disappointment, and,
mute, they lolled about with the careless ease of men who can discern perfectly
the irremediable aspect of their existence. He, profound and unconscious, waved
his arm once, and strode out on deck without another word.
Belfast was lost in a
round-eyed meditation. One or two vaulted heavily into upper berths, and, once
there, sighed; others dived head first inside lower bunks--swift, and turning
round instantly upon themselves, like animals going into lairs. The grating of
a knife scraping burnt clay was heard. Knowles grinned no more. Davies said, in
a tone of ardent conviction:--‘Then our skipper's looney.’ Archie muttered:--‘My
faith! we haven't heard the last of it yet!’ Four bells were struck.--‘Half our
watch below is gone!’ cried Knowles in alarm, then reflected, ‘Well, two hours
sleep is something towards a rest,’ he observed consolingly. Some already
pretended to slumber; and Charley, sound asleep, suddenly said a few slurred
words in an arbitrary, blank voice.--‘This blamed boy has worrums!’ commented
Knowles from under a blanket, and in a learned manner. Belfast got up and
approached Archie's berth.--‘we pulled him out,’ he whispered sadly.--‘And now
we will have to chuck him overboard,’ went on Belfast, whose lower lip
trembled.--‘Chuck what?’ asked Archie.--‘Poor Jimmy,’ breathed out Belfast.--‘He
be blowed!’ said Archie with untruthful brutality, and sat up in his bunk;‘It's
all through him. If it hadn't been for me, there would have been murder on
board this ship!’--‘Tain't his fault, is it?’ argued Belfast, in a murmur; ‘I've
put him to bed....and he ain't no heavier than an empty beef-cask,’ he added,
with tears in his eyes. Archie looked at him steadily, then turned his nose to
the ship's side with determination. Belfast wandered about as though he had
lost his way in the dim forecastle, and nearly fell over Donkin. He
contemplated him from on high for awhile. ‘Ain't ye going to turn in?’ he
asked. Donkin looked up hopelessly.--‘That black-'earted Scotch son of a thief
kicked me!’ he whispered from the floor, in a tone of utter desolation.--‘And a
good job, too!’ said Belfast, still very depressed; ‘You were as near hanging
as damn-it to-night, sonny. Don't you play any of your murthering games around
my Jimmy! You haven't pulled him out. You just mind! 'Cos if I start to kick
you’--he brightened up a bit--‘if I start to kick you, it will be Yankee
fashion--to break something!’ He tapped lightly with his knuckles the top of
the bowed head. ‘You moind, me bhoy!’ he concluded, cheerily. Donkin let it
pass.--‘Will they split on me?’ he asked, with pained anxiety.--‘Who--split?’
hissed Belfast, coming back a step. ‘I would split your nose this minyt if I
hadn't Jimmy to look after! Who d'ye think we are?’ Donkin rose and watched
Belfast's back lurch through the doorway. On all sides men slept, breathing
calmly. He seemed to draw courage and fury from the peace around him. Venomous
and thin-faced, he glared from the ample misfit of borrowed clothes as if
looking for something he could smash. His heart leaped wildly in his narrow
chest. They slept! He wanted to wring necks, gouge eyes, spit on faces. He
shook a dirty pair of meagre fists at the smoking lights. ‘Ye're no men!’ he
cried, in a deadened tone. No one moved. ‘Yer 'aven't the pluck of a mouse!’
His voice rose to a husky screech. Wamibo blinked, uncomprehending but
interested. Donkin sat down heavily; he blew with force through quivering
nostrils, he ground and snapped his teeth, and, with the chin pressed hard
against the breast, he seemed busy gnawing his way through it, as if to get at
the heart within.....
In the morning the
ship, beginning another day of her wandering life, had an aspect of sumptuous
freshness, like the spring-time of the earth. The washed decks glistened in a
long clear stretch; the oblique sunlight struck the yellow brasses in dazzling
splashes, darted over the polished rods in lines of gold, and the single drops
of salt water forgotten here and there along the rail were as limpid as drops
of dew, and sparkled more than scattered diamonds. The sails slept hushed by a
gentle breeze. The sun, rising lonely and splendid in the blue sky, saw a
solitary ship gliding close-hauled on the blue sea.
The men pressed three
deep abreast of the mainmast and opposite the cabin-door. They shuffled,
pushed, had an irresolute mien and stolid faces. At every slight movement
Knowles lurched heavily on his short leg. Donkin glided behind backs, restless
and anxious, like a man looking for an ambush. Captain Allistoun came out
suddenly. He walked to and fro before the front. He was grey, slight, alert,
shabby in the sunshine, and as hard as adamant. He had his right hand in the
side-pocket of his jacket, and also something heavy in there that made folds
all down that side. One of the seamen cleared his throat ominously.--‘I haven't
till now found fault with you men,’ said the master, stopping short. He faced
them with his worn, steely gaze, that by an universal illusion looked straight
into every individual pair of the twenty pairs of eyes before his face. At his
back, Mr. baker, bloomy and bull-necked, grunted low; Mr. Creighton, fresh as
paint, had rosy cheeks and a ready, resolute bearing. ‘And I don't now,’ continued
the master; ‘but I am here to drive this ship and keep every man-jack aboard of
her up to the mark. If you knew your work as well as I do mine, there would be
no trouble. You've been braying in the dark about “See to-morrow morning!”
Well, you see me now. What do you want?’ He waited, stepping quickly to and
fro, giving them searching glances. What did they want? Jimmy was forgotten; no
one thought of him, alone forward in his cabin, fighting great shadows,
clinging to brazen lies, chuckling painfully over his transparent deceptions.
No, not Jimmy; he was more forgotten than if he had been dead. They wanted
great things. And suddenly all the simple words they knew seemed to be lost for
ever in the immensity of their vague and burning desire. They knew what they
wanted, but they could not find anything worth saying. They stirred on one
spot, swinging, at the end of muscular arms, big tarry hands with crooked
fingers. A murmur died out.--‘What is it--food?’ asked the master, ‘you know
the stores had been spoiled off the Cape.’--‘We know that, sir,’ said a bearded
shell-back in the front rank--‘Work too hard--eh? Too much for your strength?’
he asked again. There was an offended silence.--‘We don't want to go
shorthanded, sir,’ began at last Davies in a wavering voice, ‘and this 'ere
black--.... ’--‘Enough!’ cried the master. He stood scanning them for a moment,
then walking a few steps this way and that began to storm at them coldly, in
gusts violent and cutting like the gales of those icy seas that had known his
youth.--‘Tell you what's the matter? Too big for your boots. Think yourselves
damn good men. Know half your work. Do half your duty. Think it too much. If
you did ten times as much it wouldn't be enough.’--‘We did our best by her,
sir,’ cried some one with shaky exasperation.--‘Your best,’ stormed on the
master; ‘You here a lot on shore, don't you? They don't tell you there your
best isn't much to boast of. I tell you--your best is no better than bad. You
can do no more? No, I know, and say nothing. But you stop your caper or I will
stop it for you! Stop it!’ He shook a finger at the crowd. ‘As to that man,’ he
raised his voice very much; ‘as to that man, if he puts his nose out on deck
without my leave I will clap him in irons. There!’ The cook heard him forward,
ran out of the galley lifting his arms, horrified, unbelieving, amazed, and ran
in again. There was a moment of profound silence during which a bow-legged
seaman, stepping aside, expectorated decorously into the scupper. ‘There is
another thing,’ said the master calmly. He made a quick stride and with a swing
took an iron belaying-pin out of his pocket. ‘This!’ His movement was so
unexpected and sudden that the crowd stepped back. He gazed fixedly at their
faces, and some at once put on a surprised air as though they had never seen a
belaying-pin before. He held it up. ‘This is my affair. I don't ask you any
questions, but you all know it; it has got to go where it came from.’ His eyes
became angry. The crowd stirred uneasily. They looked away from the piece of
iron, they appeared shy, they were embarrassed and shocked as though it had
been something horrid, scandalous, or indelicate, that in common decency should
not have been flourished like this in broad daylight. The master watched them attentively.
‘Donkin,’ he called out in a short, sharp tone.
Donkin dodged behind
one, then behind another, but they looked over their shoulders and moved aside.
