THOMAS R. RUTTER 116 TWENT -,- /.! STREET SANTA MGMCA, CALIF. *< UNIV. OF CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES BROKEN STOWAGE' BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE BRASSBOUNDER "Captain Bone knows the days of sailing ships, and he has given us a log . . . which is as breezy as the gale that sent the old wind- jammer around the Horn." The Bookman. "A ripping romance of the sea. This is deep- sea, blue-water life, and has a fascination all its own." William Lyon Phelps in the Yale Alumni Weekly. "The art of this book is well-nigh perfect, but apart from that (or because of it!) it is as thrilling as any cooked-up story of adventure whatever." New York Evening Post. E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 'BROKEN STOWAGE' BY DAVID W. BONE AUTHOR OB 'THE BEASSBOUNDER' "... More or less, if on board to be delivered. Packages lo\be used as dunnage or wherever required to assist stowage. Ship not to be responsible for numbers or condition on delivery." Extract from a Mate's receipt for cargo. NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 68 1 FIFTH AVENUE Copyright, 1922, By E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY All rightg referred Printtd in the UnitfJ Slatit of Amfrica TO MY SHIPMATES AND THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN TO SEA WITH ME 2125601 CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE . . . . . . . . ix CHAPTER I. SETTING OUT ...... i II. ERRORS OF JUDGMENT .... 9 III. A DEEP-WATER CRITIC .... 38 IV. UNCLAIMED REWARDS .... 44 V. THE SCRIBE ...... 52 VI. STOCKHOLM TAR ..... 56 VII. THE ' REAL ' CASHMIRI SHAWL . . 61 VIII. DROPPING THE PILOT .... 70 IX. OLD PAOLI 75 X. JEEMS SAHIB ...... 80 XI. OFF ST. MICHAEL'S ISLE ... 83 XII. AT BAZAAR 89 XIII. THE HARVEST OF THE NORTH ... 94 XIV. LA CANTINIERE ..... 100 XV. SULIMAN Bux ..... 104 XVI. COASTING DAYS HI XVII. THE MERCHANTS' CUP . . . . 117 XVIII. BEHIND THE MAY 147 viii CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XIX. FINDLAY'S SOUTH PACIFIC . . . 156 XX. THE ' BOOTLE BULL ' . . . . 161 XXI. THE ' SHANGHAIED ' RUNNERS . . 167 XXII. CHOTA BURS AT 175 XXIII. A SAILOR'S VIEW . . . 181 XXIV. THE ODDMAN .... 188 XXV. THE ' ARTS AFLOAT ' . . . 195 XXVI. SAILORMEN ON TOUR . . . 208 XXVII. A CHANNEL SUNRISE . 214 XXVIII. PORT SAID AND ' JOCK FERGUSON ' . 219 XXIX. THE STOWAWAY JEW . . . 227 XXX. THE MERRY ANDREW . . 233 XXXI. AN 'ERCTIC VOYAGE . . . . 237 XXXII. A RUN IN .... . 243 XXXIII. " Hi! PADD-AAY! 1 " ... 251 XXXIV. AT OLD QUAY .... 262 XXXV. SUFFRAGE AND BETEL-NUT . . . 267 XXXVI. THE TURN OF THE TIDE . . . 272 XXXVII. His MAJESTY'S CUSTOMS ... 280 XXXVIII. THE CATALOGUE .... 287 XXXIX. FLOOD TIDE AND EBB ... 293 PREFACE WHEN a cargo is to be stowed in a vessel's holds, shipshape and sailor-fashion, it is as well to have small packages handy. If the lading is of a miscellaneous character, it is all the more important that there be available some means by which variety in bulk may be packed securely and all made solid to withstand the labouring of the ship in heavy seas. Billets of wood, dholls of coir yarn, packages of waste material clippings roots cork all odds and ends of the markets are used in this way. Though not of much value in themselves, they are greatly valued by us as being the wedges and quoins that hold our cargo sea- worthy. These humble, sometimes despised, packages are called 'broken stowage.' We pay for their use by transporting them overseas at small rates of freight, frequently free of charge. No great risks in delivery are accepted by us. A mate's receipt for them is generally thus worded, ' . . . packages, more or less; if on board, then to be delivered to consignee. All to be used as dunnage or wherever required to as- sist stowage. Ship not to be held responsible, for numbers or condition on delivery.' Having explained this much, it remains for me to trace an analogy between the brief tales and sketches in the book and these useful, if commer- x PREFACE daily unimportant, oddments of the freight market. It is not at all easy. On my own showing, I have already discounted their intrinsic value. Still, even billets of wood and the odds and leavings of mer- chandise may be trigged up to serve good purpose and are often, indeed, ornamental. I have implied that our small packages are perhaps trumpery, but, fitted into the right place, they make the best of grounding for weightier and more im- portant goods. Let the reader, like a good soul, accept them without warranty! DAVID W. BONE. 'BROKEN STOWAGE 'BROKEN STOWAGE' i SETTING OUT 'TpHERE were three of us in the steerage of, * the Rotterdam boat. One was a Jew who beetled his brows and asked himself fierce ques- tions in Low German, the other was a young little Fleming with strong 'arms and a hard head, who told me he had been a fireman on a Vickly' boat. (He explained that a Vickly' boat was one on which Vickly' wages were paid.) I was going to join my ship at Antwerp going to sea on my very first voyage. The regular steamer for Antwerp had had a mishap and would not sail for some 'days. For me, there could be no going back home after I had set out in my bravery of brass buttons and bold good-byes. So I came on the Rotterdam steamer and trusted to find a train. We left Leith Docks about midnight a black bitter midnight, with the wind strong east outside and a big sea rolling up the Firth and shattering on the pier-heads. I lingered to sec the town lights vanish into the mist astern and, feeling ill, 2 'BROKEN STOWAGE' went below. How the Britannia plunged into it! How sick I was ! I lay on my back in a low bunk and tried to court sleep, while the 'vickly' man, in bad English and worse voice, sang, 'Leedle Fischer Maiden.' Several times in the night I got up and tried to get out for a breath of fresh air, but the steamer was driving her head into the long seas, with her foredeck all awash, and there was no shelter from the fury of it. So I returned to the steerage, to find the 'vickly' man still sing- ing the same song, but with different words and a different tune, and the Jew would stare so fiercely at me that I felt sure he had designs on my 235. 4d. The honest Vickly' man was a friend. His name was Henrik. He was going to Antwerpert to "shpend de dollars," as he said. I told him I was going there to join a sailing ship. He looked grave, but brightened up when he recollected that he knew a man who had been round the Horn in one of these, and who had come back with enough 'dollars' to start a beerhouse in the Shkipper Strasse "mit two tables in 'de shtreet out!" "We were for Antwerpen then? We would go together. That was all recht, Zoone!" He showed me his money in the knotted corner of a grimy sweat rag (after looking to see if the Jew was really asleep), and told me he had left his 'vickly' boat because Mynheer Zecond was a 'shwartzkopf,' whatever that may be. In claytime the weather was none so bad. The SETTING OUT 3 sky ha'd cleare'd, arTd the grey sweep of the North Sea was set about with many ships on their voy- agings. I had my first view of a sailing ship under canvas on the open sea. We passed quite close. She was the Templar of Arendal, and was stand- ing to the southard un'der small canvas, for the wind had still a heavy gust in it, and the barque's saltwhitened timber 'deck-load showed that she had lately come through a gale. Already I was learn- ing my business. The sailors of the steamer pointed out the 'different rigs of the vessels in sight. They seemed to take delight in telling me of all the hardships of life in a wind-jammer, and, when the Templar thrashed past, told one another (for my benefit) how glad they were to be in a well-foun'd steamer and not beating out of sight of land aboard a floating workhouse. Henrik was more considerate. He told me what a fine beer- house his friend had, his friend who had been round the Horn. Still, it was the sea I wanted, and not a life of ease and comfort such as he pictured, and in my low state my thoughts were none of the brightest. It was Sunday when we arrived at Rotterdam. In early morning we steame'd out of the rough of the North Sea and passed between the low banks of Nieu Maas. It was my first sight of foreign soil. How [eagerly I kept lookout, sitting on Britannia's fore-capstan! For all my boasted lik- ing the sea, how glaH I was to see th'e green pas- 4 'BROKEN STOWAGE* ture-lands, the trim little villages, the endless canal cuttings winding away to the blue of the horizon. Henrik was there to tell and explain: how that was the Stddhms and this the Loodswezen, here was good Genever sold, and there Tabak of finest quality. Soon my sitting was suspended. The mate and his men came to clear the ropes for mooring, and over the bows the high warehouses and spires of Rotterdam came at us. The Antwerp train would not start till three in the afternoon, so the Vickly' man took me down to sailor-town, the Schiedam Schiedyk, and we spent the time in a land of boarding-houses and zeeman's grog-shops. We had refreshment in a small place. A large signboard informed us that it was the 'Channel for Orders House/ and under- neath were the British, American, and Dutch flags suitably entwined. Here we had beer and sausage. I asked for tea, and the Vickly' man laughed. I could have beer or cocoa or chokolat or schnapps, but tea? The buxom proprietress held up her hands and said it was not in Rotterdam ! We sat a while, and were about to go, when the Vickly' man discovered a musical box that jingled 'Leedle Fischer Maiden' in waltz time whenever a pennig was put in the slot. Then he sat en- tranced, and nothing could induce him to leave until it was time to go to the Leith boat for our baggage. Henrik had a small sailor's haversack which he slung over his shoulder, but I had to SETTING OUT 5 engage a man to take my sea-chest and be'dding to the station. This he did on a long barrow, having two stout dogs harnessed underneath to drag it along. The Antwerp train was slow; we stopped at every station on the line, and it was late evening when we arrived at the frontier station of Essen. Here we stopped for a long time, and an official ran along the line of wagons shouting an order in Flamsk and French to "descend you others!" The Vickly' man shouldered his canvas bag, and I followed him out into a long shed where our fellow-passengers were protesting and arguing to gold-laced officials. Henrik emptied his bag on the counter, and an official, after examining the scant items of apparel, put them together again and motioned that he was satisfied. Then Hen- rik made for the refreshment place, and I was for following when the man stopped me with a long fast sentence in French. I know :enough French to ask for the pens of your grand-aunt, but this quick work was beyond me, so they sent for an officer who spoke English. He asked me if I had anything to 'declare,' an'd then I under- stood. He took me to a bench where stood my sea-chest and bedding, remove'd from the luggage- van. The chest was opened and my kit displayed on the bench. There were my gleaming oilskins, my long sea-boots, the sheath knife and belt (that I had buckled on so proudly before admiring 6 'BROKEN STOWAGE' brothers), my uniform with brass buttons. All new brand new aggressively new. "Zo. There would be twellef francs feefty of duty to be paid," they said, sorting them out. I protested. I was not remaining in Belgium. I was going to a British ship at Antwerp. I had no money (indeed, my railway fare had taken most of my 235. 4d.). The new clothes were for my use a seaman's outfit. "No matter," they said, shrugging their shoul- ders, indifferent, "they are of new. Eet is twellef francs feefty of duty to be paid." The crowd in the waiting-room had gone to the train; I could not see Henrik. There were only the group of officials and myself beside the long bench. I counted my money again. I wished I had not spent so much in the Channel for Orders; I wished I had not given the man with the two dogs so much. The officer who spoke English suggested that I should leave my baggage in bond, and get my Herr Captain to send for it when I arrived myself in Antwerpe. This I was about to do, being the only way out, when a stout little man came over and asked questions. He was evidently a superior officer, for the others fell back and spoke respectfully. 'M'sieu le Chef, M'sieu Wil- groot,' as they addressed him, was an enormously stout little man with a round pleasant face and little merry eye. He had a voice. A voice that rumbled. A voice from the soles of his boots. SETTING OUT 7 He spoKe English, and asked me in a kindly way. I explained my case. I was for Antwerp, to join my ship, going on a voyage to San Francisco. I had had no idea that duty would have to be paid, and had not enough money to pay it. The new clothes were my outfit sailor clothes that one goes to sea with. 'M'sieu le Chef fingered my oilskins and dungarees, drew my sheath knife, tried it on his finger nail to see if it was sharp, and motioned to a man to put them all back into the chest. The man who spoke English made some slight demur. "But, M'sieu le Chef, M'sieu Wilgroot, he is able to pay. It is an officer," he said, pointing to my brass-buttone'd uniform. "Ach, no," said M'sieu le Chef. "You nod onderstand. He is an 'junge loodsmann.' It is for de brass button dey goes to de sea, aind't it?" My chest was put into the luggage-van, and kindly M'sieu T de Chef came with me to the train, talking and asking questions. He had a way of saying u No" after every sentence. Evidently he thought it a turn of speech a sort of finished colloquialism. "You goes to San Fransisk San Fransislc no? Venn you comes back again, 'dot vass long times, no?" . . . "Ein jahr. 'tt. Dot vass long times, aind't it?" At the train they were shunting a new engine in [Front. I was looking for Henrik. I gasse'd ug 8 'BROKEN STOWAGE' the line of carriages, and I heard him. In a car- riage, among a crowd of rosy-faced country people, sat my Vickly' man. He had had beer in the refreshment place a lot of beer an'd was enter- taining his fellow-passengers. He was singing at the second line 'Skies mid shtorms vass laiden' when I passed. Seeing me, he hailed loudly; and motioned to a seat that he had held for me; two smiling countrywomen bunched their many skirts and made room. It was clear that Henrik was already a favourite. I stood for a little, talk- ing to M'siett le Chef. He told me he once wanted to go to the sea, and asked again where I was bound for. . . . "Ach, ja. San Francis San Francisk no?" He sighed and lifted his fat left han'd, anb! sighted along the fingers, as if he could see the Golden Gate in the dim 'distance. The engine gave a preparatory snort. He shook my hand, while I thanked him for his kindness. "Ach, ja" he said. "Dot vass all recht, Zoone, you vass to the sea out. . . . Meinselluf, Ah vass for to put our cox'n among us. THE MERCHANTS' CUP 131 "Byes, byes," he said, "if there had been twinty yards more the Rhoridda would have won. Now ,d'ye moind, Takia, ye 'divil . . . d'ye moind! Keep th' byes in hand till I give ye th' wurrd ! . . . An' whin ye get th' wurrd, byes! . . . Oh, Saints! Shake her up when ye get th' wurrd!" The third heat was closely contested. All three; boats, two Liverpool barques and a Nova Scotia- man, came on steadily together. A clean race, rowed from start to finish, and the Tuebrook win- ning by a short length. The afternoon was well spent when we stripped for the final, and took up our positions on the line. How big and muscular the Germans looked! How well the green boat sat the water! With what inward quakings we noted the clean fine lines of stem and stern ! ... Of the Tuebrook we had no fear. We knew they could never stand the pace the Germans would set. Could we? Old Burke, though in a fever of excitement when we came to the line, had little to say. "Keep the byes in hand, Takia till ye get th' wurrd," was all he muttered. We swung our oar-blades forward. "Ready?" The starter challenged us. Suddenly Takia yelped! We struck an'd lay back as the shot rang out! A stroke gained! Takia had taken the flash; the others the report! The Jap's clever start gave us confidence and a lead. Big Jones at stroke worked us up to better 132 'BROKEN STOWAGE' the advantage. The green boat sheered a little, then steadied and came on, keeping to us, though nearly a length astern. The Tuebrook had made a bad start, but was thrashing away pluckily in the rear. So we hammered at it for a third of the course, when Takia took charge. Since his famous start he had left us to take stroke as Jones pressed us, but now he saw signs of the waver that comes after the first furious burst shifting grip or change of foothold. '"Trok/'trok/'trok/" he muttered, and steadied the pace. "'Troke! 'troke! 'troke!" in monotone, good for soothing tension. Past midway the green boat came away. The ring of the Germans' rowlocks rose to treble pitch. Slowly they drew up, working at top speed. Now they were level level! and Takia still droning "'trokef ' troke f 'troke!" as if the lead was ours! Wild outcry came from the crowd as the green boat forged ahead! Deep roars from Schenke somewhere in the rear! Now, labouring still to Takia's 'troke 'troke/ we had the foam of the German's stern wash at our blades! "Come away, Hilda's!" . . . "Shake her up, there!" . . . "Hilda-h! Hilda-h/" Takia took no out- ward heed of the cries. He was staring stolidly ahead, ben'ding to the pulse of the boat. No out- ward heed but 'troke! 'troke! came faster THE MERCHANTS' CUP 133 from his lips. We strained, almost holding the Germans' ensign at level with our bow pennant. Loud over the wild yells of the crowd we heard the voice we knew old Burke's bull-roar: "Let 'er rip, Taki'f Let 'er rip, by el" Takia's eyes gleamed as he sped us up up up! 'Troke became a yelp like a wounded dog's. He crouched, standing, in the sternsheets, and lashed us up to a furious thrash of oars! Still quicker! . . . The eyes of him glared at each of us, as if daring us to fail! The yelp became a scream as we drew level the Germans still at top speed. "Up! Up! Up!" yells Takia, little yel- low devil with a white froth at his lips! "Up! Up! Up!" swaying unsteadily to meet the furious urging. The ring of the German rowlocks 'deepens deepens we see the green bow at our blades again. Her number two falters jars recovers again and pulls stubbornly on. Their 'shot' is fired ! They can do no more ! Done ! And so are we! Takia drops the yoke ropes and leans forward on the gunwale! Oars jar to- gether! Big Jones bends forward with his mouth wide wide ! Done ! But not before a hush a solitary pistol shot then roar of voices and shrilling of steamer syrens tell us that the Cup is ours I 134 'BROKEN STOWAGE' IV A month later there was a stir in the western seaports. No longer the ships lay swinging idly at their moorings. The harvest of grain was ready for the carriers, and every day sail was spread to the free wind outside the Golden Gates, and laden ships went speeding on their homeward voyages. The days of boat-races and pleasant time-passing harbour jobs were gone; it was now work work to get the ship ready for her bur- den, and, swaying the great sails aloft, to rig har- ness for the power that was to bear us home. From early morning till late evening we were kept hard at it; for Captain Burke and the mate were as keen on getting the Hilda to sea after her long stay in port as they were on jockeying us up to win the Cup. Often, when we turned to in the morning, we would find a new shipmate ready to bear a hand with us. The old man believed in picking up a likely man when he offered. Long [experience of Pacific ports had taught him how difficult it is to get a crew at the last moment. So, when at length the cargo was stowed, we were quite ready to go to sea, while many others the Hedwig Rickmers among them were waiting for men. On the day before sailing a number of the ship captains were gathered together in the chandler's store, talking of freights and passages, and specu- THE MERCHANTS' CUP 135 lating on the runs they hoped to make. Burke and Schenke were the loudest talkers, for we were both bound to Falmouth 'for orders,' and the Rickmers would probably sail three days after we had gone. u Vat 'bout dot bett you make mit me, Cabtin?" said Schenke. "Dot iss all recht, no?" "Oh, yess," answered the old man, but without enthusiasm. "That stands." "Hoo ! Hoo ! Hoo ! Tventig dollars to feefty dot you goes home quicker as me, no?" Schenke turned to the other men. "Vat you trinks, yentle- men? Ah tink Ah sbend der tventig dollars now so sure Ah vass." The others laughed. "Man, man," said Find- layson of the Rhondda. "You don't tell me Burke's been fool enough to take that bet. Hoo ! You haven't the ghost of a chance, Burke." "Och, ye never know," said the now doleful sportsman. "Ye never know ye'er luck." "Look here, Cabtin," said Schenke (good- humoured by the unspoken tribute to his vessel's sailing powers) "Ah gif you a chanst. Ah make de bett dis vay look. Ve goes to Falmouth you und me, hem? Now, de first who comes on de shore vins de money. Dot vill gif you t'ree days' start, no?" "That's more like it," said the other captains. "I wish you luck, Burke," said Findlayson. "Good luck you'll need it too if you are to be home before the big German." 136 ' BROKEN STOWAGE' So the bet was made. At daybreak next morning we put out to sea. The good luck that the Rhoridda wished us came our way from the very first. When the tug left us we set sail to a fine fair wind, and soon were bowling along in style. We found the nor'-east Trades with little seeking; strong Trades, too, that lifted us to the Line almost before the harbour dust was blown from our masts and spars. There calms fell on us for a few days, but we drifted south in the right current, and in less than forty days had run into the 'westerlies' and were bearing away for the Horn. Old Burke was 'cracking on' for all the Hilda could carry canvas. Every morning when he came on deck the first question to the mate would be: "Any ships in sight, mister?" . . . "Any ships astern," he meant, for his first glance was always to where the big green four-master might be ex- pected to heave in sight. Then, when nothing was reported, he would begin his day-long strut up and down the poop, whistling "Garryowen" and rub- bing his hands. Nor was the joy at our good progress his alone. We in the half-deck knew of the bet, and were keen that the ship which carried the Merchants' Cup should not be overhauled by the runner-up ! We had made a fetish of the trophy so hardly won. The Cup itself was safely stowed in the ship's strong chest, but the old man had let us have THE MERCHANTS' CUP 137 custody of the flag. Big Jones had particular charge of it; and it had been a custom while in 'Frisco to exhibit it on the Saturday nights to ad- miring and envious friends from other ships. This custom we continued when at sea. True, there were no visitors to set us up and swear what lusty chaps we were, but we could frank one another and say, "If you hadn't done this or that, we would never have won the race." On a breezy Saturday evening we were busy at these rites. The Hilda was doing well before a steady nor'-west wind, but the weather though nothing misty was dark as a pall. Thick clouds overcast the sky, and there seemed no dividing line between the darkling sea and the windy banks that shrouded the horizon. A dirty night was in prospect; the weather would thicken later; but that made the modest comforts of the half-deck seem more inviting by comparison; and we came to- gether for our weekly 'sing-song' all but Greg- son, whose turn it was to stand the look-out on the fo'c'sle-head. The flag was brought out and hung up Jones standing by to see that no pipe-lights were brought near and we ranted at 'Ye Mariners of England' till the mate sent word that further din would mean a 'work-up' job for all of us. Little we thought that we mariners would soon be facing dangers as great as any we so glibly sang about. Even as we sang, the Hilda was speeding i 3 8 * BROKEN STOWAGE ' on a fatal course! Across her track the almost submerged hull of a derelict lay drifting. Black night veiled the danger from the keenest eyes. A frenzied order from the poop put a stun- ning period to our merriment. "Helm up, f r God's sake! . . . Up! oh GodlUp! Up!" A furious impact dashed us to the deck. Stagger- ing, bruised, and bleeding, we struggled to our feet. Outside the yells of fear-stricken men mingled with hoarse orders, the crash of spars hurtling from aloft vied with the thunder of can- vas, as the doomed barque swung round broadside to the wind and sea. Even in that dread moment Jones had heed of his precious flag. As we flew to the door, he tore the flag down, stuffing it in his jumper as he joined us at the boats. There was no time to hoist out the life-boats it was pinnace and gig or nothing. Already the bows were low in the water. "She goes. She goes!" yelled some one. "Oh, Christ! She's go- ing!" We bore frantically on the tackles that linked the gig, swung her out, and lowered by the run; the mate had the pinnace in the water, men were swarming into her. As the gig struck water, the barque heeled to the rail awash. We crowded in, old Burke the last to leave her, and pushed off. Our once stately Hilda reeled in a swirl of broken water, and the deep sea took her! THE MERCHANTS' CUP 139 Sailor work ! No more than ten minutes be- tween 'Ye Mariners' and the foundering of our barque! We lay awhile with hearts too 'full for words ; then the pinnace drew near, and the mate called the men. All there but one! 