An Ocean Tramp Part 9

"He will, he will--some day, Mr. Mac," and he walks up and down the bridge for a bit, smoking the pipe his children gave him for a present last Christmas. I ask him:

"When shall we strike the trade wind, Mr. Honna?"

"Soon, soon. 'T ought to be here in the morning."

I climb down again, and sniff eagerly for the first beginnings of a breeze. Nothing, unless you are optimistic and like to stare at a brown streak away southward, between sky and sea.

I reach the engineers' awning aft of the engine-room, and see the Chief in his chair, the Fourth in his hammock, and the Second just come up for tea. I open my mouth and speak, when the regular throb of the engines is broken by a scream. Like a flash each one springs to his feet and looks at the others. The regular throb goes on as before, and George laughs, but the Second disappears through the door, I following. I shall not easily forget that scream.

Half-way down, a fireman, his face blanching under the coal-dust and sweat, meets us.

"What's up?" snaps the Second.

"Donkeyman, sir. In the crankpit!" He plunges downward again, and we do the same. Down into the fierce oily heat illuminated by the electrics in front of each engine. The second puts two fingers in his mouth and whistles shrilly to those above. And then we fall to work.

The telegraph is flung over to "Stop," the throttle is closed, ash-pit damper put on, and the regular throb slackens, hesitates, stops. With a dexterous flick of the reversing engine the Second catches the high-press engine on the stop centre and locks her there. And then we look.

Far better for him, poor lad, if he had taken my tip and left those tap-bolts to leak. The Second says "Hand-lamp," and I give him one.

People are coming down the stairs in numbers now, and the Chief rushes up to us, looks down, and turns away sickened. The ponderous cranks have blood dashed across them, the rod is streaked and lathered with it. From the bottom of the pit comes no sound, no movement. Lying on the plates is the spanner which must have spun from his hand as he fell to destruction.

"Now then, how many more?" snarls the Second. Sweat streams from his face as he pushes the intruders away and lifts a man-hole plate in the platform. I seize the hand-lamp and get down on to the tank, and the Second follows. It is not pleasant, understand, down there, where bilge collects and rats run riot, and grease is rolled into filthy black b.a.l.l.s, and the stench is intolerable. I push on towards the pit.

A full moon, blood-red and enormous, hangs just above the eastern sky-line. In the west still burns the glow of the vanis.h.i.+ng sun, and the pale sky is twinkling with innumerable stars. The regular throb of the engines drives the s.h.i.+p forward again, a sailor is hauling down the red ensign from the p.o.o.p, and another moves to and fro, silhouetted against the southern sky, on the foc'sle-head. Just ahead of the bridge two more sailors sit busily sewing. The Old Man stands by the chart-house door talking to the Mate. The dogs lie quietly on the lower deck, their heads between their paws.

In the after-hatch, covered by the flag, lies that which is about to be committed to the deep.

The red glow fades from the west, and the moon swings upward, flooding the sea with silver light. Away southward lies a black streak on the sky-line and the windsail flickers a little. The two sailors have finished sewing, and go aft. A fireman breaks the deck silence as he hoists two firebars up from the for'ard stokehold and carries them aft. Up on the p.o.o.p, under the awning, the Second Mate has removed the hand-rails on the starboard quarter, and the carpenter is las.h.i.+ng some hatches in an inclined position.

We by the engine-room door are silent, for there is nothing to say. We wait for the _Stand by_ bell in silence. A heavy footfall, and the Skipper, his bronzed face hard-drawn, his snowy hair uncovered, pa.s.ses us. I think, even now, he is sorry for that sneer at his wife's little trick. He is going to get the Prayer Book that lies close to his revolver in his chest.