The ranks kept on opening before him, closing behind, till at last he appeared
alone before the master as though he had come up through the deck. Captain
Allistoun moved close to him. They were much of a size, and at short range the
master exchanged a deadly glance with the beady eyes. They wavered,--‘You know
this,’ asked the master.--‘No, I don't,’ answered the other with cheeky
trepidation.--‘You are a cur. Take it,’ordered the master. Donkin's arms seemed
glued to his thighs; he stood, e yes front, as if drawn on parade. ‘Take it,’
repeated the master, and stepped closer; they breathed on one another. ‘Take
it,’ said Captain Allistoun again, making a menacing gesture. Donkin tore away
one arm from his side.--‘Vy hare yer down hon me?’ he mumbled with effort as if
his mouth had been full of dough.--‘If you don't.... ’ began the master. Donkin
snatched at the pin as though his intention had been to run away with it, and
remained stock still holding it like a candle. ‘Put it back where you took it
from,’ said Captain Allistoun, looking at him fiercely. Donkin stepped back
opening wide eyes. ‘Go, you blackguard, or I will make you,’ cried the master,
driving him slowly backwards by a menacing advance. He dodged, and with the
dangerous iron tried to guard his head from a threatening fist. Mr. Baker
ceased grunting for a moment.--‘Good! By Jove,’ murmured appreciatively Mr.
Creighton in the tone of a connoisseur.--‘Don't tech me,’ snarled Donkin,
backing away.--‘Then go. Go faster.’--‘Don't yer 'it me.....I will pull yer hup
afore the magistryt.....I'll show yer hup.’ Captain Allistoun made a long
stride and Donkin, turning his back fairly, ran off a little, then stopped and
over his shoulder showed yellow teeth.--‘Further on, fore-rigging,’ urged the
master, pointing with his arm.--‘Hare yer goin' to stand by and see me bullied,’
screamed Donkin at the silent crowd that watched him. Captain Allistoun walked
at him smartly. He started off again with a leap, dashed at the fore-rigging,
rammed the pin into its hole violently . ‘I will be heven with yer yet,’ he
screamed at the ship at large and vanished beyond the foremast. Captain
Allistoun spun round and walked back aft with a composed face, as though he had
already forgotten the scene. Men moved out of his way. He looked at no one.--‘That
will do, Mr. Baker. Send the watch below,’ he said quietly. ‘And you men try to
walk straight for the future,’ he added in a calm voice. He looked pensively
for a while at the of the impressed and retreating crowd. ‘Breakfast, steward,’
he called in a tone of relief through the cabin door.--‘I didn't like to see
you--Ou gh!--give that pin to that chap, sir,’ observed Mr. Baker; ‘he could
have bust--Ough!--bust your head like an eggshell with it.’--‘O! he!’ muttered
the master absently. ‘Queer lot,’ he went on in a low voice. ‘I suppose it's
all right now. Can never tell tho', nowadays, with such a....years ago; I was a
young master then--one China voyage I had a mutiny; real mutiny, Baker.
Different men tho'. I knew what they wanted: they wanted to broach cargo and
get at the liquor. Very simple.....We knocked them about for two days, and when
they had enough--gentle as lambs. Good crew. And a smart trip I made.’ He
glanced aloft at the yards braced sharp up. ‘Head wind day after day,’ he
exclaimed bitterly. ‘Will we never get a decent slant this passage?’--‘Ready,
sir,’ said the steward appearing before them as if by magic and with a stained
napkin in his hand.--‘Ah! All right. Come along Mr. Baker--it's late--with all
this nonsense.’
A heavy atmosphere of
oppressive quietude pervaded the ship. In the afternoon men went about washing
clothes and hanging them out to dry in the unprosperous breeze with the
meditative language of disenchanted philosophers. Very little was said. The
problem of life seemed too voluminous for the narrow limits of human speech,
and by common consent it was abandoned to the great sea that had from the
beginning enfolded it in its immense grip; to the sea that knew all, and would
in time infallibly unveil to each the wisdom hidden in all the errors, the
certitude that lurks in doubts, the realm of safety and peace beyond the
frontiers of sorrow and fear. And in the confused current of impotent thoughts
that set unceasingly this way and that through bodies of men, Jimmy bobbed up
upon the surface, compelling attention, like a black buoy chained to the bottom
of a muddy stream. Falsehood triumphed. It triumphed through doubt, through
stupidity through pity, through sentimentalism. We set ourselves to bolster it
up, from compassion from recklessness, from a sense of fun. Jimmy's
steadfastness to his untruthful attitude in the face of the inevitable truth
had the proportions of a colossal enigma--of a manifestation grand and
incomprehensible that at times inspired a wondering awe; and there was also, to
many, something exquisitely droll in fooling him thus to the top of his bent.
The latent egoism of tenderness to suffering appeared in the developing anxiety
not to see him die. His obstinate non-recognition of the only certitude whose
approach we could watch from day to day was as disquieting as the failure of
some law of nature. He was so utterly wrong about himself that one could not
but suspect him of having access to some source of supernatural knowledge. He
was absurd to the point of inspiration. He was unique, and as fascinating as
only something inhuman could be; he seemed to shout his denials already from
beyond the awful border. He was becoming immaterial like an apparition; his
cheekbones rose, the forehead slanted more; the face was all hollows, patches
of shade; and the fleshless head resembled a disinterred black skull, fitted
with two restless globes of silver in the sockets of eyes. He was demoralising.
Through him we were becoming highly humanised, tender, complex, excessively
decadent: we understood the subtlety of his fear, sympathised with all his
repulsions, shrinkings evasions, delusions--as though we had been
over-civilised, and rotten, and without any knowledge of the meaning of life.
We had the air of being initiated in some infamous mysteries; we had the
profound grimaces of conspirators, exchanged meaning glances, significant short
words. We were inexpressibly vile and very much pleased with ourselves. We lied
to him with gravity, with emotion, with unction, as if performing some moral
trick with a view to an eternal reward. We made a chorus of affirmation to his
wildest assertions, as though he had been a millionaire, a politician, or a
reformer--and we a crowd of ambitious lubbers. When we ventured to question his
statements we did it after the manner of obsequious sycophants. to the end that
his glory should be augmented by the flattery of our dissent. He influenced the
moral tone of our world as though he had it in his power to distribute honours,
treasures, or pain; and he could give ua nothing but his contempt. It was immense;
it seemed to grow gradually larger, as his body day by day shrank a little
more, while we looked. It was the only thing about him--of him--that gave the
impression of durability and vigour. It lived within him with an unquenchable
life. It spoke through the eternal pout of his black lips; it looked at us
through the profound impertinence of his large eyes, that stood far out of his
head like the eyes of crabs. We watched them intently. Nothing else of him
stirred. He seemed unwilling to move, as if distrustful of his own solidity.
The slightest gesture must have disclosed to him (it could not surely be
otherwise) his bodily weakness, and caused a pang of mental suffering. He was
chary of movements. He lay stretched out, chin on blanket, in a kind of sly, cautious
immobility. Only his eyes roamed over faces: his eyes disdainful, penetrating
and sad.
It was at that time
that Belfast's devotion--and also his pugnacity--secured universal respect. He
spent every moment of his spare time in Jimmy 's cabin. He tended him, talked
to him; was as gentle as a woman, as tenderly gay as an old philanthropist, as
sentimentally careful of his nigger as a model slave-owner. But outside he was
irritable, explosive as gunpowder, sombre, suspicious, and never more brutal than
when most sorrowful. With him it was a tear and a blow: a tear for Jimmy, a
blow for any one who did not seem to take a scrupulously orthodox view of
Jimmy's case. We talked about nothing else. The two Scandinavians, even,
discussed the situation--but it was impossible to know in what spirit, because
they quarreled in their own language. Belfast suspected them of irreverence,
and in this incertitude thought that there was no option but to fight them
both. They became very much terrified by his truculence, and henceforth lived
amongst us, dejected, like a pair of mutes. Wamibo never spoke intelligibly,
but he was as smileless as an animal--seemed to know much less about it all
than the cat--and consequently was safe. Moreover he had belonged to the chosen
band of Jimmy's rescuers, and was above suspicion. Archie was silent generally,
but often spent an hour or so talking to Jimmy quietly with an air of
proprietorship. At any time of the day and often through the night some man
could be seen sitting on Jimmy's box. In the evening, between six and eight,
the cabin was crowded, and there was an interested group at the door. Every one
stared at the nigger.
He basked in the warmth
of our interest. His eyes gleamed ironically, and in a weak voice he reproached
us with our cowardice. He would say, ‘If you fellows had stuck out for me I
would be now on deck.’ We hung our heads. ‘Yes, but if you think I am going to
let them put me in irons just to show you sport....Well, no....It ruins my
health, this lying up, it does. You don't care.’ We were as abashed as if it
had been true. His superb impudence carried all before it. We would not have
dared to revolt. We didn't want to really. We wanted to keep him alive till
home--to the end of the voyage.