'Gregson?' . . . No Gregson! The bosun knew. He had seen what was Gregson lying still under the wreck of the topmost spars. The captain and mate conferred long together. We had no sail in the gig, but the larger boat was fully equipped. "It's the only chance, mister," said Burke at last. "No food no water! We can't hold out for long. Get sail on your boat and stand an hour or two to the east'ard. Ye may fall in with a ship; she w-was right in th' track whin she s-struck. We can but lie to in th' gig an' pray that a ship comes by." "Aye, aye, sir." They stepped the mast and hoisted sail. "Good-bye all; God bless ye, cap- tain," they said as the canvas swelled. "Keep heart !" For a time we heard their voices shouting us Godspeed then silence came I V Daybreak! Thank God the bitter night was past ! Out of the east the long-looked-for light grew on us, as we lay to sea-anchor, lurching unsteadily in the teeth of wind and driving rain. At the first grey 140 'BROKEN STOWAGE * break we scanned the now misty horizon. There was no sign of the pinnace; no God-sent sail in all the dreary round! We crouched on the bottom boards of the little gig and gave way to gloomy thoughts. What else could be when we were alone and adrift on the broad Pacific, without food or water, in a tiny gig already perilously deep with the burden of eight of us? What a difference to the gay day when we manned the same little boat and set out in pride to the contest! Here was the same spare oar that* we held up to the judges the long oar that Jones was now swaying over the stern, keeping her head to the wind and sea ! Out there in the tumbling water the sea-anchor held its place; the ten fathoms of good hemp 'painter' was straining at the bows! The same boat! The same gear! The same crew, but how different! A crew of bent heads and wearied limbs ! Listless-eyed, despairing ! A ghastly crew, with black care riding in the heaving boat with us! Poor old Burke had hardly spoken since his last order to the mate to sail the pinnace to the east in search of help. When anything was put to him, he would say, "Aye, aye, b'ye," and take no further heed. He was utterly crushed by the dis- aster that had come so suddenly on the heels of his 'good luck.' He sat staring stonily ahead, deaf to our hopes and fears. THE MERCHANTS' CUP 141 Water we had in plenty as the day wore on. The rain-soaked clothes of us were sufficient for the time, but soon hunger came and added a phys- ical pain to the torture of our doubt. Again and again we stood up on the reeling thwarts and looked wildly around the sea-line. No pinnace no ship nothing ! Nothing, only sea and sky, and circling sea-birds that came to mock at our misery with their plaintive cries. A bitter night! A no less cruel day! Dark came on us again, chill and windy, and the salt spray cutting at us like a whiplash. Boo-m-m! Big Jones stood up in the stern-sheets, swaying unsteadily. "D'ye hear anything there? . . . Like a gun?" A gun? Gun? . . . Nothing new! . . . We had been hearing guns, seeing sails in our minds all the day ! All day . . . guns . . . and sail ! Boom-m-m-m! "Gun! Oh God ... a gun! Capt'n, a gun, d'ye hear! Hay Hay-H. Out oars, there! A gun!" Hoarse in excitement Jones shook the old man and called at his ear. "Aye, aye, b'ye. Aye, aye," said the broken old man, seeming without understanding. Jones ceased trying to rouse him, and, running out the steering oar, called on us to haul the sea- anchor aboard. We lay to our oars, listening for a further gunfire. i 4 2 'BROKEN STOWAGE' Whooo-o. . . . Boom-m-m. A rocket ! They were looking for us then ! The pinnace must have been picked up! A cheer what a cheer! came brokenly from our lips; and we lashed furiously at the oars, steering to where a glare in the mist had come with the last report. Roused by the thrash of our oars, the old man sat up. "Whatt now, b'ye? Whatt now?" "Ship firin' rockets, sir," said Jones. "Rockets ... no mistake." As he spoke, another coloured streamer went flaming through the eastern sky. "Give way, there ! We'll miss her if she's running south! Give way, all!" The glare of the rocket put heart into our broken old skipper. "Steady now, b'yes," he said, with something of his old enthusiasm. We laboured steadily at the oars, but our strength was gone. The sea too, that we had thought moderate when lying to sea-anchor, came at us broadside on and set our light boat to a furi- ous dance. Wave crests broke and lashed aboard, the reeling boat was soon awash, and the spare men had to bale frantically to keep her afloat. But terror of the ship running south from us nerved our weaned arms, and we kept doggedly swinging the oars. Soon we made out the vessel's sidelight the gleam of her starboard light, that showed that she was hauled to the wind, not running south as we had feared. They could not see on such a THE MERCHANTS' CUP 143 night, we had nothing to make a signal, but the faint green flame gave us heart in our distress! The old man, himself again, was now steering, giving us Big Jones to bear at the oars. As we drew on we made out the loom of the vessel's sails a big ship under topsails only, and sailing slowly to the west. We pulled down wind to cross her course, shouting together as we rowed. Would they never hear? . . . Again! . . . Again! Suddenly there came a hail from the ship, a roar of orders, rattle of blocks and gear, the yards swung round and she layed up in the wind, while the ghostly glare of a blue light lit up the sea around. A crowd of men were gathered at the waist, now shouting and cheering as we laboured painfully into the circle of vivid light. Among them a big man (huge he looked in that uncanny glare) roared encouragement in hoarse gutturals. Old Schenke? The Hedwig Rickmers? Aye Schenke ! But a different Schenke to the big, blustering, overbearing 'Square-head' we had known in 'Frisco. Schenke as kind as a brother a brother of the sea indeed. Big, fat, honest Schenke, passing his huge arm through that of our broken old skipper, leading him aft to his own bed, and silencing his faltering story by words of cheer. "Ach, du lieber Go//. It is all right, no? All right, Cabtin, now you come on board. Ah know 144 'BROKEN STOWAGE' all 'bout it! ... Ah pick He o'der boat up in de morning, und dey tells me. You come af mit me, Cabtin. . . . Goot, no?" "Ninety-six days, Schenke, and here we are at the mouth of the Channel!" Old Burke had a note of regret in the saying. "Ninety-six days! Shure, this ship o' yours can sail. With a bit o' luck, now, ye'll be in Falmouth under the hun- dred." "So. If de vind holds goot. Oh, de Hedwig Rickmers is a goot sheep, no? But if Ah dond't get de crew of de poor leetle Hilda to vork mein sheep, Ah dond't t'ink ve comes home so quick as hundert days, no?" "God bless us, man. Shure, it's the least they cud do, now. An' you kaapin' us in food an' drink an' clothes, bedad all the time." "Vat Ah do, Cabtin. Ah leaf you starfe, no?" "Oh. Some men would have put into the Falk- lands and landed " "Und spoil a goot bassage, eh? 'Ach nein. More better to go on. You know dese men Ah get in 'Frisco is no goot. Dem 'hoodlums,' dey dond't know de sailorman vork. But your beoble is all recht, eh! Gott! If Ah dond't haf dem here, it is small sail ve can carry on de sheep." "Oh, now, ye just say that, Schenke, ye just THE MERCHANTS' CUP 145 say that ! But it's glad I am if we're any use t' ye." "Hundert days to Falmouth, eh?" Schenke grinned as he said it. "Vat 'bout dot bett now, Cabtin?" "Oh that," said Burke queerly. "You win, of course. I'm not quite broke yet, Captain Schenke. I'll pay the twenty dollars all right." "No, no. De bett is not von. No? De bett vass 'who is de first on shore come,' hein? Goot. Ven de sheep comes to Falmouth ve goes on shore, you und me, together. Like dis, eh?" He seized Burke by the arm and made a motion that they two should thus step out together. Burke, shamefaced, said: "Aye, aye, b'ye." "Ah dond't care about de bett," continued the big German. "De bett is noting, but, look here, Cabtin Ah tell you Ah look to vin dot Mer- chants' Cup. Gott! Ah vass verricht ven your boys come in first. Ach so! Und now de Cup iss at de bottom of de Pacific." He sighed regret- fully. "Gott! I vant' t' be de first Sherman to vin dot Cup too!" The mate of the Rickmers came on the poop and said something to his captain. Schenke turned to the old man in some wonderment. . . . "Vat 'dis is, eh? My mate tell me dot your boys is want to speak mit me. Vat it is, Cabtin? No troubles I hope?" Burke looked as surprised as the other. "Send s 146 ' BROKEN STOWAGE' them up, Heinrich," he said. We, the crew of the Hilda's gig, filed on to the poop, looking as hot and uncomfortable as proper sailorfolk should do when they come on a deputation. Jones headed us, and he carried a parcel under his arm. "Captain Schenke," he said. "We are all here the crew of the Hilda's gig, that you picked up when when we were in a bad way. All here but poor Gregson." The big lad's voice broke as he spoke of his lost watchmate. "An' if he was here he would want t' thank ye too for the way you've done by us. I can't say any more, Captain Schenke but we want you to take a small present from us the crew of the Hilda's gig." He held out the parcel. Only half understanding the lad's broken words, Schenke took the parcel and opened it. "Ach Gott. Lieber Gott" he said, and turned to show the gift to old Burke. Tears stood in the big 'squarehead's' eyes; stood, and rolled unchecked down his fat cheeks. Tears of pleasure! Tears of pity! Stretched between his hands was a weather-beaten flag, its white emblem stained and begrimed by sea-water! A tattered square of blue silk the flag of the Merchants' Cup I XVIII BEHIND THE MAY the broad windy floor of the North Sea gales spring up without a warning which landsmen can discern, but the fishermen, by por- tents which they alone can understand wisps, it may be, of stringy clouds banking to the south- east, or a sickly sun, or a tide out of order, or an unwonted movement among the fish can tell whether wind will come before daybreak. When the chill, grey mist, perhaps the most familiar phenomenon of the North Sea, comes up from the south, shutting out land and lights, ships and sail, the old men can tell if a gale is in its train; and on the East Coast, where the harbours are bar and tidal and impassable in a breaking sea, their de- cision must be prompt, for if time and tide are not reckoned with in running for shelter, their only safety lies in riding out the storm to leeward of the nets. There are, however, one or two places acces- sible in all weathers, where shelter may be had in easterly gales. Inchkeith, though far from the fishing grounds, is one, and a few acres of com- paratively calm water lie to leeward of May Is- 147 i 4 8 * BROKEN STOWAGE' ? lan'd, 'behind the May,' as the fishermen call it. Even by full-powered steam vessels, which can usually make a better anchorage, the May is not despised, for it offers a convenient spot where they can lie-to until the fury of the gale has spent itself, and they can proceed on their voyage in safety. On an evening in November in a gale of easterly wind we made the Tay bar, but finding a tre- mendous sea breaking on the flats and the leading lights obscured by driving mist we thought it pru- dent to put out again until the sea on the bar had gone down. With the weather 'thickening' and threatening snow, we had no liking to lose our land-fall, so we sounded across Fife Ness and the Carrs and anchored 'close-to' to leeward of the May. Few vessels as yet had taken advantage of the shelter, for, as the tide was high and the wind north of east, the northern harbours were still ac- cessible. But with the ebb the opportunity passed, and presently the vessels which had happened on the falling tide were groping their way in the mist and darkness to the lee of the friendly rock, the one quiet spot amid the turbulence and tumult of a North Sea gale. Hard squalls blew on with a cold bite in them that told of snow and a wind well north. Ahead of us, as we lay with cable strained to weight of wind, the lighthouse flashed its beams at timely intervals, and the raucous wail of the syren voiced a pregnant warning though but a weakling whisper in the fury of the storm. 'High BEHIND THE MAY 149 . . . low. High . . . low.' Was ;ever a warn- ing more mournful or discordant? As the squalls became more frequent and in- creased in force the mist gave way to sleet, and then to snow, driving in large light flakes, the fore- runners of a heavy fall. Steam trawlers and small coasting craft crept out of the pall about us warily and sounding long notes on their steam whistles, and soon what had been empty sea behind a lonely rock became a rendezvous of importance, crowded by ships from all airts, and, even in the mist and 'darkness, presenting in animated sight and sound a spectacle at sea riding and navigating lights now in sight, now shut in; clatter of bells and hoot of steam whistles; hiss of escaping steam and clank of cable and windlass. Fishermen, steam and sail, coasters, and North Country colliers, a topsail schooner and a few rough cobles from the Dunbar coast; a jumble of maritime types blown together like paper in odd corners of a city street. Lights studded the tiny anchorage, where a short time ago was a darkness, broken only by the flashing periods of the May light. Close in under the island, where fishermen were mending broken trawls or nets, the gleam of the working flares lit up the rugged cliff, and the echo of their cries and hails, thrown back by the land, could be heard faintly in the lulling of the storm. Most of the fishers kept under weigh, and only the larger vessels anchored. Near to the north point of the island, where the water 150 'BROKEN STOWAGE was smoothest anH the shelter best, the smaller craft kept elbowing one another out of choice po- sitions, and the rapidly-changing lights, red to green and green to red, showed collision to be skilfully averted. In the early hours of the morning the squalls became less frequent and the snow ceased. The sky cleared in parts, and a dim moon, low to the eastward, shed a faint light on the ships, uncom- fortably berthed together within the small shelter afforded by the island. Beyond, huge seas, with the sweep of the leagues of the German Ocean be- hind them, thundered 'up Firth' to where Scotland stood, gaunt and forbidding, a barrier to their advance. In the clearing, the coast lights showed up around us; St. Abbs and Barnsness, Fidra and the loom of the Bass, and the Carr Lightship, rid- ing out the storm to the nor'ard, cast a bright, un- daunted beam. Towards daybreak the wind, which till now had blown steady from the nor'east, began to veer, the first sign of the breaking of the gale. At times a blast from the south end of the island would strike us, and the accompanying seas would rush in among the assembled craft, as if in triumph at finding them within reach. Inside there was no weight of wind to back them up, and they spent themselves in a long swell, jostling the smaller craft into heaving confusion. Faint and low, scarce pitched above the tenor of the gale, we heard a sound of gunfire to the nor'- BEHIND THE MAY 151 arid. Presently it was repeated, and we knew a call of the helpless at sea. A blaze of coloured fire over the North Carr Lightship showed her to be throwing rockets, signals for the lifeboat; and al- though we could see nothing of the wreck, we judged her to lie between the lightship and Fife Ness. A squall narrowed the northern horizon and shut out the vessels from our sight. For a time we heard the guns, and then, listen as we might, there was no sound from the nor'ard but the shriek of the gale and cries of the seabirds. Dawn broke and showed us a waste of tumbling, grey seas and a sickly light in a still threatening sky. The lee of the island was white with a fleecy pall, and on our 'decks in places sheltered from the flying spray lay snow. A change indeed for us, so lately steaming through Indian seas. Now and again with a dull booming the seas would break heavily on the weather side of the island, and at times the spray and spindrift even reached the decks of the vessels lying behind it. With daylight to help them, some of the ships bore away 'up Firth' to reach their ports, and only the fishers, whose business lay to seaward, held to the shelter. With us, who were waiting for water on the Tay bar, there was no need of haste. We were as well 'behind the May' as elsewhere. About noon we saw a steam trawler bearing in 'from the nor'ard. She had the rags of an ensign streaming from her masthead, and we were glacf 152 'BROKEN STOWAGE' when we recognised the 'Union' up. Evidently her cause was another's, and we watched her ap- proach with interest. Driving into the seas, hull in the hollow, or rising to show a dripping keel, she held on her way, and reached the shelter she was seeking. Her decks were lumbered with ill- lashed trawl gear. A dinghy boat, stove almost out of recognition, lay on her hatch cover, and near it crouched a crowd of seamen, braced to meet the sickening lurches of the vessel. She rode light on the water and even we, 'deep-seamen' as we were, could tell she was not long out of port. She came close to us, and her skipper hailed the 'bridge' in the homely tongue of the North. He asked if we were for Dundee, and our answer assured him. He had taken six of the crew off a schooner, he said, a wreck on the North Carr (the vessel whose guns we had heard), and he wished our captain to take them off his hands, as he was bound out to the 'lang forties' when the weather cleared. This our captain agreed to do, and the skipper gave us further particulars. A crew of nine, he thought, and three gone under. He could only get six men off the wreck. ". . . A wheen furrin' loons. Johnny Creepaws or Dutchmen, belike!" While thus engaged his keen "eyes caught a speck of sail to the nor'ard, and he brought a battered pair of binoculars to bear on it. We watched the speck till it grew to a blue-painted boat scudding BEHIND THE MAY 153 under a close-reefed fore-lug; a 'National' lifeboat making for the May. "They'll be th' Aerbroath lauds," said the trawler's skipper. "Ah doot th' Bawrhull boat couldna' win oot in a flood an' a sea like thon!" He hauled down the flag from his masthead, and gave a blast on his syren. The lifeboat paid off and steered towards him. "Ye'r ower late, lauds, ower late! Ah've gotten sax haun's oot o' her afore she broke upon Balcolmie Brigs." The coxswain of the lifeboat waved a hand in answer. He rounded the trawler's stern, lowered his sail and mast, and his boat lay a gal- lant picture on the heaving sea between our vessels. "Ah wis on th' Ae-bertay Saun's when they got word frae th' May," he said, ... "a 'geordie' ketch on th' 'Elbow! Gi'e us word o' yer schooner, an' a'll awa' in, an' telegraph frae th' May!" He got the particulars, and blades flashed as his boat forced her away through the water to a possible landing at the Altar Stanes. By skilful manoeuvring the trawler was brought close alongside, and the distressed seamen, as op- portunity offered, clambered on to our deck; but not before they had expressed, in pantomime if words failed, their gratitude to their rescuers. The Aberdeen Samaritan accepted their thanks in a shamefaced and embarrassed way; " 'at's a' richt, lauds, 'at's a' richt. Ah wis jist gaun bye, like, an' ah thocht mebbe yis be better oot o' her!" Although within the three-mile limit, our captain iS4 'BROKEN STOWAGE' thought fit to arrange a little matter of spirits an'd tobacco with the trawler. These were being passed aboard to a burly fisherman when a sea took his vessel on the bow, causing her to lurch violently towards us. The man, encumbered by the 'lar- gesse,' jumped to put a fender between the vessels' sides. The skipper, the man whose nerves were steady when he handled his boat in the wash of the North Carr, was appalled at his recklessness. A cry, almost a scream, came from his dry lips "Jock, ye bluidy loonie, mind thae boattles !" The refugees were Frenchmen. One was a very old man, too old for sea-going, and he seemed weary and disinclined to talk. From Rembault, Jean Rembault, M'sieu's, Maitre, we learnt, of their hazard. Their vessel was the Lis de Bre- tagne, an old vessel of small quickness; but a stout, mind you! From Iceland, and she was returning to winter quarters. Au nord t she started a butt; the water gained, and they were running to the Forth for shelter when she struck. A terrible af- faire, M'sieu's. Three men were drowned, here Rembault crossed himself, with a muttered "Le. Bon Dieu regard!" One was son of the old man, le vieux, Josef, who was also, we learned, owner of the boat, but, being illiterate, acted as mate. This was their tale, and we did our best for them, but le vieux, Josef, paying no attention to our sym- pathies, sat still on the hatch-coaming, with his head in his hands. For him, the world held noth- BEHIND THE MAY 155 ing more. His ship was gone, and his tall son was the sport of the waters that surged over the grim North Carr. As the day wore on the wind shifted to the south and the seas came tumbling into the anchorage rough, confused seas, revelling in the spot from which they had been so long withheld. The Isle of May no longer offered a bulwark to the breeze, so we weighed anchor and put to sea. XIX FINDLAY'S SOUTH PACIFIC CAILOR folks have no time for other than the *^ 'tit-bits' in reading matter. Such leisure as they have at sea is ruled off into so many little tabloids of time, each definite of purpose, and he would be a rash man who would encroach on the precious sleeping hours of the 'watch below,' how- ever interesting a book might be. Novels have no standing in a fo'c'sle where nine men out of ten can spin a better and more readily appreciated yarn, and works of sober interest are put aside as matters beyond the understanding. About the docks, there are few bookshops. Nautical works and text-books are sold at the opticians', the daily papers and sixpenny editions may be had at a near tobacconist's and sweet-shop. For other literature there is no great demand, certainly not enough to keep a bookseller in a reasonable state of trade. There are, however, numberless odd shops where second-hand goods of every description are on sale. Be it Bute Road or The Marsh, Paradise Street or the Broomielaw, the shops are the same, identical in arrangement and effect. Outwith the 'door the bundles of oilskin clothing and army 156 FINDLAY'S SOUTH PACIFIC 157 boots, travelling trunks, and tiers of sailors' bed- ding stand ready to the hand, and the shop win- dows are carefully arranged in hopeless disorder, a sure attraction for a seaman's roving eye. Wedged among such items as 'knuckle-dusters,' melodeons, meerschaum pipes, and solid alberts are generally to be found a few derelict volumes, the flotsam of the book market, that, appropriately enough, finds its way to the water's edge. Tables of tides long since ebbed into the womb of time, signal books of discarded codes, sailing directions for far waters, old charts, stained by sea and serv- ice, books of cunning seamanship, of the high art of Navigation (with tables of distance in sea leagues). From such a collection of odd publications I once purchased (for a shilling and twopence) a Findlay's South Pacific. It was an old and obso- lete edition, the one in which mariners are strongly advised to give Banuloa a wide berth on account of the treacherous and cannibalistic practices of its inhabitants. (Banuloa, where now the natives wear Paris hats and London fashions, and say "pip-pip" or "it's up ter yew," in the approved American way!) The book was in fairly good condition, save that the cockroaches had eaten most of the binding, and the covers had been used to stand medicine bottles on. Only the chapters devoted to Cape Horn, the .West Coast, and the passage to Californian ports 158 . ' BROKEN STOWAGE ' showed signs of having been frequently consulted; its whilom owner must have been in the 'Frisco trade. Just where Findlay tells of the fury of Cape Horn gales, was the mark of the coffee cup some hurried sup in the lulling of a gale and further on, where he gives directions for working through the Straits of Lemaire, were marks of sea-water the drippings of the old man's sou'- wester when he came below anxious-eyed, for an- other look at the description of Cape Success and the Ship Rocks to make doubly sure. Between the leaves I found a scrap of paper, an untidy half-sheet with a few jottings of laborious caligraphy and misspelt words an account of 'slops' supplied. The 'slops' were clothes and sea outfits that the captains of sailing vessels took to sea and held for sale to such members of the crew as had 'come to sea same's they wos a-goin' t' church,' and had found their wardrobe inade- quate for facing the weather. Often the 'slops' were of indifferent quality, and being sold to the crew at famous 'sea prices,' they represented a considerable source of revenue to the old-time ship- master. For one thing, he had no bad debts to consider, his customers being under his immediate eye: he had no competition to fear it is some little distance from sixty, South, to the East India Dock Road. The 'slop chest' was a needed insti- tution in the long-voyage sailing ship, where so many of the crew were shipped in a state of drink FINDLAY'S SOUTH PACIFIC 159 ancl 'destitution. It met their wants at 'sea price' ! 'Sea price' was written large over this untidy scrap of paper that I found irt the old book. 'To 'J. Jons 'A.B., one suit olskins, i.' I could fancy J. Jones standing, cap in hand and ill at ease, in the cabin doorway, and the steward sorting out the gleaming yellow oilskins, while the old man, fingering and nodding approval, remarks them the best lot he had ever carried. And when J. Jones, with an awkward tug at his forelock, had retired with his purchase, how the old man would enter it up, chuckling at the thought of the nine shillings and sevenpence he had made over the deal. ' To Abram Willis, one belt and sheth knife, '4$' Four shillings! And the best Green River knife and belt in 'sailortown' to be had at two and three! 'J. Christiansen, A.B., one pund tobacco, 35.' That would be a purser's pound fourteen ounces ! Those were a few of the items noted down and thus left amiss, but assuredly they would not be overlooked in the reckoning. Writ- ten in the same large hand they would figure as 'to slops supplied' in some bygone account of wages. Their writer will be retired from the sea now, if he is still alive. In some quiet parish within hail of the sea he will have his dwelling, with perhaps a seamanlike flagstaff in the garden and a pair of brass carronades flanking the doorway. Bored 160 'BROKEN STOWAGE' with a longshore life, he will be rather a trial to his womenfolk. Perhaps, when he meets with other old sea captains, he will brighten up, and will talk in a prideful voice of the gales he weath- ered, passages he made, and freights he earned, maybe, with a half laugh, of the profits of 'slop chest.' No doubt the memory of J. Jones, Abram Willis, and Christiansen, A.B., and the amount of their purchases will have faded from his memory, but of this I am sure, that when the wind rises and howls a whole gale into the village street, when, afar, he hears the crash of running seas on the water front, when the land about is shrouded in a pall of driving sleet, he will think of the long stormy days of beating west round the Horn. Per- haps, by some quaint turn of memory, a trifling incident may occur to him a recollection of the time when the water, running from his rain-sodden sou'wester, went drip, drip, drip on to the fifty- eighth page of Findlay's South Pacific. XX THE 'ROOTLE BULL' 'ITT'HEN fog hangs thick over the Mersey and the keenest eyes are powerless to pierce the clammy veil, only by sound and a ready knowledge of its import can the pilot navigate the busy water- way. Sight, the seaman's master-sense, denied him, ear must do the work of eye, and the river sounds, distinctive and deliberate, are there to guide as he feels a cautious way to safe anchorage. A quick, alarmed clatter of a ship's bell marks a vessel anchored; followed by the room, room of a brazen gong, it notes a lengthy craft. The weak, futile rasp of a hand-horn tells of a sailing-boat under weigh, or of a bargeman, adrift on the river, tootling for his steam escort to take his lines. Then the bell-buoys, tolling a doleful note of shoal and sandbank, and the quick decisive strokes that mark the ferry piers. Over to the west, on the Rock Lighthouse, there sounds a clang of bells at timely intervals sonorous notes, tenor and bass, that carry far enough; but, loud over all the river voices, a deep, raucous bellow from the east marks the lair of the 'Bootle Bull' officially the North 161 i6 2 'BROKEN STOWAGE' Wall Fog Syren. Hoarse, clamorous, insistent never could Bull of Bashan have tongued a note like that! Fading to an unearthly wail, it rasps out a message of warning, and manners take heed when the 'Bull' speaks and steer a proper course to keep the fairway. Far down channel, beyond the Crosby Light- ship, we hear the roar of the 'Bull,' and though the weather with us is no more than misty, we know of thick fog in the river, and our hopes of 'docking on the tide are rudely shaken. At first in wandering patches, later a solid bank, the fog comes down on us, shutting out the lightship lights, the channel buoys, the shore beacons; it is time to go slow, drifting up with the tide and the leadsman telling the depths in the doleful wail of a practised hand. Now and on, a hail from the look-out brings the pilot's ready hand to the telegraph handle, ears strained to catch the cry, faint and dulled as it is by the inconstant fog wraith. "Bell soundin' right ahead, sir! Close to!" A sharp movement of the hand, the pointer turns to 'full astern,' and, with screw reversed, we shave narrowly past a boat-shaped buoy, whose bells clang harshly at will of the tide-stream. Then on again, turning water easily, the bows scarce visible from the bridge. A dank south- easter this, with all the smoke wrack of busy Lan- cashire to thicken the driving fog. Loud and sudden, we hear the three hoarse; THE 'ROOTLE BULL' 163 blasts of Crosby Lightship. At last they have set their horn to work. Brrrr Brrr Brrrr. 'Tort a bit! Port th' helm now!" The pilot peers into the murk ahead, to mark the misty glare of the vessel's light. As we glide slowly past, a voice hails us out of the fog. "The steamer, ah-oy! Ease up ... ships to an anchor . . . below . . . th' bell-buoy!" "Aye! Aye! Easy it is!" answering; then, to the steersman, "South b' east, half east, now an' keen steering!" Sounding a deep warning note of our syren, we move slowly on all ears, listening for the next fog signal that will guide us to safer waters. Sti- fling all lesser notes, the 'Bootle Bull' roars out at half-minute intervals, but we are not yet within his range of guidance; the long stretch of Seaforth Sands lies bare between us. "I doubt we'll not dock on this tide, Captain !" says the pilot, button- ing his oilskin more closely to the throat. "Thick as a hedge, and wet too ! There'll be nothing moving in th' river if it's like this! Hark t' th' 'Bull'! 