SHIPMATES 
 
SHIPMATES 
 
 BY 
 
 A. E. LOANE 
 
 LONDON 
 EDWARD ARNOLD 
 
 1912 
 
 [All rights reserved] 
 

PORTRAITS FROM MEMORY OF NAVAL 
 OFFICERS WHO WERE BORN BETWEEN 
 1805 AND 1827 AND SERVED THEIR 
 COUNTRY FOR MANY YEARS IN ALL 
 QUARTERS OF THE GLOBE 
 
 272750 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. A MAN OF STRIFE 
 
 II. ADVISER IN GENERAL . 
 
 III. '' SALT-WATER AND FRESH " 
 
 IV. THE bore's progress . 
 V. NATHANIEL . 
 
 VI. A SWEARING ANACHRONISM 
 
 VII. CLEMENT URBANUS 
 
 VIII. o'er many MASTERS * . 
 
 IX. GEESE AT HOME . 
 
 X. DEAD POS'-CAP'eNS 
 
 XI. CHANGES AND CHANCES 
 
 XII. NEAR HORIZONS 
 
 XIII. FAILED-CHRISTIANS 
 
 XIV. DREAMS AND PORTENTS 
 
 PASE 
 1 
 
 19 
 
 41 
 
 64 
 
 87 
 
 111 
 
 131 
 
 153 
 
 178 
 
 207 
 
 227 
 
 262 
 
 275 
 
 292 
 
 yJt 
 
SHIPMATES 
 
 I. A MAN OF STRIFE 
 
 Ships and men — A quarrelsome messmate — Splendid isolation — 
 A small command — Mutiny — A strict churchman — Matrimony 
 — A sudden hreak — The slave-trade — Chronometers — Yellow- 
 fever — A mistaken verdict 
 
 '* r I iHE one great change that I observe in 
 I the navy," said an old officer some thirty 
 years ago, " is that ships are less alike and 
 men more alike than they used to be. We were 
 all tumbled in together, drunk and sober, coarse 
 and fine, sane and otherwise, for years at a stretch, 
 and we often fought from beginning to end of the 
 commission ; but I don't think we were ever as 
 dead-sick of one another as these youngsters are 
 now in quarter the time. They've all been through 
 the same mill and the handle was turned when they 
 were just the same age, and their brains had been 
 stuffed with exactly the same material. Every 
 fellow used to have a history and a character of his 
 own. Look at Byam and Heseltine and Franks 
 and Blissett and Langley and Shaw, some of 
 the first men I served with. Just after Langley's 
 
 A 
 
2 SHIPMATES 
 
 youngest son took five first-class certificates his 
 daughter said to me : ' It's all very well, but when 
 he's dead he'll be dead. When father's dead he'll 
 be extinct.' They were all a bit toned down before 
 you can remember, but can't you see the differ- 
 ence ? " 
 
 I knew all the old shipmates to whom the 
 speaker referred, and could indeed " see the 
 difference." 
 
 At the present day Benjamin Byam would be 
 called insane, but among almost equally uncon- 
 ventional men he passed for eccentric or, at worst, 
 " queer tempered." It was on record that when 
 at the end of one commission a captain of high 
 social rank did violence to his conscience, and ex- 
 pressed the conventional hope that he would again 
 have the pleasure of counting him among his 
 officers, Byam replied that three years was quite 
 long enough for the same people to be shut up 
 together. His messmates shirked all forms of 
 farewell, and fervently prayed that they might 
 never serve with him again, but when face to 
 face with this affliction only one man rebelled, and 
 his determined protest ultimately brought a good 
 billet and a large salary to Byam. 
 
 For more than half a year only the youngest 
 member of the mess had been on speaking terms 
 with him ; except when on duty every communi- 
 cation had to be passed through this medium. 
 The sole ground for the much ramified quarrel 
 
A MAN OF STRIFE 8 
 
 was this : One stifling night when all the cabin 
 doors were open and all the lights lowered, an 
 Irish lieutenant said to By am in jest, " I believe 
 you like mixing your grog in the dark so that you 
 can't see how much you take." He blazed up into 
 furious anger, and swore that he would never speak 
 to the man again. The captain overheard this, 
 and very unwisely took him to task. Byam, in 
 what he subsequently described in every quarter 
 of the globe as " a perfectly, respectful manner " 
 replied : " With all due deference to you, sir, I beg 
 leave to point out that if you search the Regula- 
 tions from beginning to end you will find none 
 that compels me to open my lips except when on 
 duty. I regard the ward-room as a floating stage- 
 coach. If I like the passengers I shall speak to 
 them, but not otherwise." The captain somewhat 
 heatedly said that his conduct was un-Christian, 
 and that he could never sit down to table with 
 him again. Long before Wednesday arrived the 
 captain repented, and somewhat pathetically told 
 the senior officer of the mess that his weekly dinner 
 with them was " the one pleasure of his life," and 
 that he trusted he should receive the usual in- 
 vitation. Byam professed to be ill, and remained 
 in his cabin. 
 
 The captain was a genial, sociable, indiscreet 
 man, on whom the isolation of his position bore 
 with cruel force. The life must always be hard 
 for a man of his type, but at the present day its 
 
4 SHIPMATES 
 
 loneliness is perceptibly modified by the frequency 
 of home mails, the long runs that it is thought 
 permissible to make for the sole purpose of picking 
 them up, and the fact that ships, and consequently 
 their commanding officers, are in much more fre- 
 quent communication than was formerly the 
 custom. 
 
 Every Sunday morning at 11.30 he liked to 
 *"• take his bearings " with a bottle of champagne ; 
 but he had no pleasure in drinking alone, and was 
 often hard put to it to find a pretext for inviting 
 one of the ofl^icers. When invention failed he con- 
 sulted the calendar. Even there he must some- 
 times have drawn a blank, for on one occasion 
 the message delivered to the second-lieutenant 
 with unsmiling stolidity was : " The captain's 
 compliments, sir, and it is the thirteenth Sunday 
 after Trinity, and he would be pleased to see you 
 at half -past eleven." 
 
 Most grievous of all the man's burdens was the 
 unwritten law that he must never mention wife 
 or child to his subordinates. One Christmas Day 
 his only guest was the captain of a French man-of- 
 war. Neither of them knew more of the other's 
 language than a few phrases learnt by rote, which 
 had no special applicability to the occasion, and 
 a miscellaneous vocabulary of about a hundred 
 queerly mispronounced words. Nevertheless they 
 talked of their families and their private affairs 
 for five hours without ceasing, and parted with 
 
A MAN OF STRIFE 5 
 
 regret. The younger men were hugely amused 
 by the fragments of conversation that reached 
 their ears, but the older ones understood, and 
 were silent. 
 
 Naturally the presence of a shipmate like Byam 
 was peculiarly disagreeable to him, and at the end 
 of a few months he easily persuaded himself that 
 they " had all had their fair share," and got him 
 appointed to a bigger ship ; the commander of 
 which promptly went to his captain and put in 
 an application for permission to return to England 
 at once on urgent private business, adding the 
 oral explanation : " I'd go to gaol sooner than 
 serve with him again. If you over-persuade me, 
 it is quite on the cards that I shall do both." The 
 captain, loth to admit such a firebrand among a 
 singularly well-matched set of officers, ordered his 
 boat and made a pressing appeal to the admiral ; 
 and Byam, to the envy of the rest of the fleet, 
 was given a small command, and Shaw, unjustly 
 deprived of it, had to take his place. He was 
 indignant and mortified at the time, but found 
 lifelong consolation in the indirect acknowledg- 
 ment that " there were worse shipmates than 
 himself." He also delighted to describe a ship, 
 " I can't say I ever went aboard her, where things 
 were hotter still. None of the men spoke to one 
 another except on duty or in the presence of out- 
 siders. When fellows called on the ward-room 
 they were introduced all round, and a little stilted 
 
6 SHIPMATES 
 
 conversation was kept up. It was just like hus- 
 bands and wives when they have quarrelled so 
 desperately that they don't wish people to know it. 
 It was supposed to come from nerves : the captain 
 was an ambitious man, and they were all over- 
 worked." 
 
 The standard of sanity applied to commanding 
 officers was if possible lower than the standard 
 of sobriety that they themselves applied to any 
 useful junior, but Byam could not meet it. He 
 danced about from stem to stern like the pro- 
 verbial dried pea on a gridiron. In more nautical 
 phrase, he was " all on gimbals " : 
 
 '' He boarded the king's ship ; now on the beak, 
 Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin. 
 He flam'd amazement.'* 
 
 There were men in those days who firmly main- 
 tained that a disagreeable captain made a com- 
 fortable ship : a common enemy bound all the 
 officers together and gave them fellow-feeling with 
 the crew. Either the principle is unsound or 
 Byam overdid the part. The officers, ceaselessly 
 worried themselves, continually harried their im- 
 mediate subordinates, and these " took it out of " 
 the men. 
 
 Mutiny resulted ; abortive as it usually was 
 when marlinespikes had to meet muskets. A 
 hitherto unknown theory was started that mutiny 
 was a serious discredit to the captain of a ship, 
 
A MAN OF STRIFE 7 
 
 but it was too new and untried to be pushed to 
 inconvenient extremes. Byam was consoled with 
 a valuable semi-civil appointment, adopted semi- 
 civil manners, and retained it until he was seventy 
 years of age. " Well " — as the commander who had 
 rebelled against serving a second commission with 
 him remarked with the clear-sightedness resulting 
 from the plain living and anxious thinking en- 
 forced by the possession of six children and an 
 income of a pound a day — " well, there's such a 
 thing as getting your deserts, and there's getting 
 things by interest, but one of the cheapest and 
 surest ways of getting what you think yourself 
 entitled to is to make yourself confoundedly dis- 
 agreeable if you don't have it." 
 
 "• Byam got a lot of profit out of cantankerous- 
 ness," one of his old messmates told me, " besides 
 all the pleasure. He not only enjoyed it at the 
 time, but for twenty or thirty years after he en- 
 joyed relating what he had said and done, justifying 
 it and glorying in it. And then, as if that weren't 
 enough, in the end he enjoyed repenting it." 
 
 I only knew Byam in his comparatively mild 
 old age, when he spent much on foreign missions 
 and insisted on conducting family prayers at great 
 length and at strangely inconvenient hours. Like 
 Petruchio he held that, " It shall be what o'clock 
 I say it is." 
 
 In these latter years he was a strict churchman, 
 but entirely after his own fashion. He utterly 
 
8 SHIPMATES 
 
 declined to know any clergyman whose church he 
 attended ; and if, unaware of this peculiarity, the 
 incumbent called on him or in any way secured 
 an introduction, he at once took a sitting in another 
 parish. For a period of several months he felt 
 obliged to attend a Wesleyan chapel, every clergy- 
 man within walking distance having sinned against 
 this unwritten code. 
 
 The natural result of pasturing in so many 
 fields was that his attention was drawn to a lack 
 of uniformity " entirely brought about by the 
 weak-kneed conduct of the bishops." He himself 
 would not tolerate the smallest variation, and left 
 a church that he had attended for five years, " un- 
 molested by the incumbent," because the new 
 hymn-books, though otherwise unchanged, were 
 marked Hymnal. To have hymn-books at all was 
 " merely a concession to the lower deck." He 
 preferred the metrical version of the Psalms at the 
 end of the Georgian prayer-book that he had 
 carried all over the world. He possessed another, 
 printed in the early part of the seventeenth century. 
 As a child I was slightly confused by the prayers 
 for Queen Anne, and asked who she was. He 
 could not tell me, but when I afterwards recollected 
 Anne of Denmark he seemed much pleased, and 
 appeared to regard her existence as the kind of 
 fact people learn ''by putting in a great deal of 
 time at the British Museum." 
 
 Shortly before he died Byam was reading prayers 
 
A MAN OF STRIFE 9 
 
 at three o'clock in the afternoon. The doctor 
 arrived — his second visit that day — and he thought 
 the patient in such a weak state that it would 
 probably be necessary to pay a third. He knocked 
 and rang, and rang again, but the servants as- 
 sembled in their master's room dared not take any 
 notice. At last, somewhat alarmed, the doctor 
 walked in unannounced. The old man turned on 
 him in blind fury : " Sir, how dare you intrude on 
 me when I am holding communion with my 
 Maker ? It is not the action of a gentleman. 
 Send in your account instanter, and never dare 
 to enter my presence again." 
 
 The night By am died, his son, a stout major of 
 marines, sat up with him. Towards morning he 
 felt hungry and exhausted, and, thinking that his 
 father was sleeping, helped himself to some of the 
 fruit left by his bedside. He dropped the bunch 
 like a pilfering schoolboy when the old man 
 suddenly rapped his stick on the floor and shouted 
 angrily : " No, you don't, sir ! No, you don't. 
 Those grapes are mine,^'* 
 
 When Byam proposed to his wife he told her 
 that he was considered the most disagreeable man 
 in the service, but unluckily she did not believe 
 him until afterwards. The marriage ceremony 
 must have been one of the shortest on record, for 
 Shaw solemnly assured me that " he took a 
 working-party ashore at eight, and he came aboard 
 to lunch at twelve a married man." 
 
10 SHIPMATES 
 
 " It wasn't altogether his temper that made 
 them unhappy," Langley told me; "it was that 
 they had so little in common. Byam was a 
 clever man in his way, and read all his life. She 
 was not merely ill-educated. Most women — and 
 men — are that ; but if you have had any kind of an 
 education you have some idea of your bearings, 
 and you can ship what you most want as you go 
 along. She was almost illiterate. When Byam 
 died, Shaw had to manage all her affairs for her. 
 The Blue Marine was such a chowder-head, and 
 the Red Marine was out of England, and the Naval 
 Instructor was out of favour at the time the will 
 was made, and the daughter was dead. Besides, 
 people always find some pretext for making use 
 of Shaw. Mrs. Byam could just manage to sign 
 her name while he kept his finger on the right spot ; 
 to pencil a document and send it by post was 
 utterly useless. I don't think she could do simple 
 addition on paper, but Shaw said she was awfully 
 keen about money matters, and could work out 
 long calculations in her head. It distracted him 
 if she insisted on comparing notes in the middle, 
 but their results always tallied. 
 