George and I go below and make all ready. I think the Second is glad of our company, in the terrible heat. We potter about in silence: then "_Stand by--Half--Slow--Stop_." A few minutes' swift toil, a hurried wash, and we climb up on deck again into the moonlight. A white, silent world of waters is about us as we join the crew going aft to the p.o.o.p. The awning has been partly folded back, and we see the Skipper resting his book on the tiller-gear, while the Steward stands by with a lantern. I look curiously into the faces I know so well, seeking, in the presence of death, a little more knowledge of life. I look at the Skipper, with his white hair and fierce moustache gleaming in the silver radiance of the moon, his hands fumbling with the leaves of the book. I look at the Chief, fidgeting about in the rear, meeting no one's eye, his mouth working nervously. I look at George the Fourth; he is staring like a schoolboy at the flag-covered thing on the hatch, with the firebars lashed to its sides. And then the silence is broken by the harsh, unsteady voice:

"_I am the resurrection and the life._"

The tension is almost unbearable now. We have not been educated to this. We are like soldiers suddenly flung into the face of the enemy.

"_We therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body (when the sea shall give up her dead), and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who at his coming shall change our vile body that it may be like his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself._"

A pause, and he closes the book. Two of the men quietly slacken the ropes which hold the body in position, another pulls off the flag, and the dark ma.s.s on the planks plunges downward into the oily sea.

Another pause, while I picture it rus.h.i.+ng "down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind white sea-snakes are," and the Chief motions furtively with his fingers.

In a few minutes we are under way.

It is eight bells, midnight, once more. The sky to the southward is a jet-black ma.s.s of clouds, and the windsail is yawing in a strong, cool breeze. Away to the westward the moon still throws her glory over the face of the waters and I go below, thinking of the night coming, when no man shall work.

And so ends our Christmas Day.

XXI

It is Sunday, and I lie under the awning by the engine-room door, lazily reading "Faust." There is a speck on the sky-line--the mail boat, bringing a letter from my friend. I look round at the translucent opal of the bay, the glittering white of the surf on the reef, the downward swoop on an albatross, and I listen to the dull roar of the breakers, to the solemn tang-tang of the bell-buoy on the bar, and the complaisant "_ah-ha-a-a_" of some argumentative penguin.

Even the drab-coloured African hills in the distance, and the corrugated Catholic church (s.h.i.+pped in sections) with the sun blazing on its windows, are beautiful to me to-day, for I am not of those who think religion is ugly because it is corrugated, or that hills are repulsive because they are not in the guide-book. I am at peace, and so are the rest. My friend the Mate is fis.h.i.+ng, but that, of course, is trite; the Mate is always fis.h.i.+ng. I fancy the cod nudge each other and wink when they see his old face looking down into those opalescent depths, and watch him feeling at his lines for a bite. How they must have joked together this morning when he gave a shout and called for help, for he could not lift the line! We all responded to the call, and the line came up slowly. "Must be a whopper," muttered the Mate, and refused my callous suggestion that it was a coal-bag which had got entangled in the hook. At last, after an eternity of hauling, came up part of an iron bedstead, dropped from some steamer in the long ago.

But the true fisherman has reserves of philosophy to cope with such slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Meanwhile the speck has enlarged itself into a blot with a tag above it and some cotton-woolly smoke. "'Tis the _Nautilas_," observes the Mate, and he calls it "Naughty La.s.s" with hibernian unconsciousness of his own humour. I wonder, now, why it is that we sailor-men invariably display such frantic _feminine_ interest when another craft heaves in sight. The most contemptible fis.h.i.+ng boat in the Bay of Biscay, when she appears on the horizon, receives the notice of all hands--the old as well as the young. And when we pa.s.s a sister s.h.i.+p, the _Aretino_ or the _Cosimo_ or the _Angelo_; in mid-ocean, we talk about her and criticise her, and rake out her past history, for days. I sometimes think, from hints the Mate drops, that our own _Benvenuto_ has a past, a St. John's Wood past I mean, not a Haymarket past. But he will have no talk by others against the s.h.i.+p. "What's the matter with the s.h.i.+p?"

he will shout. "d.a.m.n it all, I like the s.h.i.+p! She's a good old s.h.i.+p, an' I glory in her!" So we talk scandal about the others instead.