'Gad! A note like that's enough to frighten any man away t' sea !" "Aye! I think ye'd better anchor, pilot! No weather t' be going on in !" "An' I will, Captain, as soon as " "Ship to an anchor right ahead, sir!" a loud, startling cry from the bows. "Slow astern, Mister! . . . Can ye see her?" 164 'BROKEN STOWAGE* "No! . . . hear the bell . . . more!" . . . "Room, room, room, room." u 'Gad! A big boat, too! . . . Let go th' anchor! Full speed astern!" Ghostly, in fog and darkness, the towering hull of a great liner looms up near at hand, tier on tier of misty lights about her decks, and the glare of a hastily fired bluelight striking painfully on the eye. The anchor holds we back away, swinging clear, and, picking up our iron, move slowly ahead, past the 'ocean monarch.' Her anchor bell clatters noisily, some one from the high bridge yells abusive advice through a megaphone, and astern the brazen voice rings out "Room, room, room, room." We are right among them now. To right, left, ahead, astern, the clang of anchor strokes, beating of gongs, shouts out of the pall, "Ahoy! Ye're too close . . . sheer off! ... t' th' south'ard, . . ." and a welcome hint from a brother pilot "No room this side . . . bell- buoy. . . . Clear space t' th' south'ard, I think!" Hot work! Steering orders, and the engine- room bell clanging out a range of speeds that set the men below to a chorus of anathema. Only a Mersey pilot could keep a clear head in all the din, and shortly, clear of the press, we are heark- ening for the guiding strokes of the bell-buoy. There, we have it. Three-pun' -ten! Three- pun'-ten! Clear and distinct it rings out (as sailor-nren say) the wages of the port. Now we THE 'BOOTLE BULL* 165 are in clearer waters. There is no sound of any- thing moving in the river, and the Pilot, embold- ened by the silence, keeps her moving creeping cautiously from buoy to buoy, guided now by the hoarse, raucous bellow of the 'Bull.' Nearer we draw, till old 'Iron Throat' thunders his message over our mastheads, and we swing round to the tide, the anchor cast. The flood has an hour to run, the weather an hour to clear, if we are to get safely into dock, and anxious eyes are cast about for sign of a lift to the heavy dank curtain that envelops us. Sure it comes! The luck that has brought us up channel, unseeing and unseen, still holds ! The fog lifts, driven to seaward, and we find ourselves (cleverly, if chancily, placed in station for enter- ing) off the Langton Pierheads. "A-hoy! What boat's that?" Not Stentor himself could have bettered the dockman's hail! Weakly by comparison, we roar our name. "Al' right! Coom alongside . . . ye' re f'r th' East Hornby. Hurry oop, now, 'ere th' water goes back!" We swing between the pierhea'ds and enter 'dock with only minutes to spare, and scarce are moored before the fog comes down again, dense, impene- trable, banked closer by the wandering draught of wind that had set the veil momentarily aside. The ship fast to her quay-berth, we go below, fog-tired and sleepy. Near at hand the 'Bull' roars out his 166 'BROKEN STOWAGE' timely signal, and from the river without comes the deep, reverberating syren-blast of a large vessel under weigh. That will be the liner from whose lofty, gold-laced bridge we were told to "take that canal barge out t' th' nar'rard!" She will be groping for a second anchorage, too late for the tide, and here we lie, snugly berthed behind the 'Bootle Bull,' case-hardened to his bellow and ready for sleep. Turning the more cosily amid our blankets we murmur, "Well! good luck to the gilt-edged 'hooker,' anyway. Hope they like it, out there in the river, tooting the great horn, clanging bell, and beating gong, till the day breaks and the tide comes again!" XXI THE 'SHANGHAIED' RUNNERS A T the south-east corner of the Queen's Dock, * * where the line of sheds comes to an abrupt end and idle railway trucks make up the view, there is space enough for a short deep-water walk say, twenty paces and a turn if one be but careful to avoid the junction crossing stones. It lies without the bounds, concerning which a notice- board informs that 'Smoking in this roadway is strictly prohibited' ; is out of the way of straining Clydesdales, laden lorries, and swearing carters; and the shed end forms a fine weather-screen against the chill wind and rain that sweeps up the river. From this point of vantage a good look- out can be kept on harbour doings; no gaffer can pass along to dock or ferry without being seen; and thus it has been for years the 'stand' of the longshore gangs odd men, who do sailor work on the vessels in dock. They come there in the early morning, ready for a lucky day's work that begins at six, and till late in the afternoon groups of weather-beaten men may be seen pacing to and fro, generally in twos, each with a battered oilskin slung over his 167 i68 'BROKEN STOWAGE* arm. Many of them are 'riggers' by trade, but of late years that branch of sailoring has fallen away. Having had the misfortune to engage in a business that the engineer has since abolished, they are now glad to take any waterside job, from washing paintwork on a Clyde liner to earning a few shil- lings 'a hauf tide' at shifting a vessel from her quay-berth. Occasionally some of them go to sea for a spell, but most are anchored to the beach, and, year by year, the same faces surround a bo'sun on the quest for 'hands.' It is a precarious living they make; a day's work, perhaps, between two of idleness. 'Coolie' crews and Chinamen have further reduced their chances of a 'tide's work' on the local vessels, and, since 'strictest economy' is the word on the few sailing-ships that come to the port, sailor work on square rigging is not what it used to be. Naturally, with time hanging heavy, the long- shoremen are famous 'yarn spinners,' and many curious incidents of Clyde shipping are talked of 'on the stand.' Discussions and arguments (that sometimes call for the attentions of Angus Beaton, the ferry 'polis') go on, and when there is no more to be said of ship affairs, and, for the unnumbered time, the quality of the liquor at the lona Vaults has been condemned, the posters on a near board- ing offer subject-matter for debate. Much idle time may be passed in discussing the identity of X. M'Y., a seaman, or Z. M'B., a plate-layer's THE 'SHANGHAIED' RUNNERS 169 labourer, who, as set forth in a warning broad- sheet, have received two and four months respec- tively for deserting their wives and children. A familiar figure among the longshore gang was old Shaw, a genuine journeyman rigger. Summer and winter, bad weather or fine, old 'Wully' took the 'stand' among his mates, working off and on now a day at bending sail on a Loch Line clipper, or perhaps, if trade was brisk, a week or two in the yards or rigging loft. With 'Wully' it was not always thus. Among his 'min' fine's' were memo- ries of a time when the Clyde quays were lined by lofty ships, of whose stout rigging and spread of canvas he would talk with pride. "Them wis th' times i' th' riggin' tred," he would say; "the rig- gers did a' the wark in port; no a deep-water man wid lay haun' on rope tull th' 'bluepeter' wis up! Fine times! Six days i' th' week at proper joabs; mastin' an' riggin'. . . . An' as shune's we hud a ship fitted oot, an' th' riggin' set up an' the yairds an' sails aloft, up wid come a new hull frae th' yairds!" Though a 'rigger,' conservative of his 'tred,' 'Wully' had made odd voyages from time to time. 'Runs' they were called, and, being profitable, were keenly sought after by the long- shore gang. When a sailing-ship had discharge'd her inward cargo, she had often to be sent to another port to load. It would not have been profitable for art owner to engage a deep-water crew, and have them 170 'BROKEN STOWAGE \ hanging on Heserting perhaps while the vessel's cargo was being loaded. It was cheaper to employ 'runners' to work from port to port, paying them a lump sum for the passage. Most vessels were towed on these short voyages, and beyond unmoor- ing and mooring, washing decks, trimming yards, and perhaps setting a topsail to help the tug-boat when the wind was fair, the 'runners' had an easy job. On two such voyages I was shipmates with a 'Glesca crood,' among them old 'Wully,' and al- ways when I stopped at the 'stand' to pass a word with the old man it would be "D'ye min' yon time we wis 'shanghaied,' younp; f 'la-ma-lad?" "Fine that," the answer; and old Wully, with an "Ecod! YON wis a voyage!" will turn to his mates : "That wis in th' Florence that me an' him wis shipmets . . . yin o' Broon's auld ships. They're a' by wi' noo. Broon's wis aye guid tae th' Clyde chaps. If they had a ship at th' ootports comin* here tae load, they gi'en the 'rinnin' ' tae aul' Annan, him that did th' riggin' wark up by. I use' tae wark wi' Annan me an' big Bob Gem- mell an' Maguire an' th' lang Dutchman an' a wheen ithers an' when a 'run' wis gaun, we aye got a sicht. Fine joabs, tae! The ships aye towed frae port tae port, an' made quick wark o't. ... Ye wid be three days or fower at the maist on th' passage, an' efter peyin' yer railway fare, THE ' SHANGHAIED' RUNNERS 171 ye hud twa-three poun's in yer pooch when ye cam' back tae th' tred!" "Ecod! ye' re richt, Wully! Then wis times!" someone fingering the empty bowl of a 'cutty.' "That time we wis speaking aboot . . ,.. the time we wis 'shanghaied,' we went tae Middlesbro' tae bring th' Florence roun' tae th' Clyde. We sign't on here, an' thocht it wis the usual towin' joab, but when we got ootside th' Hartlepools an' th' tops'ls on her 'Le-go th' hawser,' says th' Auld Man Capt'n Leish ... ye ken 'm? "'Whit?' says we. ' 'Let go th' hawser,' he sings oot frae th' poop. 'Come on there, man,' says young Annan (that wis daein' the second mate's joab). 'Come on! Smert wi' it! Let go th' hawser,' ses he. ' 'Oh, Criffens,' ses we, 'are you no' gaun tae tow roun' ?' 'Tow roun' be dam!' ses he. 'Whit? Tow roun' wi' a fine fair win' like this?' "Weel! There wis naethin' fur't orders wis orders an' we flung aff the tow-rope an' begood th' voyage. Criffens! It wis a voyage, tae! "She wis in ballast trum; aboot five hunner ton o' pig-airn i' th' hold, an' th' Auld Man widna trust her wi' much sail. "Cranky ships, anyway them o' Broon's. "Aye! Weel, lauds, we hud a fair win' as faur up th' coast's St. Abb's Heid, an' then th' win' easterly, an' th' Auld Man hauls aff an' oot 172 'BROKEN STOWAGE' o' sicht o' th' Ian'. Days went by, an' weeks, an' us yins beatin' aboot i' th' North Sea. We had nae claes fur th' voyages us ;ettlin' tae be hame behin' a guid-gaun tug-boat afore th' week wis oot. Me, I hud only whit I stood up in ! But that wisna the warst o' it! Bein' a coastin' trup th' Auld Man couldna break th' Customs seal an' gie's a bit o' tabacca! When wur twa unce o' thick black that we stertit wi' dune ... ye min' that, young f'la ... us smokin' tawrry rope yarns an' tea leaves an' coffee groun's ! Criffens I "Aff Fair Isle in th' Orkneys, when we wis aboot a fortnicht oot, a boat cam' aff wi' th' Islesmen wantin' tae swap fush fur a bit tabacca. Losh! They cam' tae the richt ship ! We bummed a' the tabacca they had on them! I got twa inches o' black twist fur ma best knife ! "Man, it's a'fu' weather they hae up yonder! We jist hud gales an' gales it wis October month an' Auld Leish wis that feart tae pit sail on her! We jist daunert aboot under taps'ls got a sicht o' Cape Wrath an' oot we goes intul th' At- lantic! Dod! We thocht we'd never see Stob- cross again! "Three weeks by, him that wis mate o' her cam' furrit an' tried th' bounce. 'Turn to, you men,' ses he. 'Turn to an' wash paint, an' hiv her de- cent-like fur gaun up tae Glesca,' ses he. " 'Deil a wash,' says we. 'We sign't fur th' THE 'SHANGHAIED' RUNNERS 173 run,' we says, 'an' ye're gettin' mair nor that oot o' us! We'll wash deck, an' hand sail, an' steer th' hooker but if ye want yer ship redd up,' says we, 'that'll hae tae be a new contrack!' "He did a bit swearin' an' that, tull big Gem- mell said that he wid gi'e 'm a shoat on th' nose; then he went aft, an' young Annan come furrit an' tried his haun' at persuadin'. "It wis nae use! We widna dae a haun's turn. . . . Dod ! an' she wis durty ! . . . We jist sat on th' spaur en's an' watched th 'young f'la there him an' th' ither apprentices slingin' th' soogy- moogy an' washin' aff, an' th' mate staunnin' by, glowerin' at a' ! "We wunnert whit oor yins wis daein' at hame wi' nae siller comin' in. Dod! Ther'll be a 'pant' in Bothwell Street, we thocht. A trail o' wifes an' weans up speirin' whit's cam' ower the man's boat! "Syne, when we wis twinty-eicht days oot frae Middlesbro', we got a bit o' a 'slant.' No much o't. . . . Win' in th' west'ard, an' Auld Leish feart tae run in an' there wis we dodgin' aboot west o' Skerryvore. We hud a bit o' a 'confab' in th' fo'c's'le, an' then goes aft tae see th' Auld Man. 'Captin,' says big Bob, 'ye've a fair win' noo, an' we're a' wantin' tae win hame! If ye'll no' pit the to'gal'ns'ls on her,' ses he, 'we're a' gaun tae hing wur shurts on' th' topmas' riggin','. ses he 'an' see if that winna bring her in!' i 7 4 /BROKEN STOWAGE* " 'Whit's a' this?' says Auld Leish, 'whit's this? Mutiny? b'Goad! Div ye daur tae come aft here an' tell me hoo tae sail ma ship ?' ses he. " 'Aye, that,' ses big Bob. 'We're a wheert desp'rate men, Captin,' ses he. 'A' wur wires an' weans is on th' Pairish by noo, an' there's no' a smoke o' tabacca in th' bloody ship !' "In a fine funk Auld Leish ordert us yins aff th' poop, but it wisna lang afore he gi'en her th' to'gal'ns'ls. "Aff the 'Hull' th' win' whuppit intae th' nor'- west, an' we cam' hame in fine style. Between Sanna an' th' Pladda Lichts yin o' Steel's boats cam' aff t' tow us in. I kent th' skipper o' her wee Sanny Devlin . . . stops up by in th' Weaver's Pen, on th' same stairheid's ma merrit dochter. As shune's he sees sicht o' us he shouts oot: 'Weelyum Shaw,' ses he. 'Weel-yum Shaw an' Rubbert Gemmell, b'Goad! Man, we thocht ye wis a droont!' " 'Aye, that,' ses he. 'We thocht ye wis a' f droont, an' th' Prudenshial's stopped callin' fur yer weekly money,' ses he !" XXII CHOTA BURSAT 'IpHE r day had been breathless. The sun, * scarce veiled by thin, filmy clouds, had worked his fiery will on us all day. All ironwork about the decks stood painfully hot to the touch. Blistering paint and spurting pitch from the deck seams set up an almost unbearable stench. A quivering vapour had stood, man high, over the open hatchways and lower decks a dazzling, luminous haze that tried our tired eyes and dis- torted all objects to fevered images. Added to this was the noise and steam of our working ship. A ceaseless throb of the winches the round and rattling of falls hoarse, raucous cries and orders of hatchmen the hiss and screaming of over- worked valves. Oh, we are sick of it all and glad when six comes and the Bombay Dock syren sounds out for stoppage I A grateful quiet falls over the ship when the last of the gangs goes ashore, and we seek out a passably cool spot on the upper deck to set out our chairs and watch the tyrant sun go down. Count- less evening fires have made a soft haze over the 176 ' BROKEN STOWAGE ' roofs of the native town, and the sun shows blood- red through it as he goes from sight. Clouds, that before were invisible, come up when the sun has gone and stand in serried banks in the west pil- ing up and piling up, but never rising beyond a modest altitude. The usual evening sky for the time of year a little red, perhaps, but certainly nothing ominous in appearance. Darkness comes swiftly on the heels of sunset. Lights spring up on the roofs and balconies, show- ing that even the natives are feeling the heat in their ill-ventilated flats. As the glow in the west dies out of the evening sky, a reflected glare from the city's lighted streets takes its place: now the clouds look dun and sullen, with their lower edges tinted; small portions are detached and breaking away and sail up into the starlit zenith. The ebbing stream of dock labour still wanders homeward. A large gang of coal coolies come in from their clay's work at a steamer in the harbour. Many are women and small children, and their shrill voices, wrangling and protesting as is their way when work is over, carry far in the still night air. Gharries go wheeling swiftly up the dock roadway bearing those of us whom the breathless r day has not daunted to an evening's mild distrac- tion. A long train from up country comes slowly into the dock lines. The ;engine snorts in sudden alarming spasms as it 'drives the la'den waggons CHOTA BURSAT 177 across the points. A white-robed peon walks be- fore the advancing waggons, ringing a hand-bell to warn all the stern fatalists who have laid down to sleep on the railway lines. The train draws up at the sidings and I notice that the open waggons are securely covered by tarpaulin sheets. "Railway people are taking no risks," said the second. "I shouldn't wonder if it does rain to- night. Hear thunder across the harbour. We haven't had that before, though there's been light- ning a plenty. These clouds, too. Banking up for something, I sh'd say." "Oh, the usual," says I. "We may count on this every night now till the rains break. The cautionary signal was up to-day again. They say the monsoon burst at Colombo yesterday: it will take ten days at least to work up the coast." "Bhundoo, the colree wallah, told me it would rain to-night. He had it from his astrologer one of the pandits at his temple and he's laying his grain under cover." "Wise man. Not that I put any faith in his pandit, though. You'll remember the rumours and prophecies that were flying about the bazaar when the King was on his way out. The pandits foretold no end of dire happenings that never came off. Bhundoo's man is working on the 'off chance.' There is always uncertainty in the weather just now, chota bur sat is about due. If it rains well and good. If it doesn't? Well 178. 'BROKEN STOWAGE' the gods are displeased because Bhundoo hasn't given enough rupees to the temple funds." 4 'And yet, with all the uncertainty in the weather, plenty of Bhundoo caste are willing to stand the risk. Look at that big stack of linseed over by the customs godown. Must be three or four thousand bags there, and not as much as a rag of canvas over the lot. There'll be terrible mess of it if the rain comes." "That's so. I suppose the long spell of dry weather, eight months or more, has led to a lot of forgetting. The merchants will be hoping to get that lot shipped before the rains break. Tar- paulins are few and dear just now with the pros- pect of the monsoon so close." Now, silence. Six to six leaves an aching of the bones long chairs have but one use when the day's work is done. I have no idea of how time has gone, but stir suddenly to find the night air grown chill. The decks below stand glistening against the glow of the gangway lamps. The rain has come. A soft shower, cooling and welcome, has passed over whilst we slept. It is the forerunner of a heavy 'downpour, for the banked clouds in the west are rising swiftly, and the once sharp black outline of the sheds and warehouses is grey an'd misty. Across the roadway, men are hurrying with tar- paulins to cover the big stack of linseed bags: al- ready the wind has risen and their covers are CHOTA BURSAT 179 blown about here and there before they can fasten 'down securely. A stout headman stands by under an umbrella, and he curses and praises alternately and impartially as the men go about the work. Now it is, 'Sabass, maribab' and then 'Hutt, Sooar. Bhun karao ghildi* He will be the mer- chant's man, now come to carry out his master's order of a week ago. But he might as well save his breath. Before the tarpaulins are quite unrolled, the squall is upon us. It begins with a low hissing that swells quickly to a treble shriek as the wind comes over the housetops. And rain! Phew w. A solid sheet slanting furiously I Away goes the head- man's umbrella. Away the covers. A man on the top of the stack bends to the blast, staggers, clutches at the topmost bag, and comes toppling to the ground. The others let rip everything and run to him. He rises spluttering and feeling his bones, looks about for his turban, and makes off, binding his long wet headgear as he runs. Shouting to- gether, the others follow him and make for shelter. The merchant's man stands under the lee of the bags. For a time he shouts to the men. He makes promises! He implores! He curses! Then, standing out in the wind and rain, he holds his hands up to high heaven and weeps ! Quickly as it came up, the squall passes over. The stars shine out, showing what chota bursat has left to remind us that the great rains are almost i8o 'BROKEN STOWAGE* Hue. The hard-baked earth of the day is not easily permeated, and the dock roadway is a solid sheet a lake and the water is foaming in cascade over the quay wall into the dock. Over by the Customs godovon the men are busy at the big stack of bags. It is light enough to see. The merchant's man has recovered his umbrella and is pointing, pointing. I know what they are doing. They are turning the wet and damaged outer bags to show a dry skin to the casual glance. Come to-morrow, and the merchant is anxious, he will find his linseed securely covered and battened down. Should he lift a corner to satisfy himself, the bags will be dry to the touch. He will congratulate himself on having come so well out of chota bursat. XXIII A SAILOR'S VIEW CAILORMEN often talk of the beauty of the ^ Firth of Clyde, the grandeur of the estuaries of Thames and Mersey, but as yet the Ship Canal as an approach to a port is scarcely mentioned by them except as a big job in engineering, a theme of countless arguments (and sometimes broken heads) in dog-watch parliaments. And this is without reason, for the Canal has beauties that sailors should most appreciate rich rural scenery and broad stretches of country that could never be seen from the sea. The narrow (sometimes too narrow) channel gives one a near-hand view of the surrounding country, and the doings of farmer folk in the fields are no longer speculative mys- teries to the seaman. There is a place at Barton where one could almost throw a handful of ship's biscuit among the hens, and near Eastham (if we were not always in a hurry) we could go bird-nest- ing with boat-hooks from the height of the main- top. True, there is not here the stateliness of High- land hills, the breadth and movement of a windy seascape, but the flat plains with the misty, distant 181 182 * BROKEN STOWAGE' hills have a beauty of their own, an'd one cart al- ways keep a purely business eye for bucket (dredgers and mud flats, and perhaps find some- thing important to do when Widnes, with its belch- ing chimneys, heaves in sight. Entering at East- ham, the. woods and leafy lanes, the gorse-covered banks, the fields and the cattle are a direct call to sailormen to 'swallow the anchor' and come a-f arming; and when the rock-cutting is reached, it is with reluctance that you turn to give advice to the tugman, towing a long line of sheering barges, that always meets you at the very narrowest part. After the cutting there are. broad fields with cattle in them fat, red cattle that we talk about when seeing the lean, starved-looking bullocks that draw the carts at Bombay. Trees fade away to the horizon where blue church towers and spires mark the villages beyond. At Ellesmere the huge grain warehouse gives an awkward touch to the land- scape, but if the contrast is too much for you, you can always find an interest in the tall sailing-ships lying berthed there, where blue-eyed Scandinavian seamen hook logs out of yawning bow-ports and form them into rafts for their passage through the canals. Here is a network of smaller waterways; locks and steps* and bridges are everywhere, and, away up the hill, the masts of a barge will show you where inland ships go a-sailing, where the chief engineer says 'Gee up, you. 1 Near the locks is a ship-chandler's shop, with life-buoys and tar- A SAILOR'S VIEW 183 paulins and cans of paint in the little chequered windows : on fine days they hang out oilskins to dry among the fruit trees. There is a fine stretch of country from here to the sluice-gate. In some places, the fields are lower than the level of the Canal, and long-beaked dredger cranes are set up at the sides to pour mud and soil from the canal bottom, and serve a twofold purpose by deepen- ing the fairway and strengthening the banks. Strangely, the dredging plant that would be a blot on a seascape seems here to be quite in keeping with ploughing and sowing and reaping that go on in their seasons in the fields around. The men on the stagings have their trousers tied below the knee, perhaps with wisps of straw: theyMook like country labourers come strangely to work on salt water. Now a shadow on the northern sky; grim In- dustry in sorriest guise. Widnes ! Can anywhere surpass Widnes, as you round the bend? A bleak array of smouldering v. aste-heaps, with a hundred and more huge chimneys belching forth foul fumes to an ever darkling sky. What a monument to man's power of disfigurement what a cancer on the fair breast of Mother Earth ! Widnes ! Runcorn has a tract of bare ground beside the bridges, and there the children gather to greet us as we pass. Once they used to ask us of our voy- age and cargo, but with the spread of education the cry is now 'Chook oos a banan ah.' 1 84 ' BROKEN STORAGE ' Beyon'd Latchford there are farms, and on quiet spring nights you can hear the cuckoo. Rabbits run about the banks,. and they pay more attention to their nibbling than to the East Indiaman surging past. Old roads, over which stage-coaches once rattled, begin and end at the Canal banks: over- grown with weeds and verdure, they look to be no man's land, and the plough turns at their bordering hedgerows. Houses that once flanked important highways now stand in the midst of fields, for the roadways have been diverted to lead up to the giant bridges. As we pass under them, express trains go thundering over our mastheads, and pas- sengers crane their necks out of carriage windows to peer down our funnels and speculate as to our trim and tonnage. Now Partington, the coaling place, with gaunt grimy staithes, rumbling wag- gons, and squat, ugly vessels moored to the wharves. Even" a king's yacht would look mon- strous with her top-masts housed and funnels tele- scoped to fractions. There is no beauty here no fields, no trees but a pointing hand on a notice- board shows promise 'To THE VILLAGE/ Between Irlam and Barton meadows stretch out on both banks, and the kindly weather often throws a wet, blue pall over the factories and their ghostly chimneys beyond. Here is a narrow part of the Canal, and awkward for big ships meeting, and there is a famous churning of foam when the tugs fire up and strain in their efforts to keep their A SAILOR'S VIEW 185 charges apart. The salt water has entirely gone now, and the colour of the wash suggests that the Canal Company have reason when they estimate their water space in acres. Near Barton Bridge the houses have strips of garden sloping down to the Canal banks. Each has an erection at the low end, where men sit on Saturday afternoons with their jackets off and pipes alight, and criticise the ships. Farther on the scene is that of the outskirts of any great city, with Trafford Park and the golfers to show that even great commercial schools must have their play- ground. Then on to the docks, where ships carry their anchors over the winning-post and loud- voiced men stow sweet tobacco on the site of a judge's box, for here was the old racecourse that saw many a stirring spurt for the Manchester Cup. That was in the old days, in the early days of the Canal, when the men at the Locks cracked their heaving lines and shouted 'Whoa' as their first big steamers came to the berths. Now all that is changed. No longer the population crowd to the Docks to see that the ships are really there, a brass-buttoned uniform calls for no passing glance. Manchester has become accustomed to her sea- farers. Still, it is interesting to note the change that has come over the Docks district since the ships came inland. What was a ward of working-class houses has turned to be a shipping centre. In nothing is 186 'BROKEN STOWAGE' this more clearly seen than in the change of char- acter of the shops. A watchmaker who used to do business in a small way working into the night with his glass at the eye in the, clear window of a dwelling-house has blossomed forth as a 'chro- nometer-maker and adjuster': an ironmonger's shop window gives pride of place to palms and needles, marlinspikes and chest-lashings. A small shop, where once a notice intimated a patent mangle kept, now flourishes as an 'American Elec- tric Shipping Laundry' (whatever that may be). 'Shipping supplied' is on every shop window, and 'Sailors' advance notes cashed' needs no looking for among the sea clothes (bed and pillow . . . 