Singleton as usual held
aloof, appearing to scorn the insignificant events of an ended life. Once only
he came along, and unexpectedly stopped in the doorway. He peered at Jimmy in
profound silence, as if desirous to add that black image to the crowd of Shades
that peopled his old memory. We kept very quiet and for a long time Singleton
stood there as though he had come by appointment to call for some one, or to
see some important event. James Wait lay perfectly still and apparently not
aware of the gaze scrutinising him with a steadiness full of expectation. There
was a sense of tussle in the air. We felt the inward strain of men watching a
wrestling bout. At last Jimmy with perceptible apprehension turned his head on
the pillow.--‘Good evening,’ he said in a conciliating tone.--‘H'm,’ answered
the old seaman, grumpily. For a moment longer he looked at Jimmy with severe
fixity, then suddenly went away. It was a long time before any one spoke in the
little cabin, though we all breathed more freely as men do after an escape from
some dangerous situation. We all knew the old man's ideas about Jimmy, and
nobody dared to combat them. They were unsettling they caused pain; and, what
was worse, they might have been true for all we knew. Only once did he
condescend to explain them fully, but the impression was lasting. He said that
Jimmy was the cause of head winds. Mortally sick men--he maintained--linger
till the first sight of land, and then die; and Jimmy knew that the land would
draw his life from him. It is so in every shi. Didn't we know it? He asked us
with austere contempt: what did we know? What would we doubt next? Jimmy's
desire encouraged by us and aided by Wamibo's spells delayed the ship in the
open sea. Only lubberly fools couldn't see it. Whoever heard of such a run of calms
and head winds? It wasn't natural.... We could not deny that it was strange. We
felt uneasy. The common saying, ‘more days, more dollars,’ did not give the
usual comfort because the stores were running short. Much had been spoiled off
the Cape, and we were on half allowance of biscuit. Peas, sugar and tea had
been finished long ago. Salt meat was giving out. We had plenty of coffee but
very little water to make it with. We took up another hole in our belts and
went on scraping, polishing, painting the ship from morning to night. And soon
she looked as though she had come out of a band-box; but hunger lived on board
of her. Not dead starvation, but steady, living hunger that stalked about on
the decks, slept in the forecastle; the tormentor of waking moments, the
disturber of dreams. We looked to windward for signs of change. Every few hours
of night and da y we put her round with the hope that she would come up on that
tack at last! She didn't. She seemed to have forgotten the way home; she rushed
to and fro, heading north-west, heading east; she ran backwards and forwards,
distracted, like a timid creature at the foot of a wall. Sometimes, as if tired
to death, she would wallow languidly for a day in the smooth swell of an
unruffled sea. All up to the swinging masts the sails thrashed furiously
through the hot stillness of the calm. We were weary, hungry, thirsty; we
commenced to believe Singleton, but with unshaken fidelity dissembled to Jimmy.
We spoke to him with jocose allusiveness, like cheerful accomplices in a clever
plot; but we looked to the westward over the rail with mournful eyes for a sign
of hope, for a sign of fair wind; even if its first breath should bring death
to our reluctant Jimmy. In vain! The universe conspired with James Wait. Light airs
from the northward sprung up again; the sky remained clear; and round our
weariness the glittering sea. touched by the breeze, basked voluptuously in the
great sunshine, as though it had forgotten our life and trouble.
Donkin looked out for a
fair wind along with the rest. No one knew the venom of his thoughts now. He
was silent, and appeared thinner, as if consumed slowly by an inward rage at
the injustice of men and fate. He was ignored by all and spoke to no one, but
his hate for every man looked out through his eyes. He talked with the cook
only, having somehow persuaded the good man that he--Donkin--was a much
calumniated and persecuted person. Together they bewailed the immorality of the
ship's company. There could be no greater criminals than we, who by our lies
conspired to send the soul of a poor ignorant black man to ever-lasting
perdition. Podmore cooked what there was to cook, remorsefully, and felt all
the time that by preparing the food of such sinners he imperilled his own
salvation. As to the Captain--he had lived with him for seven years, he said,
and would not have believed it possible that such a man....‘Well. Well....There
it is.... Can't get out of it. Judgment capsized all in a minute....Struck in
all his pride....More like a visitation than anything else.’ Donkin, perched
sullenly on the coal-locker, swung his legs and concurred. He paid in the coin
of spurious assent for the privilege to sit in the galley; he was disheartened
and scandalised; he agreed with the cook; could find no words severe enough to
criticise our conduct; and when in the heat of reprobation he swore at us,
Podmore, who would have liked to swear also if it hadn't been for his
principles, pretended not to hear. So Donkin, unrebuked, cursed enough for two,
cadged for matches, borrowed tobacco, and loafed for hours, very much at home
before the stove. From there he could hear us on the other side of the
bulkhead, talking to Jimmy. The cook knocked the pots about, slammed the oven
door, muttered prophecies of damnation for all the ship's company; and Donkin,
who did not admit of any hereafter, except for the purposes of blasphemy,
listened, concentrated and angry, gloating fiercely over a called-up image of
infinite torment--like men gloat over the accursed images of cruelty and
revenge, of greed, and of power.....
On clear evenings the
silent ship, under the cold sheen of the dead moon, took on the false aspect of
passionless repose resembling the winter of the earth. Under her a long band of
gold barred the black disc of the sea. Footsteps echoed on her quiet decks. The
moonlight clung to her like a frosted mist, and the white sails stood out in
dazzling cones as of stainless snow. In the magnificence of the phantom rays
the ship appeared pure like a vision of ideal beauty, illusive like a tender
dream of serene peace. And nothing in her was real, nothing was distinct and
solid but the heavy shadows that filled her decks with their unceasing and
noiseless stir; the shadows blacker than the night and more restless than the
thoughts of men.
Donkin prowled spiteful
and alone amongst the shadows, thinking that Jimmy too long delayed to die.
That evening, just before dark, land had been reported from aloft, and the
master, while adjusting the tubes of the long glass, had observed with quiet
bitterness to Mr. Baker that, after fighting our way inch by inch to the
Western Islands there was nothing to expect now but a spell of calm. The sky
was clear and the barometer high. The light breeze dropped with the sun, and an
enormous stillness, the forerunner of a night without wind, descended upon the
heated waters of the ocean. As long as daylight lasted, the hands collected on
the forecastle-head watched on the eastern sky the island of Flores, that rose
above the level expanse of the sea with irregular and broken outlines like a
sombre ruin upon a vast and deserted plain. It was the first land seen for
nearly four months. Charley was excited, and in the midst of general indulgence
took liberties with his betters. Men strangely elated without knowing why,
talked in groups, and pointed with bared arms. For the first time that voyage
Jimmy's sham existence seemed for a moment forgotten in the face of a solid
reality. We had got so far anyhow. Belfast discoursed, quoting imaginary examples
of short homeward passages from the Islands. ‘Them smart fruit schooners do it
in five days,’ he affirmed. ‘What do you want?--only a good little breeze.’
Archie maintained that seven days was the shortest passage, and they disputed
amicably with insulting words. Knowles declared he could already smell home
from there, and with a heavy list on his short leg laughed fit to split his
sides. A group of grizzled sea-dogs looked out for a time in silence and with
grim absorbed faces. One said suddenly--‘Tain't far to London now.’--‘My first
night ashore, blamme if I haven't steak and onions for supper....and a pint of
bitter,’ said another.--‘A barrel ye mean,’ shouted some one. --‘Ham an' eggs
three times a day. That's the way I live!’ cried an excited voice. There was a
stir, appreciative murmurs; eyes began to shine; jaws champed; short nervous
laughs were heard. Archie smiled with reserve all to himself. Singleton came
up, gave a negligent glance, and went down again without saying a word,
indifferent, like a man who had seen Flores an incalculable number of times.
The night travelling from the East blotted out of the limpid sky the purple
stain of the high land. ‘Dead calm,’ said somebody quietly. The murmur of
lively talk suddenly wavered, died out; the clusters broke up; men began to
drift away one by one, descending the ladders slowly and with serious faces as
if sobered by that reminder of their dependence upon the invisible. And when
the big yellow moon ascended gently above the sharp rim of the clear horizon it
found the ship wrapped up in a breathless silence; a fearless ship that seemed
to sleep profoundly, dreamlessly, on the bosom of the sleeping and terrible
sea.