 *' She was only seventeen when they married, 
 but even then there was too much leeway to be 
 easily made up. A married woman can't very 
 well sit down and learn spelling, and the Blue 
 Marine and his brothers arrived with quite un- 
 necessary despatch. She was naturally clever, 
 
A MAN OF STRIFE 11 
 
 and when Byam confounded her ignorance with 
 stupidity she felt that she was unjustly treated. 
 A stupid woman wouldn't have cared, and a 
 naturally studious one would have come up to 
 time before she was five-and-twenty." 
 
 Byam's house was in a narrow street, built when 
 something was known of comfort — for the principal 
 inmates — but nothing of hygiene. The rooms 
 were large, and the furniture simple and arranged 
 with strict precision ; fifty times a day Byam 
 dressed the ranks of the chairs. The windows 
 were never opened, and the passages and stairs 
 were dark and narrow. Towards the end of his 
 life drainage became a vexed question, and he 
 had an embarrassing habit of asking his old mess- 
 mates : " Have you ever smelt anything wrong 
 with the drains ? " The question was once put to 
 Langley in Shaw's presence, and when afterwards 
 taunted with the promptness with which he 
 replied, " No, never ; nothing at all," he defended 
 himself by the quibble, " How could I smell them ? 
 There arenH any." 
 
 The walls were covered with chilly engravings, 
 possibly of value, certainly of a most depressing 
 nature. Heseltine had supplied two of his earliest 
 water-colours, but as one represented vicious- 
 looking rocks under a lurid sky, and the other a 
 ship with bare poles in a furious storm and canted 
 over at such an angle that recovery seemed im- 
 possible, they did not add largely to the gaiety 
 
12 SHIPMATES 
 
 of the domestic hearth. The books were nearly all 
 bound in liquorice-brown, worn to a lighter shade 
 at the corners, and although the pages were stained 
 and worm-eaten, many of the leaves were still 
 uncut. There were a few grim curios, chiefly 
 Chinese, and a supremely hideous pair of vases 
 for which the British Museum was supposed to 
 sigh in vain. They had been presented by some 
 Chinese statesman, who had also sent a large 
 quantity of tea which he considered as valuable 
 as the choicest wine. Byam tasted the tea, called 
 it undrinkable trash and gave it to his native 
 servant, who caused international difficulties by 
 attempting to sell it and being arrested as a thief. 
 
 Byam was extremely kind and hospitable to his 
 messmates' children, but iced pound cake was 
 rather a doubtful joy when eaten under his eye ; one 
 knew that before the hall door was well closed a 
 servant was summoned to sweep up the crumbs. 
 As far as boys were concerned he did not think it 
 necessary to wait ; he rang the bell, and when 
 Hannah appeared, leaving the dust-pan and brush 
 in the hall (too prudent to mount the long flight of 
 stairs without them, and too well-trained to antici- 
 pate an order), he made a vague but impressive 
 gesture and said, " That — er — debris distresses 
 me." 
 
 Like nearly all his messmates he was invariably 
 courteous to servants, but rarely gave a direct 
 order ; possibly he feared apoplexy if it had been 
 
A MAN OF STRIFE 13 
 
 disobeyed. The usual forms delivered in the 
 most detached manner were : "I think I should 
 like so and so ; " " Perhaps it would be better if you 
 did this or that " — but somehow these phrases were 
 taken as stringent orders. He paid good wages 
 and raised them when he thought fit, but a servant 
 who asked to be " highed " was dismissed : '' the 
 request was equivalent to an accusation of robbery." 
 Hours of work were reasonable, but to ask for a 
 holiday was unpardonable. " If any servant de 
 mands a holiday," he said icily, " I give them a 
 long one." 
 
 By am was not wholly incapable of friendship. 
 He had a schoolfellow who had joined the navy 
 at the same time as himself. They had never 
 served together, but had frequently met to com- 
 pare grievances, and when they retired they lived 
 close to one another and used to take a constitu- 
 tional together every morning. One day they 
 parted on the usual terms, but when the friend 
 overtook Byam the next morning he observed that 
 his salutation was not returned. He attributed 
 the omission to absent-mindedness, and walked by 
 his side speaking of some matter which interested 
 them equally. No reply was made. They reached 
 cross-roads and he asked : '' Which way are you 
 going, Ben ? " Byam looked him full in the face 
 and said in his bitterest tones : "I am going 
 that way — and you can go to the devil." They 
 never spoke to one another again. Byam may 
 
14 SHIPMATES 
 
 have known why, but his friend most certainly 
 did not. 
 
 There is something tragic in the childishly 
 sudden cessation of many old friendships. In one 
 case an admiral and a captain had been friends 
 all through their service-life, and after they retired 
 they settled in the same town and went abroad 
 together every spring. Crossing the channel one 
 wet cold day the admiral first opened a port-hole 
 and then closed it, repeating the manoeuvre until 
 the captain in a fit of nervous irritation said, " Hang 
 it all, Joe, a window must be either open or shut." 
 (The use of Christian names was much more 
 common among sailors in the old days than it is 
 now.) " Don't be a fool," retorted the admiral 
 testily. When they arrived at their journey's 
 end they put up at different hotels, and henceforth 
 passed one another in the street with the briefest 
 of greetings. 
 
 Byam had spent several years on the West Coast 
 of Africa, and with sardonic humour used to relate 
 how on his return from a successful expedition 
 carried out by four boats under his command, the 
 captain rushed to the gangway to meet him, and 
 without a thought of possible dead or wounded 
 gasped out, '' How many ? " " And when I said, 
 ' Five hundred odd,' he hugged me in his arms. It 
 was nineteen weeks since we had exchanged an 
 unnecessary word. 
 
 '' It used to be said that prize-money was put 
 
A MAN OF STRIFE 15 
 
 on a coarse grating and well shaken. What fell 
 through went to the captain and admiral, anything 
 that stuck in the crevices was for officers and men. 
 As for the ships we destroyed by accident, or be- 
 cause we could not spare enough men to handle 
 them, they were always measured over the mast- 
 head. 
 
 " But he hugged me a bit too soon. The ship 
 was so abominably overcrowded that we had to 
 take three hundred of the slaves aboard our own 
 craft. That evening I was keeping the second 
 dog-watch. The slaver-captain, a very gentle- 
 manly fellow, was walking up and down with me, 
 and everyone else was at dinner. Suddenly there 
 was a sort of boiling over — I can't describe it in 
 any other way. The slaver-captain shrieked, 
 ' Shoot 'em down, shoot 'em down like dogs, or 
 you're done for.' The marines came tumbling 
 up headlong with loaded muskets, and when the 
 fight was over only ninety-seven slaves could be 
 found. We counted the cartridges, and not more 
 than twenty can have been shot. The rest must 
 have thrown themselves overboard unhurt. The 
 slaver-captain's cook was at the bottom of it. 
 He knew their language, and told them we were 
 cannibals and that their only chance was to try 
 and seize the ship. 
 
 '"You couldn't do anything to slaver-captains 
 except strip them of everything they had and land 
 them. This man had a magnificent chronometer, 
 
16 SHIPMATES 
 
 and it was given to me. I sold it : it was better 
 that it should go where its history was unknown. 
 
 '' In those days heaps of merchant vessels had 
 to sail without any chronometer at all. Ships of 
 all nationalities used to hail one another as they 
 passed and shout, ' What's your longitude ? ' If 
 they had nothing to depend on but themselves 
 they got into the latitude and ran down the longi- 
 tude, and if they weren't more than thirty miles 
 out in their reckoning they thought they had done 
 well. Even to our own small craft only one chrono- 
 meter was supplied, and you really want three. I 
 get very restless nights, but the one service-dream 
 that I ever have is that the chronometers are 
 running down and there is a sentry over them and 
 I can't get past him. 
 
 '' But I once had a far worse experience 
 than that slaver business. We were 2000 miles 
 from port and yellow-fever broke out. We lost 
 80 men out of 230, and for over three weeks the 
 captain and myself were the only persons left who 
 could command a watch or take an observation. 
 
 "The sail-maker and one boy sewed up the 
 bodies: I insisted on all the ordinary forms being 
 gone through. At last the boy came to me and 
 protested, but I wouldn't listen to him. I said, 
 * When your turn comes do you wish to be pitched 
 over the side without decent burial ? ' The other 
 day I saw a boy with just such a head of hair, and 
 I thought what a brutal thing it was to say. But 
 
A MAN OF STRIFE 17 
 
 it never struck me at the time ; I didn't realise 
 how young he was and that it was too ghastly a 
 piece of work for him even if there had been no 
 danger." 
 
 After he retired he read practically the whole of 
 the Times every day, beginning immediately after 
 an eight-o'clock breakfast and sending the paper 
 the same evening to a man who could not afford 
 to take it in. Almost the last book that he read 
 was the Origin of Species^ and he was exceedingly 
 impatient with any weak-minded brother who could 
 not instantly reconcile its teaching with that of 
 Holy Writ. " If it pleased the Almighty to make 
 my ancestors monkeys, w-w-what does that matter 
 to me ? " 
 
 The great tragedy of his life was one that he 
 never mentioned, and which had almost passed 
 from the remembrance of his shipmates. He 
 had a half-brother more than twenty years younger 
 than himself, and he was strongly attached to 
 him. He entered the paymaster line, and when 
 he was about twenty-five he was assistant-pay- 
 master in charge on board a small vessel, and the 
 captain was an utter scoundrel, though no one 
 knew it at the time. He borrowed large sums 
 from young Byam, and either he had not the 
 moral courage to insist on having proper receipts 
 or else they were spirited away. He was suddenly 
 called on to hand in his accounts, and was nearly 
 £200 short. The captain denied on oath that he 
 
 B 
 
18 SHIPMATES 
 
 had ever borrowed a farthing, and the young fel- 
 low was dismissed the service with disgrace. If 
 Byam had actually seen him no doubt he would 
 have been able to persuade him of the truth of his 
 story, but the court-martial took place on the 
 other side of the world ; he only knew the verdict 
 and a very brief abstract of the evidence. He was 
 a scrupulously honourable man, and his brother 
 had been his one soft spot, more to him than his 
 sons ever were, and the disgrace half killed him. 
 He sent him £50, and said he never wished to hear 
 his name again. 
 
 Young Byam was a good enough fellow to have 
 stood all the ordinary trials of life, but he hadn't 
 strength for a thing like that. It broke his spirit, 
 and a few years later he died literally a beggar. 
 But what really broke Byam up and seemed to 
 alter his nature as far as it could be altered was 
 that long after, when everyone but himself had 
 practically forgotten his brother, the captain was 
 tried by court-martial for some terribly shady 
 piece of work and cashiered. Then poor Byam 
 knew that his brother had been wronged, and 
 perhaps more wronged by himself than by the 
 rest of the world. 
 
II. ADVISER IN GENERAL 
 
 A service quarrel — The complete letter-writer — Philosophy of 
 sex — Prisoner's friend — A prodigious memory — A prudent 
 father — On the West Coast — Medical aid — A radical change — 
 A fixed proportion — Natural history — Shipwreck — The rigour 
 of the game — The question of age 
 
 RICHARD SHAW, commonly called Sure-of- 
 It, was about fifteen years younger than 
 Byam, and their acquaintance dated from 
 the time when he was a boy of twelve and 
 Mrs. Byam was a bride of seventeen. His youthful 
 admiration for her turned to chivalrous service 
 as the years went on, and he was one of the very 
 few persons who contrived always to remain on 
 speaking terms with her husband. 
 
 He was a hard-headed Puritan, who never drank 
 or swore or neglected his duty, and who possessed 
 a sense of humour mainly exercised in " taking it 
 out of " his superior officers in the most exasperat- 
 ingly correct fashion. When quite a young man 
 he was given command of a small ship. Going 
 out of harbour he met another ship coming in ; 
 if she had flown a certain pennant it would have 
 been his duty to make way for her, but as she did 
 not he held on his course. Rather too late he 
 
 19 
 
20 SHIPMATES 
 
 perceived that she intended to do the same, and 
 the two ships grazed one another, doing some 
 trifling damage to the larger vessel. He at once 
 went on board to explain the matter and express 
 his regret. The captain, " in the presence of two 
 of his officers, of a person in the dress of a civilian, 
 and of his private servant," shouted furiously : " I 
 call it a d — d lubberly piece of work." Shaw 
 begged leave to differ. The expression was re- 
 peated. He made a formal salute and left the ship. 
 Twenty-four hours later the captain met him 
 ashore, and coming up to him with hollow geni- 
 ality, said : " I have thought no more of that little 
 affair yesterday." Incensed that the man should 
 publicly insult him and then offer a perfunctory 
 apology in private, Shaw replied with hauteur : 
 " I have thought of it, sir, and I must request 
 you to forward a communication to the admiral." 
 When the admiral read it he sent for the captain, 
 and advised him to write a letter expressing regret 
 for the words used and the circumstances in which 
 they were uttered. The captain hotly refused. 
 " Agree with thine adversary quickly," said the 
 admiral. " I warn you that there is too much 
 against you already. If you attempt to fight this 
 you will bring such a hornets' nest about your ears 
 that you will never be able to stand against it. 
 It would hardly be a serious matter to any other 
 man, but it is more than your reputation will bear. 
 It is the last straw." 
 
ADVISER IN GENERAL 21 
 
 With regard to the disciphne of the lower deck, 
 Shaw acknowledged but one rule : " Whatever 
 you do to a bluejacket, never interfere with his 
 meals." It sounds simple, but as a young man 
 it carried him through several mutinies without a 
 scratch, though marlinespikes fell thick as hail 
 within a few feet of him. 
 