15.) and oilskins of the outfitters. Sailcloth may now be purchased in what was formerly a prosper- ous baby-linen establishment. Withal, the atmosphere of a sea-connection is somehow unreal. What right has a public park at the very dock gates, on the spot where other sea- ports would have slums and stables? W T hy a cab- stance with polished taxis in a row, when every one knows that it is only when we steam into the Salvage Court with the right end of the hawser aboard that we can afford such luxuries? Other ports have grown from small beginnings tide- ways and anchorage to wharves and quays, and these in turn to docks and warehouses. Here we have a Port of Magnitude, dry docks and quays and basins x cranes and warehouses and workshops, A SAILOR'S VIEW 187 all full-grown and imbued with a spirit of life and work, and all ready to the hand at a turn of the tide cocks at Eastham. It is something great to think of. It is magnificent. Surely the Man- chester man has reason for a great pride when he sees the ships coming to their berths, when he hears the bellow of a liner canting on his High- way to the World. XXIV *" I A O be successful as a ship pedlar not merely * the qualities of a keen trader are required. The spirit of the business having a more peculiar quality than that of a landward market, its con- duct calls for judgment, patience, humour, and all that may be summed in the excellencies of a super- salesman. While it is true that the monetary re- turns from dealing in small wares on the ships in harbour would hardly attract a pushful and am- bitious trader, it may be claimed that the practice acquired does train and produce a salesman or woman who, given other opportunities, could make a prosperous way in almost any walk of life. I am led to all this by recalling the 'Oddman' who, for some time, did business aboard the ships in Marseilles. Claiming to be English or Ameri- can as suited his dealings, he worked under what he called trade names during the five years or more that he was a known figure about the dockside. No one could quite fathom his past history. That it was of interest, there could be no doubt. A man of considerable education, speaking many lan- guages, and of a habit and address that marked 188 THE ODDMAN 189 a measure of breeding, it was a constant source of wonder to us that he should be content to fritter away his energies in the small ways of ship peddling. Knowing the 'Oddman' pretty well, I am convinced that, did he but open his mouth on the subject, he would speedily mould our opinions to a conclusion that he was making the best of everything. He could sell snow-shoes to a Hotten- tot. Metaphor is dangerous. I was going to write that the caprice of some strange tide must have stranded the 'Oddman' on the beach at Marseilles. A strange tide, indeed ! It comes to me that there is not any tide of note in the Mediterranean. I must look about for a better simile. The Wheel of Fortune! Good! He was a soldier of For- tune, as ever was. Let us put it that, at Marseilles, the tyres of his Fortuna (1904 model) were punc- tured by the spikes of outrageous fate and there was, for him, nothing to do but get off the driving seat and set about the repair of his adventure. This he did with skill plus an incomparable good humour, for when I saw him first, he was engaged in selling highly-polished Easter cards to a sober- minded Third Engineer, and if that is not a feat calling for tact and address and humour and .en- durance, let those who are sceptical ask of the en- gineer's Presbyterian relatives who would doubt- less receive the 'romanish' cards in due season. During the years that the 'Oddman' made his 190 ' BROKEN STOWAGE' living at the 'dockside, he provided us with ample subject matter for discussion and conjecture. When we had passed Port Said, homeward bound, and the chill of the Mediterranean had dispelled the somewhat somnolent atmosphere of our 'dog- watch' parliaments, we began to ponder and dis- cuss the state of our next port of call, Marseilles, and to speculate on the prospect of our stay there. It was inevitable that the 'Oddman' should be men- tioned, and there was always a pleasing sense of something new in store when we came to consider in what particular line of business he would be en- gaged. I had a theory that he only held to a cer- tain occupation for as long as its conduct was diffi- cult; that, when a routine of trade was established, he lost all interest in it. In a way, that being an artist of a salesman he took pleasure only in overcoming our sailorlike conservatism in matters of trade. With certain of his wares doing well and a fairly brisk trade being done, he would suddenly astonish us by disposing of his stock completely and launching out into some new departure. I have mentioned his use of 'trade names.' He changed these too with as little warning. What- ever may have been his real name, he was never at a loss for a high-sounding tally. When he sold Easter cards and stereoscopic lorgnettes, we un- derstood that he was Burton. As a dealer in works of art, his card proclaimed him Martini. I knew him as Mortimer at the time he was busily THE ODDMAN setting up the 'Continental News and Riviera 'Ad- vertiser,' an essay in journalism that was largely devoted to the doings of British- American society in these parts. I cannot now recall the exact argument he used to compel me to purchase one of his stereoscopes. It must have been specious and convincing, for, ieven at this date coldly and dispassionately I can remember many reasons why I should not have spent so much money. Item: I did not want a stereoscope. Item : I could ill afford it. Item : I saw no beauty in the coldly silhouetted perspective of the gadget. Nevertheless, I and every one of my shipmates bought one of the infernal things, together with glossy views of the Pantheon, the Louvre, and Japanese cavalry exercising on a wide foreign plain. Burton! Martini! I remember the Captain's pride in the possession of an oil painting of the Massilia under all steam which Martini had procured for him. There were also two paintings of ladies in a duel a I'outrance, and a whistling beggar boy, and a colourful representation of the Old Port with a sky of the uttermost blue. Whatever may have been his merits as a salesman, Martini was no captious critic of the arts. But the plausibility of the man! Whoo! Doubtless, if he had liked, he could have sold me highly-tinted pictures. Fortu- nately, a trade in dyed goat-skins from Algeria took up his attention ( . . . I have two of them, 192 4 BROKEN STOWAGE ' good value, . . . ) , and he did not ;enlist me as a patron of the high arts. On occasion, there would be an interval in his periodic visits to the ships. It coincided with the latter half of the Monte Carlo season, and it is more than probable that the 'Oddman' would be there looking in to see whether or not his For- tuna car was capable of repair. In general, he re- turned to the dockside with little evidence of an improved estate; the croupiers, being mechanical automatons, would be impervious to his wiles. After such visits, he was more than ever anxious to "do business; his dealings were perhaps more precipitate than formerly; it was even possible to procure 'bargains/ But now to my theory that he was ever in ill content with a trade that seemed in process of becoming easy and lucrative. He abandoned a business in Algerian rugs and goatskins that seemed to be providing him with a considerable margin of profit. They were good rugs and ex- cellent goatskins and, as they were brought over at no cost of transport by the sailors of the Algiers steamers, he could quote reasonable prices. There were not even enough of them to supply the de- mands. For Cotter he was then Cotter that fine state of the market decided him to throw in his hand. He took up employment with a firm of Ship and Engine repairers and acted as an in- terpreter in the difficult business of translating THE ODDMAN 193 'eichtp'rts' into millimetres and supplying an un- derstandable French equivalent for the 'foo-foo valve' and 'the key of the keelson.' In time he was appointed a trade runner for the firm, to canvass for business on the incoming ships. I do not think he had any knowledge of the technics of marine engineering when first he came on board as the representative of Les Ateliers Forgon: I am certain that such glib familiarity with engine room terms as he later acquired was not very deep. When business offered, he had his own way of straightening out our requirements. He would bring his foreman from the workshops and then and there translate the directing Chief Engineer's done into the patois of the district. He had no light task. His new job was perhaps more entertaining than the former dealings in odd commodities. Leisure ! There was no great hustle required after the morn- ing's round of the docks had been made and op- portunity frequently offered for a comfortable seat on the Chief Engineer's settee and an unstinted flow of conversation. Philosophy, Josephus' works, the Scottish League ties, the imminence of social legislation, were all talked out, and no small amount of shrewd observation of events was voiced by the 'Oddman.' When last I was in Marseilles, he was still on this employment. He had been at it for over a year, a considerably longer time than he had ever i 9 4 'BROKEN STOWAGE' 'devoted to a specialty. Mainly, He secured tHe repair and adjustment of the smaller deck and en- 'gine fittings, but there were occasions when some stress of weather brought grist to his mill in the shape of a modest contract. As we understood he was paid on a commission basis, we could see no great profit accruing to him from his business. It was difficult to conjecture just why he held out for so long. I am convinced that he sticks to it in the hope of some day proving his merit by securing a major contract say, the provision and fitting of a new engine bed-plate in record time. He will not consider the possibilities of this job to be exhausted until he has overcome the natural bias of Scots Chief Engineers in favour of the economy of an ;engine repair completed on the Clydeside. The 'Oddman' talks quite like a craftsman now. Knowing the Scottish dialect to be the right native tongue of marine engines, he has set himself to ac- quire the accent and the mode of expression. My last recollection of his ability in this, is of a small remark he made when some adjustment of the rud- der was under way. He had objected to the meas- ures proposed (as not giving his firm the right scope for a long and detailed bill). "Chief," he said! "I think thae pintles are a wee thing light for the job !" XXV THE 'ARTS AFLOAT,' A RT at sea is an old, long story: it began with the warm blood of a sacrificial lamb, smeared on the rude sails of early voyagers, rose to a height in the 'greate shippes,' begilded and carven, of the sixteenth century, and now lingering, exists in crude sea pictures, painted on the lid of a sea- chest, in fanciful embellishment of gear and cord- age, and in the tattooing borne on the bodies of those who follow the sea. In this lowly form it is but the last shred of a vanishing estate, like the dairymaids' chalking of the milk pans, the carter's bedecking of his horse; it is a survival of a time when folk took pride in their arts and handcraft, and gloried in the labour of their hands rather than in the hire it brought. Part of this may have been a matter of superstition, a deferring to the gods (as Hindus at Saraswati prostrate them- selves and worship the emblems or materials by which they make their bread), but surely that can- not now be so. It could be no superstition that made Owen Evans (skipper of a 'fly-boat' on the Manchester Can.il) have a presentation of Car- narvon Castle painted on the inboard end of his 195 '196 'BROKEN STOWAGE', > scuttle-butt (paid a sign-painter seven shillings to 'do it, he told me), for what harm of tempest could befall him, unless his horse were to go lame? And besides, what particular saving virtue could there be in Carnarvon Castle, however well designed? Had it been a 'Mary and the Child,' like the pa- tron's steering board on a Bastia felucca, or a bejewelled Ikon, like that they carry on the bridge of a Russian battleship, one could have under- stood, but Carnarvon Castle! It was just that good Evans had an eye for the beautiful, and, to the extent of seven shillings of his scanty means, he was a patron of the arts. Out at sea we are no longer allowed to decorate our ships; seafaring has become distinctly a busi* ness, a traffic, a trade, with no call for unnecessary embellishment. First, the gilt-work on the stern was done away with; it was a needless expense; the cost was better put into timely advertising. Then the shapely figurehead, symbol of grace and elegance, gave place to an iron scroll, an affair of stunted proportions that sate heavy over the sheer- ing forefoot. The carving of a spar end was time wasted, when the carver might be more profitably employed in scaling rusty bulwarks. Then came the steamship, gaunt and bare of ornament, work- ing through the tides in feverish haste, an ill thing to beautify, a monster of mechanics whose only beauty was that she floated, and, floating, bor- rowed a grace of movement from the restless sea. THE 'ARTS AFLOAT' 197 In her there is no time to be wasted; her short- voyage crew have no interest in their vessel; she is strictly a machine, to be oiled and greased, and blacked and red-leaded, but not to be embellished that would be labour lost, energy sadly misdi- rected. Still in odd ways one sees the mark of more than a hireling interest. Once I saw a collier in Methil Docks; she was black and stark, as only a collier can be; she was piled, bridge-high, at the coamings with slatey Scotch, and the steward was carrying the cabin dinner along in a pocket-hand- kerchief, but (whisper, that her owners may not come to hear) her after ladder-rails were cleverly cross-pointed, and had neat 'turks' heads' at handy intervals. Some one had had a pride in her, for it was surely the work of a watch-below; it was no slap-up job. In the long-voyage sailing-ship it is different. True, there is neither time nor material for the old-time 'fancy work,' but if the Mate is not too modern in his ideas a little can be done. I have memories of famous bell-lanyards, cunning jobs in half-hitchin', round and square sennit and cock's- combin' that would have been beautifully finished, a credit to any clipper's poop, but for something always coming in the way; and bucket handles, and shackles, and boat's fenders, and an albatross's foot that hung long in a dark corner of the aftdeck, which (but for its having been destroyed by a senior in the interests of sanitation) would have 198 'BROKEN STOWAGE' made a most artistic tobacco-pouch for any one who smoked shag. That was in small ways ; there is now no carving of skids ('The sea is His, and He made it,' was a favourite motto in 'hard-case,' lime-juice packets), no gilding of head boards, but, if the ship may not be 'fancified,' there are our sea- chests in fo'cas'le or aftdeck, a little rough paint from the ship's stores will not be missed, and we may do as we like with our own. To sailors there are only two things worth re- producing in colour on one's gear or person. One is a ship under sail, her flags and tackle; our hands, 'rough and tarred' as Kipling's chantymen's, are too rude properly to portray the other. There was always some one in the ship's crowd a famous hand at painting ships, and, as we are an independent folk, many pounds of hard tobacco (the currency at sea) were earned by his talent. Earn it he did, for it was nothing easy to satisfy the many criticisms of his shipmates. Originality in design or treatment was sternly repressed; there was only one way that a ship should be painted on the lid of one's sea-chest, 'shipshape an' Bristol fashion.' It was a lee view, all sail set, colours and distinguishing signal flaunting board-like from the gaff, and a lighthouse, the particular one of one's fancy, showing an answering signal in the middle distance. Most preferred the Tuskar, for there was no great mass of land to take up the picture, and, as the ship was nearly always heading to the THE 'ARTS AFLOAT' 199 right, it brought the action down to a definite basis, the pleasure of a seaman's eye, a 'home- ward-bounder,' standing up Channel. Devotion to detail was the aim of the painter. Indeed, it had to be, for his patron would be ill-pleased if there was left a matter for sneering shipmates to point to with scorn, to dub 'lubberly.' Even though the ship was stiff and flat, the lighthouse proportion- ately out of reason, the waves woolly and unreal, the rig and trim had to be beyond question. It was a long job, requiring patience and perseverance. First the price and the character of the ship had to be arranged with the patron. The price was an easy matter, for there was a sort of tariff. A schooner was cheap two pounds of tobacco, per- haps, and the price rose according to the rig. A four-masted, full-rigged ship would run to about five or six pounds, and, if there \vas to be a pilot boat in the offing, as high as eight. A pound of tobacco is value for two and six it is a 'purser's pound/ only fourteen ounces. Deciding about the ship was a more difficult matter, especially with an old hand who had seen some service afloat. Usu- ally he would decide on the ship with the biggest spread of canvas, or perhaps on one with a pe- culiarity in her rig. "Jest you do me th' City o y Florence, young feller; wot Ah wos in in eighty- four. One o' them ol' City ships, wi' single mizzen tops'l, an' a slidin' gunter fer th' skysail pole. Single mizzen togs'l, 200 'BROKEN STOWAGE' mind ye, an' two reef ban's, an' a gaff fer th' try- sail on th' main!" This was the order, and the work began. The wood had to be prepared and a light groundwork put on; then the sky, a grandly blue, homeward- bound sort of sky, laid on. (Clouds were difficult, and were seldom attempted.) Then the ship had to be lined out, and here began the painter's troubles. "Now! Wot did Ah tell ye 'bout that there mizzen tops'l; two reef ban's, Ah said, an' a tackle on th' second cringle. . . . 'Ere, young fel- ler, look at that 'ere light'us flagstaff! 'Ow d'ye 'expeck a light'us flagstaff t' stand up in a breeze without stays?" Here the painter, a man of ideas, tries to assert himself. ..." 'Ow could ye see stays 'n a light'us flagstaff, an' it two miles off?" By this he would rouse the wrath of the fore- cas'le, and there would be a gathering round, and heated argument. "Never ye mind 'bout two mile off! Ye knows bloody well as a light'us staff is allus well stayed ! Jest ye put in them stays, young feller, an' no 'damn shinnanikin !" The stays go in. Work goes on smoothly for a bit until some old hand sidles up and says, pleasant- like, "Look a' here, me son, if ye wants things ship- shape, jest ye cut out a bit o' th' luff o' that tawps'l!" The patron is indignant; here is some one interfering with his beloved single mizzen THE 'ARTS AFLOAT ' 201 tops'l, "with two reef ban's, mind ye." Then, ' 'Ere ! Jest you keep yer adwise till it's arst for. Ah ain't goin' t' 'ave th' lid o' my chest spoiled by them as ain't never bin shipmates w' single mizzen tops'ls!" There are angry words. Some one else breaks in. "Ho, yes! Vs a fine 'and at spoilin' th' lid o' yer chest. Why! Look at mine! There wos th' James Baines as wos t' be, an' Ah tol' 'im plain as 'ow she clews up t' th' yard-arm, an' 'ere 'e goes an' clews up t' th' bloody quarter. Rotten bad, Ah call it! An' then 'e goes for to change th' name, an' paints in different colours, an' makes 'er th' bloody Wanderer o' St. Johns, a ship Ah never 'ad no use for. 'Im!" a glance of scorn "An' calls 'isself a bloo'dy hartist!" The poor painter has a hard time; it is an all- hands job; even the Dutchman would have a word to say, and in the general chorus his presumption would pass unheeded by the elder men. When it was finished and lay in a clean place awaiting a rub of stolen varnish, it was a work of technics, if not of art, and represented more faith- fully, perhaps, the cut and rig of a ship of our times than Vandevelde's wonderful shuyts do of his. In other ways could this (desire to 'decorate be satisfied. 'Shackles' could be made in the 'watch- below,' or (if sufficient canvas could be had) a cover for a sea-chest. Covers were worked of 202 'BROKEN STOWAGE; 'drawn threads, and the fringes were tasselled ancl interlaced in a mode as delicate and formal as a lady's needlework. Not many were done, for can- vas was almost priceless in a 'wind-jammer,' and there were only a few, Dutchmen and old men-o'- warsmen, who could do it properly. 'Shackles' were sailor handles for sea-chests. This was a great working of rope and twisting of yarns, a 'test' in sailorising that took a long time to do ; he was considered a good seaman who could finish off in the approved manner. (Alas! for the mis- shapen mass, ends out and uneven, that I spent so many hours over, and finally, after a particularly severe criticism by a greasy Russ, threw into the shakins' cask among the ends and leavings of sailor work.) Shackles were generally painted in three bright colours, hung up to dry in odd corners, forgotten, rediscovered when bags were being packed and the homeward pilot aboard, and were given to favoured shipmates or were left for 'prentices to quarrel over when they came to clear the fo'c'sle out after the 'crowd' had gone. Then there was tattooing, an ancient art, be- loved of manners an'd dukes and princes. It is not now done at sea. Few of the modern sea- men know how to do it properly, and it is left to 'professors' of the art to set up premises in Bute Road and Ratcliffe Highway and the Broomielaw and Bond Street, W., where homeward bounders and other men of position can have their sense or THE 'ARTS AFLOAT' 203 sentiments suitably worked on their persons anchors and clasped hands, hearts and crossed na- tional flags, crosses and memorial stones. ('In memory of mother/ I saw once on the chest of a hard case, as bawling a blasphemous, uncharitable dog as ever Shakespeare knew.) Mottoes were often done. 'True till Death' has a new sig- nificance when worked above the presentment of a 'damsel of rounded charm and muscular; 'Ven- geance' on the forearm of a placid Scandinavian was odd; had he been a swart Dago with a long sheath-knife on his hip, yes; but Hans Dans! De- cidedly odd. Once, on a forehatch, I heard an argument about tattooing, a quaint reasoning. "Wot's th' use on it? W'y! If ye gets wrecked out furr'in, an' goes under, an' gets washed ashore all broke up them wot finds ye knows by yer marks" (he meant crosses or a figure of Christ; often done). "They knows as ye' re a Christian, an' they buries ye decent. But if ye ain't got no marks, w'y!" i(the upturned palms of unanswerable enquiry) "'oo th' 'ell are ye?" These are the decorative arts. Of music there is less to be said; not that it is of little interest or less importance, rather because it is a more deli- cate matter to handle. Who, watching men at heavy manual labour, say, hoisting a weight to a height, has not felt a stirring within, a desire to hold the breath while the men pull, an instinct to 204 ' BROKEN STOWAGE' breathe generously when the pull is given? That instinct is parent to sea-music, to the 'chanties' that seamen sing when straining at the ropes, when heaving, heavy chested, on the bars of a windlass. No one knows aught of the men who set the tunes to the chanties. The words are anybody's, any words may do. Usually they are gross and un- printable, but the tunes are different. They are unchanging, no one dares meddle with them; they are handed down from aged salt, about to hail his Pilot, to wonder-eyed youngsters with the hay- seed in their hair. They, too, are unprintable, but that because there is no mode of writing music that could properly express the quick-changing swing, the quaint indescribable inflection, and the chal- lenging note that comes before a thundering chorus. They are the seaman's own, and will die with him when the sea is only a place for black smoke and whirling screws. There are some songs, too, sung at sea and sel- dom elsewhere. Most begin with, 'Come, all ye jolly sailormen, an' listen to my song.' The tunes are very old, almost ancient, and they are usually sung by the older hands. They are 'Bound away to the West'ard,' The City o' Baltimore,' and 'Henry Martin.' There is a fine swing about them, but now the blatant influence of the 'alls is in the! forecas'le, and they are not much sung. Welsh sailors have a gift: they are great hands at singing in parts. They have a fine sense of harmony, and THE 'ARTS AFLOAT 5 205 a man out of tune among a Welsh 'crowd' would be about as happy as a soldier in a Liverpool fore- cas'le. Their songs are not sailor songs though, and may not be put down as sea-music. Dutchmen are rare instrumentalists. Never was a Dutchman who couldn't play some humble in- strument, but their music is of the 'dans-haus' order, reminiscent of Shkipper Strasse or a Bier- garten in Altona. Once I was shipmates with a Finn who played the fiddle. He used to play sailor music. He would sit on the forehatch o' nights and play even on without effort. He would make it up as he went along, a weird, melancholy thing of his own, something about wind and a black night, he would say. His watchmates thought it uncanny, and left him alone. Once a braggart boy cursed him for a screechin' devil. He was called off by the old bosun : "Don't ee go vor tu vex un, me son; them Finns hain't vair volk !" Old Garge thought that if the Finn were vexed he might raise a gale of wind on us by his uncanny fiddling. That was our music, that and the chanties, never a great art perhaps, but assuredly an expression of deep feeling. Those who have heard know it those who have heard Renzo on a blustering, windy night, and the ship staggering in the track of a gale, or Shenandoah borne over the water in the first grey flush of an early dawn. Poetry has no beginning at sea; it is a borrowed 206 'BROKEN STOWAGE' art, a loan but lightly treasured. Once there went poets to the deep. They told of takings at sea, of the sack of cities, of victories on the main, or of the deeds of the great captains. Few wrote of the life they must have known so well. After all, they could have been but poor poets, since they and their lines are forgotten, while William Falconer (whose hands must have reeked of tar, the palms hardened by grip of shroud and halliard, when he wrote his 'Shipwreck') stands still a mentor to his sea-fellows. The lines And he who strives the tempest to disarm Will never first embrail the lee yard-arm, The master &iid; obedient to command, To raise the tack the ready sailors stand, Gradual it loosens, while th' involving clew, Swelled by the wind, aloft unruffling flew, The sheet and weather-brace they now stand by ; The lee clew-garnet and the bunt-lines ply. Thus all prepared, "Let go the sheet," he cries; Impetuous round the ringing wheel it flies, Shivering at first, till, by the blast impell'd, High o'er the lee yard-arm the canvas swell'd; By spilling lines embraced, with brails confined, It lies at length unshaken by the wind. are even now quoted in nautical text-books as a standard in seamanship. The making of verse is little liked by sailormen, unless it be a new rig to an old chanty or a rhyming lampoon. One who could work into doggerel verse the peculiarities of his shipmates was, in a way, admired, though never popular. THE 'ARTS AFLOAT' 207 Of another stamp was Mister Richards, who had the next cot in a hospital in Monte Video. He had been mate of a London barque. His ship had sailed, and he was still laid up a sort of con- sumption I think it was. He was a great reader. Once he showed me something he himself had written. It was about an old captain of his, who, after a long, hard time at sea, had sent his son to the same service. One verse was The men who kept King Philip's Fleet afar, The mariners who swept th' Spanish Main, The men who won the fight at Trafalgar Lie dead, but in their children live again, Who, where th' British Ensign flaunts th' breeze, O'er steam-press'd power, or flowing sail unfurl'd, Shall hold high court upon the open seas, And make an Empire of th' Ocean World. Poor Mister ! He would have no further place in the ordering of that Ocean Empire, for the Sister told us quietly, that he might not hear that his was a bad case, that he was not like to go the sea again. XXVI SAILORMEN ON TOUR T MET them on the cock o' the hill above * Whistlefield, just where one can get a famous glint of Loch Long with Glenfinart lying broad and bonny between. I was bound over to Ardentinny and stopped awhile to rest at the summit. It was a fine day in early May. Breezy. Big full-bellied clouds swept over the blue and cast deep shadows on the hill-side. While I rested I heard voices in angry alterca- tion. The wranglers were far down the glen, but the din of their bicker carried far. Words were not easy to make out, so I concluded that some tinkers were bound up. A turn of the low road brought them to view. There were two. They seemed to be heavily laden and walked haltingly^ their heads cast down, as if they were searching the roadside. As they drew near I made out old William Shaw, sailorman and conning rigger, of the port of Glasgow. He carried a coil of rope over his shoulder and a large paint-tin in his right hand. I did not know the second man. He looked young. He was slight in build and walked with a fine turn of the heels that marked him a sailor. He carried, 208 SAILORMEN ON TOUR 209 a bunch of paint-cans that made clatter as he came up the brae. Some paint-brush handles stood out of his pocket, and his blue dungaree clothes were bespattered with white. "Hullo, Wully," I said, "I never thought of meeting you stravaiging about the country-side. What's this ploy you're on?" "Hullo, young f'la-ma-lad it's you. You an' yer bikesycical. Goad! I wissht I hid yin o' them masel'. I'm ferr din oot wi' a' this trampinV He threw the coil off his shoulder with an impatient whirl, and sat down on the hill-side. "Hey, you," he shouted to his mate. "Ha'e a look aboot an' see if you can fin' yer wee gantline block." "Him," he added with scornful emphasis, "he'd lose the hair aff his heid if it wisnae fur his kep. First it wis the pent an' brushes that he left at th' Bullwood, him that ta'en up wi' th' servant lassies ! Then, begoad, he be tae be leavin' Strachur withoot th' sclimbin' irons. Noo it's th' wee gantline block. Fa'en oot on the road atween here an' th' Whistlefield Inn." "But what's brought you up here with your gantlines and blocks and climbing irons? I never heard tell of a job at the rigging up here on the hill-side." "Ha'e ye no'," said the old man. "Ah, weel, ye're aye learnin'. If ye had yer een aboot ye, ye'd see that it wis pentin' flegstaffs we wis efter. No' that bad a job, neither" clinking money, in his 210 'BROKEN STOWAGE' pocket. "If it wisnae for him an' his wye o' lossin' things, we'd be gaun back tae Glesca the nicht wi' th' best pairt o' fifteen pun' i' wur pooches. We wis ettlin' tae dae a job at Arranteeny an' feenish up an' get ower tae Gourock by seeven o'clock, but afore we wis hauf wy doon th' glen 'Hullo,' says he, 'whaur's th' wee gantline block?' 