Donkin chafed at the
peace-- at the ship--at the sea that stretched away on all sides merged into
the illimitable silence of all creation. He felt himself pulled up sharp by
unrecognised grievances. He had been physically cowed, but his injured dignity
remained indomitabe, and nothing could heal his lacerated feelings. Here was
land already--home very soon--a bad pay-day-- no clothes--more hard work. How
offensive all this was. Land. The land draws away life from sick sailors. That
nigger there had money--clothes--easy times; and would not die. Land draws life
away....He felt tempted to go and see whether it did. Perhaps already....It
would be a bit of luck. There was money in the beggar's chest. He stepped
briskly out of the shadows into the moonlight, and, instantly, his craving,
hungry face from sallow became livid. He opened the door of the cabin and had a
shock. Sure enough, Jimmy was dead! He moved no more than a recumbent figure
with clasped hands, carved on the lid of a stone coffin. Donkin glared with
avidity. Then Jimmy, without stirring, blinked his eyelids, and Donkin had another
shock. Those eyes were rather startling. He shut the door behind his back with
gentle care, looking intently the while at James Wait as though he had come in
there at great risk to tell some secret of startling importance. Jimmy did not
move but glanced languidly out of the corners of his eyes. ‘Calm?’ he asked.--‘Yuss,’
said Donkin, very disappointed, and sat down on the box.
Jimmy breathed with
composure. He was use to such visits at all times of night or day. Men
succeeded one another. They spoke in clear voices, pronounced cheerful words,
repeated old jokes, listened to him; and each, going out, seemed to leave
behind a little of his own vitality, surrender some of his own strength, renew
the assurance of life--the indestructable thing! He did not like to be alone in
his cabin, because, when he was alone, it seemed to him as if he hadn't been
there at all. There was nothing. No pain. Not now. Perfectly right--but he
couldn't enjoy his healthful repose unless some one was by to see it. This man
would do as anybody. Donkin watched him stealthily. -- ‘Soon home now,’observed
Wait.--‘Why d'yer whisper?’ asked Donkin with interest, ‘can't you speak hupz?’
Jimmy looked annoyed and said nothing for a while; then in a lifeless unringing
voice:--‘Why should I shout? You ain't deaf that I know.--‘Oh! I can 'ear right
enough,’ answered Donkin in a low tone, and looked down. He was thinking sadly
of going out when Jimmy spoke again.--‘Time we did get home.....to get
something decent to eat.... I am always hungry.’ Donkin felt angry all of a
sudden.--‘What habout me,’ he hissed, ‘I am 'ungry too an' got ter work. You,
'ungry!--‘ Your work won't kill you,’ commented Wait, feebly;‘there's a couple
of biscuits in the lower bunk there--you may have one. I can't eat them.’
Donkin dived in, groped in the corner and when he came up again his mouth was
full. He munched with ardour. Jimmy seemed to doze with open eyes. Donkin
finished his hard bread and got up.--‘You're not going? asked Jimmy, staring at
the ceiling.--‘No,’ said Donkin impulsively, and instead of going out leaned
his back against the closed door. He looked at James Wait, and saw him long,
lean, dried up, as though all his flesh had shrivelled on his bones in the heat
of a white furnace; the meagre fingers of one hand moved lightly upon the edge
of the bunk playing an endless tune. To look at him was irritating and
fatiguing; he could last like this for days; he was outrageous--belonging
wholly neither to death nor life, and perfectly invulnerable in his apparent
ignorance of both. Donkin felt tempted to enlighten him.--‘What hare yer
thinkin' of?’ he asked surlily. James Wait had a grimacing smile that passed
over the deathlike impassiveness of his bony face. incredible and frightful as
would, in a dream, have been the sudden smile of a corpse.
‘There is a girl,’
whispered Wait....‘Canton Street girl--She chucked a third engineer of a Rennie
boat--for me. Cooks oysters just as I like....She says--she would chuck--any
toff--for a coloured gentleman.... That's me. I am kind to women.’ he added a
shade louder.
Donkin could hardly
believe his ears. He was scandalised.--‘Would she? Yer wouldn't be hany good to
'er,’ he said with unrestrained disgust. Wait was not there to hear him. He was
swaggering up the east India Dock Road; saying kindly, ‘Come along for a treat.’
pushing glass swing-doors,, posing with superb assurance in the gaslight above
a mahogany counter.--‘D'yer think yer will hever get ashore?’ asked Donkin
angrily. Wait came back with a start.--‘Ten days,’ he said promptly, and
returned at once to the regions of memory that know nothing of time. He felt
untired, calm , and as if safely withdrawn within himself beyond the reach of
every grave incertitude. There was something of the immutable quality of
eternity in the slow moments of his complete restfulness. He was very quiet and
easy amongst his vivid reminiscences which he mistook joyfully for images of an
undoubted future. He cared for no one. Donkin felt this vaguely like a blind
man may feel in his darkness the fatal antagonism of all the surrounding
existences, that to him shall for ever remain irrealisable, unseen and
enviable. He had a desire to assert his importance, to break, to crush; to be
even with everybody for everything; to tear the veil, unmask expose, leave no
refuge--a perfidious desire of truthfulness! He laughed in a mocking splutter
and said:
‘Ten days. Strike me
blind if I hever!....You will be dead by this time to-morrow p'r'aps. Ten days!’
He waited for a while.‘D'ye 'ear me? Blamme if yer don't look dead halready.’
Jimmy must have been
collecting his strength for he said almost aloud--‘You're a stinking, cadging
liar. Every one knows you.’ And sitting up, against all probability, startled
his visitor horribly. But very soon Donkin recovered himself. He blustered, ‘What?
What? Who's a liar? You hare--the crowd hare--the skipper--heverybody. I haint!
Putting on hairs! w ho's yer?’ He nearly choked himself with indignation. ‘Who's
yer to put on hairs,’ he repeated trembling. ‘'Ave one--'ave one, says 'ee--an'
cawn't heat 'em 'isself. Now I'll 'ave both. By Gawd--I will! Yer nobody!’
He plunged into the
lower bunk, rooted in there and brought to light another dusty biscuit. He held
it up before Jimmy--weethen took a bite defiantly.
‘What now?’ he asked
with feverish impatience. ‘Yer may take one--says yer. Why not giv' me both?
No. I'm a mangy dorg. One for a mangy dorg.I'll tyke both. Can yer stop me?
Try. Come on. Try.’
Jimmy was clasping his
legs and hiding his face on the knees. His shirt clung to him. Every rib was
visible. His emaciated back was shaken in repeated jerks by the panting catches
of his breath.
‘Yer won't? Yer can't?
What did I say?’ went on Donkin fiercely. He swallowed another dry mouthful
with a hasty effort. The other's silent helplessness, his weakness, his
shrinking attitude exasperated him.‘Ye're done!’ he cried. ‘Who's yer to be
lied to; to be waited on 'and and foot like a bloomin' hymperor. Yer nobody.
Yer no one at all!’ he spluttered with such a strength of unerring conviction
that it shook him from head to foot in coming out, and left him vibrating like
a released string.
Jimmy rallied again. He
lifted his head and turned bravely at Donkin, who saw a strange face, an
unknown face, a fantastic and grimacing mask of despair and fury. Its lips
moved rapidly; and hollow, moaning, whistling sounds filled the cabin with a
vague mutter full of menace, complaint and desolation, like the far-off murmur
of a rising wind. Wait shook his head; rolled his eyes; he denied, cursed,
menaced--and not a word had the strength to pass beyond the sorrowful pout of
those black lips. It was incomprehensible and disturbing; a gibberish of
emotions, a frantic dumb show of speech pleading for impossible things,
threatening a shadowy vengeance. It sobered Donkin into a scrutinising
watchfulness.
‘Yer can't holler. See?
What did I tell yer?’ he said slowly after a moment of attentive examination.
The other kept on headlong and unheard, nodding passionately, grinning with
grotesque and appalling flashes of big white teeth. Donkin, as if fascinated by
the dumb eloquence and anger of that black phantom, approached, stretching his neck
out with distrustful curiosity; and it seemed to him suddenly that he was
looking only at the shadow of a man crouching high in the bunk on the level
with his eyes.--‘What? What?’ he said. He seemed to catch the shape of some
words in the continuous panting hiss. ‘Yer will tell Belfast! Will yer? Hare
yer a bloomin' kid?’ He trembled with alarm and rage. ‘Tell yer gran'mother!