 He had a strong hold on his messmates, chiefly 
 won by cultivated commonsense and an elementary 
 knowledge of business matters rare among sailors 
 in those days. He was not a favourite with men's 
 wives and daughters, in fact he often complained 
 that he was " only invited to funerals," but oc- 
 casionally widows and orphans learnt how much 
 they owed to the check placed on the investments 
 of their simple-minded relatives by his oft -repeated 
 maxim, " Better take four per cent, and all Night 
 in." It is true that his conceptions of the functions 
 of money were of the most childlike nature. In 
 later life he often said : " They talk very glibly 
 of millions and hundreds of millions, but if every- 
 one were to call his money in I'd like to know 
 where they'd find it ! " 
 
 Shaw drew up wills, and promised to prove them 
 without the help of a lawyer ; he composed letters 
 asking for good-service pensions, extra allowances, 
 or coveted appointments, saw that they were 
 copied on the right paper with a three-eighths 
 margin, and revised the spelling with almost imper- 
 ceptible touches of a quill-pen which performed 
 
22 SHIPMATES 
 
 marvels in his hand and spread ink and despera- 
 tion in his messmates'. " Why on earth don't 
 you use a dictionary ? " he asked one specially 
 helpless client. '' My dear fellow, what earthly 
 use is a dictionary unless you know the first 
 three letters of the word you want ? " 
 
 One reason for the high percentage of successful 
 applications was that he sternly discountenanced 
 the common phrase, " There's no harm in asking." 
 " I don't ask you to stop and think whether you 
 deserve it : matters of this kind are not based on 
 considerations of merit. But I do ask you not to 
 waste powder by asking for a thing until you are 
 quite sure that it is in a man's power to give it to 
 you. Ask him for what he has, and if he sees fit 
 to refuse he feels that he has done you an injury, 
 that he owes you a good turn, and later on he is 
 very likely to give you something a long sight 
 better just to get you off his mind. Ask him for 
 what he can't give you and you humiliate him, 
 and unless he's a most exceedingly amiable fellow 
 he'll bear you a grudge as long as he lives." 
 
 Shaw kept his head at all times. " Never cry 
 when you lose, never crow when you win," was his 
 favourite motto. One day a man for whom he had 
 written what he called a " strong " letter brought 
 him the reply with a face of silent reproach. 
 " Hah ! " said Shaw cheerfully, as he skimmed it 
 over, " their Lordships have refused you, and 
 they've done it in a confoundedly nasty way. In 
 
ADVISER IN GENERAL 23 
 
 all my experience I don't think I've ever known 'em 
 go outside the usual forms." '' I shall be a marked 
 man," groaned his messmate. " My dear fellow, 
 do exercise a little common sense. They're uncivil 
 because they know they're in the wrong. You 
 can hardly expect them to say so. Just hold on 
 quietly for a few months and you'll get it." And 
 he did. 
 
 On one occasion an old shipmate, the command- 
 ing officer of a small craft which had most recklessly 
 got into difficulties with Chinese pirates and lost 
 several men, brought him the account of the affair 
 that he had prepared for the admiral and asked 
 proudly : " What d'you think of it, eh ? " " Think 
 of it ! Think of it ! " spluttered Shaw ; " why, if 
 the admiral sends that report home you'll have 
 to follow it at your own expense, and you'll be 
 precious lucky if you find yourself shelved on the 
 lowest rate of half-pay. Why, it would dish you 
 if your name were Beauchamp instead of Brown 
 without even an e. Where's my pen ? I'll make 
 you a rough draft on the back of this." He did 
 so, and in due time Brown received a letter of 
 thanks from the Admiralty, and at the end of the 
 commission was promoted over the heads of fifty 
 just men. 
 
 Shaw even edited proposals of marriage, and 
 decided if and when they should be renewed. 
 He shared Mr. Collins' views as to the practice of 
 elegant females. If the lover had cooled down 
 
24 SHIPMATES 
 
 before the refusal was received he said : " You're 
 well out of it, old boy." If feelings were at the 
 same, or even a higher temperature, he said with 
 welcome positiveness : " She only means, Ask me 
 again," and drafted a fresh letter. 
 
 Shaw's opinions on the whole question of sex 
 had the merit of simplicity and steadfastness, 
 and supplied a good, bold, working hypothesis by 
 which to direct his shipmates' course though not 
 his own. " Most men are rogues, most women are 
 fools. When a man's a fool he's more foolish than 
 any woman on earth, and if a woman has brains 
 she is a more cunning rogue than any man unhung. 
 A man who marries a woman cleverer than himself 
 is a fool." This would seem to be implied by the 
 previous statements, but he regarded it as a dis- 
 tinct theorem needing separate proof. He married 
 the most intellectual woman he ever met. Like 
 the half-legendary Scottish king he would handle 
 the books that she read, muttering, " Good Lord, 
 what's it all about ? It's High Dutch coiled against 
 the sun as far as I'm concerned," and then kiss 
 the name on the fly-leaf before he laid it down. 
 To the day of his death he thought his wife faultless, 
 except for a vexatious excess of what he held to 
 be characteristic feminine virtues — selflessness and 
 generosity in money matters. 
 
 Although in so many ways an active-minded man, 
 Shaw possessed to a marked degree a gift common 
 among his contemporaries, the power of almost 
 
ADVISER IN GENERAL 25 
 
 entirely suspending thought and remaining for 
 hours in a quiescent state without suffering from 
 boredom. In bad weather or in crowded waters 
 he had the habit of sitting in his cabin in the dark, 
 so that if he were called on deck at any moment his 
 sight would need no adjustment. After being on 
 shore for a time this power deserted him, and to his 
 annoyance and his friends' amusement he was 
 compelled '' to fill up part of his time " with 
 occupations previously despised. 
 
 As a young man he prided himself on his whiskers, 
 and although they were unquestionably beyond 
 regulation length and width and depth, his pug- 
 nacity and his fluency as a letter-writer were so 
 well known that even the veriest martinet did not 
 venture on open remonstrance. One day when his 
 ship was being inspected the admiral complained 
 of the " hairy face " of one of the seamen. The 
 captain thought his opportunity had come at last, 
 and waving his hand in Shaw's direction said: 
 '' You see, sir, the example that is set before him." 
 The admiral, however, had already far more clerical 
 work than he liked ; he gave a quick glance at 
 Shaw, discovered a small clearing in the forest, and 
 said conclusively : "It is entirely different ; Mr. 
 Shaw is shaved." 
 
 Every man's grievance was as dear to Shaw as 
 his own, perhaps dearer — ^until it had been righted. 
 As far as his own affairs were concerned his service 
 conscience was almost as strict as his private, but 
 
26 SHIPMATES 
 
 for distressed clients he stretched many a doubtful 
 point. When a Rhadamanthine official refused 
 to give an Irish surgeon any pay until he produced 
 the detailed diary which it was his duty to keep, 
 he shut himself up with the man in his cabin and, 
 aided by a marvellous memory for other people's 
 business and a fine instinct for probability, he 
 filled up a log-book which easily passed muster. 
 
 Perhaps the keenest joy of Shaw's early service 
 life was to appear at courts -martial as prisoner's 
 friend, and from much practice he had acquired an 
 attorney-like subtlety which often won the day 
 in face of the clearest evidence. On one occasion 
 a young lieutenant was charged with using in- 
 subordinate language while under the influence of 
 drink. He was undoubtedly guilty, but his 
 record was not such as commonly belongs to men 
 who find themselves in this position ; Shaw con- 
 sidered that he was being hardly dealt with, and 
 was furiously his partisan. 
 
 On the evening before the dreaded day he 
 visited the young fellow in his narrow cabin and 
 found him drowned in tears. " It's all up with 
 me," he gasped. " Captain Gaynor's a member of 
 the court, and he's just been here and advised me 
 to plead guilty." 
 
 In the excess of his unholy joy Shaw almost 
 swore. " We've got him, my boy, got him hip and 
 thigh. Take your all-night-in while you can get 
 it. Mark my words, you'll keep the middle-watch 
 
ADVISER IN GENERAL 27 
 
 to-morrow. Pryor and Ellis are about sick of 
 sharing your duty. No ; I won't tell you until 
 the last moment. You're off your balance, and I 
 can't trust to your discretion." 
 
 Next morning the lieutenant, prompted by 
 Shaw, but too much dazed to realise of what use 
 the form could be, objected to the presence of 
 Captain Gaynor as a member of the Court. Asked 
 for his reasons he was again primed, and re- 
 plied : '' He has prejudged the case. He came 
 to my cabin last night and advised me to plead 
 guilty." 
 
 Within eight hundred miles there was no other 
 officer of sufficient rank and wholly unconnected 
 with the case. The court-martial was indefinitely 
 postponed, the prisoner returned to duty, and 
 finally the charge was dropped. 
 
 It was a quarrelsome age in the navy, and the 
 fact that admirals had the patronage of all vacancies 
 caused by courts-martial, as well as invaliding and 
 death vacancies, did not tend to the peaceful 
 settlement of disputes which often had an incredibly 
 trifling commencement. Shaw was far from con- 
 ciliatory in manner, but he incessantly trotted out 
 a phrase which checked a hundred times as many 
 wrangles as he ever caused : " You can't argue 
 about matters of fact. Settle your facts first on 
 good authority. Steward, bring me my Gazetteer," 
 or Navy List, or Peerage, or Dictionary. If the 
 desired information was not enshrined in these 
 
28 SHIPMATES 
 
 his only works of reference, he settled the matter 
 '' to the best of my recollection." There were few 
 who dared dispute the accuracy of a man who knew 
 the entire morning and evening service by heart, 
 who could remember the second and third Christian 
 names of messmates whom he had not met for 
 twenty years, state with confidence their birth- 
 place and parentage, and describe with veri- 
 similitude the exact sentiments with which they 
 had been received by their respective fathers-in- 
 law. 
 
 One oft-repeated tale was of a half -pay captain 
 who fell desperately in love with the only child 
 of a very rich man. Finding that his feelings were 
 warmly returned he called on her father, but 
 without the faintest expectation of meeting with 
 decent civility. The old man heard what he had 
 to say, and then began to sum up the case : " You 
 have no connexions, no interest, no hope of 
 further employment afloat, and ' as a married man ' 
 no wish for it. What have you to offer my 
 daughter ? " 
 
 " My half -pay is seventeen shillings a day." 
 
 " And you have nothing more ? " 
 
 " Nothing but £1800 that I saved." 
 
 " What out of ? " 
 
 " My pay." 
 
 '' Good Lord ! " cried the man of wealth. Then 
 he held out a detaining hand. 
 
 '' You mayn't have much to give my daughter, 
 
ADVISER IN GENERAL 29 
 
 but at any rate you will know how to take care of 
 what she has. If she's content, I am." 
 
 An early period of Shaw's life bulked large in 
 recollection — eighteen months' slaver-catching on 
 the West Coast of Africa. 
 
 '' It was awful lying a few miles out, day after 
 day, knowing what every other fellow would say 
 before he'd even thought it. With nine in the 
 mess there were never enough of us on speaking 
 terms to play a rubber of whist, though sometimes 
 it ran to three-handed cribbage. When we did 
 get ashore we walked in opposite directions as hard 
 as we could go. What temper there was we kept 
 for service purposes. 
 
 *' The food was atrocious. The day after we got 
 out to Lagos the captain sent for us all and said : 
 ' I've been talking to the doctor who has been out 
 here before, and at my request he's going to give 
 you a little advice.' So the combined sawbones 
 and pill-compounder began. It was chiefly about 
 what not to eat. We listened, and then went 
 back to the ward-room and looked at one another 
 pretty ruefully. ' Look here,' I said, ' if we eat 
 we may die, and if we don't we must die. Eat 
 whatever 's going — and let 'em fight it out down 
 below.' So we ate all we could get, and everyone 
 of us lived to go home, even the doctor. 
 
 "" He was quite insane. I had a touch of fever 
 once, and he was mixing up some medicine for me. 
 His place was just opposite my cabin, both doors 
 
30 SHIPMATES 
 
 were open, and I had very long sight. Why until 
 I was past fifty I could stand in the middle of 
 Southsea common and read the time by St. 
 Thomas's clock ! ' What's that you're putting 
 in ? ' I sung out. ' Only something to take the 
 taste off,' he said, and handed the glass to my 
 servant. 'Put it alongside me,' I said to the 
 fellow ; ' I don't want it just yet awhile.' While I 
 was sniffing it and holding it up to the light, the 
 captain came in to inquire for me. ' Good 
 Lord ! ' he said, ' what a baby. Why don't you 
 swallow it down and have done with it ? ' ' For 
 the simple reason,' I said, ' that there is a full 
 ounce of poison in it, and I don't even know the 
 brand.' ' My dear fellow,' he said, ' pray re- 
 collect that the last time you had a touch of fever 
 you accused your servant of stealing £800 in silver 
 from under your pillow. He had to run for his 
 life, and you were abusing the sentry for not 
 poking a bayonet into him.' 
 
 '' However, when I told him the stuff came from 
 the third bottle on the second shelf, starboard 
 side, and he found the lip of it was wet, and when I 
 proved to him that as I lay in my bunk I could pick 
 out every one of the poisons, he looked a little 
 queer. ' What do you want me to do ? ' he asked. 
 'Lock 'em all up and lose the key.' So he did. 
 We couldn't get any other doctor to say the man 
 was mad. Dog won't eat dog." 
 