'Aye, whaur is't?' says I. 'Ye hid it when we got aff th' man's cairt at Lach Eck side, afore we begood tae sclimb th' hill.' 'Weel I huvnae got it noo,' says he. 'Hits drapped off on th' road.' 'Ye'd better drap aff an' find it,' says I. 'Hoo th' blazes can we dae that bit job at Arranteeny wi' nae gantline block.' . . . Sae we jist cam' awa' back up the glen, but deil a glint o' th' block hae we seen." The little man, after looking about casually, had seated himself and was filling a pipe with black twist. "Ach, whatt's th' matter now, annyway?" he said. "Be me sowl, ye w'd think it was iverry panny in th' wurrld ye'd lost, t'hear ye talkin'. Shurre, wit' th' fifteen poun' that y'ure talkin' aboot we can buy a score av gantlin' blocks." "Hark till 'm. A score o' gantline blocks an' I'll lay ma share again' a happeny there's no' a block tae be had at Arranteeny fur love nor money." "Ach, you an' yerr blocks!" The little man kicked the empty paint-cans viciously, and made off down the glen again. "Haw, Loughran! Haw, JeemsJ haw, SAILORMEN ON TOUR 211" Jeemsy!" In genuine 'distress, the old man shouted on his hasty mate. "Ach, whit are ye ta'en on that w'y for? Ye ken fine that I'm pit oot at no' gettin' on wi' that job doon-by. Come awa' back here an' ha'e yer smoke." Wee Loughran hesitated, stood about whistling a while, then returned. I had never known old Wully to be so conciliatory before. Clearly, the little Irishman was the important partner in the concern. I was curious to learn, and asked the old sailor how they carried on the business. "Ach, it wis jist me seein' wee Loughran therr when he wis sclimbin' a schooner's mast. It wis in the Queen's Dock an' he wis gaun up the pole topmas' jist as nate as if he wis walkin' oot in Sauchieha' Street. Therr wis nae riggin' on her no' as much as a bit o' chafin' gear tae pit yer fit on jist yin o' thae wee Dundalk schooners, plain sticks aboon th' taps. Says I, therr's th' wee laud tae pent flagstaffs doon th' watter a peyin' job I kent it when I wis young an' soupple masel'. Sae I got on th' crack wi' him, an' took him on at a pun' a week an' a share o' th' profits. He's an Isley Magee man a wee bit thrang whiles but he can gaun up th' side o' a hoose haudin' on by hees eyelids." Somewhat mollified by old Wully's eulogy, the famous climber had returned to the search. He was peering diligently among the stunted heather at the roadside for his lost gantline block. 212 'BROKEN STOWAGE' "I mak' th' contraks an' mix th' pent an' tend th' gantline while th' wee f'la 'daes th' pentin' doon. Whiles, if it's a big job, like auld Captain Mac- Pherson's mast at St. Catherine I dae a turn aloft masel'. Goad, ye sh'd a seen th' pent we hid ower therr. Ye'll mind o' th' Captain? He wis in thae auld Quebeckers o' Allans. Retired this fif- teen year or more. He's gotten a ship's mast rigged up in his gairden. A' complete ! Main tap, an' lower yaird, an' shrouds an' lifts an' fit-ropes a' complete ! That wis a big contrack. Power days we wis at th' riggin' an' a day an' a hauf pentin' doon an' a' th' time th' auld yin wis stottin' aboot bossin' th' job. It wis 'Main tap, therr ye've left a "holiday" ddaft th' kep.' Or 'Topmast held, ahoy. Can ye no* see that shackle is pentit black an' no' mast colour?' A' th' time he wis merchin' up an' doon wi' his haun's behin' his back, jist as he used tae dae in thae auld Quebeckers. We hid a gey job o' it, wi' a wee dram every nicht when we cam' doon frae aloft. It feenished up wi' wee Loughran therr forgettin' th' sclimbin' irons, an' us hauf wye ower tae Strachur afore he missed them." Now I could see the smoke of the E'dinbttrah Castle over the hill and had to mount and away to catch her at Ardentinny. I left Wully and his mate still arguing, though less vehemently, about the wee gantline block. Perhaps in remote future years some savant will SAILORMEN ON TOUR 213 make a sensational statement. He may say that the old folk-songs of his ancestors possess points of truth and actuality in their legendary embellish- ment ! He may quote "On the heights of Ben Lomond their galleys may steer." And he may produce as evidence auld Wully Shaw's wee gantline block discovered on the cock o' the hill above Glenfinart. XXVII A CHANNEL SUNRISE Holyhead at daybreak we turn into the George's Channel, steaming south with the last outrunning of the ebb. Broad on the port beam the coast of North Wales looms up, a dark rugged mass against the faint grey of early dawn. Holyhead's town lights glimmer bravely against the dark of the land, and, clear of the Headland, the South Stack light flashes at minute intervals. Ahead lies the open channel, its broad surface scarce ruffled by a light east wind. Here and there twinkling ship-lights stud the darkling western sea- line; astern and to the east a confusion of smoke wrack, lowering over a cluster of steaming lights, shows the outbound tideload from the Mersey on the way to sea. First clear of the pierheads we lead the fleet, but our turn will be short now. Our twelve knots at the very best can show poor heels to the two 'fourteens' who are racing up astern; already the foremost is hauling out west to give us sea-room in passing. "After all, speed isn't every- thing," we say, looking resolutely ahead. Some- where in the gloom of the foredeck 'one bell' is struck. Half-past four! The lascar on look-out 214 A CHANNEL SUNRISE 215 shouts the watch-cry, a long drawn-out Koob dek-ta hai that sounds all but wakeful. A gruff, "Aye, aye," answers the hail, and the Mate, up there, resumes his pacing tap, tap, terap! The madman's promenade ten paces and a turn, ten a halt a sharp order to the steersman; the gear creaks to a vicious strain, and with our head swinging wildly to sudden helm we sheer under the stern of a schooner, close enough to note a glimmer on her decks someone striving to prick up an ill-burning sidelight. At proper course again we speed on; the tap, tap, terap resumed. From far down in the bowels of the ship come the noises of the stokehold that tell of action below, in contrast to the quiet of the deserted decks. A shovel clangs harshly on the footplates, an imperative call for more coal to feed the throbbing monster; wrangling voices, pro- test and abuse, are borne up through the fiddley- gratings, choice wafts of Bombay-babbery, that only cease with the clash of furnace doors and the stoker's warning shout to his mate at the back fires. A burst of green smoke rises straight from the fun- nel, the measured throb of the engines seems louder to our ears; we should do well now, with a fresh gang below and the fires cleane'd and set away. Un'der the great glare of the South Stack a tiny point of light spurting out an'd in in sharp, vicious flashes shows the Morse signalman at his key- 216 'BROKEN STOWAGE' board, taking tally of the ships that pass by night. On the bow an inward-bound steamer is 'wink- wink-winking' a long message for the dock people at Liverpool, and, south away, an old-fashioned Johnston boat is throwing brilliant fireballs her Company's night signal. No new-fangled talking- lamps for her stout old captain. He still believes in guns and red and green fireworks a brave show to catch the eye of a sleepy signalman. "Vick E! There's that Booth liner finished now, and old 'fireworks' has got his red flare. Call him up, mister, and give our name !" A new voice on the bridge; two tap tap teraps. The Cap- tain has come on deck to set his channel course. "Aye, aye, sir!" Our lamp flicks away at the spelling, gleaming 'longs' and 'shorts' on the bridge spars and upperworks. "R D ! All right," says the Captain, reading the answering twinkle ashore. "He's got it. Spell 'Thanks' and call off!" The Stack has just time to acknowledge before our 'next astern' picks him up, and again the 'wink-wink-winking' goes on something about the weather in the bay. The Stack will be glad when it comes daylight enough for the flagman to have an innings. It should not now be long de- layed; already the gloom is lightening; and through a high rift in the misty cloud-bank that palls the east keen steel-blue sky shows the first break. A CHANNEL SUNRISE 217 In the dim half-light the near land, the shadowy sails of drifting coasters, the sheering, smoke- wreathed hulls of the following fleet, take shape and colour. The longshore lights, so late a galaxy of radiant points, are paling to extinction; the sea, borrowing from tire lightening zenith, shows a shimmer of grey, with patches of deep shadow where our side-wave breaks the placid surface. Holyhead breakwater grows sightly to the eye, standing clear of the distant shore. A railway steamer lies berthed within, with a curl of smoke drifting from her two shapely funnels the Irish mail in readiness. The lighthouse tower standing bold on the summit of the South Stack shows white against a backing of the rugged Head, and when it is light enough the keeper shuts off his displaced thousands of candle-power. Our turn of leader- ship is up now. In spite of our efforts the first of the 'fourteens' a huge China trader goes forg- ing past, giving us a choking waft of black, sul- phurous Welsh in the passing. Out in the open the breeze comes with the dawn. A freshening wind rouses the channel to sparkle, and glitter, and play of light and shade. The calm under the lee of the land is swept by rippling ed- "dies; the sails of the coasters shiver and blow out, then stand full to the favouring land breeze, and the shapely hulls lean away south across Carnar- von Bay. Fast as the light grows the mist breaks up and re-forms in endless fantastic wraiths, all 218 /BROKEN STOWAGE' aglow with a tinge of rose that fades through violet hues to deep, stubborn shadows where the clouds overhang. Iridescent plumes of trailing vapour strike out from the dark ridges of the land; the mist caps of the high Welsh peaks are doffed at coming of the day. The sun's pilot-rays turn the zenith, and flaming scarlet takes the place of rose. Deep azure sky shows through in ever-widening patches, and the night clouds, banking in the west, make a last sullen stand against the vanguard of the morn. Then, in a burst of radiant glory, the sun comes up, clearing the horizon, with scarce a wisp of windy cloud to mar his rising. XXVIII PORT SAID AND 'JOCK FERGUSON' A l A HE gaunt, iron light-standard, cluster of low huts, mosque dome and minaret, and a ruined, dismantled fort that now mark the site of the once prosperous Damietta have faded away on the quarter, sinking back into the quivering heat haze as they had scarce emerged; and steam- ing athwart the muddy outflow of the Nile we drew near Port Said the Half-Way House; caravanserai for voyagers on the long sea-route to the East. A high lighthouse rises up over the turgid water a sightly guiding mark on the low isthmus where the level desert stands long unseen from seaward. Lesser buildings, gay of gaudy paintwork and fanciful balconies, cluster at its base, and clearing the housetops, the masts, spars, and flags of ships in the harbour stand out. Far stretching east and west the bleak flats of Balah and Menzaleh lie bare to the scorching sun, void of vegetation, un- broken by mound or eminence, save where the rude huts of the Arabs mark the skyline, distorted by mirage that shimmers on the sandy plain. Clear- 219 220 'BROKEN STOWAGE' ing to definite proportions as we draw on, the long breakwater shows up. Nearly a mile of solid masonry, it stretches its smooth formal blocks out to sea a windward barrier to the heavy seas that come with northerly gales. At the centre of the sea-wall stands a statue of De Lesseps, a huge massive figure dominating the entrance to the Canal a statue with the 'action' of the polite gentleman at the door of a Polyseum. "Walk this way, sir," it seems to beckon. "Suez Canal, sir? Straight on, sir, and last turn to the left!" Off the outer buoy we bring up to take a pilot on board. He comes off to us in fine style, towing in the wake of a powerful Canal tug, but, to our disappointment, the 'brither Scot' (for whom Weekly Mails, News, and Glasgow Heralds lie parcelled up, ready at hand) is not our man this time. A lanky Greek boards to take us in; a swarthy Dago, who, though knowing little Eng- lish, can tell us the news of the day by 'juggling' of his hands. Slow, to pass a monster sand- dredger the latest from the Pudzeoch we steam into the harbour and lace up to buoys abreast of the Cafe Khedivial. As we are taking no coal the Port Captain has given us the favoured berth, well within hearing of the Viennese Orches- tra, and so near the Boulevard that a clap of our hands would bring attentive gargons to the cafe doors. The Port Said 'queer-fellows' in their boats are PORT SAID 'JOCK FERGUSON' 221 gathered at the buoys to meet us. Hotel touts, boatmen, pedlars, lace-wallahs, ship-chandlers, coal agents, they swarm about us before our warps are run out a horde of modern Babylonians, wrangling over places, shouting shrill trade cries, praying custom, patronage, or 'backsheesh' in a hundred clamorous tongues. Our decks, for the nonce, are turned into a market-place: portman- teaux and home-like 'placks' are rapidly emptied, turned upside down, and the wares arranged atop; every standard of ship's furniture is made to serve as booth and showstand on the hatches, on winch covers, deck chairs, everywhere, a glittering as- sortment of the thousand useless articles for which a sale seems only to be found at Port Said. On one hand we are offered 'scarabs' priceless an- tiques (from Brummagem) ; on the other, Maltese lace, some real most Nottingham. In hushed confidential tones 'Scotch' whisky, at a modest price, is brought to our notice. Ye gods ! Bonnie Shottland brandt! 'In Hamburg gemacht!' "Hoo are ye, Mackay," says a voice. "Auch- termuchty! Ecclefechan, an' Mullguy! Hooch aye!!" We turn. Who is this, who 'dares to parody a Man we Know? Who but 'Ferguson' 'Jock Ferguson' 'Jock Ferguson, b'lang Greenock,' as he tells us, and again mutters the test formula as proof. No proof is needed. 'Jock,' as an old friend, gets a handshake, and his fellow-pedlars 222 'BROKEN STOWAGE' slink away from such a token of bias, and hurry off in search of greenhorns. "Wed, Jock, hoo'sa' wi' ye?" "Verrr-y goot, mister" ('Jock's' r's are won- derful). "How you was yourrr-sel', mister? You want anyt'ing dis time? Turrr-kish d'light, cigar- rett. . . . Oh, blenty noose! All mafeesh de Turk! De bloody Sultan got it de sack!" Here 'Jock' spits vehemently, to show a free-born Arab's contempt of Turks and Sultans. "Oh, yes! Blenty trr-uble in Constant. Four, five thous' beoble kill it. Dey got a new Sultan now. . . . No ! No monsoon broke yet. Ah wass aboard 'dat Paddy Hendisen boat an' dey tel' me dey had fine weather all de way. T'ree box cigarette, sir? Nine bob, sir, as shair's daith, sir. . . . Oh, well seven an' six. Ye're a 'hard case,' Mackay. Ah'm givin' you sheap, for you all de time deal wi' 'Jock Ferguson' !" At Port Said the peculiar circumstance of an unlimited and ever-changing supply of visitors, who stay but an hour or more in the Port, lends itself to boundless rogueries; and the pedlars and shopkeepers 'queer-fellows' all reap a heavy harvest among the ships, hourly arriving or de- parting on oversea voyages. Passengers, after the experience of a week or more on shipboard (where all the buying is done by purser's account), welcome the novelty of being able to actually spend their money, and do not seem to be greatly PORT SAID 'JOCK FERGUSON* 223 concerned at the worthless rubbish that the pedlars offer. Chief among the 'queer-fellows' who ply their nimble tongues at such a market, 'Jock' became early alive to the unsuitableness of his patronymic Mahommed Dessoukeh, no less to purposes of his sort of trade. Like as not, he has never heard of Mark Twain and the real original 'Jock,' but, from wherever he got his alias, 'Jock Fergu- son, b'long Greenock,' he became, and great is his profit. Such success as was his induced others to follow his example, and the 'clan' has grown. Arabs, Greeks, Levantines, Jews, Copts, have all taken the whim, and now John Fergusons, Joe Fergusons, Macleans, Macnabs, and Mackays are met at every turn, each with a sorry goose to cook; and the visitors are asked, in every tongue in Europe, to step up and provide the stuffing. To 'Jock's' broad shoulders it may be due that his particular alias is not yet assumed by any other. Some poaching there may be on his preserve the custom of officers and engineers on the regular liners, but his business is pretty safe, as nearly every one counts a purchase cheap, if only to hearken to the quaint jargon that goes freely with 'Jock's' wares. A specious rogue none more plausible 'Jock' but follows the custom of the East, the system of trading that brings the element of chance beloved of Asiatics to the making of a bargain. At Port Said the value of any com- 224 'BROKEN STOWAGE' modity is just exactly what can be got for it good reasoning and if one is only properly scorn- ful at a request for, say, six shillings for a box of cigarettes, 'Jock' or his prototype may come along (when the bell to 'clear ship' is rung) and pocket two bob with a cheery "Thank ye, sir!" Six shil- lings is 'asking price,' which he demands on the chance of his meeting a 'gull,' and, indeed, it is astonishing how often he hears the wings a-flutter. 'Jock' makes no secret of his trickery; rather he glories in it, and even when the boot is on the other foot, and he finds himself the holder of worthless coin, the 'queer-fellows' take any currency it is with no great show of anger that he says, "Done this time, Mackay. 'Jock Ferguson' too bloody good for dam rogue!" After a turn of business on the saloon deck he will come below, chuckling hugely, his broad cheery face a study in elation. "What now, 'Jock'? Who have ye 'done' this time?" some one will ask. "Ah done nobody, but Ah done goot bizness! Goot bizness, mister! Fella' up dere, he buy de tobacco. 'How much ye want for tin, dis Pioneer Bran'?' he say. 'Two bob,' Ah sed, 'an' Ah'm givin' ye sheap,' Ah sed. 'Two bob,' he say. 'Bai Jove/' " 'Jock' has the tone of it. " 'Bai Jove,' he say. 'Dey sell dat on de ship here for two-an'-six!' 'Dam rogue!' Ah sed. 'Dam rogue if dey sell dat tin for two-an'-six ! Ah'm givin' you PORT SAID 'JOCK FERGUSON' 225 sheap,' Ah ses. 'Ah wan' 'dat money for blay de carte.' 'Bai Jove,' he say. 'Dese Arab is bahn gambler; blay carte, eh?' An' den he buy four tin Pioneer Bran' !" "Well, what about it? Saves sixpence a tin, anyway!" u Oh, no! He doan'! 'Jock Ferguson' 'a a 'hard case'! Mind, Ah'm tellin' ye! Dem tin Pioneer Bran' wass quarter-poun' tin de ship sell 'm half-poun' tin, ain't it? Dam fool no look, saavy de tin!" But it is at barter with a 'brither Scot' that 'Jock' is at his best. No turn of Clydeside 'pleas- antry' is lost on him; every new way of putting it is remarked attentively, to be brought forth at the psychological moment when a bargain is to be clinched. His 'Oot ye' the two fingers uplifted at the right speed is worth an extra shilling of any Govan man's money. ( Kam-a-rach-an-chew?' he will say, tentatively, to a newcomer whose face has been his study for a moment or more. 'Kam- a-rach-an-chewf If he is right: business, sure! If wrong: well, if wrong, it is no great matter, for, be ye of Cumberland or Kamchatka, 'Jock' can ask a fancy price in the mode of speech to which you are most accustomed. True, 'Kam-a- rach-an-chew' is all he has of the language of Eden, and is not even good Gaelic, but it serves, like 'Auchtermuchty' and 'Hooch aye!' and 'Whit 226 /BROKEN STOWAGE' r div ye think, o' Wee Ma'greegor nooT as an intro- ductory medium, and that is the great thing among a horde of clamorous petitioners. With a marvellous memory for men and faces, 'Jock' can place every Captain, Mate, and Engi- neer in the regular lines that go by the Canal, and he is an accurate registrar of changes and promo- tions. If we wonder who has the luck to man the new ship that we met in the Gulf of Suez, 'Jock' knows. If doubtful of the whereabouts of a quon- dam shipmate, it is 'odds on 1 that 'Jock' can tell us. "Och aye! Mister Browne? Ah know dat fella'. He come troo' three wik' pas'. Sheef- ofsur now a 'hard case' ! Smit' ? . . . Smit' ?" . . . doubtfully; there are many Smiths. Then his memory serves him. "Och aye," he will say, "Smit' ! A wee-fla' . . . walk like dis" a turn on the deck. "He leaf de . . . two w'yge gone. No! Ah doan' see 'm come out no more. He owe me fif shilling a 'hard case' ! But dat's al' right. Bime'by he come troo de Canal, an' he woan' forget 'Jock Ferguson'! Hooch aye!" XXIX THE STOWAWAY JEW 7 I A WO days after we had left Suez he was dis- * covered burrowing in the coal-bunkers a miserable hunger-maddened wretch, haled roughly to the bridge to be seen of the Captain. "No spik. No spik," he whined, in reply to the Chief Engineer's fierce questioning and threats; "me no spik." His clever young anaemic face looked doubly pale in contrast with the sun-tanned seamen about him. High temples and a prominent nose pro- claimed the Jew. No sea-fellow this, with his long shapely hands and nervous fingers. "A Jew by thunder!" said the Captain, eyeing him sternly (as became a shipmaster about to be robbed of food and passage money). "Where d'ye come from, eh?" "No spik. Me no spik," said the stowaway. Then suddenly he launched into long breathless sentences in high German with a great moving of his hands. Wiping the grime and perspiration from a heated brow, the bosun, a stout little North German, left his work at the word to engage the miserable in conversation quick talk, with many 227 228 'BROKEN STOWAGE' strange hybrid oaths on the bosun's part: then he turned to the waiting Captain. "Zay hees name vass Albrecht. . . . He god no moneys. He gomes here on boardt ven ve vass ad de buoys coalin' an' he goes to de bunkers in. Zay he vill vork for hees bassage. He zay he blay de pianna, sir. Dot vass hees bizeness." "The piano, eh? Gad! We've got a prize! Th' piano!" The Captain looked at the grimy wretch as at a new species of mankind; then to the Chief "Here, Geordie. Tak' him doon th' stokehold ye'er short o' hands and see if he can play th' stoker's chorus with a ten-inch shovel." Pushed and driven and week-kneed, the un- fortunate lad went down the ladder, his taskmaster following. "Ar'll gie ye sumthin' t' eat," he said roughly, "but, b' Goad, ye'll wark f'r it, ma man." We were in the hottest part of the Red Sea, steaming south at the bare five knots that was all our fainting stokers could raise steam for. A light following breeze but added to the sweltering heat by stifling ventilation and overcoming the cooler head airs that we made by progress. Weak vapoury fumes rising from the funnel told of the state of things below bad coal, a weak crew, and a temperature at 103. Now and then a gasp- ing fireman struggled up from the stokehold to fall all but exhausted on the deck, only to be followed and driven below again by the Chief. There is no limit, no appeal, on a short-handed tramp making THE STOWAWAY JEW 229 tKe August passage, and the half-fainting wretch", breathing curses to his groans, would turn again to the slavery of fire and shovel. Stripped to the waist, black, with a reek of sweat pouring to his eyes and scoring cleanly furrows to his narrow puny shoulders, the stowaway clambered to the deck with strength scarcely left to mount the topmost rung. He had had an hour of the hell below, plying pick and shovel under the blows and curses of the brutalised stokehold gang. Groaning from sheer physical pain, he held his hands to his throbbing temples, sank bowed to the knees, and gazed long at the cool quiet 'depths of water overside, at the gently rippling sidewash as the steamer moved slowly over the calm sea. "Whaur's that chield that plays pianny. Coom oan, wull ye, else ar'll brak' iverry boan i' yer boady." The Chief, roaring threats, showe'd his ugly hea'd above the gratings. At sight of him the stowaway started affrightedly, grasping the side rail, with foot upraised as if to climb. From the bridge the Captain noted the action, and saw the agonised upturned eyes of the Jew. "Here, ca' canny, man. Ca' canny, Geordie, else ye'll have him o'er th' side. . . . Let 'm be, Chief. He's no use t' you, I see. . . . Hi, bosun! Bring that man along here. . . . Here, you ! Hi ! Oh, my God!" ... As the bosun, shouting in German, ran along the deck, the Jew, mistaking his purpose, waited no longer. Without word or sound he 230 'BROKEN STOWAGE' sprang from the rail, struck water witK a Hull splash, and the ship moved on. ... A second spash. . . . The bosun, finishing his run with a leap to the rail, paused to mark the black strug- gling figure in a swirl of broken water, then plunged to the rescue. A rush was made to the bridge by the sailormen working on deck, the Captain and Mate shouting orders: some one threw a lifebuoy, the engine pointer was rammed full astern, the helm put down. The boat, as is the way of tramps, was hard bedded in the chocks, and it took time to sway her out, man, and lower her. At last she took the water and shoved off on her errand. There was half a mile to go, for we had swung far to the westward on reversed engine. In the calm sea the men were easily seen two black specks hobbling slowly in the direction of the painted buoy. To us on deck it seemed but a stroke or two between the men and the buoy ; that the bosun was finding it a long way we could see by the frequent pauses by the drag of the second head so low in the water. Excitedly, we watched the boat approach them, the rowers urging her with a furious stroke that left a lash of white water behind. "Right !" A cry of relief from the Chief, while the boat canted to her gunwale with the weight of the two limp figures dragged aboard. THE STOWAWAY JEW 231 Steaming 'down, we soon picked up the boat and turned away south again. The Jew was far gone. He was unconscious when we carried him to a berth on the Chiefs settee. The bosun, hard-case hero, was none the worse. In the cool of the evening the Jew came round, and the Chief was soon on the bridge with