Yer afeard! Who's yer ter be afeard more'n hanyone?’ His passionate sense of
his own importance ran away with a last remnant of caution. ‘Tell an' be
damned! Tell if yer can!’ he cried. ‘I've been treated worse'n a dorg by your
blooming back-lickers. They 'as set me on, honly to turn against me, I ham the
honly man 'ere. They choked me, kicked me--an' yer laffed-- yer black, rotten
incumbrance, you! You will pay fur it. They giv' yer their grub, their
water--yer will pay fur hit to me, by Gawd! Who haxed me ter 'ave a drink of
water? They put their bloomin' rags on yer that night, an' what did they giv'
ter me--a clout on the bloomin' mouth--blast their....S'elp me!....Yer will pay
fur hit with yer money. Hi'm goin' ter 'ave it in a minyte; has soon has ye're
dead, yer bloomin' useless fraud. That's the man I ham. An ye're a thing ----a
bloody thing. Yah--you corpse!
He flung at Jimmy's
head the biscuit he had been all the time clutching hard, but it only grazed,
and striking with a loud crack the bulkhead beyond burst like a hand-grenade
into flying pieces. James Wait, as though wounded mortally, fell back on the
pillow. His lips ceased to move and the rolling eyes became quiet and stared
upwards with an intense and steady persistence. Donkin was surprised; he sat
suddenly on the chest, and looked down, exhausted and gloomy. After a moment he
began to mutter to himself, ‘Die, you beggar-- die. Somebody'll come in.....I
wish I was drunk....Ten days....Hoysters....’ He looked up and spoke louder. ‘No....no
more for yer....no more bloomin' gals that cook hoysters....Who's yer? Hit's my
turn now.... I wish I was drunk; I would soon giv' you a leg up haloft. That's
where y er will go. Feet first, through a port....Splash! Never see yer hany
more. Hoverboard! Good 'nuff fur yer.’
Jimmy's head moved
slightly and he turned his eyes to Donkin's face; a gaze unbelieving, desolated
and appealing, of a child frightened by the menace of being shut up alone in
the dark. Donkin observed him from the chest with hopeful eyes; then without
rising he tried the lid. Locked. ‘I wish I was drunk.’ he muttered and getting
up listened anxiously to the distant sound of footsteps on the deck. They
approached--ceased. Some one yawned interminably just outside the door, and the
footsteps went away shuffling lazily. Donkin's fluttering heart eased its pace,
and when he looked towards the bunk again Jimmy was staring as before at the
white beam.--‘'Ow d'yer feel now?’ he asked. --‘Bad,’ breathed out Jimmy.
Donkin sat down patient
and purposeful. Every half-hour the bells spoke to one another ringing along
the whole length of the ship. Jimmy's respiration was so rapid that it couldn't
be counted, so faint that it couldn't be heard. His eyes were terrified as
though he had been looking at unspeakable horrors; and by his face one could
see that he was thinking of abominable things. Suddenly with an incredibly strong
and heart-breaking voice he sobbed out:
‘Overboard!....I!....My
God!’
Donkin writhed a little
on the box. He looked unwillingly. Jimmy was mute. His two long bony hands
smoothed the blanket upwards, as though he had wished to gather it all up under
his chin. A tear, a big solitary tear, escaped from the corner of his eye and,
without touching the hollow cheek, fell on the pillow, his throat rattled
faintly.
And Donkin, watching
the end of that hateful nigger, felt the anguishing grasp of a great sorrow on
his heart at the thought that he himself, some day, would have to go through it
all--just like this--perhaps! His eyes became moist. ‘Poor beggar,’ he
murmured. The night seemed to go by in a flash; it seemed to him he could hear
the irremediable rush of precious minutes. How long would this blooming affair
last? Too long surely. No luck. He could not restrain himself. He got up and
approached the bunk. Wait did not stir. Only his eyes appeared alive and his
hands continued their smoothing movement with a horrible and tireless industry.
Donkin bent over.
‘Jimmy,’ he called low.
There was no answer, but the rattle stopped. ‘D'yer see me?’ he asked
trembling. Jimmy's chest heaved. Donkin, looking away, bent his ear to Jimmy's
lips and heard a sound like the rustle of a single dry leaf driven along the
smooth sand of a beach. It shaped itself.
‘Light....the
lamp....and....go.’ breathed out Wait.
Donkin, instinctively,
glanced over his shoulder at the blazing flame; then, still looking away, felt
under the pillow for a key. he got it at once and for the next few minutes was
shakily but swiftly busy about the box. when he got up, his face--for the fist
time in his life--had a pink flush--perhaps of triumph.
He slipped the key
under the pillow again, avoiding to glance at Jimmy, who had not moved. He
turned his back squarely from the bunk and started to the door as though he
were going to walk a mile. At his second stride he had his nose against it. He
clutched the handle cautiously, but at that moment he received the irresistible
impression of something happening behind his back. He spun round as though he
had been tapped on the shoulder. He was just in time to see Jimmy's eyes blaze
up and go out at once like two lamps overturned together by a sweeping blow.
Something resembling a scarlet thread hung down his chin out of t he corner of
his lips--and he had ceased to breathe.
Donkin closed the door
behind him gently but firmly. Sleeping men, huddled under jackets, made on the
lighted deck shapeless dark mounds that had the appearance of neglected graves.
Nothing had been done all through the night and he hadn't been missed. He stood
motionless and perfectly astounded to find the world outside as he had left it;
there was the sea, the ship--sleeping men; and he wondered absurdly at it, as
though he had expected to find the men dead, familiar things gone for ever; as
though, like a wanderer returning after many years, he had expected to see
bewildering changes. He shuddered a little in the penetrating freshness of the
air, and hugged himself forlornly. The declining moon drooped sadly in the
western board as if withered by the cold touch of a pale dawn. The ship slept.
And the immortal sea stretched away, immense and hazy, like the image of life
with a glittering surface and lightless depths; promising, empty
inspiring--terrible. Donkin gave it a defiant glance and slunk off noiselessly
as if judged and cast out by the august silence of its might.
Jimmy's death, after
all, came as a tremendous surprise. We did not know till then how much faith we
had put in his delusions. We had taken his chances of life so much at his own
valuation that his death, like the death of an old belief shook the foundations
of our society. A common bond was gone; the strong, effective and respectable
bond of a sentimental lie. All that day we mooned at our work, with suspicious
looks and a disabused air. In our hearts we thought that in the matter of his
departure Jimmy had acted in a perverse and unfriendly manner. He didn't back
us up, as a shipmate should. In going he took away with himself the gloomy and
solemn shadow in which our folly had posed, with human satisfaction, as a
tender arbiter of fate. And now we saw it was no such thing. It was just common
foolishness; a silly and ineffectual meddling with issues of majestic
import--that is, if Podmore was right. Perhaps he was? Doubt survived Jimmy;
and, like a community of banded criminals disintegrated by a touch of grace, we
were profoundly scandalised with each other. Men spoke unkindly to their best
chums. Others refused to speak at all. Singleton only was not surprised. ‘Dead--is
he? Of course,’ he said, pointing at the island right abeam: for the calm still
held the ship spell-bound within sight of Flores. Dead--of course. He wasn't
surprised. Here was the land, and there, on the forehatch and waiting for the
sailmaker--there was that corpse. Cause and effect. And for the fist time that
voyage, the old seaman became quite cheery and garrulous, explaining and
illustrating from the stores of experience how, in sickness, the sight of an
island (even a very small one) is generally more fatal than the view of a
continent. But he couldn't explain why.
Jimmy was to be buried
at five, and it was a long day till then--a day of mental disquiet and even of
physical disturbance. We took no interest in our work and, very properly, were
rebuked for it. This, in our constant state of hungry irritation, was
exasperating. Donkin worked with his brow bound in a dirty rag, and looked so
ghastly that Mr. Baker was touched with compassion at the sight of this plucky
suffering.--‘Ough! You, Donkin! Put down your work and go lay-up this watch.
You look ill.’--‘Hi ham, sir--in my 'ead,’ he said in a subdued voice, and
vanished speedily. This annoyed many, and they thought the mate ‘bloomin' soft
to-day.’ Captain Allistoun could be seen on the poop watching the sky cloud
over from the south-west, and it soon got to be known about the decks that the
barometer had begun to fall in the night and that a breeze might be expected
before long. This, by a subtle association of ideas, led to violent quarrelling
as to the exact moment of Jimmy's death. Was it before or after ‘that 'ere
glass started down’? It was impossible to know and it caused much contemptuous
growling at one another. All of a sudden there was a great tumult forward.
Pacific Knowles and good-tempered Davies had come to blows over it. The watch
below interfered with spirit, and for ten minutes there was a noisy scrimmage
round the hatch, where, in the balancing shade of the sails, Jimmy's body,
wrapped up in a white blanket, was watched over by the sorrowful Belfast, who,
in his desolation, disdained the fray. When the noise had ceased, and the
passions had calmed into surly silence, he stood up at the head of the swathed
body, and lifting both arms on high, cried with pained indignation:--‘You ought
to be ashamed of your-selves!....’ We were.
