An Ocean Tramp Part 8

The cool breeze against my face arouses me. The mood of exultation in my engines, the mood of blank despair, both have pa.s.sed, and I am, I hope, myself again. Once more "the kick o' the screw beneath us and the round blue seas outside." Once more the wandering fever is in my blood, and, as the winter's day fades away, I stand against the rail looking eastward at the flas.h.i.+ng lights, calmer than I have been since that night--a month ago. I am an ocean tramp once more, and count it life indeed.

"_And out at sea, behold the dock-lights die, And meet my mate, the wind that tramps the world._"

XVIII

I have been looking into some of my books, now that the sea is so calm and the weather so enchantingly fair. I find a pleasurable contrast in dipping into such volumes as Boswell's "Johnson," Goldsmith's "Beau Nash," and Lady Montague's "Letters." The life they depict is so different, the opinions they express so dissimilar from those I have myself gradually grown to affect. And what an amazing _farrago_ is that same Boswell! Surely, if ever a book was written _con amore_, it is that one. Compare it with the "Life of Beau Nash." Each is the biography of a remarkable man, but what a difference! In every line Goldsmith displays a certain forced interest. I do not know, but I am almost positive he cared very little for his subject; I feel that the work is only being carried on for the sake of gain. Regarded so, it is a masterly little Life. Two hundred small pages--Nash merits no more on the roll of fame.

But the former, twelve hundred closely printed pages. No paltry little anecdote or incident, germane or not, is too contemptible for him. The ident.i.ty of some obscure school, the masters.h.i.+p of which Johnson never held, is argued about until one is weary of the thing. The illegible note, written for his own eye alone, is construed in a dozen ways, and judgment delivered as though the fate of empires hung thereon. The smug complaisance with which he cites some prayer or comment to ill.u.s.trate his idol's religious orthodoxy would have angered me once--_did_ anger me once--but out here, on the broad blue ocean, I smile at the toady, and marvel at the wondrous thing he has wrought.

Pleasant, too, to turn the leaves of my Dryden, and glance through some of those admirably composed prefaces, those egotistical self-criticisms so full of literary pugnacity, in an age when pluck in a poet needed searching for. I often say to folk who deplore Bernard Shaw's prefatory egotism that if they would read Dryden they would discover that Shaw is only up to his own masterly old game of imitating his predecessor's tactics. But Shaw is quite safe. He knows people do not read the literature of their own land nowadays.

I had a laugh last evening all to myself when I noticed that, in a hasty re-arrangement of my book-shelves, _Gorky_ stood shouldering old _Chaucer_! Could disparity go further? And yet each is a master of his craft, each does his work with skill--with "trade finish," as we say.

And so it seemed to me that, after all, one might leave the "Romaunt of the Rose" side by side with "Three of Them," on condition that each is read and re-read, if only for the workmans.h.i.+p.

Cellini, too, draws me as regularly and irresistibly as the moon makes our tides. Here is richness. The breathless impetuosity of the whole narrative, the inconceivable truculence of the man, fascinates me, who am so different. When I looked at that "Perseus" in Florence, when I leaned over the medal-cases in South Kensington and stared hard at the work of his murderous hands, I felt awed and baffled. How could he do it--he with his dagger just withdrawn from some rival's shoulders, his fingers just unclasped from some enemy's windpipe? Then, again, the virile cheerfulness of the man! G.o.d is ever on his side, Justice is his guardian angel. And while musing upon him some few days back, I fell to wondering if I might not imitate him. I mean, why could not I take the life of some such man (and I know one at least who could sit for the portrait), and write a fict.i.tious autobiography in that truculent, bombastic, interesting style? I have the material, and I believe I could do it. What do you think, old friend? It is already one of my plans for the future, when I am done wandering.

That last word reminds me of my Borrow. Who can describe the bewildering delight when one first plunges into "Lavengro" and the "Romany Rye"? To take them from the book-case and carry them out to Barnet, where the Kingmaker fell, and read with the wind in your face and the Great North Road before your eyes--is that too much to ask of mine ancient Londoner? Believe me, the thing is worth doing. No man ever put so divine an optimism into his books, so genuine a love of "nature." Says Mr. Petulengro: "There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise the wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?"

One of the most precious memories of my younger manhood is brought back to me as I write those words. It was a Sunday afternoon in late autumn, in one of those unfrequented ways which slant off from the Great North Road beyond Hadley Heath, where the green turf bordered the brown road and the leaves covered the earth beneath the trees with a carpet of flaming cloth-of-gold. I had left my book and bicycle to one side, and, seated upon a low grey stone wall, I watched the sun go down. Behind me, across the intervening meadows, rose clouds of dust, redolent of waste gases, where thundered an ever-increasing traffic of swift vehicles. In front a vaporous mist was rising from the land; the shadows broadened, and the red western glow grew deeper, while in the middle distance a tiny child, clad in green cloak and little red hood, stood conning her Sunday story--a jewel of quiet colour in the gathering autumn twilight. And so, as I listened to the roar from the macadamed highway and looked out upon that evening glory, it was as though I heard, far off, the throbbing pulse of the great world's mighty hand, while I sat still in the heart of it.