 Although two of Shaw's closest personal friends 
 
ADVISER IN GENERAL 81 
 
 were medical men, he was careful to explain that 
 he liked them " as shipmates," and not in their 
 professional capacity. He thought all doctors 
 ignorant and daring, but naval doctors were " far 
 and away the worst of the lot. If a man can't get 
 a living in England he goes to India ; if he isn't 
 good enough for that he goes into the army ; if 
 they won't have him even there the navy has to 
 take him." One of his favourite stories was of a 
 bluejacket who fell out of his hammock at nine 
 o'clock one evening and dislocated his shoulder. 
 There were five doctors on the ship's books, two 
 permanently and three as passengers, but it was 
 sixteen hours before the unlucky man received any 
 surgical attendance. Where were they all ? One 
 was drunk, two were ashore on leave, and one 
 without it, and one couldn't be found. 
 
 Another tale was of his dining with the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief in China and saying to him : 
 '' Medical treatment has changed to an extra- 
 ordinary degree, sir. When I was out here twenty 
 years ago doctors starved their patients, gave 
 them purgatives strong enough for a cart-horse, 
 bled them till they fainted, and salivated them 
 till their teeth dropped out. Now it's effervescing 
 drinks and chicken and champagne, and stuffing 
 from morning till night and whenever a man opens 
 his eyes. They even wake him up to feed him." 
 '*■ Just what I was telling a whole posse of them 
 this morning." '' And I suppose they said the 
 
82 SHIPMATES 
 
 other men were all wrong and wisdom was born 
 with them ? " " Not a bit of it ! They said that 
 the British constitution had radically changed 
 during the interval. Rather a colossal lie, but 
 they're an example to us : they never give one 
 another away." 
 
 At heart Shaw admired one of his early captains 
 who, '' after working the thing out carefully on 
 paper," decided that it was impossible to have 
 more than five per cent, of the men on the sick-list 
 '" without throwing everything out of gear." One 
 day the staff-surgeon reported that a certain man 
 was ill. The captain shook his head. " You 
 have your five per cent, already." " But the man is 
 most seriously ill, sir." '' Can't help it. Five per 
 cent, is the outside number that I can spare." 
 '' But, sir, if the man is kept another day on duty 
 I cannot answer for his life." " Then all I can 
 say is, that if he goes on the sick-list the man who 
 is nearest well must come off. Five per cent, you 
 have, and five per cent, is all you'll get while I 
 command this ship." 
 
 When ill his attitude was very much that of 
 Dr. Johnson : " Pr'y thee, don't tease me. Stay 
 till I am well, and then you shall tell me how to 
 cure myself." 
 
 Man is born to boast, and sailors are no excep- 
 tion to the rule. One will swear that he has been 
 in every naval hospital in every quarter of the 
 globe, and in some of them twice over, while 
 
ADVISER IN GENERAL 83 
 
 another boasts that he has never been a day on 
 the sick-list in his Hfe, and risks that hfe in the 
 interests of the boast. Men with their temperature 
 at 105° F. have only consented to remain in their 
 cabin on the understanding that their record is not 
 to be spoilt by any formal recognition of the fact 
 that they are not on duty. Shaw boasted that 
 he had never seen the inner walls of a hospital al- 
 though he had had every fever that it was possible 
 to have, from small-pox and yellow fever down- 
 wards, the one exception being Malta fever, but 
 that was the text for a further boast — '' I never 
 served in the Mediterranean and put water-colour 
 drawings in my log-book and made myself a 
 laughing-stock for foreigners by speaking French. 
 Everyone should stick to his own language, and 
 then you may know what you are talking about." 
 He affected to despise shipmates who " had spent 
 half their time in Malta," but later in life, when he 
 found how many things were of interest to them 
 and a dead-letter to him, he frankly owned that 
 he was envious : ''In my day the Mediterranean 
 was the only chance a man had of being civilised, 
 and I never but once passed the straits." 
 
 He had not a high opinion of the amount of 
 intellect needed in the upper ranks of the service, 
 and enjoyed relating the curious chances by which 
 some men received most unsuitable appointments 
 and the ease with which they retained them. In 
 one case, '' Two admirals applied for the same 
 
 c 
 
34 SHIPMATES 
 
 billet. Their interest was about equal and the 
 Admiralty did not wish to offend the supporters of 
 either, so they gave it to a third man who had 
 no interest at all and was supposed to have no 
 brains. A friend said to him : ' There's been 
 nothing but quarrelling on the station for the 
 last three years. You'll never be able to keep 
 peace among 'em all.' 'I don't intend to try,' 
 he said. ' I have always maintained that that 
 is the duty of the Commander-in-Chief's cook.' 
 And his cook did it, too ! " 
 
 Shaw loved facts, and if in apparent contradic- 
 tion so much the better. Reconciling theories 
 annoyed him desperately. Although of an eagerly 
 helpful nature he was singularly incapable of teach- 
 ing, and nothing seemed to him more wonder- 
 ful than the power of communicating knowledge 
 to others. One day he said to a naval instructor : 
 '' If I had been a schoolmaster I should have been 
 dead long ago." " It's a trying life for any man. 
 
 Still, with a chest like yours " " But what on 
 
 earth has my chest to do with it ? I mean that I 
 should have been hanged." 
 
 He often spoke of a shipmate some years older 
 than himself who, after a brief childhood spent in 
 an old seaport town, entered the navy, and served 
 almost continuously for fifty-five years. One day 
 he wished to pay a compliment to a lady and 
 told her that she had a complexion like a rose. 
 This effort though lacking in novelty was fairly 
 
ADVISER IN GENERAL 35 
 
 well received, and he added warmly : " Yes, indeed, 
 like a primrose ! " It is doubtful whether Shaw 
 himself could have given the names of a dozen 
 flowers, and he certainly could not have applied 
 half that number correctly. His ignorance of 
 bird life was so complete that when a little girl 
 said to him, " This is my tame sparrow. I have 
 had it for two years," he exclaimed, " Bless my 
 soul, my dear, you don't say so ! You surprise 
 me. I thought the little beggars died off every 
 winter like flies." 
 
 As a child Shaw had absorbed narrowly Evan- 
 gelical doctrines, and he was inwardly convinced 
 that all worthy people ought to find life a vale of 
 tears and bitterness, and he enjoyed his own almost 
 unbroken good luck a little fearfully. Being 
 slightly illogical he drew the further conclusion 
 that misfortune was a sufficient proof of virtue, 
 and was extremely sympathetic. Only one mis- 
 fortune must never be mentioned in his hearing — 
 shipwreck. There are sailors who claim a know- 
 ledge of their profession in strict proportion to the 
 number of shipwrecks and " narrow shaves " they 
 have experienced, but this pretension roused his 
 wrath to the fiercest degree. " If ever I'd been 
 wrecked, at least I'd have the decency not to say 
 so. For one ship that is lost by stress of weather, 
 fifty are lost by bad seamanship. With all the 
 ocean on one side, and an iron-bound coast on 
 the other, they hug the shore. Now I'll tell you 
 
36 SHIPMATES 
 
 what I call caution. The man was an ignorant 
 old fellow, but he understood a sailor's first duty — 
 to take care of his ship. He was going up from 
 Plymouth to Glasgow ; ran into a thick fog, and 
 lost his bearings altogether. He was afraid to go 
 on; he couldn't anchor, and what d'you suppose 
 he did ? He said to himself : ' It must be safe 
 to go over the course we've already crossed,' and 
 he did. Then when the fog lifted he picked up his 
 bearings and turned round once more. Of course 
 I'm not speaking of the merchant service. I 
 know many skippers have a double set of orders : 
 one for the owners to produce if anything goes 
 wrong, and one that they have to follow if they 
 don't mean to get sacked." One conviction due 
 to his early upbringing was that it is impious to 
 complain of the weather, but he gave himself a 
 dispensation when fog and thaw combined forces. 
 
 Like most sailors of his day, Shaw was a great 
 card player. Whist, picquet, ecarte, nothing 
 came amiss to him, but he owned to a preference 
 for cribbage, and especially treasured a board that 
 had been present at the battle of Trafalgar. 
 
 " I never saw the game played until I was 
 twenty-two. In fact I hardly knew one card from 
 another. I was the youngest in the ward-room by 
 a long chalk, and I joined in the middle of the 
 commission, and the commander made me play 
 with him every night because he always won and 
 the others couldn't stand any more of it. He 
 
ADVISER IN GENERAL 37 
 
 was a Scotch earl, who couldn't afford to chuck the 
 service when he succeeded to the title. He just 
 explained the rules of the thing to me, and then 
 from the very beginning we had what he called 
 the rigour of the game. That meant all I omitted 
 to count he took for himself, and if I tried to take 
 too much he pegged the amount backward on my 
 board and forward on his own. It was awfully 
 trying to the temper, but one night after six weeks 
 of it I beat him three games out of five, twice 
 round the board. A fellow who was looking on 
 said I had had a run of luck, and of course I let 
 it pass, but the commander said : ' Not a bit of it ; 
 it was done by good play. Ten days ago he 
 grasped the principle of the game, and the rest of 
 you never could. Tell them what it is, Shaw.' 
 Well, up to that moment I hadn't the ghost of 
 an idea, but flattery sometimes gives a jog to 
 your brain that nothing else will, and I answered 
 as glibly as if he had held up the words in front of 
 me : ' As long as the cards are properly shuffled 
 the hands must run pretty even. It's pegging that 
 does it.' 
 
 '' Soon after that his affairs were arranged, and 
 he went home. I think there was a thicker 
 sprinkling of titled men in the navy then, but for 
 the most part they were very poor. I knew two 
 more of them who would have been precious glad 
 to have a hundred a year besides their pay. To 
 spend, I mean ; nominally they had several 
 
38 SHIPMATES 
 
 thousand. And just because so few men had 
 money even those who might have had more were 
 kept pretty short at sea. I remember two younger 
 sons of a wealthy duke, and they were only given 
 the regulation minimum allowance — fifty pounds. 
 
 " I got into the navy by a bit of a side-wind, 
 and I came up hand over hand, and some of the 
 fellows didn't altogether like it. But I looked 
 older than I was and I kept a still tongue, and very 
 soon they only knew my seniority and lost sight 
 of my age. 
 
 " It's a thing most people are wonderfully dense 
 about. I remember when I was barely twenty- 
 seven a soldier was given a passage aboard us out 
 to Hong-Kong. I rather liked the fellow, and he 
 sat next me at dinner and spent a good deal of 
 time with me on deck. When he landed he 
 couldn't find me, and he asked the captain to say 
 good-bye for him, and added : ' Poor old chap, I 
 hope he'll get his promotion soon. It's rather 
 hard lines.' The captain was surprised, and said: 
 ' Up to the present he has been a lucky man. For 
 what age do you take him ? ' ' Oh, well, I suppose 
 he can't be far short of fifty ? ' " 
 
 All through his life the subject of age was of the 
 deepest interest to Shaw ; he could not come into 
 the most casual contact with anyone without 
 asking himself and other people. How old is 
 he ? Uncertainty was vexatious, inaccuracy was 
 
ADVISER IN GENERAL 39 
 
 intolerable. One day Langley's wife lamented in 
 his hearing that she and her nine brothers and 
 sisters were all a little doubtful as to their precise 
 age as they had been christened " in batches," 
 and could therefore derive but little information 
 from their baptismal certificates. Shaw condoled 
 sincerely with her most insincere regrets. She 
 belonged to an old naval family, and after turning 
 the matter over in his mind for some hours he 
 decided the age of every member of it for three 
 generations, and drew up a document which filled 
 two sheets of foolscap, marking those dates which 
 were " ascertained " with a star, and those which 
 were '' approximate " with a cross. Fortunately 
 he had a deep-rooted dislike to spending money on 
 postage, dating from the time " when it used to 
 cost me twenty-two pence to send a letter from 
 Lisbon to Portsmouth, and the Portuguese pocketed 
 almost the whole of it," and he handed the missive 
 over to Langley and asked him to give it to his 
 wife the next time he went ashore. Langley 
 choked down his laughter and undertook the 
 commission, but did not fulfil it until he had 
 made a few judicious alterations in the dates, 
 muttering to himself : " And the man has the 
 cheek to call me the most foolhardy fellow he 
 ever met ! " 
 
 Some weeks later Shaw was gratified to learn, 
 at third or fourth hand, that Mrs. Langley " really 
 
40 SHIPMATES 
 
 could not understand why people called him such a 
 disagreeable man," and he replied with great 
 cordiality that, although she might have her 
 foibles, in some ways she was one of the most 
 sensible women he had ever met. 
 
III. "SALT-WATER AND FRESH" 
 
 Impersonation — A Spartan husband — Midshipman's half-pay — 
 The duties of an expert — The Bishop of Marines — Religious 
 instruction — The origin of civilisation — Laugley's remains 
 
 IANGLEY was the son of a country clergy- 
 man, and he most certainly bore out a 
 common statement with regard to their 
 lack of discipline. His chief weapon was sarcasm, 
 and he made so many enemies that, in spite of 
 brilliant professional abilities and good oppor- 
 tunities of displaying them, promotion was ex- 
 ceedingly slow, and appointments were hard to 
 obtain and difficult to keep. 
 
 He was a small man, with a hooked nose and 
 dark, unsailorlike, short-sighted eyes ; in fact he 
 so strongly resembled the pictures of Wellington 
 on blacking-bottles that he declared any further 
 portraiture to be sheer waste of money, and the 
 only photograph his wife possessed was taken 
 very late in life by a former messmate, who soon 
 afterwards abandoned the art " because it was 
 reducing the list of his friends too rapidly." He 
 had a thin, penetrating voice, and spoke with a 
 deliberation which seemed to tip all his arrows 
 
 41 
 
42 SHIPMATES 
 
 with flint. His messmates agreed that " there 
 was no venom in him," but his commanding 
 officers usually held a different opinion. 
 
 One day Langley heard a lieutenant complaining 
 in somewhat insubordinate terms that for three 
 weeks in succession he had had to keep watch and 
 watch and could hardly hold his eyes open at 
 noon, and told him drily and with apparent con- 
 viction : " The knowledge that you have the honour 
 to hold a commission in her Majesty's service 
 ought to be sufficient, sir, to keep you awake 
 day and night continuously until further orders." 
 Both speeches reached the captain's ears, and not 
 unnaturally he thought Langley's was far more 
 subversive of discipline. 
 