Belfast took his
bereavement very hard. He gave proofs of unextinguishable devotion. It was he,
and no other man, who would help the sailmaker to prepare what was left of
Jimmy for a solemn surrender to the insatiable sea. He arranged the weights
carefully at the feet; two holystones, an old anchor-shackle without its pin,
some broken links of a worn-out stream cable. He arranged them this way, then
that. ‘Bless my soul! you aren't afraid he will chafe his heel?’ said the
sailmaker, who hated the job. He pushed the needle, puffing furiously, with his
head in a cloud of tobacco smoke; he turned the flaps over, pulled at the
stitches, stretched the canvas.--‘Lift his shoulders....Pull to you a
bit....So--o--o--. Steady.’ Belfast obeyed, pulled, lifted, overcome with
sorrow, dropping tears on the tarred twine.--‘Don't you drag the canvas too
taut over his poor face, Sails,’ he entreated tearfully.--‘What are you fashing
yourself for? He will be comfortable enough,’ assured the sailmaker, cutting
the thread after the last stitch, that came about the middle of Jimmy's
forehead. He rolled up the remaining canvas, put away the needles. ‘What makes
you take on so?’ he asked. Belfast looked down at the long package of grey
sailcloth.--‘I pulled him out,’ he whispered, ‘and he did not want to go. If I
had sat up with him last night he would have kept alive for me....but something
made me tired.’ The sailmaker took vigorous draws at his pipe and mumbled:--‘When
I....West India Station....In the Blanche frigate....Yellow Jack....sewed in
twenty men a day....Portsmouth--Devonport men--townies--knew their fathers,
mothers--sisters--the whole boiling of 'em. Thought nothing of it. And these
niggers like this one--you don't know where it comes from. Got nobody. No use
to nobody. Who will miss him?’--‘I do--I pulled him out,’ mourned Belfast
dismally.
On two planks nailed
together, and apparently resigned and still under the folds of the Union Jack
with a white border, James Wait, carried aft by four men, was deposited slowly,
with his feet pointing at an open port. A swell had set in from the westward,
and following on the roll of the ship, the red ensign, at half-mast, darted out
and collapsed again on the grey sky, like a tongue of flickering fire; Charley
tolled the bell; and at every swing to starboard the whole vast semi-circle of
steely waters visible on that side seemed to come up with a rush to the edge of
the port, as if impatient to get at our Jimmy. Every one was there but Donkin,
who was too ill to come; the Captain and Mr. Creighton stood bareheaded on the
break of the poop; Mr. Baker, directed by the master, who had said to him
gravely:--‘You know more about the prayer book than I do,’ came out of the
cabin door quickly and a little embarrassed. All the caps went off. He began to
read in a low tone, and with his usual harmlessly menacing utterance, as though
he had been for the last time reproving confidentially that dead seaman at his
feet. The men listened in scattered groups; they leaned on the fife rail,
gazing on the deck; they held their chins in their hands thoughtfully, or, with
crossed arms and one knee slightly bent, hung their heads in an attitude of
upright meditation. Wamibo dreamed. Mr. Baker read on, grunting reverently at
the turn of every page. The words, missing the unsteady hearts of men, rolled
out to wander without a home upon the heartless sea; and James Wait, silenced
forever, lay uncritical and passive under the hoarse murmur of despair and
hopes.
Two men made ready and
waited for those words that send so many of our brothers to their last plunge.
Mr. Baker began the last passage. ‘Stand by.’ muttered the boatswain. Mr. Baker
read out:‘ To the deep,’ and paused. The men lifted the inboard end of the
planks, the boatswain snatched off the Union Jack, and James Wait did not
move.--‘Higher,’ muttered the boatswain angrily. All the heads were raised;
every man stirred uneasily, but James Wait gave no sign of going. In death and
swathed up for all eternity, he yet seemed to hang on to the ship with the grip
of an undying fear. ‘Higher! Lift!’ whispered the boatswain fiercely.--‘He
won't go,’ stammered one of the men shakily, and both appeared ready to drop
everything. Mr. Baker waited, burying his face in the book, and shuffling his
feet nervously. All the men looked profoundly disturbed, from their midst a
faint humming noise spread out-- growing louder.....‘Jimmy!’ cried Belfast in a
wailing tone, and there was a second of shuddering dismay.
‘Jimmy, be a man!’ he
shrieked passionately. Every mouth was wide open, not an eyelid winked. He
stared wildly, twitching all over; he bent his body forward like a man peering
at an horror. ‘Go, Jimmy!--Jimmy, go! Go!’ His fingers touched the head of the
body and the grey package started reluctantly to, all at once, whizz off the
lifted planks with the suddenness of a flash of lightning. The crowd stepped
forward like one man; a deep Ah--h--h! came out vibrating from the broad
chests. The ship rolled as if relieved of an unfair burden; the sails flapped.
Belfast, supported by Archie, gasped hysterically; and Charley, who anxious to
see Jimmy's last dive, leaped headlong on the rail, was too late to see
anything but the faint circle of a vanishing ripple.
Mr. Baker, perspiring
abundantly, read out the last prayer in a deep rumour of excited men and
fluttering sails. ‘Amen!’ he said in an unsteady growl, and closed the book.
‘Square the yards!’
thundered a voice above his head. All hands gave a jump; one or two dropped
their caps; Mr. Baker looked up surprised. The master, standing on the break of
the poop, pointed to the westward. ‘Breeze coming,’ he said, ‘square the yards.
Look alive, men!’ Mr. Baker crammed the book hurriedly into his pocket.--‘Forward
there--let go the foretack!’ he hailed joy fully bareheaded and brisk; ‘Square
the foreyard, you port-watch!’--‘Fair wind--fair wind,’ muttered the men going
to the braces.--‘What did I tell you?’ mumbled old Singleton, flinging down
coil after coil with hasty energy; ‘I knowed it! --he's gone, and here it
comes.’
It came with the sound
of a lofty and powerful sigh. The sails filled, the ship gathered way, and the
waking sea began to murmur sleepily of home to the ears of men.
That night, while the
ship rushed foaming to the Northward before a freshening gale, the boatswain
unbosomed himself to the petty officers' berth:--‘The chap was nothing but
trouble,’ he said, ‘from the moment he came aboard--d'ye remember--that night
in Bombay? Been bullying all that softy crowd--cheeked the old man--we had to
go fooling all over a half-drowned ship to save him. Dam' nigh a mutiny all for
him--and now the mate abused me like a pickpocket for forgetting to dab a lump
of grease on them planks. So I did, but you ought to have known better too,
than to leave a nail sticking up--hey, Chips?’ ‘And you ought to have known
better than to chuck all my tools overboard for 'im, like a skeary greenhorn,’
retorted the morose carpenter. ‘Well--he's gone after 'em now,’ he added in an
unforgiving tone. ‘On the China Station, I remember once, the Admiral he says
to me....’ began the sailmaker.
A week afterwards the
Narcissus entered the chops of the Channel.
Under white wings she
skimmed low over the blue sea like a great tired bird speeding to its nest. The
clouds raced with her mastheads; they rose astern enormous and white, soared to
the zenith, flew past, and falling down the wide curve of the sky seemed to
dash headlong into the sea--the clouds swifter than the ship, more free, but
without a home. The coast to welcome her stepped out of space into the
sunshine. The lofty headlands trod masterfully into the sea; the wide bays smiled
in the light; the shadows of homeless clouds ran along the sunny plains, leaped
over valleys, without a check darted up the hills, rolled down the slopes; and
the sunshine pursued them with patches of running brightness. On the brows of
dark cliffs white lighthouses shone in pillars of light. The Channel glittered
like a blue mantle shot with gold and starred by the silver of the capping
seas. The Narcissus rushed past the headlands and the bays. Outward-bound
vessels crossed her track, lying over, and with their masts stripped for a
slogging fight with the hard sou'wester. And, inshore, a string of smoking
steamboats waddled, hugging the coast, like migrating and amphibious monsters,
distrustful of the restless waves.
At night the headlands
retreated, the bays advanced into one unbroken line of gloom. The lights of the
earth mingled with the lights of heaven; and above the tossing lanterns of a
trawling fleet a great lighthouse shone steadily, such as an enormous riding
light burning above a vessel of fabulous dimensions Below its steady glow, the
coast, stretching away straight and black, resembled the high side of an
indestructible craft riding motionless upon the immortal and unresting sea. The
dark land lay alone in the midst of waters, like a mighty ship bestarred with
vigilant lights--a ship carrying the burden of millions of lives--a ship
freighted with dross and with jewels, with gold and with steel. She towered up
immense and strong, guarding priceless traditions and untold suffering,
sheltering glorious memories and base forgetfulness, ignoble virtues and
splendid transgressions. A great ship! For ages had the ocean battered in vain
her enduring sides; she was there when the was vaster and darker, when the sea
was great and mysterious, and ready to surrender the prize of fame to audacious
men. A ship mother of fleets and nations! The great flagship of the race;
stronger than the storms! and anchored in the open sea.