"Life is very sweet, brother: who would wish to die?"

XIX

Is all this too bookish for an ocean tramp? Alas! I fear I grow too c.o.c.ksure of my literary attainments out here, with none to check me.

It is in London where a man finds his true level in the book world, as Johnson shrewdly observed. In the evening, when we are gathered over the fire, and opinions fly across and rebound, when one hears bookmen talk of books, and painters talk of art--that is the time when I feel myself so unutterably insignificant. Often I have looked across at T----, or G----, or ----, someone I know even better than them, and I feel discouraged. You men have _done_ things, while I--well, I talk about doing things, and try, feebly enough, to make my talking good; but to what end? T---- has his work in many a public building and sacred edifice; G---- has his books on our tables and in the circulating libraries; and you have done things, too, in dramatic literature.

Meanwhile I am an engine-driver on the high seas! I know my work is in the end as honourable and more useful than yours, but I cannot always keep back a jealous feeling when I think of the years sliding by, and nothing done. Nothing ever finished, not even--but there! That chapter of my life is finished and done with, incomplete as the story will be always. Often and often, under the stars at midnight, I think that if she would stand by me, I could be nearer success--I could take hold of life and wrench away the difficulties of it. And then again comes a more valiant, manly mood. I say to myself, I will do something yet. I will reach the heights, and show her that one man at least can stand on his own feet. I will show her that she need have no need to be ashamed of him, though no carpet-knight, only an engine-driver. And I recall that brave song in the "Gay Pretenders":

"_I am not what she'd have me be, I am no courtier fair to see; And yet no other in the land, I swear, shall take my lady's hand!_"

Well, that is my high resolve sometimes, and I will try to keep it in front of me always, and so do something at last.

Well, well, this is sad talk for the day before Christmas! Come away from books and trouble, out on deck, where there is a breeze. The mighty Norseman is ready to cut my hair, and is waiting abaft the engine-room under the awning.

It is the donkeyman's business, aboard this s.h.i.+p, to cut the officers'

hair. A marvellous man, a good donkeyman. And this one of ours is multi-marvellous, for he can do anything. He speaks Swedish, Danish, Russian, German, and excellent English. He has been a blacksmith, butcher, fireman, greaser, tinsmith, copper-smelter, and now, _endlich_, _enfin_, at last, a donkeyman. His frame is gigantic, his strength prodigious. On his chest is a horrific picture of the Crucifixion in red, blue, and green tattoo. Between the Christ and the starboard thief is a great triangular scar of smooth, s.h.i.+ny skin. One of his colossal knees is livid with scars. He tells me the story like this, keeping time with the click of the scissors.

"When I was a kid I was a wild devil. Why, I ran away with a circus that came to Stockholm, and my father he came after me and he nearly kill me. Then, one day, I had on--what you call 'em, mister?--long shoes, eight, ten feet long--ah! yes, we call 'em _ski_. Well, I go to jump thirty, forty feet, and I am only twelve years old. The strap come off my foot and I have not time to s.h.i.+ft my balance to the other foot, and I go over and over, like a stone. I come down on my knee, and there are beer-bottles on the rocks. The English and Germans, they drink beer on the rocks--beautiful Swedish beer, better than Lowenbrau, hein! Well, they take out of my knee fifty pieces of gla.s.s--you see the marks? And my chest it is smashed bad. They cut off three rib and look inside; this is where they look into my chest. All right! They put ribs back and box all up. Oh, I was a wild devil when I was a kid!"

Such is Johann Nicanor Gustaffsen, with his huge strength, frescoed chest, and pasty face with the jolly blue eyes. I think the women like him, and, by the hammer of Thor! he can bend a bar of iron across his knee!

XX

It is Christmas Day, and I begin it with the clock as usual. George the Fourth punches me in the ribs, grunts, "Merry new Christmas, Mac,"

and vanishes. There is not a breath of air stirring. Through the sultry night air the stars burn brightly. A cl.u.s.ter of blurred lights on the horizon show me where a liner is creeping past us in the darkness--a s.h.i.+p pa.s.sing in the night. Clad only in dungaree trousers and singlet, I go below, on watch. The windsail hangs limp and breathless, and the thermometer stands at 120 Fah. Christmas Day!

Slowly in the hot air the hours drag on. One, two, three o'clock.

Then, "one bell." No breeze yet. I finish up, score my log on the black-board--Sea water 90, discharge 116--and call the Second. He is awake, panting in the hot oven of his berth. If I wish him a merry Christmas he will murder me. I slink below again, and have a sea bath.