the news. "All right, is he?" said the Captain. "Well, that's good. Give him a rest, and when he's better ye can put him to some light work messroom or that but no handlin' now, none o' that man- handlin'. Gad! Ye nearly did it that time, Geordie. Man, but ye' re a coorse divil !" "Aye, ar's coorse. An' ar need be if we're t' gat oot o' this hell-hole o' a Red Sea. Hoo farr noo t' Jebel Teer, Captain, . . . t' Jebel Teer an* that fine breeze ye' re lookin' for?" Eight days of the torture we had, then to open sea, running out the last of the monsoon, the en- gines throbbing merrily under a full head of steam, and Geordie, no longer the brutal Chief of the bloody days of the Red Sea, become a man again and hail fellow with Albrecht, the stowaway Jew. At light work washing paint, sweeping decks, fetch all and carry Albrecht worked his passage, and more than a waif's share of the Chief's outfit went to clothe him. We got used to him, and al- most looked on him as a shipmate before his voy- 232 'BROKEN STOWAGE' age was up. At Singapore he took the. road. No one saw him after the last warp was turned. No one asks questions at Tanjong Pagar. A year later I crossed hawse with Albrecht again. It was at Bombay, at the Grand National Bar a grog-shop in a side street off the Fort, the resort of bluejackets and soldiers, with a stray merchantman or a broken-down English jockey to leaven the crowd. At a piano in a corner of the Bar sat Albrecht, He had on a shiny dress suit, was clean-shaven, and looked prosperous. Evi- dence of his popularity showed in the array of beer glasses in varying stages of depletion that stood atop of the piano. A bluejacket, at request of 'shipmates all,' rose to sing, and crossed over to the piano to arrange for an accompaniment. As the easier way, he whistled a snatch of a doleful but popular air. Albrecht had learned a little English. "Oh, ya-as," he said, "Ah know dot. You brik de nose mil mudder, aind't it?" strik- ing into a fanciful accompaniment to the sailor's rendering of the ballad, 'You'll break the news to mother' As his fingers wandered over the keys, I noticed a strip of flesh plaster on the back of his deft right hand. Evidently Albrecht had worked another passage! XXX THE MERRY ANDREW AWN of a grey November morning, a misty wind from the south-east bringing scent of the damp earth and mouldering leaves aboard, as we enter the Manchester Canal, with the Merry Andrew steaming valiantly astern. She is an old boat that, the stern tug that took our ropes at Eastham; an old boat with an old, weather-beaten skipper, who stamps tap, tap on the crazy bridge deck, a signal to the man below to come ahead with his engines. A long string of barges towed by a business- like tug-boat is making for the smaller lock, and our pilot, grumbling loudly at their inconvenient manoeuvres, decided to 'ease down.' Three blasts of the steam-whistle, which the Merry Andrew feebly repeats; the old skipper stamps with his heel tap, tap, tap, and with both paddles re- versed and a cracking of the stern hawsers the old craft tears up the water and makes the foam fly in a gallant effort to take the 'way' off our vessel. It takes some power to arrest the momentum of eleven thousand tons, and the Merry Andrew does her best; the old skipper seems to be quite proud of her behaviour as we barely clear the sheering 233 234 'BROKEN STOWAGE,' barges. One 'blast' from the bridge, and we steam smoothly on past the misty woods and yellow gorse of Eastham, the high banks, and the bleak Mersey flats, where a few shivering sheep are huddling in the sheltered places, too deeply weather-bound to heed the liner surging past. At Ellesmere the small craft moored to the wharves tighten up their fastenings with a vicious jerk, and seem as if they would like to follow us up the hill to the distant city. As we take the 'ugly curve' at Runcorn the children on their way to school catch sight of us, and loud and gleeful are the shouts ' from the canal banks. Here is a fine sight before school-time; something stirring to begin the day with. The big liner is interesting, of course, with her crew of grinning 'blackies,' but for them the centre of attraction is the stern tug their old friend the Merry 'Andrew. What matters that her smoke escapes from apertures undreamt of by her designers, that her thin steam-whistle is wheez- ing always, that her stem is twisted out of perpen- dicular and her timbers started at the butts? To them she is the embodiment of maritime grace and elegance, for has she not two tall funnels, while the big ships have only one! With gleeful shoufrs they run along the banks. "Merry Andr a, a-hoy! Ahoy, the Merry Andr a! What's thy carg ah?" The old skipper waves a hand in ac- knowledgment and their cries follow us as we round the bend. THE MERRY ANDREW 235 "What's thy cargo?" shouted the children, a timely question to ask of an old sea-rover, and, by the sea-stained bulwarks and rusty ribs of her, a gallant cargo enough. Of old memories and salt- sea sentiment; of sad farewells and tear-stained faces at the pierheads as the tall ships crept sea- ward in her wake; of sailor shouts and hoarse orders, a rousing sea 'chantey' as the yards went creaking to the masthead and sails were trimmed for the long board to the south'ard; a cargo of joyful mariners welcomed back to home waters, of glad shouts at the dock gates when she had dragged the rusty-ribbed wanderer into port. A cargo to be proud of, though the years have brought the Merry Andrew to the lowly duties of a stern drag on the Ship Canal. The mist is gradually deepening into a fog as we approach Latchford, and our progress is slow and wary. Time and again the Merry Andrew has to back away to keep us off the banks, and the dense smoke pouring from her battered funnels tells of the strain on her. We meet an outward- bound steamer at an awkward part. It is a tight fit for two 'fifty- footers' in the narrow waterway, and there is much churning of foam, cracking of hawsers, and shrill 'tooting' of whistles before we 'draw apart and proceed on our ways. Bitter cold and all, the pilot mops his heated brow and signals for the Merry Andrew to follow on again. The fog grows denser, and the mournful wail 236 ' BROKEN STOWAGE' of our syren finds "dismal echo as we pass under the dripping bridges. At Rixton a coasting steamer passes us with unseemly haste, taking two of our fenders and the best of our paint down stream with her. This, with the fog and waning 'daylight, decides our pilot to tie up at Partington for the night. Slowly we make our way to the bank, guided by the rumble of wagons at the coal- tips. In answer to our hail a boat puts off and takes the warps -ashore, and amid shouting from the 'bridge' and bank and clatter of straining winches we heave alongside and make securely fast. Some one shouts from forward "That'll do, the Merry Andrew; lie off an' stand by for daylight in the morning!" An answering, "Ay, ay!" from somewhere in the gloom, and at three taps of the old skipper's heel the Merry Andrew backs away and vanishes into the mist astern. Next time we bore up for Eastham the familiar old 'seahorse' was not there to meet us. A stout and serviceable craft with a brass-bound skipper and the beam of a young Cunarder took our ropes. No one seemed to know quite what had happened to the Merry Andrew, but a pier-hand mentioned that he had seen a familiar-looking, black-and- white funnel among some 'scrap' on the Garston beach last time he was over seeing his wife's sister's 'usband. XXXI AN 'ERCTIC VOYAGE OR some time I had noticed that old Wully Shaw was missing from the stand. The cor- ner of the Loch Line sheds, where the odd men and riggers stood about waiting for employment, looked somehow less familiar without the weather- beaten face and sturdy figure of the old sailorman. I wondered if at last he had found the race too swift for him. Some years had gone since we were shipmates together, and Wully was then well on in age. Skelly McNaught, another old shipmate, gave me a courteous wink as I went by one day, so I stopped to ask how things were doing. Rotten bad, he said. He told me he hadn't done a hand's turn at the 'tred' since the last French barque had come in from New Caledonia and that was a month bye. As evidence of such hard case he fumbled with his empty pipe. I was touched to see an old shipmate so far down. He brightened. I asked him about old Shaw. "Ach, Wully," he said. "He's got a fine job, now. I wissht ther was mair o' them. They're diggin' a new dock doon at Bylie Shearer's auld 237 238 'BROKEN STOWAGE', slip, an' Wully his gotten a watchman's job. . . . Sets a' th' gate in a wee hoose an' watches th' tool chests, an' sees that thae wee bandy-leggit Kel- vinha' weans disnae steal th' men's denners oot o' ther jaiket pockets. . . . Whiles he's on the nicht shift. . . . Gantin' ower a guid-gaun fire or ha'en a bit crack wi' th' nicht polis'. . . . Ye s'ud gain in an' see th' auld yin if ye're doon that wye. Thae navvies that's diggin' th' dock will no' listen till his yarns. He'll be gled tae hae a crack wi' wiselike folk." This I promised to do, but many things came in the way, and it was only when a dry-docking job took me down the Pointhouse Road at an un- earthly hour of the morning that I remembered old Wully, and looked in at the railway gate as I passed. There he was, crouching over a fine red fire, the ruddy glare of it lighting up his keen old face, now lined and seamed by the years. "Ye're therr," was all he said by way of greet- ing, but it had a Clydeside significance of its own. I sat down by him on the shiny bench. There was a chill wind from west and the fire was need- ful. A row of blackened tea cans stood in front of the blaze, warming up for the men who were working by a glare of lights at the water's edge. I had plenty of time. Across the river I could see" the vessel that was to come out of dry dock before we could go in. She was not yet afloat. AN 'ERCTIC VOYAGE 239 We talked awhile of our voyages, of gales and fogs and that. I said something about navigation. "Man," said Wully, "you fellies think ye ken a' aboot it. As sune's ye get a bit step up th' ledder therr's nae holden ye in. See us a bit o' paper an' a pencil, says you, an' I'll tell ye whar we are. Ye' re jist ups wi' yer sextan' an' therr ye hiv it. ... I min' wanst I made a voyage tae th' west'ard. It wis in th' Glenbelmar. She wis a new boat . . . jist up frae Russels at th' Poart an' we wis gaun oot tae Montreal in ballast. The Captain o' her was one o' ye fancy navigators. Ay workin' awa' 'dancin' roun' aboot the compass squintin' up at th' sun through wee bits o' glesses dunt, 'dunt, duntin' wi' th' deep-sea lead every time we cam' within a hunner mile o' land. . . . Whit is't ye ca' that wye o' daein', when ye steer awa' up tae th' 'erctic on th' coorse tae America? . . . First ye gang tae th' nor'west . . . then west. Syne, be Goad, ye steer sou'west tae mak' th' land." "Oh! That will be Great Circle Sailing. The shortest way between two points on the globe." "Ou aye. Ye've got it a' aff fine. Great Circle, ;eh! Shortes' way. Huh! Shortest way is richt. . . . Weel, we set aff. It wis the summer-time an' we hid fine weather tae begin wi'. Syne it got cauld an' caulder. Goad ! amaist f reezin' an' hit July month. The Captain wis ay layin' it aff tae th' Met whit he wis gaun tae do an' whit he wis 240 'BROKEN STOWAGE* no'. He would talk by th' 'oor aboot th' time tHat wis lost at sea through the want o' proper naviga- tion. Hit jis wants thinkin' oot he w'd say. Goad! he wis a warmer. . . . The auld Met was yin o' thae yins that canna keep a job: he took ower mony o' his observations through tumbler bot- toms. A guid sailorman though." A shrill engine-whistle at the gate brought the old man to his feet. He unbolted and threw wide the boards to allow a small bogie engine and a line of trucks to enter. In passing, the engine-driver handed out a billet of wood with a cord becket attached. "Ye see I'm a bit o' haun' wi' th' figgers m'sel," said Wully, as he hung the billet up on the wall of his hut. "Them's for tallyin' the loads, a' plain sailin'. . . . Ou, aye, we wis gaun oot ta th' west'ard in th' Glenbelmar. Weel syne, we got in amang th' ice when we wis aboot five days frae th' Tail o' th' Bank. Big humplocks tae. That wis a' richt 's long as it wis clear weather we could see whit tae dae; but afore lang th' fog cam' doon an' the gem' stertit. It got thicker an' thicker an' us gaun slow an' stoppin'. Th' Cap- tain wis nae fule, for a' he wis so ta'en up wi' his fancy navigation. Man, he hid th' turn o' haund- lin' th' boat, an' he twistet her aboot as if she wis meant tae be sail't that wye. It wis slow, an' stop, an' astern, an' aheid, till th' engineers below wis ferr crazy. When we got intil th' thick o't, we AN 'ERCTIC VOYAGE 241 could hear the bergs plunkin' an' crackin, a' aboot us. "Syne we got oot o' th' ice-field, but th' fog still held on. Day efter day th' Captain wis oot dodgin' wi' his sextan' an' his wee bit gless, but th' fog wis ay too much for him. We wis fourteen days oot when he stopped her. 'Get th' lead over, mister,' says he. 'We maun be somewhere aboot th' Straits o' Bellisle,' says he. We duntet an' duntet till we got aboot eichty fathoms. 'That'll do,' says he. 'We'll wait till it clears.' "Th' next mornin' it clears up a wee. Awa' aheid o' us, we could see th' land. Therr wis no' much tae go by, hit bein' misty an' a turn o' thin rain, but the Captain hid it that he'd made guid his landfall. Therr wis a break i' th' coast up tae th' norrard. 'Bellisle, fur a fiver,' says he, stottin' up an' doon th' bridge as pleased as could be.' "A very good landfall, too," I said, rising to go. The tugs at the dry dock were smoking up, getting ready to drag the now floating steamer to her berth. I would have to hurry on. "Haud on a wee," said Wully, putting a re- straining hand on my arm. "Ye've gotten plenty o' time. They havnae got th' caisoon up yet. I ken that caisoon. Mony's th' time I've waitet t' ma hauns an' feet wis blue at that Number Yin Doak. She'll no' stir oot o' that for hauf an' 'oor yet. Haud on till ye hear th' 'pant.' "It wis clearin' up fine. We saw a fishin' 242 ' BROKEN STOWAGE' schooner in under th' land. 'Starboard, you,' says he. I wis at th' wheel. 'We'll go in,' says he to th' Met. 'We'll go in an' ask th' schooner for the bearin' o' Bellisle lighthouse.' "We drapped doon till th' schooner wis within hail. 'Ahoy!' says the Captain. 'The schooner, ahoy!' says he. 'Can ye give me th' bearin' an' distance t' Bellisle?' "The man that wis steerin' th' schooner looked up, bewildert like. . . . 'Bellisle,' says he. 'Did yew saay Bellisle, Captain? . . . Hully smoke! Bellisle's a hunner an' ten mile t' th' south'ard.' " XXXII A RUN IN "T EE fore brace, the watch there," shouted ^ the Mate, with a curse at the fickle wind that was bearing us from our course. "Tail on, ye idle hounds. Tail on an' haul." Quickly the watch mustered at the call, and the yards were hauled forward to a fresh south breeze, a head wind for Liverpool our port of purpose. The Shirley was homeward bound, twenty-six days out from New York. So far, winds had been fair and strong, and we had made our landfall Tory Island as if steered to a hairsbreadth, but now our luck was out. Under shortened sail, the Shirley was turned to marking time, sailing tack and tack off the entrance to the North Channel. And to-morrow would be Christmas Eve the day when we had fondly hoped to be strutting on Liv- erpool streets with our women-folk, a twelve- months' 'pay day' in our pockets. "What's th' odds, anyway?" said the bosun. "More days more dollars, ain't it?" The bosun, being a Nova Scotiaman, could afford to be philosophic, but we, who had dreamed of wives and bairns greeting us on the quay and 243 244 'BROKEN STOWAGE' bearing us home in triumph, looked glumly at great ragged storm-clouds banking in the sou' west. "Head winds an' half a gale," continued our Job's comforter. "I guess yew byes won't see yewr homes this side o' th' Noo Year. Y' kin make up yewr minds f'r Chrismas on salt water agen. Salt horse an' Liverpool pantiles f'r yewr Chrismas dinner, I reckon after all yewr guff 'bout turkeys an' roas' goose an' plum duffs an' that." "Oh, it ain't so bad 's all that, bosun," said Joe Buttle, who was :ever hopeful. "Th' grub ain't half bad, an' mebbe th' ol' man'll give us a tot o' grog f'r a merry Christmas. Mebbe we'll 'ave a fair win' as '11 roll us up t' th' Langton Pier'eads in no time." "Mebbe. Mebbe thar ain't 'alf a gale o' win' behind them clouds; mebbe this 'ere barque kin go 'ead t' win'; but one thing's sure, ol' hoss. Yew won't get no tot o' grog out o' this ere starvation packet. There's them aft there as kin keep th' cork in th' bloody bottle. My oath!" With a half-laugh, the bosun turned away to his quarters, leaving us to talk of 'slants' and 'chances.' The short midwinter day had drawn to a close. Out on the lee bow the Innistrahull Light showed up across the darkling waters. The wind was freshening, and already the Shirley was hammer- ing at the short Channel sea, casting icy sprays over the bows. Away in the south we marked A RUN IN 245 steamers' lights crossing the Channel, unhindered by trick of wind or weather. Oh, that we too had a rattling screw at the stern of her to drive us on to our hearts' desire, in spite of the vexing wind! In twos we paced the decks, stamping feet and trapping' our arms for a meed of warmth in the bitter weather. The night turned misty, then rain fell, at first in a thin drizzle, but strengthening to a lashing downpour as the clouds broke away from the misty south. The Channel lights shut out from our view, the horizon narrowed to a near circle of heaving water. It was typical southerly weather, portent of a sore storm battering before we won into port. Nearly eight bells, the Mate ordered us to 'see all clear for going about,' and, when the other watch joined us on deck "All hands 'bout ship" was the cry. In a burst of savage rain we manned the braces and swung the great yards when the order came, but there was no cheerful echo of a hauling song as we bore back on the stiff, half- frozen ropes. At the wind again on the other tack (steering back on the line our keel had already ploughed) we were sent below, and turned into our damp and cheerless bunks with a last sleepy, "Hard lines." "Ahoy oi oi ahoy ! Turn out, you sleepers there! Turn out! Ahoy oi oi ahoy!" 246 'BROKEN STOWAGE' We had been scarce asleep it seem eel before our turn was up, and there was John Collins of the other watch, thundering with his fists on the lid of a sea-chest and calling us to turn out. "Ahoy, you sleepers there!" he roared. "Turn out an' see wot th' starboard watch kin do f'r ye ! One bell gone an' th' barque pilin' along afore a fine fair win' !" 'Fair wind.' That did it. At first we thought it a trick to rouse the deadheads but no. As, half-slept and shivering, we rolled out and put foot to the deck, we knew by the reeling of the hull that it was right a fine fair wind. "Gad ! She's roll- ing home all right. When did it come, Collins?" "Oh, soon after you Jonahs went below. 'Ow 'd'ye expek a fair win' we' en you wos on deck?" Skipping through the forecastle door in time to escape a flying sea-boot, Collins returned on deck, and we hurriedly buckled on our sodden weather harness and went out to relieve the watch. All hands were in fine spirits, and talking assuredly of a 'home' Christmas. The change had come sud- denly and unexpectedly. "We 'ad no end o' wind an' rain at first," said one of the starbowlines; "rotten cold rain too, sleet a'most, an' then th' win' slips back inter th' west. 'Good iron,' says we, an' now it's blowin' arf a gale from th' nor'west, an' she's smokin' along f'r th' Mersey bar. Keep 'er goin', me sons," he A RUN IN 247 said as he threw off his glistening oilskins and pre- pared for needed sleep. 'Smoking through it,' she was reeling along south under a press of canvas. Captain Lewis was great for 'crackin' on' when a course could be made, and the Shirley was staggering with all sail she could carry. Running down the Irish Lights, the wind blowing strong and true, we sailor-folk had little to do but reckon our pay and make plans (that fared no further) as to how we might best spend our money. Dawn of Christmas Eve broke on us as we reeled past the Chickens o' Man, run- ning swiftly before the strong gale from nor'- west. Old Man Lewis stepped up and down the poop, rubbing his hands in high good humour, and pausing now and then to admire the set of his to'gallans'l, stiff and straining, each drawing a famous load. At times he would slap the taffrail, shouting aloud "Into it, old girl. Get into it I tell 'oo." The surly Chief Mate was in his glory. From first grey break of day he had been at our heels, man-driving for all he was worth. Strangely, we were keen to do his bidding on this the last day of his hectoring and bullying. At his direction we cleared the anchors for service, and thought little of it when, at our miserly 'dinner, a burst of green water came spurting into the forecastle through the opened hawse-pipes. 248 ' BROKEN STOWAGE* Sixty-four miles from Chickens to the bar, and at a rate of knots we rode down the stormy leagues, and soon the plunging Lightship came into view. A stout little steamer, showing the red and white of pilots on station, came out to meet us, but, though the wind was lessening, the sea ran over- high for boat service, and the most they could do was to steer ahead of us, showing the way. At this, we had to shorten sail in order to keep a rear position. Hot-foot from the south'ard a tug-boat bore up to us, seeking a tow, but we had the wind right for the Mersey Channel, and Captain Lewis canny Welshman would only promise the tugman a job in the river. Formby Lightship, fretting at her stout cables, was passed before the sea was smooth enough for our guide to lower a boat and send a pilot aboard us. "Egad, Captain," said the pilot as he clambered aboard, "you're in a hurry for your Christmas pudding, by the pace you're going. You gave us all we could do to keep ahead of you. Are you for dockin' to-night?" "Iss. Iss, indeed if they haf got a berth for us in the dock. My owners will be lookin' for us. They would get my signal from Malin Head." Old Lewis, already in his well-creased, long- shore clothes, was as eager as the rest of us to set foot ashore. "All right, Captain. You can get some of the A RUN IN 249 canvas off her now. Tops'ls will be spread enough for bringing up in the river." Rounding the last of the Lightships, the Mersey river opened out a scene of animation that held keenest interest for us. Majestic liners lay an- chored off the Stage awaiting their turn to land or embark passengers; coasting steamers backed out of the half-tide docks, turned, and sped away to sea on their errands; huge cargo vessels swung to the ebb outside the dock gates attending the tide; bustling tugs and ferries stood across and up and down the fairway, turning, canting, backing, draw- ing to the piers and out again, like the scurry of an unsettled brood. Steam everywhere, and belching smoke; not a sailing ship in the river but ourselves; no fine spars to draw a sailor's eye; no clean-cut clipper stems sheering in this tideway. We had only a short glimpse of the land scenes for which our eyes had longed. Already the sun had gone to the west, and lights were springing up on ship and shore. As we came by New Brighton, the sky behind was aglow with the promise of a fine Christmas day. In the river, the wind that had brought us so bravely in fell light, and Old Lewis was forced to accept the services of the tug that had first spoken us. Dearly would he have loved to bring his barque to her anchor under sail to show the liner's people that there were yet a few seamen afloat, but the press of river traffic and short 250 'BROKEN STOWAGE' berths to anchor in mack that a risky manoeuvre. So, steering in the wake of the Kate Jolife, we stemmed the fast-running ebb, and soon our an- chor was fast bedded in English ground. At midnight, when Liverpool's bells were ring- ing out the Message, we hove up our anchor and were towed into dock. "A Merry Christmas, Captain," yelled the Dockmaster through his megaphone as we drew on to the pierheads. "A Merry Christmas to ye, and ye're just in time." XXXIII "HI! PADD AAY!" a daelin' man 's daelin', an' a man interferes wit' a daelin' man whin a daelin' man's daelin, a daelin' man's got th' roight to' give 'im a bit av a clip av a crack wit' a slip av a bit av a sthick, d'ye moind!" Thus Paddy, when the Birkenhead longshoremen (wickedly, and of malice aforethought,) stowed a number of the old man's trading parcels along with packages marked BOMBAY and KARACHI in the hold of the Australia. True, their rough pleasantry was dis- covered in time before cargo was blocked up in the 'tween decks, and Paddy was able to imple- ment his contracts and deliver, seriatim, (a) Two boxes of Lifebuoy soap and a pack- age of matches to the order of the 'Thoid Affisur.' (b) A writing pad, envelopes, a Bee clock, a tin of bianco and a pair of braces, all consigned to the 'Surgint.' (c) An ironclad watch (duly repaired) and a guaranteed gold-cased albert for the Fifth 'In- gineer.' All were duly delivered; but the loss of his goods, however temporary, meant much more than 251 252 ' BROKEN STOWAGE ' a mere loss of profit to Paddy. His concern would be of that nature that looks forward to possibilities to ultimate results. Being myself of an imagina- tive turn, I could read into the old man's mood as he stood about in the starboard alleyway and pon- dered his commitments. I could conceive (a) his concern about the matchless and soap- less condition of the Third Mate; (b) the dismay with which he contemplates the absence of braces on the person of the Surgeon; (c) his utter despair in realising that (though his misfortune) the Fifth Engineer might con- ceivably turn out late for his watch in the engine room. Happily, there was no need for the old man to lose his sleep. Under pressure from the head fore- man, the dockers restored the abstracted packages and all was well, and, in connection with the inci- dent, there only remains a memory of the famous statement in which Paddy expressed his view of the sacred rights of property, and propounded a novel law of free and unrestricted trade. From that same statement a text might be drawn; a text to [expose Paddy's character and his views. Be it noted, the savage and lucid insistence with which he eases off the safety-valve of his righteous indig- nation. The ferocious dentals of it! "Whin a daelin' man 's daelin', an' a man interferes with' a daelin' man whin a daelin' man 's daelin' " His opening might well serve as a model preamble to "HI! PADD AAY!" 253 any high enactment; but it is in his claim of penalty that one may feel the lessening sense of injury, the influence of mercy that not all laws contemplate. It is wonderfully graduated. The stirring indict- ment that is almost like a severe and summary pun- ishment in itself, toning down by its excess of qualification to a "bit av a clip av a crack" with a "slip av a bit av a shtick." Finally, there is the measure submitted for your approval the kindly interrogation of your concurrence. Of all the dockside pedlars who did business on the fringes of the East Float at Birkenhead, Paddy stood out as possessed of the most original turn of mind not alone in the ways of trading, but in matters of habit and outlook. His business was to him much more than a mere method of earning his daily bread; he brought an artistry to his 'dealinY that placed him above the ruck. While the chemist's boy, with a rounded black tin sample case over his shoulder, confined his trad- ing to the appeal of the white lettering on his box, or to brief intervals in the perusal of a penny 'blood' (he being but a hireling employed by the week), Paddy impressed his personality on poten- tial customers by a conversational ability that might, under proper direction, have earned him fame. I have known many professional 'enter- tainers' who had not a third of Paddy's ready wit. An original! Trading was to him no lowly state of thraldom, no soul-destroying solicitation, no 254 'BROKEN STOWAGE' mum catch-ha'penny business of handing in a card and awaiting a result. He would ever have a big speaking part in the drama of life. Everything that happened within his ken was sufficiently im- portant for discussion. The doings of his neigh- bours (invariably unfriendly) in the lowly dockside street in which he lived, the interference of the police in such innocent 'divarsions' as gambling and 