The Narcissus, heeling
over to off-shore gusts, rounded the South Foreland, passed through the Downs,
and, in tow, entered the river. Shorn of the glory of her white wings, she
wound obediently after the tug through the maze of invisible channels. As she
passed them the red-painted light-vessels, swung at their moorings seemed for an
instant to sail with great speed in the rush of tide, and the next moment were
left hopelessly behind. The big buoys on the tails of banks slipped past her
sides very low, and, dropping in her wake, tugged at their chains like fierce
watch-dogs. The reach narrowed; from both sides the land approached the ship.
She went steadily up the river. On the riverside slopes the houses appeared in
groups--seemed to stream down the declivities at a run to see her pass, and,
checked by the mud of the foreshore, crowded on the banks. Further on, the tall
factory chimneys appeared in insolent bands and watched her go by, like a
straggling crowd of slim giants swaggering and upright under the black plummets
of smoke cavalierly aslant. She swept round the bends; an impure breeze
shrieked a welcome between her stripped spars; and the land, closing in,
stepped between the ship and the sea.
A low cloud hung before
her--a great opalescent and tremulous cloud, that seemed to rise from the
steaming brows of millions of men. Long drifts of smoky vapours soiled it with
livid trails; it throbbed to the beat of millions of hearts, and from it came
an immense and lamentable murmur--the murmur of millions of lips praying,
cursing, sighing, jeering--the undying murmur of folly, regret, and hope
exhaled by the crowds of the anxious earth. The Narcissus entered the cloud;
the shadows deepened; on all sides there was the clang of iron, the sound of
mighty blows, shrieks, yells. Black barges drifted stealthily on the murky
stream. A mad jumble of begrimed walls loomed up vaguely in the smoke,
bewildering and mournful, like a vision of disaster. The tugs, panting
furiously, backed and filled in the stream, to hold the ship steady at the
dock-gates; from her bows two lines went through the air whistling, and struck
at the land viciously, like a pair of snakes. A bridge broke in two before her,
as if by enchantment; big hydraulic capstans began to turn all by themselves,
as though animated by a mysterious and unholy spell. She moved through a narrow
lane of water between two low walls of granite, and men with check-ropes in
their hands kept pace with her, walking on the broad flagstones. A group waited
impatiently on each side of the vanished bridge: rough heavy men in caps;
sallow-faced men in high hats; two bareheaded women; ragged children,
fascinated and with wide eyes. A cart coming at a jerky trot pulled up sharply.
One of the women screamed at the silent ship--‘Hallo, Jack!’ without looking at
any one in particular, and all hands looked at her from the forecastle head.--‘Stand
clear! Stand clear of that rope!’ cried the dockmen, bending over stone posts.
The crowd murmured, stamped where they stood.--‘Let go your quarter-checks! Let
go! sang out a ruddy-faced old man on the quay. The ropes splashed heavily
falling in the water, and the Narcissus entered the dock.
The stony shores ran
away right and left in straight lines, enclosing a sombre and rectangular pool.
brick walls rose high above the water--soulless walls, staring through hundreds
of windows as troubled and dull as the eyes of over-fed brutes. At their base
monstrous iron cranes crouched, with chains hanging from their long necks,
balancing cruel-looking hooks over the decks of lifeless ships. A noise of
wheels rolling over stones, the thump of heavy things falling, the racket of
feverish winches, the grinding of strained chains, floated on the air. Between
high buildings the dust of all the continents soared in short flights; and a
penetrating smell of perfumes and dirt, of spices and hides, of things costly
and of things filthy, pervaded the space, made for it an atmosphere precious
and disgusting. The Narcissus came gently into her berth; the shadows of
soulless walls fell upon her, the dust of all the continents leaped upon her deck,
and a swarm of strange men, clambering up her sides, took possession of her in
the name of the sordid earth. She had ceased to live.
A toff in a black coat
and high hat scrambled with agility, came up to the second mate, shook hands,
and said:--‘Hallo, Herbert.’ It was his brother. A lady appeared suddenly. A
real lady, in a black dress and with a parasol. She looked extremely elegant in
the midst of us, and as strange as if she had fallen there from the sky. Mr.
Baker touched his cap to her. It was the master's wife. And very soon the
Captain, dressed very smartly and in a white shirt, went with her over the
side. We didn't recognise him at all till, turning on the quay, he called to
Mr. Baker:--‘Remember to wind up the chronometers to-morrow morning.’ An
underhand lot of seedy-looking chaps with shifty eyes wandered in and out of
the forecastle looking for a job--they said--‘More likely for something to
steal,’ commented Knowles cheerfully. Poor beggars. Who cared? Weren't we home!
But Mr. Baker went for one of them who had given him some cheek, and we were
delighted. Everything was delightful--‘I've finished aft, sir,’ called out Mr.
Creighton.--‘No water in the well, sir,’ reported for the last time t he
carpenter, sounding-rod in hand. Mr. Baker glanced along the decks at the
expectant groups of men, glanced aloft at the yards.--‘Ough! That will do, men.’
he grunted. The groups broke up. The voyage was ended.
Rolled-up beds went
flying over the rail; lashed chests went sliding along the gangway--mighty few
of both at that. ‘The rest is having a cruise off the Cape,’ explained Knowles
enigmatically to a dock-loafer with whom he had struck a sudden friendship. Men
ran, calling to one another, hailing utter strangers to ‘lend a hand with the
dunnage,’ then sudden decorum approached the mate to shake hands before going
ashore.--‘Good-bye, sir,’ they repeated in various tones. Mr. Baker grasped
hard palms, grunted in a friendly manner at every one, his eyes twinkled.--‘Take
care of your money, Knowles. Ough! Soon get a nice wife if you do.’ The lame
man was delighted.--‘Good-bye, sir,’ said Belfast with emotion, wringing the
mate's hand, and looked up with swimming eyes. ‘I thought I would take 'im
ashore with me,’ he went on plaintively. Mr. Baker did not understand, but said
kindly:--‘Take care of yourself, Craik,’ and the bereaved Belfast went over the
rail mourning and alone.
Mr. Baker in the sudden
peace of the ship moved about solitary and grunting, trying door handles
peering into dark places, never done--a model chief mate! No one waited for him
ashore. Mother dead; father and two brothers, Yarmouth fishermen, drowned
together on the Dogger Bank; sister married and unfriendly. Quite a lady.
Married to the leading tailor of a little town, and its leading politician, who
did not think his sailor brother-in-law quite respectable enough for him. Quite
a lady, quite a lady, he thought, sitting down for a moment's rest on the
quarter-hatch. Time enough to go ashore and get a bite, and sup, and a bed somewhere.
He didn't like to part with the ship. No one to think about then. The darkness
of a misty evening fell, cold and damp, upon the deserted deck; and Mr. Baker
sat smoking, thinking of all the successive ships to whom through many years he
had given the best of a seaman's care. And never a command in sight. Not
once!--‘I haven't somehow the cut of a skipper about me,’ he meditated
placidly, while the shipkeeper (who had taken possession of the galley), a
wizened old man with bleared eyes, cursed him, in whispers for ‘hanging about
so.’--‘Now Creighton,’ he pursued the unenvious train of thought. ‘quite a
gentleman..... swell friends....will get on. Fine young fellow.....a little
more experience.’ He got up and shook himself. ‘I'll be back first thing to-morrow
morning for the hatches. Don't you let them touch anything before I come,
shipkeeper,’ he called out. Then, at last, he also went ashore--a model chief
mate!
The men scattered by
the dissolving contract of the land came together once more in the shipping
office.--‘The Narcissus pays off,’ shouted outside a glazed door a brass-bound
old fellow with a crown and the capitals B. T. on his cap. A lot trooped in at
once but many were late. The room was large, white-washed, and bare; a counter
surmounted by a brass-wire grating fenced off a third of the dusty space, and
behind the grating a pasty-faced clerk, with his hair parted in the middle, had
the quick, glittering eyes and the vivacious, jerky movements of a caged bird.