Even salt water at 90 Fah. is a boon after four hours in that inferno.

A mug of cocoa--strange how hot cocoa cools one--and I turn in. I hear the Skipper padding up and down in his sandals on the p.o.o.p, clad only in pyjamas. At last, as the stars are paling, I fall asleep.

At seven o'clock I am aroused by the mess-room steward leaning over me, closing my ports. They are flooding the decks with sea-water to cool them, and if my ports are open I am also flooded.

Still no relief. There is a deathly quiet in the mess-room as we a.s.sembled to our Christmas breakfast of bacon and eggs, coffee, cocoa, and marmalade. Imagine such a _menu_ in the tropics! The b.u.t.ter is liquid, and from each of us, clad in singlets and white ducks, the sweat streams. The day begins unpropitiously. John Thomas, the mess-room steward, balancing himself on the top step of our companion-way with three cups of boiling cocoa in his hands, slips and thunders to the bottom. There is a chaotic mixture of scalded boy, broken cups, and steam on the floor, and we giggle nervously in our Turkish bath.

George the Fourth goes on watch, and we lie listlessly under our awning, praying for a breeze. On the face of the blazing vault there is not a single cloud, on the face of the waters not a ripple. The sea is a vast pond of paraffin. The hot gases from the funnel rise vertically, and the sun quivers behind them. The flaps of the windsail hang dead, the sides of the canvas tube have fallen in like the neck of a skinny old man. Slowly the sun mounts over our heads and the air grows hotter and hotter. From the galley come sounds of quacking, and a few feathers roll slowly past us. Now and then an agonized trimmer will stagger out of a bunker hatch into the open air, his half-naked body black with coal-dust and gleaming with sweat. The Mate, in a big straw hat, paces the bridge slowly. The cook emerges from the galley and hastens aft for provisions--they are preparing our Christmas dinner. Roast duck, green peas, new potatoes, plum pudding--and the temperature is 105 Fah. on deck.

One bell. I rise, and go below to change for my watch--12 to 4.

"Will you take any dinner, sir?" John Thomas rubs the sweat from his forehead and sets the soup on the table. I ponder on the madness of eating Christmas fare in that oven-like mess-room, but sentiment wins, and I sit down with the others.

"Hoondred an' twenty oonder t' win's'le," whispers George to me huskily.

"What's the sea-water?" asks the Chief.

"Eighty-nine, sir."

We push the soup aside, and John Thomas brings in the roast ducks. How appetizing they would be at home! The Chief wrenches them apart in perspiring silence, and we fall to. We peck at the food; the sweat drops from our faces into the plates, the utensils slide from our hands, and so we make the best of it. But when the pudding arrives our courage fails us. We _cannot_ face plum pudding, sentiment or no sentiment. We gulp down some lime-juice and stagger away like dying men--I to four hours' purgatory below.

Slowly (oh, so slowly!) the time drags on. The greaser draws his tattooed arm across his eyes and whispers, with the triumph of a lost soul bragging of the Circle of Fire, that he has known it "'otter'n this in the Red Sea, sir." He is an entertaining man. Often I hear tales from the wide world of waters from his lips. This is his last voyage, he tells me. He is going "sh.o.r.e donkeyman" in future--what you call longsh.o.r.eman. His wife has a nice little business in Neath now, and "she wants 'im 'ome." Have I noticed how that high-press guide is leaking? Should he tighten up the tap-bolts in the bottom plate? I dissent, because one cannot reach them safely while she is running. It is only a trifle; better let it go. He acquiesces doubtfully, and resumes greasing. And the hours drift by.

At four o'clock the Second relieves me, looking reproachfully at the slackened windsail. Still no breeze. And the greaser, who does not go off till six o'clock, observes, "Oh, wot a--'appy Christmas!" Which would be profane if the temperature were lower.

I change into white ducks again and saunter up to the bridge to talk to my friend the Mate. If I were to paraphrase Johnson's burst of energy, I should say, "Sir, I _love_ the Mate!"

"Merry Christmas, Mr. McAlnwick!" he shouts cheerfully from the upper bridge, and a chorus of yelping dogs joyfully take up the cry. They are the "Old Man's," but they follow the Mate up and down until they drop with fatigue. Black silky spaniel, rough-red Irish terrier, black and grey badger-toed Scotch half-breed, nameless mongrel--they all love the Mate. "Come here," he says, and I climb up to his level.

"The Old Man had a letter this mornin'," he says.

"Eh?" I remark blankly.

"Ah! His wife gave it me before we sailed an' I left it on his table this mornin'! Says he, at breakfast, 'Pshaw!' says he, 'it's a waste o' paper.'"

"Mr. Honna," I say, "perhaps he'll be sorry for saying that, eh?"