 The imprudence of Langley's words was over- 
 matched by some of his acts. One trick that he 
 played was so mad that even he never dared 
 speak of it until long after he retired. A very 
 young captain about his own height, and bearing 
 enough resemblance to him to answer to any pass- 
 port-description, was appointed to a ship and 
 ordered to take up his command by a certain date. 
 For reasons altogether too unreasonable to be laid 
 before the admiral he did not wish to join until 
 thirty-six hours later, and after a hasty examina- 
 tion of the list of officers on board his vessel asked 
 Langley to personate him. Langley readily 
 agreed, took most of the baggage, set out on his 
 seventy-miles' journey by coach and rail, and 
 
'^SALT-WATER AND FRESH" 43 
 
 reached the ship after nightfall. By the dim light 
 of oil -lamps he knew that he had little to fear, 
 and soon turned in and slept peacefully all night. 
 He awoke to the realisation that although it was 
 winter there were ten hours of daylight to be 
 faced, and that however familiar he might be with 
 the usual routine of a captain when joining his ship, 
 he could neither show himself on deck nor put 
 his signature to any papers. The time-honoured 
 ruse of " shamming sick " was not open to him ; 
 there was a doctor on board, and to refuse to see 
 him would be an act of grave discourtesy. It 
 was true that the doctor could not prove that he 
 was not Captain Kennedy, but, when he afterwards 
 saw that officer, for whom could he take him ? 
 He adopted a middle course : said he felt tired 
 and chilly, put on a travelling-cap and a monkey- 
 jacket (uniform greatcoats were then unknown), 
 and crouched over a closed stove. 
 
 No one but the first lieutenant entered the cabin ; 
 but before noon he could see plainly that the man's 
 suspicions were aroused, and that the questions 
 laid before him were mere pretexts for an inter- 
 view. At last Langley carried the war into the 
 enemy's country, turned on him in a rage and 
 asked : " How dare you disturb me in this frivolous 
 manner ? If you don't understand the ordinary 
 routine of a ship in harbour you had better ask 
 to be relieved." The lieutenant left the cabin, 
 but two hours later returned, with no affectation 
 
44 SHIPMATES 
 
 of asking for orders, and, looking him straight in 
 the face, asked point-blank, '' Sir, are you Captain 
 Kennedy ? " " Get out of my cabin, sir ! " The 
 young man stood his ground : "I ask you, sir, are 
 you Captain Kennedy, the recently appointed 
 captain of this ship ? " 
 
 Springing to his feet and swearing violently 
 (not a practice of his own, but a well-known habit 
 of the man he was impersonating) and shouting, 
 " Get out of my cabin, sir, or I'll put you under 
 arrest!" Langley bore down on him, and without 
 actually touching him compelled him to back out 
 of the open door, which he immediately slammed 
 and fastened. 
 
 An hour or so later the happy idea struck 
 Langley that, having carried out the admiral's 
 orders by joining the ship on the previous day, 
 there was nothing to prevent him from going back 
 to the junction to meet Kennedy, who was due 
 there at midnight and had promised faithfully 
 to be aboard soon after breakfast, and this plan 
 would obviate all difficulties as to the disappear- 
 ance of the superfluous captain. 
 
 He changed into plain clothes, and sent for the 
 first lieutenant and announced his intention of 
 going ashore for the night. The lieutenant, suf- 
 fering strong reaction from his previous boldness, 
 received his parting orders with perfect meekness. 
 
 Langley would have left by the next train had 
 not Kennedy most unexpectedly alighted from it. 
 
''SALT-WATER AND FRESH" 45 
 
 His nerve had begun to fail at two o'clock that 
 morning when it suddenly struck him that he 
 was risking another man's commission as well as 
 his own. Finding that he would not be expected 
 on board that night they turned into an hotel 
 to laugh and dine. Curiously enough, although 
 they both lived to be very old they never met 
 again. 
 
 Langley was fond of ladies' society, but fiercely 
 resented their presence on board ship. " It isn't a 
 fit place for any woman, and it spoils her clothes. 
 The cleaner a ship is, the dirtier it is. We clean 
 with grease and rags, not soap and water." He 
 professed to honour above all men a certain 
 captain whose wife went aboard to see him, 
 entirely against his wish, when the ship was riding 
 at anchor about three miles from the shore. 
 " Dirty weather " suddenly set in, and he most 
 reluctantly agreed that she should spend the night 
 aboard. He had scarcely done so when orders 
 were received to set sail immediately, and he called 
 for his wife's boat. It was impossible to let down 
 the companion-ladder, and as soon as the boat 
 had been lowered the lady was slung over the side 
 in a chair. Just at the critical moment a wave 
 dashed the boat away from the ship's side, and the 
 chair was dipped well down in the water. Every 
 man expected the order that the boat was to 
 wait until a few dry wraps could be found, but 
 the captain merely swore at the boat's crew for 
 
46 SHIPMATES 
 
 being land-lubbers and had the chair lowered 
 again. Drenched through, and in a piercing wind, 
 the unlucky woman was rowed ashore. When 
 the captain returned a fortnight later from his 
 flying cruise — no letters having been received in the 
 meantime — ^he learnt that his wife had been five 
 days in her grave. 
 
 One of Langley's cherished recollections was of 
 a most profitable stay in Scotland : 
 
 '' I was six or seven and twenty, but still a 
 mate. I had been stranded for several months, 
 and had no hope of employment and no half-pay. 
 None was given to junior officers. Why, a mess- 
 mate of mine was a married man and had a couple 
 of children. He was ashore for more than two 
 years, and they were nearly starving. At last he 
 went to their Lordships and complained that he 
 had been passed over. They said : ' We are here 
 to find officers for ships, not ships for officers.' 
 ' However that may be,' he said, ' I can't hold out 
 another week. If you can't give me an appoint- 
 ment we must all go to the workhouse on Saturday.' 
 They didn't want a scandal of that kind, so they 
 found him a billet. 
 
 '' I wasn't married, and my father gave me 
 house-room and the run of my teeth, but even 
 that was more than he could afford, and I hated 
 turning up at meal-times, and I hated loafing round 
 the village all day, though I was fond enough of 
 the place in an ordinary way. 
 
"SALT-WATER AND FRESH" 47 
 
 '' I'll tell you a thing that shows how times are 
 changed. One Saturday evening I went to tea 
 with some old friends in the village, and we were 
 having a round game. About nine o'clock my 
 mother sent a message by the maid : ' Would Mr. 
 Willy please return at once as the water was 
 heated for his bath.' No one seemed to think it 
 queer. 
 
 '' Well, by some side-wind I got an offer to go to 
 Scotland as an expert. I knew about as much of 
 the matter as you do, perhaps less, but that was 
 their look-out, not mine. You can't be buyer 
 and seller too. When I met the agent he asked 
 me what terms I expected. I hummed and hawed 
 and said that in the navy our pay might be small 
 but it was certain, and so forth. At last he got 
 impatient, and said very brusquely : ' I may as 
 well tell you at once that three guineas a day is 
 our outside limit.' Three guineas a day, when I 
 had never had more than five shillings in my life, 
 and all the pocket-money I had had in sixteen 
 weeks had been a sovereign that my good old aunt 
 gave me ! I said to myself like a Chinaman, 
 ' Keep your countenance, Johnny,' and told him 
 that, as I was not likely to be wanted afloat just 
 yet awhile, I thought I might as well go. I 
 borrowed five pounds to get across the border, and 
 came back with a hundred, a thing not many men 
 can boast of if report says true ! What did I do 
 to earn it ? The only thing I can remember 
 
48 SHIPMATES 
 
 doing is standing on a bridge and noting down 
 the number of vessels that passed within a given 
 time." 
 
 The h — ^less chaplain who had been such an 
 affliction to Heseltine once served under Langley, 
 who found him a heavy trial, though for other 
 reasons. 
 
 '' He was the best little fellow in the world, 
 though he did say nothink and anythink, and never 
 shook hands with anyone without hoping they 
 were 'pretty -well-to-day.' Don't know where he 
 came from, but I fancy from some all-sorts-shop up 
 north. He got converted somehow, and thought 
 he had a mission to convert other people. He 
 scraped together the quaintest set of testimonials 
 imaginable and went to the bishop and begged and 
 prayed to be ordained. The bishop refused him 
 time after time, but he stuck to it like the widow 
 in the Gospel (I once heard him speak of her as 
 * the important widow '), and at last for peace' 
 sake the poor old man said that if he'd go to a 
 theological college for a year he'd give in. 
 
 '' Well, it seemed that as a curate no one wanted 
 him, and he was pretty well on his beam' ends. 
 In a lucky moment he heard of the navy, ap- 
 parently for the first time. Chaplains weren't 
 obliged to be double-barrelled in those days, and 
 they were at a premium just then ; and he found 
 himself received with open arms, and four times 
 the screw he'd ever had before, no rent to pay. 
 
''SALT-WATER AND FRESH" 49 
 
 and four meals a day for a sum that any landlady 
 in the kingdom would have scoffed at. I must say 
 he was openly thankful and did his best to earn 
 it. He used to begin his sermon the first thing 
 Monday morning, and hammered away at it till 
 the last thing Saturday night. The first half of 
 the week he was lengthening it, and the second half 
 shortening it, for he never found a captain who 
 expected the men to stand more than forty-five 
 minutes. After that it was quite understood that 
 to shuffle your shoes on the deck was no breach 
 of discipline. He complained to me once, but I 
 said : ' Put yourself in their place. They don't 
 understand ten consecutive words, and they smell 
 their dinner burning.' 
 
 " I can see him now when he first joined. He 
 had blue eyes about the shape and size of a six- 
 weeks' old kitten's, and a complexion like an apple 
 rubbed up with the corner of an old woman's 
 apron. One night at mess soon after he arrived 
 someone asked him if he didn't regret having lost 
 all chance of becoming a bishop. He explained 
 quite seriously that he had never had any : 
 ' There are no gawspel bishops.' We should have 
 let it pass at that, but the paymaster, a hoary 
 old ruffian who was supposed to be getting on for 
 seventy, and who died ten years later, ' to the 
 inexpressible grief of his wife aged fifty-four,' a 
 regular son of a sea-cook, told him he stood a very 
 fair chance of being Bishop of Marines, as he had 
 
50 SHIPMATES 
 
 joined young and it went chiefly by seniority, and 
 he ought to get his name on the roster as soon as 
 possible ; and he had better ask the captain about 
 it the next time he was at leisure. He swallowed 
 it whole, but the following morning Franks told 
 him in his dry, serious way that the captain might 
 think his application premature, and he had better 
 wait till the end of the commission. Franks often 
 interfered if he thought things were being carried 
 too far, but he never did it in a nasty, self-righteous 
 way. If I'd had half his tact and a quarter his 
 temper I should have been an Admiral of the 
 Fleet. 
 
 " Practical jokes often led to bad blood, more 
 especially if the biter was bit. I recollect a lanky 
 sub-lieutenant persuading a raw Scotch assistant- 
 surgeon — ^he was more like a Shetland pony than 
 anything else — to go and ask the captain where 
 his cabin was. The captain saw that he had been 
 hoaxed, and, after recommending him to have his 
 hair cut without delay, he turned the matter over 
 in his mind for a moment and then said : ' There 
 is a spare cabin. And, what's more, you shall 
 have it.' 
 
 ' ' I never met little Nothink again until I had 
 my first (and only) captain's command, and then 
 I found he was to be my chaplain. He was hardly 
 changed by a hair's-breadth, and I felt quite glad 
 to have him until one day when he was giving 
 religious instruction to the ship's boys under an 
 
'^ SALT-WATER AND FRESH" 51 
 
 awning and I heard a few scraps of it as I walked 
 up and down. First I heard him ask them to 
 *" picture the f eelin's of Sinkt Pahl when 'e 'card the 
 shots whistlin' round 'im.' I let that pass : he 
 might have been thinking of slings and catapults. 
 At any rate I couldn't prove that he wasn't. Soon 
 after he asked from whom ' Our Lord descended ' ? 
 There was a long pause, and then one lad gabbled, 
 * Descended into 'Ell.' I let that pass ; it was 
 too awful for words. Finally he said : ' While 
 we're year in the bright noon-day, dear boys, in 
 Nengland it's the middle of the night.' That was 
 more than I could stand. I told the sentry to call 
 him out, and said : 
 
 " ' Surely you are aware that England and the 
 Cape of Good Hope are on almost the same parallel 
 of longitude ? ' I could see that he no more knew 
 what I meant than if I had spoken Greek, but I 
 made him understand that he must stick to 
 Scripture history, and that he had better give it 
 without any trimmings. To bring the matter 
 home to him I brought up what he had been 
 saying about Sinkt Pahl, and I'm blessed if the 
 little beggar didn't tell me that artillery was 
 mentioned ' somewhere ' in the Old Testament ! 
 I told him that Jonathan's ' artillery ' was on a 
 par with the boy David's ' carriage ' ; and I said 
 that he was a long sight too fond of argufying, and 
 that it was contrary to the Naval Discipline Act ; 
 and I reminded him of Jeshurun, who waxed fat 
 
62 SHIPMATES 
 
 and kicked, and Zimri, who slew his master, and 
 what's-'is-name who said, 'Is thy servant a dog, 
 that he should do this thing ? ' and then ran a 
 knife into his commanding officer. I was getting 
 into low water by that time, so I warned him 
 that a man of many words would not prosper, 
 and that a meek and quiet spirit was an ornament, 
 especially on a black coat, and then I left him. 
 He seemed rather dazed, but he was an awfully 
 good little chap and never bore malice. He told 
 everyone on board that I was a man who had 
 searched the Scriptures. 
 