Poor Captain Allistoun also in there, and sitting before a little table with
piles of gold and notes on it, appeared subdued by his captivity. Another Board
of Trade bird was perching on a high stool near the door; an old bird that did
not mind the chaff of elated sailors. The crew of the Narcissus, broken up into
knots, pushed in the corners. They had new shore togs, smart jackets that
looked as if they had been shaped with an axe, glossy trousers that seemed made
of crumpled sheet-iron, collarless flannel shirts, shiny new boots. They tapped
on shoulders, button-holed one another, slapped their thighs, stamped, with
bursts of subdued laughter. Most had clean radiant faces; only one or two were
dishevelled and sad; the two young Norwegians looked tidy, meek, and altogether
of a promising material for the kind ladies that patronize the Scandinavian
Home. Wamibo, still in his working clothes, dreamed, upright and burly in the
middle of the room, and, when Archie came in, woke up for a smile. But the
wide-awake clerk called out a name, and the paying-off business began.
One by one they came up
to the pay-table to get the wages of their glorious and obscure toil. They
swept the money with care into broad palms, rammed it trustfully into trousers
pockets, or, turning their backs on the table, reckoned with difficulty in the
hollow of their stiff hands.--‘Money right? Sign the release. There--there,’
repeated the clerk, impatiently. ‘How stupid those sailors are!’ he thought.
Singleton came up, venerable-- and uncertain as to daylight; brown drops of
tobacco juice maculated his white beard; his hands, that never hesitated in the
great light of the open sea, could hardly find the small pile of gold in the
profound darkness of the shore. ‘Can't write?’ said the clerk, shocked. ‘Make a
mark, then.’ Singleton painfully sketched in a heavy cross, blotted the page. ‘What
a disgusting old brute,’ muttered the clerk. Somebody opened the door for him,
and the patriarchal seaman passed through unsteadily, without as much as a
glance at any of us.
Archie had a
pocket-book. he was chaffed. Belfast, who looked wild, as though he had already
luffed up through a public-house or two, gave signs of emotion and wanted to
speak to Captain privately. The master was surprised. They spoke through the
wires, and we could hear the Captain saying:--‘I've given it up to the Board of
Trade.’ ‘I should 've liked to get something of his,’ mumbled Belfast. ‘But you
can't, my man. It's given up, locked and sealed, to the Marine Office,’
expostulated the master; and Belfast stood back, with drooping mouth and
troubled eyes. In a pause of the business we heard the master and the clerk
talking. We caught ‘James Wait--deceased--found no papers of any kind--no
relations--no trace--the office must hold his wages then.’ Donkin entered. He
seemed out of breath, was grave, full of business. He went straight to the
desk, talked with animation to the clerk, who thought him an intelligent man.
They discussed the account, dropping h's against one another as if for a
wager--very friendly. Captain Allistoun paid. ‘I give you a bad discharge,’ he
said, quietly. Donkin raised his voice:--‘I don't want your bloomin'
discharge--keep it. I'm goin' ter 'ave a job hashore.’ He turned to us. ‘No
more bloomin' sea fur me,’ he said, aloud. All looked at him. He had better
clothes, had an easy air, appeared more at home than any of us; he stared with
assurance, enjoying the effect of his declaration. ‘Yuss. I 'ave friends well
hoff. That's more'n yer got. But I ham a man. Yer shipmates for all that. Who's
comin' fur a drink?’
No one moved. There was
a silence; a silence of blank faces and stony looks. He waited a moment, smiled
bitterly, and went to the door. There he faced round once more. ‘Yer won't? Yer
bloomin' lot of 'ypocrites. No? What 'ave I done to yer? Did I bully yer? Did I
hurt yer? Did I?.... Yer won't drink?....No!....Then may yer die of thirst,
hevery mother's son of yer! Not one of yer 'as the sperrit of a bug. Ye're the
scum of the world. Work and starve!’
He went out, and
slammed the door with such violence that the old Board of Trade bird nearly
fell off his perch.
‘He's mad,’ said
Archie. ‘No! No! He's drunk,’ insisted Belfast, lurching about, and in a
maudlin tone. Captain Allistoun sat smiling thoughtfully at the cleared
pay-table.
Outside, on Tower Hill,
they blinked, hesitated clumsily, as if blinded by the strange quality of the
hazy light, as if discomposed by the view of so many men; and they who could
hear one another in the howl of gales seemed deafened and distracted by the
dull roar of the busy earth.--‘To the Black Horse! To the Black Horse!’ cried
some. ‘Let us have a drink together before we part.’ They crossed the road,
clinging to one another. Only Charlie and Belfast wandered off alone. As I came
up I saw a red-faced, blowsy woman, in a grey shawl, and with dusty, fluffy
hair, fall on Charley's neck. It was his mother. She slobbered over him:--‘O,
my boy! My boy!’--‘Leggo of me,’ said Charley, ‘Leggo, mother!’ I was passing
him at the time, and over the untidy head of the blubbering woman he gave me a
humorous smile and a glance ironic, courageous, and profound, that seemed to
put all my knowledge of life to shame. I nodded and passed on, but heard him
say again, good-naturedly:--‘If you leggo of me this minyt--ye shall 'ave a bob
for a drink out of my pay.’ In the next few steps I came upon Belfast. He
caught my arm with tremulous enthusiasm.--‘I couldn't go wi' 'em,’ he
stammered, indicating by a nod our noisy crowd, that drifted slowly along the
other sidewalk. ‘When I think of Jimmy.....Poor Jim! When I think of him I have
no heart for drink. You were his chum, too....but I pulled him out....didn't I?
Short wool he had....Yes. And I stole the blooming pie.....He wouldn't
go.....He wouldn't go for nobody.’ He burst into tears. ‘I never touched
him--never--never--’ he sobbed. ‘He went for me like....like.... a lamb.’
I disengaged myself
gently. Belfast's crying fits generally ended in a fight with some one, and I
wasn't anxious to stand the brunt of his inconsolable sorrow. Moreover, two
bulky policemen stood near by, looking at us with a disapproving and
incorruptible gaze.--‘So long!’ I said, and went off.
But at the corner I
stopped to take my last look at the crew of the Narcissus. They were swaying,
irresolute and noisy on the broad flagstones before the Mint. They were bound
for the Black Horse, where men, in fur caps, with brutal faces and in shirt
sleeves, dispense out of varnished barrels the illusions of strength, mirth,
happiness; the illusion of splendour and poetry of life, to the paid-off crews
of southern-going ships. From afar I saw them discoursing, with jovial eyes and
clumsy gestures, while the sea of life thundered into their ears ceaseless and
unheeded. And swaying about there on the white stones, surrounded by the hurry
and clamour of men, they appeared to be creatures of another kind--lost, alone,
forgetful, and doomed; they were like cast aways, like reckless and joyous
castaways, like mad castaways making merry in the storm and upon an insecure
ledge of a treacherous rock. The roar of the town resembled the roar of topping
breakers, merciless and strong, with a loud voice and cruel purpose; but
overhead the clouds broke; a flood of sunshine streamed down the walls of grimy
houses. The dark knot of seamen drifted in sunshine. To the left of them the
trees in Tower Gardens sighed, the stones of the Tower gleaming, seemed to stir
in the play of light, as if remembering suddenly all the great joys and sorrows
of the past, the fighting prototypes of these men; press-gangs; mutinous cries;
the wailing of women by the riverside, and the shouts of men welcoming
victories. The sunshine of heaven fell like a gift of grace on the mud of the
earth, on the remembering and mute stones, on greed, selfishness; on the
anxious faces of forgetful men. And to the right of the dark group the stained
front of the Mint, cleansed by the flood of light, stood out for a moment,
dazzling and white like a marble palace in a fairy tale. The crew of the
Narcissus drifted out of sight.
I never saw them again.
The sea took some, the steamers took others, the graveyards of the earth will
account for the rest. Singleton has no doubt taken with him the long record of
his faithful work into the peaceful depths of an hospitable sea. And Donkin,
who never did a decent day's work in his life, no doubt earns his living by
discoursing with filthy eloquence upon the right of labour to live. So be it!
Let the earth and the sea each have its own.
A gone shipmate, like
any other man, is gone for ever; and I never saw one of them again. But at
times the spring-flood of memory sets with force up the dark River of the Nine
Bends. Then on the waters of the forlorn stream drifts a ship--a shadowy ship
manned by a crew of Shades. They pass and make a sign, in a shadowy hall.
Haven't we, together and upon the immortal sea, wrung out a meaning from our
sinful lives? Good-bye brothers! You were a good crowd. As good a crowd as ever
fisted with wild cries the beating canvas of a heavy foresail; or tossing
aloft, invisible in the night, gave back yell for yell to a westerly gale.