'up and down' fighting and wife beating, were all subject matter for interested comment. The open- ing afforded for receipt of orders, if skilfully and discreetly veiled, was always there with Paddy fingering the soiled leaves of his penny note book and ever and anon moistening the tip of his 'black- lead' in the corner of his mouth. His particular business ? Well ! Paddy kept no shop nor did he believe in making the rounds of the docks heavily laden with an assortment of samples. His way of trading was to establish standard brands that called for no tentative sub- mission for approval. Not that he was at all con- servative he would accept orders for anything and everything but rather that his interest in our well-being might be accepted by his purveyal of the best. In the years of Paddy's trading, he fulfilled a service that was keenly required. Ships' officers had then little leisure in the daytime. Practically no day-leave could be obtained from the ruthless Chief Mate, and the engineers were as steadily em- ployed in their department. The gangway was "HI! PADD AAY!" 255 'forbidden ground until the longshoremen had stopped work after covering the hatchways in the slipshod Mersey fashion. Then, then was not the time to be shopping and carrying parcels : was not Vesta Tilley at the Empire or George Formby at the Argyle? Paddy, with his soiled notebook stepped into the breach and did much to advantage the few hours of our leisure ashore. Major and minor, our needs were served by his ready acceptance of, all manner of commissions. Doubtless he made good profits for we were never close buyers and were always prepared to make allowance for the drudgery of carriage on the dockside, away from the shopping centres, and the most of our 'de- mands were for common goods and plain: but, on occasion, Paddy might safely be entrusted with a difficult charge. If your Aunt Maria had im- posed upon you a commission to purchase a parro- quet in Bombay and the distractions of that pleasant port had succeeded in driving her instruc- tion from your mind, Paddy could save your face and aid in maintaining intact that little remem- brance in Aunt Maria's last will and testament. At the word 'go,' he would proceed across the river to the bird-market and procure for you the very specimen. He knew something about them too and would rarely be taken in by the dealer's spe- cious warrantry. Adept at stage management, he would carry his 256 'BROKEN STOWAGE' purchase aboard in some state at the very busiest hour, just to show the dockers (his inveterate enemies) that he was a man in whom confidence was reposed by their superiors. It was perhaps the same motive that governed his execution of the minor commissions that may be summed up in the combination of 'soap and matches.' Delivery of these he deferred until the afternoon of sailing 'day. Amid all the hurry and rush of getting the ship ready for tide time, Paddy with his many bundles, brown paper and loose strings hanging [everywhere they could hang, stood out as a man of affairs. It flattered his sense of importance that he should be there at the last finishing off, with the dockers stowing that long-mislaid consignment of hoop-iron and old John and his mates trying to coax a nervous race horse to enter the stall in which to take a standing passage to Bombay. In the matter of 'side-lines,' Paddy had many. While it is true that he had an aversion to carrying heavy samples about with him, his innate sense of the fitness of things his originality perhaps, suggested an easier and more attractive method of displaying his finer wares. Except when one of the many crises, that frequently overcame him, was in process of development, he dressed rather smartly and had a way of passing his hand over his chin to draw your attention to the fact that he had shaved well and truly. In the fold of his neck-tie he would display a modest stick-pin, from wing to "HI! PADD AAY!" 257 wing of his waistcoat there would perhaps be an albert of some pretensions, with a gilt badge or two strung up in the exact centre those chaste shield designs that, awarded for prowess in five-a- side football tournaments, are much affected by very young engineer officers. As opportunity offered, Paddy would maybe draw a quite good Waltham or Riversdale watch from his pocket, scan the time, and present the timepiece for your inspection. The jewellery and valuables were no heirlooms, no greatly treasured possessions. For but a modest turn of profit, the old man was prepared to shed all or any integral part of his magnificence. I did not care to see Paddy in the days of his prosperity such as these, knowing as I did that they portended a temporary suspension of business and many regrettable incidents in the old man's way of life. The rounds of his activity were so clearly defined by his appearance that it called for no great effort of thought to establish the exact season of his affairs. Let us begin with the spring of his accustomed cycle the days after a long period of revelry and subsequent idleness. For a time he haunts the wings of his work-a-day stage he hangs around the shed doors or loafs furtively about the cargo skids, as though summoning all his courage to face the footlights of publicity. There is maybe a day .or two. of this. Then, pulling down the front of 258 'BROKEN STOWAGE ' his waistcoat setting his hat a-trim, he comes over the gangway, shewing an unusual nervous- ness as though not quite sure that permission to board would be granted. He eyes the quarter- master on duty there with a wildly apprehensive look. He crosses the decks quickly to avoid the frankly mirthful eyes of such of the dockers who have jobs at the hatchways. Once in the officers' alleyway, a small measure of assurance may re- turn to him. "Shure now," he may say to himself, ". . . th' ship 's been away frum thim parts for a mont' or two. They '11 nat be afther knowin' I Ve been on th' ran-dan!" Confiding soul! He does not know that his doings have been the talk of the waterside for many days ! He carries no bag or parcel; his clothes are dusty and ill-fitting; his chin shews the stubble of perhaps a week's growth. Paddy is 'down on his luck.' Gone the display of cheap jewellery. Gone the alert and confiding air with which he was wont to start his 'daelin' ! Gone the self- assurance that mustered a counter-quip for every scornful remark of the dockers. With a whimsical half-smile, he goes around to see what can be done to rebuild his credit. He is in process of 'steadyin' up ! Not yet the 'daelin' s' in expensive articles. Capital has first to be acquired by small transac- tions trade is limited and confined. A few orders for 'soap and matches' are taken, there is rjer- "HI! PADD AAY!" 259 Haps a whispered suggestion on the matter of a small loan, ". . . t' kaape me roight wit' th' daelers as I'm a-daelin' by!" His summer comes and Paddy remains clear- headed and active. He has worked up through 'soap and matches' to the more profitable lines of writing-pads, electric torches, Bee clocks, and the cheaper grades of fountain pens. He washes daily and his chin is kept at a moderate degree of smoothness. The small loans have been repaid with an interest of milesian compliment. His step is jaunty as he comes along the dockside. The 'ould bag' recovered from the pawnshop re- sponds to his grip, and no longer he eyes the quartermaster apprehensively as he steps over the gangway. He faces up to the dockers with every bit of his old 'back chat.' "Arrah, yes omathauns,'* he will shout, at an appearance of their candid in- terest, ". . . did yes nivir in ye'r loife 'do a day's worrrk loike me?" Autumn! I call it autumn because the season approaches the fall of his good estate. Doubtless Paddy thinks it the time of his life. If he were a scholar, he would acclaim the period as the perihelion of his orbit the zenith of his progress through an uncertain cycle of time and circum- stance. Things go well. He has invested in a suit of super-sporting cut. Jewellery? He has ven rings on his fingers, all of which he is pre- pared to discard in the processes of trade. On 2 6o 'BROKEN STOWAGE' busy days, he employs a small boy to bear a han'd with the parcels. He nods patronisingly to the quartermaster, and glares defiantly at the dockers when he comes aboard. He is no longer content to put through a small order from the butler or chief baker; he deals only as he will tell you "wit' th' Affisurs." We do not learn at first hand what happens to the old man in the winter of his accustomed round. He wanes perceptibly before the total eclipse. There are indications of an abnormal state in his irregular attendance at the dockside and in certain lapses of memory, not amounting exactly to care- lessness. Then for the first time in perhaps a year or eighteen months he comes no longer to the ships. I have seen him occasionally at this crisis in his affairs; a distant view of a familiar figure, sham- bling in the by-streets. Paddy en deshabille is not a very pleasant sight. His disappearance from the scenes of his trading splendour is marked by a crop of rumours. In most of the stories, we do not recognise the old man as we know him. In some, however, there is his distinct trade mark of unique originality. While the money lasts Paddy 'does things on a scale of prodigality. His debauch is no swinish devotion to sleep. The foreman of the 'dockers told me he had seen the old man having his 'dinner in fine style. As a measure of home discipline per- "HI1 PADD AAY!" 261 haps, He ha'd ma'de his wife set out the table with a clean cloth in the middle of the Shore Road at Seacombe. Lorries and trucks and waggons with' goods for the Float went splashing by in the mud, whilst his wife tip-toed in the slimy puddles to serve him chops! XXXIV AT OLD QUAY A T Old Quay, by Runcorn Bridge, there is * ^ mooring space for large vessels overtaken by fog or nightfall in their passage of the Ship Canal. Between Eastham and Latchford there is no other place where they will lie quietly until daylight comes again, and, when the short winter days draw to a close, the pier hands at Old Locks, hear- ing the hoarse note of a deep-waterman's whistle beyond the bends, lay their heaving lines in readi- ness and stand by to earn a modest half-crown by running the steamer's hawsers to the mooring posts. On a chill afternoon in late October, waning daylight and an untimely tide at Eastham send us to this 'lie-by,' and before dark we are well fast to stout iron bollards, the only standards of the sec- tion that will hold a weighty ship against the surge and indraft of passing craft. As we come to, the light is fast fading from the western sky. Across the bleak Mersey flats, where screaming gulls circle and wheel, the town of Widnes gaunt and grimy in broad of day has assumed a less forbidding aspect under the last feeble rays of the wintry sun. The harsh rigid outlines of works and factory, the 262 AT OLD QUAY 263 smouldering waste-heaps, the stark unsightly rows of brickwork, are mellowed in prospect by the evening mist, and the great pall of overhanging smoke wrack merges kindly into a grey curtain of advancing night. The arches and high castellated towers of Runcorn Bridge stand warm in colour against the clear northern sky, then deepen to a sombre grey, and that in turn to sharp black sil- houettes as the light fades and it is dark. Lights spring up on the river banks, shimmer- ing, reflected in the stream that moves surely and silently in flood to cover the sandbanks and the water road to Warrington. Out in the river chan- nels the black shadows of sails pass by barges 'drifting lazily on the tide, for the wind has fallen away with the sun's setting. Sailing lights mark their progress, faint green flickerings, for such as should show the red, lie anchored or aground awaiting the sluggish tide to lift their laden keels and bear them seaward. Near at hand, in the Canal dockyards and workshops, the clang of busy hammers and rattle of machine tools strike a strenuous note, in contrast with the silence of our 'deserted quay. Their great working lights cast glare and shadow on the surface of the water, throwing into vivid relief the fleet of tug-boats and barges that lie awaiting their turn of repair. From down-stream a weedy whistle sounds, and soon the Dublin boat comes slowly by the bends thumping with her great side paddles and churn- 264 'BROKEN STOWAGE' ing the Canal to a white froth and foam. She is a picturesque old Irish ruffian with a fine smell of cattle, the lowing of a close-packed herd comes from her as she steers cautiously on her night passage to Manchester. Our mooring hawsers creak to a steady strain when the draft comes. We move, a foot or so, till the stout ropes and firm quay fasts hold their own. Old Quay can hold us : we lie still again ! Six ! With a suddenness that marks a day's toil thankfully over, the clamour at the dockyards stops. The working flares go out and we hear the clatter of the workmen as homeward, talking noisily, they tramp through the lanes. A low rumble of carts passing over the cobbles marks the last load brought in: gates are swung to with a decisive jar, and the dockyard, so late the scene of vigorous action, stands black and silent. After work the play. On vacant land by the arches of the bridge a glare of light springs up. There are the 'wakes' roundabouts and swings, ringboard and shooting galleries getting ready for an eve- ning's business, and the strident notes of 'A Lassie from Lancashire,' brazenly orchestral, are borne on the wind to us. The buttresses of the high bridge come to relief in heavy masses of light and shadow as the arcs of the fair spread their glow: jets of white steam spurt from the power engine of the roundabouts a moment and the shrill whistle reaches us, but these notes of .ecstasy AT OLD QUAY 265 '(space bars to the orchestrion's bellow) are but trial essays at present, for the Runcorn folk will be busy at their evening meal. It is now half-flood, and a messenger comes clog-clamping over the flags to warn us that he is "lattin' th' water oot o' th' canal." For that we shall have to heave tight our stern fasts and bind her to the Quay. From upstream and down barges and fly-boats assemble, sheering into the Old Lock with shouting and fending and pushing of long poles. The lockmaster herds them into his fold with a fine touch of raillery. "Coom on, there. Coom on," he shouts to a laggard barge- man. "If tha doan't look aout, tha'll be looked (locked) aout." With a creak of tense chain, the lock gates swing to : the masts of the barges and black fun- nels of their escorts sink slowly beneath the quay wall, as the lockmaster drains to the level of the fast-deepening river. Anon, the outer gates arc opened, and, marshalled by their fussing tug-boats, the barges steer into the river channel and wind, a procession of blinking red lights, under the arches of the bridge. Others take their places in the locks, entering from the river. The lock- master sees to it that here is economy of water and power. The inward-bound barges are less in number than the craft just cleared to the river; there is still space for a flat or two at the low end of the locks. Unheeding the impatient hail of the 266 4 BROKEN STOWAGE' bargemen, he stands at the lockhead watching the 'dim sailing lights of a few flats that are beating up against the light breeze now set in from the south-east. Back and across they go, tack and tack, taking the most of the windward running tide. It seems long ere the foremost, with a great rattling of sail and cordage, bears into the gate- way and heaves her lines ashore. Now the lock is crowded, with only a foot or two of gleaming water showing, and the master brings the sea- gates across. Again the creak of chain and jarring of the massive timbers, and the boats, lifted by a flood from the higher level, rise to the limit and set out anew on their passages. High water, and the Mersey at Runcorn a broa'd river once more ! Barges have come and gone, the Old Lock is quiet again, and the master with a cheery "Good neet, Mister. Six o' clock i' t' marnin'," has clop-clop-clopped his way up the long sea-wall. The showman's orchestrion has wheezed out 'A Lassie from Lan-ca-share' for the last hundredth time and is tarpaulined and at rest. The wind has come keen from the eastward, with a rare atmosphere and clear northern light that comes with frost. A late express thunders across the bridge, shedding a trail of golden sparks to the water. One by one the house lights go out, but over the water the glare of quenchless furnaces in a Temple of Industry stands steady, reflected in the overhanging cloud-wraith. XXXV SUFFRAGE AND BETEL-NUT R. NARAYAN S. BHOSLE writes us a let- ter from which we take the following ex- tracts : I tell you truly, Mr. Editor, if Suffragists allowed in House of Parliament they make the world topside down. First of all they make Mrs. Pankhurst Viceroy of India and Mrs. Pethick Governor of Bombay. I know you are laughing Mr. Editor because I say this, but all womans is like that and do more foolish things. Your St. Paul is very clever fellow. He knows all the foolisfi things of the womans. He says very strongly womans must shut the mouth. No talking about business or anything. Everything must ask to the husbands and he will tell you. Shame, shame for womans to talk. But what the womans care for St. Paul. He is poor fellow and not passing M.A. and B.A. like them and their husbands perhaps only passing fourth of fifth standard. So they become proud and fight to go in the House of Parliament. Europe people say we Indian people treating our womans like servant and animals. This is not true. We teach woman to do home work proply. Clean the house, make food, wash dress, make dress and make jolly all the peoples of the house. . . . Therefore My dear Mr. Editor I fold hands and kiss your feets and ask you to tell all the men to stop this mischief of the suffragists. If man will not stop it God will stop it. I like you very much to put this letter in your Times of India because in Bombay also some foolish men 267 268 'BROKEN STOWAGE' allowing womans to do wrong things by which they become afterwards slowly, slowly, suffragists. Then finished with Bombay. No! It isn't! It is quite genuine and appeared in the Times of India Weekly of the 3ist July 1912. I have not the honour of Mr. Bhosle's ac- quaintanceship, but I know several Indian gentle- men who could quite well have so expressed them- selves. There is Mr. Jhimmji, who sometimes does business at the docks. He is a labour con- tractor and loads ships occasionally bulk loading, I mean, where the labour is merely that of filling baskets or tubs on the shore and tipping them into the ships' holds. Mr. Jhimmji is not sufficiently a stevedore to be allowed to load and stow cargo. He is elderly, as age goes in India perhaps forty or forty-five. I hear that he is a grandfather. He comes by the dockside at about ten in the morn- ing, stepping slowly and importantly in his big em- broidered shoes. Often I have a word or two with him, for he is a pleasantly benevolent old gentle- man, well educated, and has opinions on the topics of the 'day. Only the other day he expressed him- self on the subject of Abkari licenses, and, had my eye not been taken by his quaint headgear, flow- ing robes, legs bare to the knees, feet shod in 1 curiously embroidered shoes, I might easily have fancied myself a-listening to a temperance debate at home. Mr. Jhimmji speaks much better Eng- lish than Mr. Bhosle writes. I have nevjer yet SUFFRAGE AND BETEL-NUT 269 had the temerity to ask Mr. Jhimmji's opinion on the Suffrage question. I had the idea that that was touching too closely on caste matters. Mr. Jhimmji is, I think, a Vaisya, and anything that raises a corner of the purdah is very difficult with them. Still, from my modest acquaintance with him, I feel confident that he would express him- self on pretty much the same lines as earnest Mr. Bhosle. Mr. Jhimmji is wealthy and is said to be very charitable. Conjecture as to the amount of his donations varies among those who know him, but all seem agreed that he gives away a considerable sum in philanthropic effort. Yesterday, I was passing along the quayside on my business. I saw a steamer of Runciman's being loaded with manganese ore. Bullock carts brought the loads down in small quantities, and the very heavy ore was backed off on to a heap on the quay. From there, it was carried by hand in small iron scoops and loaded into the great tubs that hy- draulic cranes hoisted to the ship and so the ore was tipped into the vessel's holds. The carriers were all women and girls, and their work was none of the lightest. Each loaded scoop would weigh about forty pounds, and had to be carried a considerable distance. They carried them on their heads, one hand steadying the scoop and the other held straight out in balance. Most were young girls mere children and they toiled and sweated 270 * BROKEN STOWAGE' under a broiling sun in a rusty choking clou'd of ore dust. Some few were adults. At one great heap a woman filled scoops, scraping the red lumps and dry dust with a hook-spade. Slung in a scrap of dingy clothing at her back was a tiny infant, a month old perhaps. Now and again, at the violent movement, the child would wail pitifully. The woman paid but scant attention to it. Perhaps there was a momentary pause in the scraping, to hitch the little scrap of humanity to an easier posture, but the work went on dig, dig, digging. What industry! Ah, but there was a spur to industry, and he sat on the rim of an ore tub, and all the time he said things ! If the little carrier girls paused but a minute to scratch themselves to adjust their ore-grimed rags to see how their naked feet had fared on the rough stones there was an outburst from the task- master on the rim of the ore tub. It is well not to understand Hindustani too well sometimes! At each heap there was a taskmaster. They were the only men 'employed' in the gangs, and I noticed that all of them were Mahommedans. Beyond shouting abuse and indecencies at the women they took no part in the loading. Only they sat, each on the rim of an ore tub, chewing betel-nut and squirting the bright red saliva wher- ever their head happened to be turned at the mo- ment of need; quite a number of the toiling car- riers showed stains. SUFFRAGE AND BETEL-NUT 271 On the way back I met my mukkudam. I asked him how they paid the women. He said they were of a low caste Mahars and would be getting six annas (sixpence) for a day of ten hours. I asked who was loading the Runciman boat. He said it was Jhimmji. XXXVI THE TURN OF, THE TIDE TN Calcutta towards the end of September the * weather takes an unsettled turn, and its va- garies are particularly trying after a lengthy and severe monsoon. The south-west monsoon is of- ficially over, but yet recurs in frequent squalls ; the cold weather has not yet arrived, though the morning mists .enshroud the maidan and river, and the temperature occasionally falls as low as 70. The sky, fair and cloudy by turns, presents an ever-changing variety of effects, and at this season, above all others, the sunsets on the river attain to grandeur. Rain still falls in spasmodic bursts, and the daily appearance of mysterious cones and drums on the flagstaffs of the Harbour Office in- dicates the presence of cyclonic areas in the Bay. On the river the slackness and comparative stag- nation of the rainy season has given place to stren- uous days, days when berthing masters work double tides, upstream and down river, when no one may prolong his siesta, and only foolish folk give bedding to an idle ox. Vessels discharg- ing at the jetties work far into the night, taking advantage of the weather as they may, for who 272 THE TURN OF THE TIDE 273 knows when a deluge may befall? Stevedores, breathless and impatient, are seeking in odd corners for the coolie labourers they discarded when 'the rains' set in, and they think themselves ill-used when they find them elsewhere employed. Steamers are daily arriving from outports, and a forest of masts and spars, funnels and shrouds, is springing up at the Esplanade moorings, where the huge cargo-carriers lie, in readiness for a bumper jute crop. Here the river presents a stir- ring scene, a riot of colour and life and movement. Along the banks gaily dressed crowds of Bengalis assemble to bathe in the sacred river. It is the festival of Puja, and the bathing ghats are thronged at all hours by seekers after sanctity. With a thoroughness that marks sincerity, they set about their ablutions and simple rites. Milk, rice, banyan leaves, and scented flowers are cast on the waters; prayers are said, and the suppliants seem utterly unmindful of a shadow on their temple steps, a shadow cast by the stern of an East Coast leviathan, a monument of ugliness. It matters not that strange keels ride in the river, that out- pourings from Feringhi mills and factories find their way to swell the tide; nothing can defile its purity nor alter its sanctity, for to them Hugli is Mother Gunga, river of ages, healer of pain and sickness, soother of sorrow and suffering, cleanser of sin and defilement, sure highway to Nirvaneh, quiescence of all. The flood comes up from the 274 'BROKEN STOWAGE' sea witH a majesty of movement, bearing on its broad bosom the craft of many countries and many races, meting an equal surge to shapely liners and the shallow 'dug-out' canoes of river folk. Har- bour launches dart about on their errands, pant- ing laboriously against the stream, or steaming with the tide at dangerously high speeds. They lie low in the water, and the waves they cause seem absurdly out of proportion to their bulk and beam; steaming against the tide, they seem to be shoving all Hugli before them to make a passage. Pictur- esque, ungainly craft work upstream with much shouting and cracking of oars. The standing rowers pull a short dipping stroke, and chant a chorus to the song of their steersmen, perched high above the steering oar. Inland steamers from up- country high, warehouse-like craft are canting in mid-stream, or steering, three abreast, towards the navigable passage of the Howrah Bridge. Far down the river, at Garden Reach and beyond, the black smoke pouring from factory chimneys tells of work and overwork, for the jute mills must now toil night and day to stand a chance against the industry of Dundee. A black indigo-tinted squall is making up in the sou'west, and the lower reaches are shrouded in the blue mist that marks the rain advancing. The steersmen in the river boats lay their umbrellas handy, and the weather- wise put out an additional rope to steady their craft. The flags of the shipping lie lung against THE TURN OF THE TIDE 275 the masts, then stir uneasily, as if unable to tell which airt to flaunt. The forerunner of the squall takes them, and they slat out viciously, and lay a trembling edge to the wind and rain. Down comes the deluge, and amid the drumming of the rain on the awnings and the noise of water rush- ing through the scuppers can be heard the cries and lamentations of boatmen who have been taken unawares with their goods uncovered. There is a scurry and a rush to get the hatches on, and an im- patient wrestle with a wind-possessed tarpaulin, and then the drenched cargo-wallahs betake them- selves to cover. Out in mid-stream sailing boats are caught by the squall. Some have only a few fluttering rags to tell where their canvas stood; others, better provided, are making most of the following wind, and, with sheets eased away and a full sail, are scudding up-river, to reach Samnugger before nightfall. Quickly as it comes up, the squall passes away across the city. Sails are again hoisted, and the boatmen resume work. Fishermen put off from the banks in their frail canoes, and start sweeping the river with their nets, sure of a rich haul after the rain. The flood tide bears strongly upstream, surging under the wharves and landings and wash- ing over the steps of the temples a brown muddy flood, bearing many derelict objects on its rippling surface. There are brown earthenware chatties, * BROKEN STOWAGE' not yet stranded or borne to sea, broken branches and bleached tree roots, logs of timber and rough- hewn spars, carcases of oxen, and sometimes, a huddled mass that once may have been a man. Some boatmen recover a baulk of timber and chatter joyfully over their find, but scarce have they got their prize on board before the police boat is alongside, and a burly Havildar demands, with an excess of picturesque abuse, an account of the salvage. The headman of the cargo boat en- deavours to satisfy the enquiring official, and be- littles his find in no halting terms. "Wood of little goodness, oh, Havildar-jee! A cursed bit of jungle wood that I thought teak when I saw it with my eyes. Of no value, no value at all, as thou seest. Accursed am I that I should waste my time at Maknens (MacKinnon's) ghat!, To the water with it again, M'med Sheik Ismail, for thou knowest whom the mill-sahibs will beat if we be late!" The Havildar raised a restraining hand, and the log remains. "Oh, son of genera- tion of Liars, thinks't thou I know not good teak, but days in the water? Show me thy license, pig, the number of thy boat, for this is an affair for the 'Specter-Sahib' I" "That I, a boatman of years " The tide bears the boats upstream and out of earshot, but evidently the matter is amicably ar- ranged. Shortly the police boat casts off, and the log still rests across the gunwale of the cargo- THE TURN OF THE TIDE 277 wallah. It will be a matter of eight annas or maybe a rupee 1 The day wears on, and already the sun's rays seek under roof-tops and chase the grateful shade from under awnings. The Mussulmans in the boats range themselves for prayer, and their cry, La Allah il a 'Allah, mingles curiously with creak of chain and rattle of panting winches. Slowly the sun descends, and a deep bank of western cloud sends out emissaries to attend the close of day. The towers and minarets, domes and spires of the city, anU the masts and spars of shipping are out- lined with a golden thread; the distant trees as- sume a deeper hue. The broad expanse of the river reflects the glow and glory of the sky o'er- head, changing from a molten bronze to the shim- mer of fiery copper as the sun nears the horizon. Clouds, unseen before, are creeping up with the [eastern twilight, breaking up and reforming under the yet 'dispelling rays of the light-giver. In the west the cloud banks assume a grandeur of saffron and gold, orange and crimson, and amid such radi- ance the sun goes 'down. From an Indian Marine ship anchored in the river the beautiful melody of 'sunset' bugle-call announces the close of 'day. Flags flutter from their proud places aloft; the noise and clamour of ships at work, the rattle of falls, the throbbing of winches, cries of the workers and raucous exhortations of men-drivers all cease, for a time at least. 