 '"And I have searched the Scriptures. One 
 commission I made a collection of texts for sermons, 
 and used to offer them six or eight at a time to 
 every sky-pilot I met. I never could understand 
 why parsons stick to the same few passages when 
 there are texts crying out to be used, and fitted 
 to every contingency of life ashore or afloat or 
 in harbour. You hear a new text about as often 
 as you hear a good sermon, and, however badly 
 your own parson preaches, he always finds a stop- 
 gap who does it so much worse that you are quite 
 glad to see him back again. Did I ever tell you 
 of the old evangelical parson who was invited 
 to preach for his ritualist son, and his text was : 
 * Lord have mercy on my son : for he is lunatick.' 
 Well, the Lord had mercy on him, for he died 
 before the young idiot took the final plunge. Not 
 that I should wear myself to skin 'n griff if a son 
 
"SALT-WATER AND FRESH'' 53 
 
 of mine were inclined that way. If you go the 
 right way to work you may stop a man from 
 going to the Devil, but you'll never stop him from 
 going to Rome. He'll do it to a dead certainty, 
 and the sooner he's under proper discipline the 
 better. 
 
 '' It's a queer thing : Shaw's quite a religious 
 man, but he can't endure to hear a text except 
 in church. If he comes across one anywhere out- 
 side his own Bible and prayer-book, it seems to 
 cause in him a kind of spiritual nausea. Often 
 when he gets a letter from his widows and orphans 
 he hands it over to his wife unopened and says : 
 * I can't stand it. Tell me the gist of it. I know 
 there are texts ' — and he is always right. 
 
 "I remember some of the texts now. 'Thou 
 hast been honourable, and I have loved thee.' 
 ' Sing ye praises with understanding.' ' Beguil- 
 ing unstable souls.' ' The line of confusion and 
 the stones of emptiness.' ' At noon-day will I 
 pray.' I must say I like a broad daylight religion. 
 Morning and evening religion is all very well, but 
 in the morning almost any creed will do, and in 
 the evening you may not be there ; what we want 
 is something for the heat and burden of the day. 
 But my favourite, the one that I offered to the 
 whole of them, was : ' It burnt him, yet he laid 
 it not to heart.' What could you have better 
 suited for us poor weak-kneed, backsliding fellows 
 on a man-of-war ? I remember pressing it on 
 
54 SHIPMATES 
 
 our chaplain. He wasn't like poor dear little 
 Nothink ; he'd been to the university and all 
 that kind of thing, but he was frightfully low- 
 church. He said : ' I am pleading one cause — 
 Eternal Salvation — and for the sake of the men 
 it is impossible for me to be too plain and simple, 
 or to repeat the gracious message too often.' I 
 said : ' You take too much for granted. I've 
 got a soul to be saved. How d'you know it isn't 
 your business to save me, and mine to save the 
 lower deck ? ' He said : ' There is only one way 
 to be saved.' I said : ' Maybe so, but you don't 
 know it.' It was what you might call an am- 
 biguous phrase, and he took it in the irritating 
 sense. We both lost our tempers, and I said a 
 few things which it might have been better not 
 to say, and which it's just as well not to repeat, 
 but I think what really riled him was my telling 
 him that excellent sermons could be bought for 
 sixpence, and that I should be glad to contribute 
 towards any reasonable outlay in that direction. 
 He nearly cried with rage, and went to the captain 
 and accused me of ' horrible blasphemies ' and 
 whispered a few of them in his ear. The old man 
 never liked to let on that he was deaf, so he shook 
 his head solemnly and said there must be some 
 misunderstanding ; I could not possibly have said 
 anything so outrageous. But he took jolly good 
 care not to ask me ! 
 
 '' Then the chaplain began a paper quarrel with 
 
"SALT-WATER AND FRESH" 55 
 
 me, and it went on gaily at first, but a spell of bad 
 weather came on and I hadn't time enough to 
 devote to the matter, and it went by default. I 
 never could make out what the fellow had learnt. 
 Why, he bought a water-cooler for his cabin and 
 wanted to return it because it leaked ! He very 
 seldom took grog, but, when he did, instead of 
 ordering it and drinking it in a straightforward 
 way, he used to begin like this : ' Er — steward — 
 give me a glass of water.' Then a few minutes 
 later, when men were beginning to think of their 
 second glass : ' Ah — steward — I should like a bit 
 of biscuit.' And then at last, what he wanted 
 all the time : ' Oh — steward — I think I'll have 
 a little brandy in this water.' 
 
 '* Perhaps, after all, it was better than another 
 chaplain I knew who always took his spirits neat, 
 and expected everyone to know his habit. The 
 first day he joined the ship he poured himself out 
 a good half-glass, and while something drew off 
 his attention for a moment the marine standing 
 behind him slashed in some water. He turned on 
 the man in a fury and roared : ' D — n your eyes, 
 you've drowned the miller ! ' I must own it was 
 the only time I ever heard him swear, and he had 
 a way of putting a stopper on fellows who had 
 the silly trick of swearing as much as they chose 
 and then apologising to his cloth. He used to 
 say cheerfully, ' My dear fellow, thafs nothing,' 
 the implication being that he could do far more 
 
56 SHIPMATES 
 
 in that line himself if it were worth a sensible 
 man's while. 
 
 '' We used to make the mealy-mouthed one carve 
 the poultry at table, not because he did it well — 
 I remember Blissett put up a placard behind him, 
 ' Mangling done here,' but someone hauled it 
 down before he saw it — but because we felt we 
 ought to try and get the country's money out of 
 him somehow. All the time it was, 'My dear 
 fellow, what can I send you ? Have I helped you 
 as you like ? ' and so forth, while he shuffled 
 all the liver-wings under the drumsticks until he 
 was ready to eat them. 
 
 " As far as I was concerned the birds might have 
 been centipedes, but they were never tough. I was 
 thirteen years out in China, and it was what we 
 called a full-belly station. To this day I can't look 
 a fowl in the face, and even on the lower deck 
 they got tired of geese and turned back to salt- 
 junk with a relish. As soon as we had eaten all 
 the birds down to six weeks old we moved on, and 
 we were back again before the skinny little beggars 
 weighed a couple of pounds. I remember going once 
 with this same chaplain to a two-o'clock family 
 Sunday dinner. The man's wife carved, and there 
 was a hare, and she asked him very politely what 
 part he would like. He made no bones about it : 
 'I should like a slice out of the middle of the 
 back.' 
 
 " He ought to have felt too much shocked to eat 
 
''SALT-WATER AND FRESH'* 57 
 
 any dinner at all. The poor woman thought they 
 must say grace as a parson was there, though they 
 weren't in the habit of doing it. She was a good 
 soul but not exactly an authority on etiquette, 
 and she looked at her husband and said in an 
 imperative whisper, ' Bob, say grace.' He bent his 
 head, turned purple, and stuttered out, ' Bless the 
 meat ! ' " 
 
 When Langley was quite an old man he was 
 given a civil C.B. Strained relations with his 
 superiors had prevented him from being mentioned 
 in any despatch after an engagement with the 
 enemy, and therefore the military division was out 
 of the question. " What does it mean ? " asked 
 one of his grandchildren. 
 
 '' It means, my dear, that I am a Civilised Beast. 
 At least they think so." 
 
 Shortly before his death he dropped sarcasm for 
 a few moments, and said to a young lad just going 
 out to India as a tea-planter : " Take evening- 
 clothes with you, and if anyone wants to be kind 
 to you, let them ! I never let anyone be kind 
 to me when I was young, and so I never became 
 civilised. People were such snobs in those days, 
 and it sickened me. One night four or five of us 
 were invited to a small governor's to dine. The 
 youngest was a midshipman belonging to a very 
 good family and he was told off to take the 
 governor's wife into dinner. That was a mere 
 matter of course, but the fulsome way she talked 
 
58 SHIPMATES 
 
 to him was disgusting. Some of the island people 
 were there and she wanted to convince them 
 that she knew everyone at home, and kept on 
 asking for his cousin the marquess of this and 
 his aunt the dowager countess of that. He got 
 redder and redder and mumbled replies that no 
 one could hear. At last she asked : ' And what 
 was your father, Mr. Daysent ? ' In a thin sharp 
 voice that could be heard from one end of the 
 table to the other he said, calmly : ' My father, 
 ma'am ? Oh, he was a butcher.' We asked him 
 afterwards what put the idea into his head, and 
 he said : ' Well, my mother had to buy sheep from 
 him, anyway. Beastly tough they were, too.' 
 
 " I remember another midshipman who was 
 always being baited by an idle young assistant- 
 surgeon — they were gun-room fry in those days 
 and slept in hammocks, and if there was a cabin 
 to spare the senior sub-lieutenant claimed it. The 
 boy knew something that none of the rest of us 
 knew, but he was a good-natured little chap and 
 kept it to himself. One day the man began jeer- 
 ing at his clothes, and then at last he lost his 
 temper, and out it came : ' It may be a very 
 bad coat, doctor, and I dare say it is, but your 
 father made it.'" 
 
 Unlike most sailors Langley kept up a corre- 
 spondence with several old messmates, and many 
 of his sayings were passed on to the next genera- 
 tion, and may bear one more repetition : 
 
"SALT WATER AND FRESH" 59 
 
 Ward-room cook's bread is better than none. 
 
 It is much easier to pretend you don't want 
 things than to pretend that you have them. 
 
 Any man can be a conscientious bore. A 
 conscious bore is a hero. 
 
 A tidy man is nearly always secretive. 
 
 Much depends on choice, but far more depends 
 upon whether you make the best or the worst 
 of your choice. 
 
 Our religion is like children's rules when playing. 
 They say : "If you touch me here or there, or if 
 the ball goes over that fence, ifs not to count, ^^ 
 
 People are too fond of expecting gratitude for 
 things they were never even asked to do. They 
 ought to remember what a canny old Scot said 
 a couple of hundred years ago : " There is no 
 injury worse nor compulsory kindness." 
 
 The arrogance of assuming that your dog waits 
 on the opposite bank with humble eagerness to 
 greet you ! In the next world you may be your 
 dog's dog. 
 
 What can be more unjust than to expect that 
 other people should be just ? 
 
 Do parsons really desire to convert us ? Or 
 doctors to cure us ? Or lawyers to settle our 
 affairs satisfactorily ? 
 
 People keep all their commonsense for their 
 own affairs. 
 
 The respectable man is told : " It's all a 
 matter of environment : in the same position you 
 
60 SHIPMATES 
 
 would be just the same." But has not the 
 respectable man refused the evil and chosen the 
 good of his own surroundings ? Has the man 
 born in a crowded street no power at all to do the 
 same ? If he had not, and if he did not as a rule 
 exercise it, the whole country would be "in peril 
 of salvation." 
 
 Quarrels between men and women, rich and 
 poor, old and young, are never atoned. They 
 use different weapons and obey different rules. 
 
 Nothing would bore and exasperate me more 
 than a person taking a purely sympathetic interest 
 in things that deeply affected me. 
 
 How much religion must we carry to the Bible 
 before we can find any there ? 
 
 Flattery is like manna, of which the Israelites 
 always had enough whether they gathered much 
 or little. 
 
 It is comparative peace to know what you want 
 and to know you can't get it. Anything's better 
 than the unrest of not knowing what you want, 
 or the emptiness of thinking there is nothing you 
 do want. 
 
 Almost anything is possible. People who intend 
 to remain sane stick to probabilities, strong pro- 
 babilities. 
 
 It is much more difficult to be a passable father 
 than to be a good husband. Your children never 
 meet you half way. 
 
"salt-water and FRESH" 61 
 
 If a woman's traditional weapons are lying, 
 tears, and flattery, a man's are flattery, lying, and 
 bluster. In both cases only flattery stands hard 
 wear. 
 
 Unfortunately the question in life is not whether 
 one has much patience or little, but whether one 
 has enough. 
 
 We seem in a bad way, whether because of the 
 new learning or because of forgetting the old. 
 
 Her troubles were always like an expansive gas. 
 One was enough to fill her mind, and a dozen could 
 do no more. 
 
 We might divide our acquaintances into those 
 who look for change through life and those who 
 look for it through death. Their own or others'. 
 
 Difference of opinion as to what constitutes 
 evidence may well separate chief friends. 
 
 '' In vain is the net spread." Not at all : it 
 flatters the human bird. 
 
 If I give all I have, I shall steadily have less 
 and less to give. 
 
 I don't think I was ever guilty of the hateful 
 ingratitude of telling a man his own favourite 
 yarn. 
 
 '' Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute." 
 Rubbish. It's the last step. We are all ready 
 enough to begin. 
 
 The more affected some fellows' manners are, 
 the better I like them. 
 
62 SHIPMATES 
 
 Don't call on heaven and earth to stand still 
 while you get through your little bit of work. 
 
 You wouldn't marry her " if she were the only 
 woman on earth " ? Doesn't it strike you that 
 in that case the competition might be a little 
 severe ? 
 
 A young man is certain to get into difficulties 
 of one kind or another. What really matters is 
 the way he gets out of them. 
 
 What keeps a rose a rose but the power of 
 selection ? The selective power of inborn char- 
 acter is shown every moment of the day. The 
 stupid are always hearing and reporting folly, and 
 the malicious malice. 
 
 Why do the prophesied ill results not happen ? 
 Often it is because all people of goodwill combine 
 to prevent the results they have foretold. 
 
 Woman's incurable hopefulness shows that she 
 is better fitted to deal with the young than with 
 adults. 
 
 Class is permanent because necessary. To be 
 shunned by his own class is the worst punishment 
 that can befall any man, and the fear of it is a 
 strong restraint. Class provides a public more 
 exacting in some of its demands than the family, 
 and more just and accurate than the world at 
 large. 
 
 It was merely a seed of experience sown in her 
 imagination. 
 
 To say, " I can do as much as ever I could," 
 
''SALT-WATER AND FRESH" 63 
 
 is more often a reproach to one's youth than a 
 credit to one's age. 
 