Here, on the ragged edge of the Empire, things are managed expeditiously by the authorities. Scarcely an hour after the _Nautilas_ has dropped her pick the tugboat comes out again and flings us our mail. Bosun and donkeyman trudge aft and take the letters for the foc'sle, the mess-room steward deposits a letter in my lap, and I think of my friend. At this moment he is engaged in repartee with the housekeeper as she lays the table for tea. The heavy twilight is settling down over the river outside; lovers are pacing the walk as they return from their Sunday tramp. Possibly, too, that fantastic scene which he has described to me is now enacting. He is at the piano; the housekeeper, in tears, is on her knees beside him, and they raise their melodious voices "_for those in peril on the sea_." How affecting, for one to be so remembered! I thank them both with all my heart.

And now he tells me that his play goes well, and I am glad. It will indeed be a red-letter day when I pay my s.h.i.+lling and climb into the gallery to see his work. No, I shall not criticise. Probably I shall hardly listen. I shall be thinking many thoughts, dreaming dreams, feeling simply very glad and very proud.

I sympathise always with his struggles with his _personnel_, but I think, though, he hardly allows enough for the point of view. These actors and actresses are not literary. (They _should_ be, I know.) They look at an author's work as a man looks at the universe--a small part at a time. That trite old paradox that, to the actor, the part is greater than the whole, should never be forgotten. Remember, too, how "touchy," as he calls it, they _must_ be, in the nature of things.

Their touchiness, their affectation, their lack of culture--all are inherent in them. _Their_ success is always immediate, using the word in its literal sense as a metaphysician would use it; the author's success is mediate, through time and trial. So one should not be discouraged because they fail to appreciate one's efforts to give them the atmosphere of the period. They will get the atmosphere intuitively, or not at all.

He complains of "loss of time," "thankless task," "inefficiency," and the like. Now, I think that is grumbling without cause. Take my own case, for example. I have no problems of dramatic art to wrestle with, only the problem of coal consumption. But it is ultimately the same thing, i.e., energy. My friend mourns the shameful loss of energy incident to the production of a decent presentment of his dramatic conception. I, as an engineer, mourn over the hideous loss of coal incidental to the propulsion of the s.h.i.+p. The loss in his case, I suppose, is incalculable: in mine it is nearly seventy per cent. Think of it for a moment. The _Lusitania's_ furnaces consume one thousand tons of coal per day, seven hundred of which are, in all probability, lost in the inefficiency of the steam-engine as a prime mover. It runs through the whole of our life, my friend! Waste, waste, waste! What we call the perfect cycle, the conversion of energy into heat and heat into energy, cannot, in practice, be accomplished without loss. What may interest you still more is that we cannot, even in theory, calculate on no loss whatever in the progress of the cycle, and by this same "entropy loss," as we call it, some of our more reckless physicists foresee the running down of the great universe-machine some day, and so eliminating both plays and steam-engines from the problem altogether. But this is my point. Prodigious loss is the law of nature which she imposes both on artist and artisan. Indeed, artist and artisan have their reason of being in that loss, as I think you will admit.

Again, history will corroborate my contention as to the catholicity of this loss. Imagine the French Revolution, the Lutheran Reformation, the "Catholic" Reaction, and the like, to be _revolutions_ of the vast human engine. Consider then the loss of power. Consider the impulse, the enormous impulse, applied to the piston, and then look at the result. What losses in leakages, in cooled enthusiasms, in friction-heat, in (pardon the ludicrous a.n.a.logy) waste gases! Think, too, of the loss involved in unbalanced minds, as in unbalanced engines, one ma.s.s of bigoted inertia r.e.t.a.r.ding another ma.s.s! Oh, my friend, my friend, you talk of "losses" as though you playwrights had a monopoly of it. Ask men of all trades, of all faiths, and they will give you, in their answers, increased knowledge of human life.

Such, at least, is my method--digging into the hearts of men. Take, for instance, my friend the Second Officer. A tall, lean young man, with an iron jaw under his brown beard. I began to talk to him one evening because he said he never had letters from home. He had a sister, he told me, but there was no joy in the telling. "We don't hit it off," he observed grimly, and I smiled. He has no sweetheart, loves nothing but dogs. How he loves dogs! He has two at his heels all day long. He loves them almost as much as dogs love the Chief Officer, which is to distraction. He will take the solemn English terrier up on his knee and give me a lecture thereon. This same pup, I learn, is "low"--look at his nose! He is in bad health--just feel his back teeth! Saucy? Yes, certainly, but not a thoroughbred hair on him. He has worms, too, I understand, somewhere inside, and on several occasions during the voyage his bowels needed attention. I, in my utter ignorance of dog-lore, begin to marvel that the animal holds together at all under the stress of these deficiencies. Perhaps the dirt which he collects by rolling about on deck affords a protective covering. Once a week, however, his lord and master divests him of even this shadowy defence, and he emerges from a bucket, clean, soapy, and coughing violently. In all probability he rejoices in consumption as well.