278 '. BROKEN STOWAGE '[ From the boats thin blue smoke an'd the oHour of wood fires mark the evening meal in prepara- tion, and the boatmen, released from their day's work, gather round and spend the cool twilight hour in talk and banter. One, under the stern- ports, rattles a 'turn-turn,' and sings, with an af- fected nasal intonation, an endless song of the glories of 'Shah-Jee-han.' He details the splen- 'dour of the raiment, the magnificence of the pal- aces of Shah-Jee-han, and commences to enumer- ate the virtues of the wives of the renowned Prince, when an exasperated steward interrupts his chronicle with a vituperative 'Chuperao sooar!' The glow in the west changes from saffron to a 'dull smoky red, and then to grey. Familiar stars peep out, ranged in unchangeable constellations. The night clouds roll up from the south-west, and lightning, vivid but noiseless, flashes intermittently around the horizon. Lights spring up along the river on ship and shore, cocoanut oil flares on the boats, and great ghostly arcs on the railway ghats and Howrah Bridge, their reflections broken by shadowy sail or black hull of passing craft. An inland steamer passes 'down the river with her searchlight throwing a long brilliant beam ahead, seeking for shoal or obstruction. At the bathing ghat, clashing of cymbals, rumble of a rhythmic turn-turn, and blaze of many lights and coloured fires mark the ceremonial arrival of some elabo- rate idol, about to be immersed in the river. THE TURN OF THE TIDE 279 Jewels, trinkets, and gaudy fabrics are removed, and the figure cast to the waters. The blaze of light dies out, and only tapers, set afloat, glimmer and splutter in the 'darkness. At times their feeble rays fall on silent white-robed figures knee-deep in the water; devout ones, engaged in prayer or meditation; and the smell of scented flowers, their offerings, cast on the water, rises in the still air. The tide has slackened, and they who have busi- ness upstream are making most of their oppor- tunity. Creeping along close inshore, where the flood still lingers, they mark their progress with shouts of encouragement, 'Sabass, maribab! Sa- bassf' Then the flood ceases, and there is a stillness over the river, its broad bosom unagitated by wind or tide. The voices of the night take strength from the darkness; the chirrup of crickets and cries of night birds can plainly be heard. A fisherman casts his net with a soothing plash, and his oar creaks as he twists his canoe into position for the haul. The low rumble of distant traffic on Howrah Bridge only accentuates the silence of the hour and stillness of the tide. The air grows chill, an'd a 'damp mist moves across from the marshy banks at Shalimar. Now a low swelling murmur from the devotees at the gh&t marks a movement of importance Mother Gunga, mys- terious and majestic, has turned their offerings to the sea. XXXVII HIS MAJESTY'S CUSTOMS EPRESENTATIVE of law and the revenue, the Customs Officers are the first to board an inward-bound vessel. Theirs is the privilege of greeting the sailormen just in from the sea, and although the object of their visit may be opposed to certain proprietary interests, and thus distaste- ful to some members of the crew, their salutations are none the less hearty on that account. As they are conversant with the doings of the world at large, and more particularly with those of their own port, their coming is looked forward to by the deep-water men, ignorant for months, maybe, of what has happened beyond the rim of their lonely horizon; and if the mode of greeting takes the form of a proffered newspaper, days old and thumbed as it might be, their reception is almost royal. They are diplomats to a man, these keen- eyed, weather-beaten servants of the Crown; they never go to work off-hand. That would be an abrupt and mechanical way of carrying out their instructions. Matters go on much better when amicable relations are established, so our Customs Officer, with a preliminary flourish of his knuckles 280 HIS MAJESTY'S CUSTOMS 281 on the hooke'd-back 'door, projects a cheery face into the frame of one's doorway, an'd says genially, "Well?" Then, to a comfortable seat and a talk together. There is the voyage to be discussed, the weather, shipping casualties, sailors' wages; and whilst talking of the appointments of a new ship or of a state of 'Preventive' inefficiency at other ports, he is, at the same time, taking stock of cabin furniture and marking down some discrepancies in measurement that may be worth looking into. It is all done in fine spirit. It is a game he plays for a livelihood, "You hide and I seek!" Meeting daily with men arrived from all parts of the globe, he has a fund of interest and incident to draw upon, and, as the pursuit of his calling makes him a keen judge of men and character, he is a good talker, well worth listening to. A favourite theme is, of course, some smart work recently done in seizure of contraband, and the skilful way in which he discounts the element of chance, and presents the particular incident as a standard of everyday work, is remarkable. With the odds so heavily against him, it is not surprising that he should have disappointing experiences, and it is to his credit that he relates the failures as often as the successes, and laughs as heartily as anyone at the way he has been 'done.' At B there was a famous Customs 'crew.' They were known as the 'breakdown gang,' for their skill in the mysteries of ship construction. 282 ^BROKEN STOWAGE'; [The magnitude of their 'seizures' was talltecl about on the seven seas, and they were popularly sup- posed to have to pay income-tax on their share of the fines for smuggling. There were four whilom ship-carpenters in the gang, and they knew every- thing about a ship; no task in exposing the 'in- nards' of a vessel was considered too great for them. They could whip down the lining boards of a cabin, satisfy themselves that the recess con- tained nothing dutiable, and rattle them up into place again the while their chief (the P.O., they call him) was having a fairly long smoke in the steward's cabin. Even the ship's sacred compasses were not left free of their attentions, and they thought nothing of probing round the magnet chambers with an iron lantern and a steel poking- rod. Once a Nova Scotia barque came in light from a Continental port. The 'breakdown gang' were serving the tide, and they boarded her with high hopes of a seizure. The mate of the barque was a 'hard case,' and if looks went for anything he should have had at least half a hundredweight of contraband stowed somewhere away. She was a difficult job, being an ancient craft, with the repairs and alterations of half a century to puzzle the rummagers, but the credit of the 'breakdown gang' had to be upheld, and they stuck manfully to their task. They went over her thoroughly; they loosed the sails and shouted, "Stand away, HIS MAJESTY'S CUSTOMS 283 under!" but nothing fell from the folds; they shifted ballast and dabbled in the water-tanks, but nothing came to light; and, to crown all, the evil- looking mate borrowed a few cigars and some to- bacco from the P.O., "jest t' keep me goin' till I get ashore," he said. Next morning, when going their rounds, they met an ill-used man. He had a bruised lip, was out of breath, and vowing sum- mary vengeance. Ill-used seamen are plentiful enough about the docks, and little attention would have been paid to him but that he was telling a 'docker something about a Nova Scotia mate, and how hard they were on fo'c'sle hands. 'When shipmates fall out the Customs come by their due' ; and a little sympathy elicited the facts that he was one of the crew of the barque, that he had made the voyage, was hard worked, and treated cruel, and now, after a drop o' drink, had had words with the mate, been 'clouted,' and bundled ashore. He muttered many threats against his aggressor, he would be even with him yet the dog! The 'Customs' were ready listeners, and the P.O. hinted at his own opinion of the mate's character. At this the ill-used man became suspicious, and when it was suggested that he might know some- thing of the mate's 'plank' (hiding-place) became indignant. "No! No! Bad's bad, but Ah ain't goin' t' give away no shipmate t' you bloomin' sharks. If Ah meets 'im ashore arter dark, A'll give 'im one, 284 'BROKEN STOWAGE' that's wot Vll get, one acrost th' bloomin' jaw, but Ah ain't a'goin' t' give 'im away, no bloomin' 'fear. Me? Not much!" This was a 'scent,' and when it was represented to the ill-used man that the contraband being found ( u and found it will be, if we've got t' stand the barque on 'er 'ead an' shake 'er") he would be fixed on as accessory, he reluctantly laid the in- formation : "Mind ye, Ah knows nothin' fer certain; but w'en we was in th' river, 'im an' th' bloomin' nig- ger stooard was a-muckin' about th' chain locker, an' if there ain't 'baccy in that there chain locker, call me a bloomin' Dutchman, that's awl!" The chain locker is that compartment where the ship's anchor cables are kept, and to clear it for inspection would be no small task, but here was information, the bruised lip stamping it as genuine, so the 'breakdown gang' again boarded the barque and set to work. They were met at the gangway by the mate. "Hullo! Ain't you satisfied yet? Guess you kant hev much t' do, when you come hear a-roustin' th' rats about!" In spite of his bold front, he seemed ill at ease, and watched their preparations for heaving out the chain with evident perturbation. "Wall! Look you hear," he said. "If you start that chain, you'll stow it again, every ruddy HIS MAJESTY'S CUSTOMS 285 link, an' it ain't no fool job gettin' th' range right in a small locker like that!" "Oh! That's all right, mister," answere'd the P.O. "Never you fear, we'll put the chain back as we get it If we find no contraband about!" Jackets came off, and they started on the star- board anchor, heaving up, and letting the chain run into the dock. It was hard work; the windlass was old-fashioned and rusty, but the rummagers hove with a will, and the pawls went clank, clank, clank, as if there was a twelve-months' pay to lift at the windlass bars. Two hundred and forty fathoms of cable there were, but hope was at the 'bitter' end, and by midday both chains were chock up, and they were able to get down to the floor of the locker. For over an hour they probed around, tramping, ankle-deep, in the mud and refuse of a hundred anchorages. Odd things they found queer shells from tropical seas, bits of coral, decayed seaweed, scraps of chain and wire all the refuse that had come up in the wake of the chain from countless ocean bottoms but there was no contraband, nothing dutiable. For long they searched, reluctant to give it up, and that they only did when the mate shouted down, wanting to know what they had found. "Wall! Look a hear," he said. "I guess you'd better take a rest, an' let me get my hands on t' clear that muck out o' th' locker what I've been 286 'BROKEN STOWAGE' wantin' t' Ho this three year or more, only never had hands t' spare t' roust th' cable up !" Sadly they clambered up the ladders, to find the ill-used man and another waiting in the fo'c'sle with buckets and brooms and a heaving line, all .ready for their job of clearing out the locker. Grinning, the ill-used man said that he'd found that the mate wasn't a half-bad sort after all, that he had looked over his being drunk and fighting in the 'Lord Nelson' last night, and had promised him the bosun's job on the next voyage ! XXXVIII THE CATALOGUE A T the Stores, an energetic shop-manager * pressed a catalogue of their wares upon me. The tome was bulky and I demurred, but it was of no use. "Ah," he said, with a confident smile, "you will find it very useful, sir, during your stay in India." Now, how did he know I was a new-comer? Perhaps there was something in my dress or man- ner, my topee would be too aggressively new, or my crash jacket would show a tailor's fold as dis- tinct from a dhobe's! He was evidently an ob- servant person, but not sufficiently observant to deduce that I was leaving Bombay on the morrow which I was. I did not require a Stores cata- logue, but he insisted, so I brought it with me. It was a very bulky volume, some 1040 pages, and all the items were fully illustrated. The Stores are properly a chemist's and druggist's es- tablishment, but the catalogue, beginning at A 'Abaca, roots, Manilla ran through the entire classification of requirements, ancient and modern. C Cachous, liquorice; D Diaries, Stores spe- 287 288 'BROKEN STOWAGE' cial; E Entree "dishes, plated, best and so on to Z Zymometers, adjustable, nickel-steel. All this I read on my way to visit a man at Colaba. I decided that such a volume was not conducive to a spirit of contentment and economy, that its further perusal would tend to show me how ill-supplied I was with even the necessaries of a polite existence. Already I was grieved that I did not possess a D Dressing-case, fitted, gold- mounted, warranted Rs. 780, As. 12. I resolved to discard the tempting book, and, to that end, stowed it under the sea f of the hackney gharry that was bearing me on. I took pains that the driver should not see me do this. I waited until he was deep in an argument with the driver of an overtaking tramcar. At Greaves' bungalow I paid the gharry off. On my way upstairs I dis- tinctly saw my late driver preparing for a rest. He brought grass fodder from a bag under the gharry and placed it on the ground where his horse, a broken-winded arab, could get at it. Then he lay back on the floor of the carriage, set his feet high up on the wheel guards, unloosed his jacket, and lay still. But for my having seen this I would still have faith in the Bombay gharriwallah. In spite of frequent differences on money matters, I had, till this, a tolerant regard for the dusky jehu who bows me so magnificently to my seat and lets me THE CATALOGUE 289 step oft in tHe mu'd, he sighing only at the smallness of his backsheesh. As I say, I saw him at his rest. Judge, then, of my surprise when, half an hour later, Greaves' bearer interrupted our conversation with the in- formation that a gharriwallah had called back with a book which the Sahib had left in his gharry. "Oh! that catalogue," I said. "I 'don't want it." Then it occurred to me that this would be a bad precedent. "Oh, well! Take it, O Bargoo, and let the man go !" But no! Bargoo returned with the statement that the gharriwallah so great was his honesty would return the book to none but the Sahib him- self. There was nothing for it. The man was brought in. He looked hot and hurried, but I noticed that his jacket was still unbuttoned. At sight of me he smiled a proud, glad smile. He had the wretched book tightly clasped in his hands. "Thy book, O Sahib, that I, Sheik Ebram, found in our gharry." He twisted the brass badge on his arm so that I could note his number. "It was a long way off at Dhobe Talao be- fore I saw that the Sahib had left it. ... Here have I hurried back, although there was business for me at Bori Bundar. ... I hurried back in haste, lest the Sahib should be gone!" His hurried speech and breathing were well 290 'BROKEN STOWAGE' simulatecl but that unbuttoned jacket! Then there was the point that only by lying down in the gharry could he have seen the book as I had placed it. If I had troubled to look over the east ver- andah, I would surely have seen the gharry in the same spot the winded crock still struggling with the last straws of his meal. Besides, there is not in Bombay a public gharry horse capable of going from Middle Colaba to Dhobe Talao and back in half an hour. I knew that he was lying and he knew that I knew but there was the miserable book, undoubt- edly my property Hutt! I gave him six annas, and the staid Bargoo saw him off the premises, he protesting loudly about the smallness of his re- ward. Having thus paid money for the book, I decided to keep it. Greaves was laughing at me, and I swore that nothing should part me from my vol- ume. During what remained of my leave ashore I kept firm hold of it. Even when playing a last hundred up at Greens', I had a wary eye on the spot wherfi I Ha'd laid it by. As a result I lost bacUy. Sailing clay is busy clay. !A' lengthy boulevard in the nether regions must be paved with the good intentions that are only brought to mind when the 'blue peter' is run up. Everything and every one THE CATALOGUE 291 is hurried. There is the usual mad rush to com- plete our loading in time, the doubt whether all the cargo can be stowed, the fitting and finishing of a good burthen, the clearing up and coiling away of harbour gear sea-trim must be the word when the tide serves. With all this there are our own personal affairs. The laggard 'dhobe turns up with the washing he should have 'delivered yesterday. A skilful move this, for now there is no time to turn over and lay bare the tears and rents so cleverly folded to show a laundered surface to the casual eye. Then Aunt Matilda's set of china has not turned up, and there is a prospect of its having been delivered on board some other vessel. A great army of expectant retainers hangs around most of whom one does not remember having seen before. They salaam grandly whenever they happen to catch the eye, and appeal mutely for backsheesh. At length the feverish rush is over and the stevedore's gangs have gone ashore. The barriers are put up and yellow-turbaned police are there to see that no one without a bill of health is allowed to go on board. The port doctor comes to examine us an'd to cer- tify that we are suitable for export. We are all ready, and the dock pilot is clearing his throat, when a running coolie breaks through the police line and comes swiftly to the gangway. The police wallahs follow and lay rough hands on him: he is being told a lot of information about 292 'BROKEN STOWAGE' the character of his women-folk. It is quite a scene I The unmooring of the ship is temporarily suspended. I am told that the man has a letter and parcel for me. Observed of all, I open the letter. It is from the barkeeper at Greens' : SIR On occasion of last visit you left book which I sending by the special coolie. The book! That infernal catalogue again! P-S. Please paying coolie hire, annas four. XXXIX FLOOD TIDE AND EBB half-ebb to half-flood there is little 'do- ing on the broad of the Mersey river; only the ferry-boats pass from shore to shore, and a coasting schooner, hung up on the last tide, works slowly to an anchorage in the Sloyne. Traffic afloat is at a standstill until the tide turns and bears a burden of laden ships in from the sea. Out in midstream a few vessels, too late to dock on the flood, are anchored, and a great Cunarder, with her blue peter at the fore, lies waiting off the landing-stage for her appointed sailing hour. To seaward the banks lie bare to sun and wind, and the great grey gulls, the Mersey's scavengers, are screaming and quarrelling over the moist patches; already the rising water is lapping over the sandy fringes and their feeding ground will soon be covered. Across the river the Cheshire shore lies steeped in the broad light of the westing sun. There is a fresh wind, and the swift-moving clouds cast long lines of shadow on the land and water. A fine sight. We the Engineer and I have been sent round from the Clyde to meet a ship on 293 294 'BROKEN STOWAGE' arrival and are now waiting to join her. We are certainly better here than in the bar parlour of the 'Admiral Blake' across the way from the street gates. A group of tugs lie anchored off the 'dock en- trance waiting for the ships to come in, and the rising smoke from their funnels shows the expec- tation of the ever-ready. Those inside the dock to serve the outward bound are already casting off their mooring ropes and getting trimmed for their tide's work. Theirs is the first move in the 'dock, and soon they will be canting and twisting their charges into the basins. We mount an erec- tion behind some huts to count the blue peters in sight. Bold among the spars of the shipping, the fluttering tokens of departure are easily recog- nised. . . . "Thirteen . . . fourteen . . . fifteen. Fifteen ships ready for the sea." "Av coorse," says the Engineer . . . "this is a Setterday, th' great sailing day. It widna dae tae let th' sailors hae their Sunday i' port. Nae fears ! They maun awa' aff t' sea t' mak' th' siller. Mebbe th' owners i' th' kirk o' Sunday '11 pit up a bit prayer f'r Jeck. Mmh! Mebbe no." Away to seaward, beyond the Crosby, the smoke wrack of incoming steamers is blown low on the water. It is finely clear, and we watch the vessels rounding the lightships and bearing up the channels. They are the first of the tide load, and being in good time, they come up under low, FLOOD TIDE AND EBB 295 steam and anchor at their ease. A big steamer in light trim has come in from the nor'ard, a ship for the Manchester Canal, for her masts are low- ered and men are working at the stagings on her funnel she must be no more than sixty-eight feet from the water-line to clear the lowest of the bridges that span the ditch. There she goes, thrashing her way up-river to be ready to enter at Eastham on the level. Others are there at the anchorage: Scandinavian timber-ships, listed awk- wardly and with deck loads piled high; ore-car- riers for the steel-works ; a fruit-steamer from the West Indies; the Dublin cattle-boat, broad of beam, with her cargo lowing and bellowing, passes up on the Cheshire side. There is no sign of our, ship; we see no familiar funnel among the in-' comers. Late. Life and movement are not only on the river now, for there is a coming and going at the 'dock- head. Boatmen, pierhands, stevedores, and shore gangs are turning up, looking out for their jobs, and the dock people are shipping levers and un- hooking hand chains. Elsewhere in the city there! is little work done on a Saturday afternoon, but here, those who serve the tide must come at the call, day or night, Sunday or weekday. Tide is the tyrant master. The work begins among the small craft. A! bustling tug, towing a long line of barges and river craft, sheers into the locks and brings ug : bumping 296 'BROKEN STOWAGE' and grinding together, the flats in her wake come to the lock walls. The flatmen sway long poles to fend their boats, cast lines one to the other, and shout warnings and hails. In most, the lady of the barge is at the steering while her man tends the lines. Now all are mustered in the locks and the gates are swung to. The water swirls and eddies as it drains to the river, and soon the level is reached. The dockmen hail across the locks, hand levers, and the sea-gates creak and strain in their opening. One behind another the towing lines come a-taut, and the barges pass out into the tide- stream and line out behind their monitor; black smoke pours from her funnels, and she scurries up-stream favoured by the wind and tide. Now the big ships are hauling through from the inner docks, and the stir and bustle, shriek of steam-whistles, churning of screw, hoarse orders, rattle of warping capstans are heard where a short hour before all was as quiet as a country millpond. They are vessels of all sorts and sizes, of all trades and many flags : huge cattle-ships and Western Ocean liners, Levant traders with their decks stowed over with waggon frames and furni- ture vans, a French barque with her yards canted at all angles, a Spanish mail-boat for Manilla (her much-bewhiskered Commandant holding his hands to high heaven in protest at the way the Mersey pilot swings his ship to the gates). The tide waiters are increasing: women are FLOOD TIDE AND EBB 297 among us now, gazing anxiously seaward, enquir- ing, listening, watching, soothing fractious chil- 'dren, folding and refolding shawls each with a big doorkey in hand. The tide is hard to them. In the Dock Office there is a constant whirring of telephone bells, and stout elderly gentlemen pass in and out, intent on the ordering of their ships. One emerges gloomily, muttering abuse of wind and weather, and gives orders to his boatmen. "Aye, aye, sir," says the leader. "Come on, 'Arry. 'T aint ho use 'angin' 'bout 'ere. She only passed 'Oly'ead at one, an' she carn't do more 'n nine knots. Coom on, let's be orf. It'll be an- other o' them Sunday mornin' jobs." The sun has gone and dark is setting in. Lights glimmer along the shore, and the electric arcs at the dockhead splutter noisily in their first contact. The Cunarder passes out to seaward, resplendent in tier upon tier of gleaming ports. She looks like a seaport herself a seaport suddenly drifted away. The dock gates are now wide, and the out- ward bound, in timely procession, pass out and stem the flood. To some eyes they may seem to be in hopeless confusion, a dangerous gathering of moving ships, but there is a method in it all. A loud-voiced dockmaster from behind a huge mega- phone controls matters, and the basin is soon clear for the ships to come in. They are clustered off the 'dock, marking time till they get the order to come alongside, and show 298 'BROKEN STOWAGE* a bewildering jumble of rapidly changing lights, red and green and white. Smartly, as they are called on, but without haste, they drop out of the rush of the tide, one after another, and sheer into the east lockway. Like their sister ships now rac- ing down the channels, they are of all classes, the freight of seven seas brought up on one tide. It is now nearly high water. A lumbering cattle- boat is breasting her way across from the Wal- lasey stage where she has discharged her steers, and the dockmaster keeps the gates long open for her entry. With her decks still reeking of the hastily disembarked cattle, she passes through no time to spare and the huge gates are swung to behind her, locked to hold the prisoned water till the next high tide. Our ship has not come in: there is no word of her. There will be fog perhaps, or bad weather in the Bay. We, too, shall have one of these Sunday morning jobs. There is nothing coming in from the sea now, the Canal-bound vessels in the Sloyne have all hove up their anchors and are on their way the river looks lonely after the stir and bustle of tide- time. To seaward are the stern lights of depart- ing vessels and the gleam of the warning light- ships. Across the river the myriad lights of the Tower Grounds are reflected, 'dancing and shim- mering in the ebbing water. THE END A 000 071 327 1