 I could not let my children go there until they 
 are older ; it might spoil their moral accent. 
 
 Get as near to a place as you can before you 
 begin asking the way. 
 
IV. THE BORE'S PROGRESS 
 
 All acquisition — A self-taught artist — The linguist — Anecdotage 
 — A test-case — Four shillings a day. A timely legacy — Marriage 
 — Provisional patents — A '^valued contributor" 
 
 HESELTINE'S messmates always began by 
 thinking him an acquisition and ended by 
 labelling him a consummate bore, but 
 even towards the close of a four-years' commission 
 they felt proud of him on guest-nights. A long 
 line of captains had called him " a very gentle- 
 manly fellow who invariably makes a good 
 impression on educated foreigners." An equally 
 unbroken succession of boatswains had taken the 
 whistle from their mouths and tightened the 
 corners of their lips to combine emphasis with 
 discretion, and pronounced that "if he lives to 
 be a thousand he won't know how to 'andle a 
 cock-boat." The unanimous verdict of the lower 
 deck took the form of damning praise : " There 
 ain't, so to say, any 'arm in 'im." 
 
 Heseltine was a self-taught water-colour painter 
 of tireless industry, and bestowed his sketches 
 generously upon his shipmates. Few were con- 
 sidered worthy of framing, and they disappeared 
 
 64 
 
THE BORE'S PROGRESS 65 
 
 almost as certainly as last year's almanacs, until a 
 more discriminating relative sent one of them to 
 the Royal Academy, where it was accepted, but 
 fortunately for the artist's service career was re- 
 turned unsold. After that the innocent philistines 
 religiously hoarded every daub weeded out of his 
 portfolio and those of his imitators, and for half 
 a century these all held honoured places in their 
 wives' drawing-rooms. '' Done the same year that 
 he exhibited at the Royal Academy," they would 
 say, although his nominal output during that 
 period would have papered a £60 villa from attic 
 to cellar. 
 
 The artist was also something of a linguist, 
 could hammer out Caesar's Commentaries, Schiller's 
 Thirty Years^ War, the Promessi Sposi, and Gil 
 Bias. These four books lasted him throughout 
 eight complete commissions and a considerable 
 amount of broken time, as a franc-an-hour teacher 
 engaged in Malta had told him that it is better 
 to read one page twenty times than to read twenty 
 pages once, and advised him always to read aloud. 
 The only foreign author who had ever tempted 
 him to a more rapid rate of reading was Moliere. 
 
 He prided himself on his ability to " make 
 himself understood in seven languages." One 
 specimen will suffice. He requested a niece who 
 had been living in Germany for some years to 
 "• enter into a little light conversation with him 
 to test his colloquial powers." Nervously anxious 
 
66 SHIPMATES 
 
 not to go beyond them, she asked him if he 
 thought it would rain. After visible hesitation he 
 replied : " Weer will seen." 
 
 A good many years before this the ward-room 
 had on one occasion run short of wine, and the 
 senior member hailed a passing French vessel 
 and sent Heseltine on board to ask if they carried 
 more wine than they needed. He returned 
 without any, and followed by such very intelligible 
 abuse that his messmates could only conclude that 
 he had inadvertently altered the tense, and trans- 
 posed the message into an inquiry as to whether 
 the strangers " had had more wine than they could 
 carry." 
 
 On Sundays he read Alison's History of Europe, 
 and Napier's War in the Peninsula, in ten and 
 seven volumes respectively. When he first joined 
 the ward-room he had a Dictionary of Anecdote, 
 which he used to study for ten minutes every 
 evening while he dressed for dinner. It was known 
 that his early days had been spent in Ireland, so 
 his somewhat premature anecdotage passed for a 
 natural gift, and was well received until one 
 unlucky day when Shaw went in to ask him a 
 question and observed the book lying open on his 
 chest of drawers. After that they laughed at him 
 until most men would have flung the book over- 
 board in a fury, but he quietly returned it to the 
 shelf, and at the next port exchanged it for a 
 mouldy Greek lexicon. 
 
THE BORE'S PROGRESS 67 
 
 " It shows what fools men are," commented 
 Shaw many years later. '' However old the yarns 
 may have been they were new to us, and we enjoyed 
 them, especially as he had enough natural wit to 
 enable him to bring them in with a fair amount of 
 apropos, but directly we knew where they came 
 from we howled him down every time he tried to 
 open his lips." 
 
 In English Heseltine was something of a purist, 
 went out of his way to use the subjunctive mood, 
 said know-ledge and illustrate when he could 
 resist local influence, abhorred the service use of 
 lay and laid for lie and lay, and, if he chanced 
 to say won't or don't, hastily corrected himself. 
 If ladies were present he apologised. He was 
 still saying mighty and vast and precious and 
 monstrous when most of his contemporaries said 
 " awfully," and a few degenerates of seventy-five 
 or thereabouts had arrived at " ripping." On 
 the other hand, in middle life he definitely and 
 consciously gave up Toosday, stoopid, and dook. 
 Strangely enough when Shaw, most seriously 
 scandalised by the incident, told him that a young 
 lieutenant had been heard using a piece of modern 
 music-hall slang when giving an order to his men, he 
 utterly failed to realise the enormity of the offence. 
 
 Questions of pronunciation were well known to 
 be the breath of life to him. Once when he was 
 lying in his berth and seemed to be collapsing from 
 the after-effects of a successfully resisted attack 
 
68 SHIPMATES 
 
 of yellow fever, the young Scotch surgeon reported 
 to the captain in despair : 
 
 '' We can't rouse him. He eats nothing." 
 
 " Have you tried champagne ? " 
 
 " He has had a quart bottle in less than three 
 hours." 
 
 " Well, when his lunch is ready give him my 
 compliments, and say I'm glad to hear he's getting 
 on so well ; and tell him that when I was ashore 
 yesterday I walked through the earthquake quarter 
 
 with Lord , and that he pronounced rubble 
 
 exactly like rouble, and I should like to have his 
 opinion of the matter in writing within the next 
 twenty -four hours." 
 
 Heseltine always spoke of one ship with intense 
 affection. " I had nothing to complain of except 
 that three of the fellows would pronounce miracle 
 as if it were spelled miricle." The most trying 
 period of his service life was a three years' com- 
 mission spent with a chaplain who dispensed, as 
 far as practicable, with the use of the letter h. 
 He could just manage to sound it in ha'penny, 
 but only by dint of saying half -penny. Heseltine 
 had prudence enough to know that interference 
 with such a habit was a more delicate matter than 
 any with which he had previously dealt, but the 
 case troubled him from a social and a religious 
 as well as a linguistic standpoint : the chaplain 
 was an excellent man, and was openly ridiculed 
 by every youngster on the ship. 
 
THE BORE'S PROGRESS 69 
 
 After years of toil Heseltine had reached as far 
 as Gil Bias' lamentable experience with the 
 Archbishop of Granada, and before taking an 
 irrevocable step he related the story to the chap- 
 lain and asked his opinion. " Serve 'im right," was 
 the reply. " I took that for my answer," Heseltine 
 would say in melancholy self -justification, mingled 
 with a tinge of self-reproach ; " I abandoned him 
 to his fate." 
 
 On one subject he was wholly without affectation 
 or reserve, namely, the pressing and extreme 
 poverty of his early days. As a temporary lapse 
 he may have spoken of the res angusta domi, but 
 translation followed hard. 
 
 "My father was an old before-the-peace lieutenant 
 with ten children, six of them boys, and four shil- 
 lings a day. We lived in Ireland because we were 
 somehow stranded there, and food was cheap and my 
 mother was a marvellous manager. I was the eldest, 
 and when I was sixteen and in danger of turning 
 into an Irish loafer, with an accent that you might 
 cut with a knife, a ship was sent round by the 
 Admiralty recruiting boys of all classes. The 
 captain offered to take me as a first-class volun- 
 teer, the equivalent of a modern naval cadet, if my 
 father would guarantee me an allowance of £50 
 a year. He signed the paper, but of course I 
 never drew it. I should have been a mean young 
 scoundrel if I had ! Why, he used to hand all his 
 pay over to my mother, and then ask her for 
 
70 SHIPMATES 
 
 sixpence to buy tobacco. In memory of him I 
 always vote Conservative, but I am sure I do not 
 know why he did it, for he used to say that the 
 Tory principle with regard to naval officers was : 
 * Keep 'em poor and they'll serve you well.' 
 
 " What my mother went through living in that 
 God-forsaken hole ! I recollect one winter evening 
 when she and I and the rest of the children and 
 a maid-servant were alone in the house, and three 
 ruffianly men knocked at the door and wanted 
 to search for arms. My mother shouted, ' John, 
 Frank, Joe, after them ! ' and rolled her stock of 
 cheeses one after the other down the wooden stairs 
 to simulate the sound of heavy footsteps, and the 
 rascals ran off as hard as they could go. On 
 Saturdays she used to have fried potatoes for 
 supper, and after church on Sunday she read the 
 cookery-book, especially the recipes with truffles 
 and isinglass and oysters. 
 
 '' My father was heir to £30,000. At least he 
 said so, but my mother never believed a word of 
 it until soon after I went to sea, when a legacy of 
 £1800 dropped in, and she found that it caused 
 him bitter disappointment. He talked of a death- 
 bed will and a guided hand, and perhaps it was 
 true, but my mother would not hear of going to 
 law. She had necessarily adopted the habit of 
 discounting all he said, and although she was an 
 immensely clever woman she may sometimes have 
 taken the discount off in the wrong place. 
 
THE BORE'S PROGRESS 71 
 
 " As far as my father was concerned the money 
 would have been wasted in a year, but my mother 
 invested it at nine per cent. That sounds Hke 
 wasting it in a week, but when she died thirty 
 years later more than half of the capital was still 
 in existence. The rest had gone in educating her 
 daughters and buying outfits for her sons. Most 
 women in those days would have reversed the 
 process, but she said that a successful man could 
 dress as he liked after he was thirty, and a woman 
 had no need of expensive clothes while she was 
 young, and that boys could pick up their education 
 as they went along and girls could not. So we 
 had the purple and fine linen and went out to 
 seek our fortunes, and my sisters went to school 
 and learnt French and Latin." 
 
 Heseltine had a profound dislike to what he 
 called " naval women," and listened with silent 
 horror to Blissett's fabulous relations of his 
 mother's dealings with the Admiralty. In early 
 days he frequently and solemnly announced : 
 
 " I shall marry a woman who does not know the 
 bow from the stern, and when I am at sea she 
 shall be fifty miles away from a naval port." 
 
 " M — ^m — ^yes," said Langley one evening, " I 
 knew a man who used to say that, and did it too." 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " When he came back she was considerably 
 more than fifty miles away. ' Trust 'em all in 
 all or not at all,' is the only motto for a sailor 
 
72 SHIPMATES 
 
 or any other man. And whatever you do, 
 Heseltine, be sure to marry a woman who talks 
 a great deal." 
 
 " It's always difficult enough to know what a 
 woman thinks," put in Shaw, " but if she doesn't 
 talk you are absolutely in the dark." 
 
 '' And silence generally spells criticism," re- 
 sumed Langley, " and sometimes it is mere laziness 
 and apathy. Besides, talkativeness is a sure sign 
 of health and energy. If a woman doesn't talk to 
 an apparently wasteful extent while she is young 
 and strong, how is she to economise force when 
 she gets older ? She can't give up work. At 
 least not if you contemplate living on your pay." 
 
 " And if you do that you must take care to 
 choose a poor man's daughter," said Shaw. 
 
 " Balderdash ! " cried Langley brusquely. " It 
 doesn't matter a rap whether her father's rich 
 or poor. The real point is. Did he live within his 
 means ? As long as he did that, you may be toler- 
 ably certain that she will do the same. If you are 
 poorer than other people in your class of life there 
 is a strong presumption that you are extravagant, 
 and if you're better off it is a sign of economy." 
 
 " But as to talkativeness," objected Heseltine, 
 " you all accuse me of talking too much, and 
 I " 
 
 '' You are not speaking with your usual pre- 
 cision. If I have ever accused you of anything, it is 
 not of talking too much, but of saying too little." 
 
THE BORE'S PROGRESS 73 
 
 "' And I have always understood that men should 
 marry wives unlike themselves." 
 
 ""A most damnable heresy," said Langley, 
 " and one which fully accounts for the miserably 
 slow rate of social progress. Doubtless it some- 
 times leads to a hollow and deceptive domestic 
 peace ; no error in conduct could persist if its 
 immediate results were not often of a pleasing 
 nature." 
 
 '' You know very well," cried Shaw impatiently, 
 " that if you had a wife as reckless of speech as 
 yourself you would pitch into her like blazes." 
 
 " Course I should." 
 
 '' And then she'd tell you that people who live 
 in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." 
 
 " I fancy she would say something a little more 
 subtle, but at the moment I can't tell you exactly 
 what. Supposing, however, for the sake of argu- 
 ment, that in private life she used such a smooth 
 stone from the brook as the proverb you quote, the 
 next move in the game would be perfectly simple. 
 I should tell her that only those who live in glass 
 houses can with any decency throw stones." 
 
 " And then ? " 
 
 " I can't tell you the next, or the next but one 
 and twenty, but ultimately, after making such a 
 deuce of a row, I should have to be more careful, 
 and so would she. Suppose, on the other hand, 
 that I were a mealy-mouthed, cautious fellow, 
 I should be very likely to mistake her recklessness 
 
74 SHIPMATES 
 
 and flippancy for wit, and encourage her in it till 
 she hadn't a friend in the world. And if I married 
 a gentle, quiet, prudent woman I shouldn't be 
 able to appreciate her virtues. I shouldn't know 
 the cost." 
 
 " I've been married four years," said Shaw, 
 *''' and you seem to think you know a vast deal 
 more about the whole matter than I do." 
 