The Second Officer, I say, teaches me philosophy. He has had a hard life, I think. By sheer industry he has risen from common sailor to his present berth. I say "sheer" because it seems to me that when a man has no friends or relations who care to write to him, the way of life must be very steep indeed. I was surprised, though, to learn of his loneliness. Had he, then, no kindly light to lead him on?

Unconsciously he answered me. Would I come down below and have something to drink? With pleasure; and so we went. The last time I had been in that room was when his predecessor, the little man with four children and a house of his own, had extended hospitality to me. It is not a pleasant room. A spare bunk full of canvas bolts, cordage, and other stores, make it untidy; and the Steward's stores are just behind the after bulkhead, so that it smells like a s.h.i.+p-chandler's warehouse. Well, we sit down, and the whiskey pa.s.ses. We light cigars (magnificent Campania Generals at three farthings each), and then he ferrets about in his locker. I look at the pictures. Almanack issued by a rope-maker in Manchester; photo of an Irish terrier, legs wide part, tail at an angle of forty-five to the rest of him; photo of Scotch terrier, short legs, fat body, ears like a donkey's; photo of the officers of s.s. _Timbuctoo_, in full uniform, my friend among them, taken on the upper deck, bulldog in the foreground. By this time the Second Officer has exhumed an oblong wooden case containing a worn violin. Ah! I have his secret. He holds it like a baby, and plucks at the strings. Then he plays.

Well, he knows, by instinct I imagine, that I care nothing for music, as music. So when I ask for hymn-tunes, he smiles soberly and complies. I hear my favourites to my heart's content--"Hark, Hark, My Soul," "Weary of Earth," "Abide With Me," and "Thou Knowest, Lord."

How glad they must be who believe these words! The red sun was flooding the room with his last flaming signal as the man played:

"_Abide with me; fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide, When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, O abide with me!_"

Yes, _mon ami_, all men know of that tremendous loss inherent in all their labours. And it is, I think, to balance that loss that they have invented religion.

XXII

It has suddenly struck me that there are many important things to be found by considering the cheap literature which floods the English and American publics week by week and month by month. I am afraid that, when at home in Chelsea, where even the idlers read Swinburne and Lord de Tabley, I had grown accustomed to the stilted point of view, calling novelettes "trashy" and beneath an intellectual man's consideration. Well, since this particular trash forms the staple brain food in the Mercantile Marine, I must needs look into it more closely. With results.

There is a question of bulk and output. This is appalling to a laborious writer, a student or a thinker. Week by week there pours forth an unending deluge of love fiction, and week by week this deluge is absorbed into the systems of millions of human beings. We speak glibly of the world-wide fame of some cla.s.sic, when, in point of fact, the people familiar with that cla.s.sic are isolated specks in the vast, solid ma.s.s to whom some novelettist is a household G.o.d. The cla.s.sic will have, say, one votary in the family, the novelettist will capture the family _en bloc_. An engineer will receive a cargo of novelettes, all of which have been digested, or even feverishly devoured, by his mother, wife, or sisters. He will pa.s.s them on to the Steward, who will read them and give them to the sailors and firemen. And this obtains in every s.h.i.+p wherever the English language is spoken. What cla.s.sic can claim a public that does not seem microscopic compared to this?

I cannot but observe, too, that Miss Anonyme often writes exceedingly well. No extraneous vapourings are admitted, and the plot is steadily developed to its inevitable conclusion of "happy ever after." The metaphors are somewhat stereotyped, and quotations from Tennyson are awkwardly handled, but--what would you for a penny? Johnson's explanation--that they write well in order to be paid well--is correct. Miss Anonyme knows her "market," and she writes for it as well as can be expected under the circ.u.mstances.