 " Considering that three years and ten months 
 of that time have been spent on foreign service, 
 is it an altogether unwarranted assumption ? 
 And although I am not married myself I lived 
 nearly fourteen years with married people." 
 
 " You mean as a child ? " 
 
 " Yes ; I studied human nature while you were 
 wasting your time at school. You have often 
 told us that you went before you were six." 
 
 '' And can't human nature be studied at school ? 
 Or in the navy ? " 
 
 " Or in a prison ? What can you know of human 
 nature as a whole ? We spend most of our time 
 in a world shut off from women, and old men, and 
 children, and sick people, and nearly all kinds of 
 rogues, and students, and downright fools." 
 
 '' Poets and novelists do not agree with you, 
 Langley," said Heseltine, lagging far behind. 
 
 " If you drag poets into it Shaw will agree with 
 me, and he has a chest-voice worth any amount 
 of argument. He hasn't read a square inch of 
 poetry in his life, and doesn't mean to," 
 
THE BORE'S PROGRESS 75 
 
 '" And yet on the strength of a single line he 
 confuted the theory that Shakespeare had ever 
 been at sea." 
 
 " What was the line, Shaw ? It's beyond me." 
 
 " He said, somewhere or other, I can't give you 
 the latitude and longitude, that a man's wits were 
 dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage. If 
 he had ever been at sea he would have known 
 that old biscuit is soft and weevilly." 
 
 "So he would," said Langley with a shudder. 
 (He had a womanish disgust for insects, even when 
 unmixed with his daily bread.) 
 
 " Where did you hear it ? D'you know any 
 more ? " 
 
 "My wife made me go to some Shakespeare 
 readings with her. The man read well. It didn't 
 sound like poetry. At least, not objectionably 
 so. I only remember two other scraps : ' Hover 
 through the fog and filthy air,' which always 
 reminds me of north country towns in the winter : 
 and ' The uncertain glory of an April day.' That 
 gives you all Devon and Cornwall in seven words. 
 It refreshes me in the tropics." 
 
 " Just like Shaw's practicality," said Heseltine. 
 "If he picked up anything, no matter what, he 
 would be worried until he found a use for it." 
 
 " I'm not sure he isn't a bit of a poet himself," 
 said Langley. " Oh " — as Shaw made an indig- 
 nant and somewhat unnecessary disclaimer — " he 
 is quite right to keep it dark, but if ever he finds 
 
76 SHIPMATES 
 
 leisure to consider the matter I think he will 
 perceive that what he dislikes is poems, not 
 poetry." 
 
 " And I shall certainly take care to marry a 
 really domesticated woman," continued Heseltine. 
 '' To marry a woman who is not a good cook is 
 suicidal for a poor man. It means the slow 
 destruction of your constitution." 
 
 " And marrying a good cook means the rapid 
 destruction of your figure. My mother and her 
 sisters were all the worst cooks imaginable, and 
 I hope my wife will equal them. If any woman 
 entered the house who knew a thing about it 
 they unlearnt her in a week. And what's the 
 result ? " Neither of his hearers hazarded a guess. 
 " Why, their husbands are all alive and kicking, 
 and all well over seventy. Only the other day 
 one of them put on his youngest son's overcoat 
 by mistake, and looked uncommonly well in it. 
 Good cooking is a vast mistake. We don't need 
 any encouragement to eat, especially when past 
 thirty, and voluntary abstinence under temptation 
 uses up mental force. What we need is to be 
 steadily and consistently discouraged by very 
 indifferent plain cooking." 
 
 " But plain cooking is so monotonous," objected 
 Heseltine. He was one of the most temperate of 
 men, and food affected his imagination more than 
 his appetite. 
 
 " Monotonous ! Think of the variety that can 
 
THE BORE'S PROGRESS 77 
 
 be got out of boiled potatoes. Monotonous, 
 indeed ! " 
 
 " Yes," said Shaw dogmatically. " A boiled 
 potato can only be done, or under-done, or over- 
 done." 
 
 '" A very superficial view. My father and all 
 his brothers-in-law could have named a dozen 
 subdivisions in each class, besides the days 
 when their wives forgot to order any potatoes, 
 or the maids put on the saucepan without water 
 or without potatoes. Send them all packing ? 
 My dear fellow, you don't suppose any one of them 
 was ever permitted to find fault with a maid- 
 servant ? And they dared not find fault with 
 their wives. Ah, there are fine traditions of 
 husband training in our family ! I have a cousin, 
 a little slip of a creature hardly up to Shaw's 
 elbow, and she married a city man with an awful 
 reputation for bad temper. One night he came 
 home in a captious mood ; he wouldn't eat the 
 soup because it was peppery or the fish because 
 it was cold, and then came a pair of roast fowls 
 and a large piece of ham. He began carving 
 and suddenly stopped short, and protested they 
 had every fault it was possible for birds to possess. 
 My cousin said they were average specimens, and 
 not at all badly cooked. He snatched up the dish 
 and pitched it through the window. She said: 
 ' The ham had better go too,' and flung it after the 
 fowls. And the land had peace for forty years." 
 
78 SHIPMATES 
 
 " She oughtn't to have told you," said Shaw, 
 naturally sympathising with the husband. 
 
 " You bet she didn't ! He told me himself. 
 Said it did him no end of good." 
 
 '' I shall take especial care to choose a good- 
 tempered wife," said Heseltine in his slow, even 
 tones. 
 
 " I've no objection to that, none at all," said 
 Langley cordially, " You are a most exceedingly 
 good-tempered man yourself. Ah, I see you are 
 coming round to my views ! " 
 
 " I don't wish to say anything disagreeable, 
 Langley, but — " This was a favourite opening 
 of Shaw's, much dreaded by most of his friends, 
 but Langley met his slightly worried look with 
 amused interest — " do you seriously consider 
 that it would be safe for you to marry a woman 
 with a temper like your own ? " 
 
 " Take a hopeful view, old boy. Perhaps I 
 shan't be able to find one. You didn't." 
 
 " Thank Heaven, no ! " said Shaw with perfect 
 sincerity. He held most exaggerated views as to 
 the ferocity of his temper, and never heard of 
 any man being convicted of manslaughter without 
 the instant self -reminder : '' There, but for the 
 grace of God, go I." 
 
 '' And just think of the economy implied by 
 bad plain cooking," resumed Langley. " D'you 
 remember old Mrs. Rideout, Tom Rideout's 
 mother ? You must have met him, Shaw, even 
 
THE BORE'S PROGRESS 79 
 
 if you didn't know her. A conk-nosed fellow 
 rather like myself, but heavier ? He's junior 
 to you on the list, but I know he's four or five 
 years older than I am, which makes ten." 
 
 " I've often come across his traces. A muddle- 
 headed lout. Built much on the same lines as 
 Byam's Blue Marine." 
 
 " Yes, the old dummon had all the brains — and 
 kept 'em, as far as her sons were concerned. She 
 was a dear vulgar old soul, and she used to say : 
 ' Naval officers aren't allowed to save out of their 
 backs, so they must save out of their bellies.' 
 And she made her husband do it, too ! One egg 
 for breakfast, and a scrap of cheese and a small 
 half-pint of beer for supper. She saved close on 
 £2000 while they still had Tom and his brother 
 and a couple of daughters on their hands." 
 
 '' What interest did she get ? " asked Heseltine, 
 remembering his mother's fateful investment. 
 
 " Interest ! She thought interest would turn 
 the old boy's brain. Neither of them ever saw a 
 farthing of interest, and I don't know that Tom 
 will. She spent it all buying bits of swampy 
 ground that would be worth a hundred times 
 what she gave for them in forty or fifty years' 
 time. The Admiralty are bound to buy a good 
 slice of it, though they swear they won't — some 
 of them would come out of their graves to spite 
 old Mother Rideout — and when the townspeople 
 have given up shooting rubbish on the rest it will 
 
80 SHIPMATES 
 
 be christened ' Rideout Park Estate,' and chopped 
 up for building purposes, sixteen or twenty houses 
 to the acre. Tom hasn't sixpence to spare, but 
 the grandsons will be rich men." 
 
 '' I don't believe in that kind of thing," said 
 Shaw, as much worried as if the matter called 
 for instant decision. " I shall save all I can to 
 make matters easier for my wife when I die, and 
 I shall do my best to put my sons in a good 
 position to earn their own living, but I'm hanged 
 if I'll earn it for them, and as to grandsons " 
 
 " You refuse to be stinted of hen's eggs and 
 beer in order that they may have plover's eggs 
 and champagne without working for them ? I 
 believe you'll stick to it, too ; but Heseltine will 
 have to keep a bright look-out ; I can see as plain 
 as a pikestaff that his wife will be a mighty obsti- 
 nate foreboding woman, and because to-morrow 
 is sometimes more important than to-day she'll 
 argue that the middle of next century affects 
 him more than the middle of next week. And 
 I don't think his constitution would stand as much 
 of it as old Rideout's. He married late, and lived 
 to ninety-four." 
 
 '' His father was a farmer," said Shaw. 
 
 " Ah, that accounts for it. A family can no 
 more stand three generations of saving out of 
 your pay than it can stand three generations of 
 riotous living. On the whole, I think your wife 
 had better be a little extravagant. Not enough 
 
THE BORE'S PROGRESS 81 
 
 to bring the bailiffs in, you know, but enough to 
 put a stopper on saving. Let your sons start 
 fresh. Perhaps it wouldn't be amiss if she had a 
 little money of her own." 
 
 " No ; but I do not wish to be hampered in my 
 choice. What I chiefly desire is companionship, 
 sympathetic companionship," droned Heseltine. 
 
 " Sounds rather tedious — for the lady. And 
 nothing is so sympathetic as solitude, when you 
 have once arrived at the point of talking to 
 yourself and saying what a devilish good fellow 
 you are." 
 
 " If you want a strong woman," said Shaw 
 solemnly, '' choose a thin white-faced one. They 
 eat all the food and have all the strength. Just 
 in the same way, if you want good sight, don't 
 choose a dark eye that looks as if it could pierce 
 the keep of Portchester Castle, but a pale grey, 
 rather small. 
 
 (With the busy idleness of a man shut off from 
 the world, Langley instantly concluded that 
 Mrs. Shaw had eyes as dark and short-sighted as 
 his own, that she had a brilliant complexion, and 
 that her husband was anxious about her health. 
 Two years later he unhesitatingly picked her out 
 from among a dozen naval officers' wives and 
 introduced his own wife, who was still sufficiently 
 a stranger to feel surprised when she afterwards 
 learnt that it was their first meeting.) 
 
 Heseltine was faintly displeased. " I — er — do 
 
82 SHIPMATES 
 
 not imagine that every detail can be arranged 
 beforehand. I think of essentials. For instance, 
 I do not wish for an ambitious wife." 
 
 " Quite right," said Langley, " it would be like 
 serving for life under men who were working 
 for their promotion." 
 
 " But if there were no ambition on either side, 
 what would become of a man's sons ? " asked Shaw. 
 
 " There may be one or two flaws in my theory," 
 Langley conceded. " It isn't fully worked out yet." 
 
 Heseltine ignored the sage advice received from 
 his messmates, and ultimately married a lady 
 chiefly distinguished by her great taciturnity and 
 the rigidity of her back-bone. In a moment of 
 unusual intimacy she told a young friend that she 
 owed the erectness of her carriage to the fact 
 that she had never worn supports. When she 
 was about twelve years old her mother, otherwise 
 an excellent woman, bought her an exceedingly 
 stiff and strait pair of stays and insisted on their 
 being worn in a country scarcely outside the 
 tropics. The pain and sense of suffocation were 
 unbearable, and she privately appealed to her 
 father, who said, " Burn them. Sit up as if you 
 had swallowed a ramrod, and your mother will 
 never find it out." 
 
 Heseltine chose her under the wholly mistaken 
 impression that a silent person is necessarily a 
 sympathetic listener. The subsequent disillusion- 
 ment, coupled with the observed fact that Langley's 
 
THE BORE'S PROGRESS 88 
 
 excitable vivacious wife could hear everything 
 that her husband said even while going full speed 
 ahead on her own account, darkened all his views 
 of matrimony. '' When my husband has anything 
 new to say," Mrs. Langley explained, " I always 
 listen, just as I always gaze in the looking-glass 
 when I have a new bonnet. Why should I do it 
 at other times ? " 
 
 As before stated, Heseltine was nothing of a 
 sailor, and as a young man did not even develop 
 the scientific interest in his profession which 
 enabled Franks to hold his own among men who, 
 as far as practical seamanship was concerned, 
 ''could have doubled him into a cocked-hat"; 
 but in late middle age the advent of ironclads was 
 a deeply perturbing element in his consciousness, 
 and for many years a large part of his leisure was 
 devoted to the invention of hopelessly complicated 
 appliances for overcoming what he called '' their 
 inherent defect." In plain English, used in a 
 moment of rare irritation to meet some argument 
 of Shaw's : " A wooden tub wants to float if it can, 
 and an iron pot wants to sink." " Not unless 
 you knock a hole in it ; and why should you ? " 
 asked Shaw contentiously. But Heseltine's mind 
 had harked back to the lamentable inelegance of 
 his simile, and was bent on comparing a wooden 
 line-of-battle ship to the Pyramids of Egypt and 
 an ironclad to a Gothic cathedral, but the analogy 
 " wouldn't run on all fours," and fell rather flat. 
 
84 SHIPMATES 
 
 Fortunately for his wife and family he con- 
 tented himself with taking out ten or a dozen 
 provisional patents, and made no attempt to raise 
 capital to float any of his inventions. Shaw, who 
 never touched a pencil, and could do nothing with 
 a pen except write, and who could not look at a 
 tool of any description without cutting or bruising 
 his shapely brown hands, was perfectly ready to 
 admire the exquisitely precise mechanical draw- 
 ings as works of art, and the models as remarkably 
 ingenious toys, but the notion of their ever being 
 of the smallest practical use exhausted his very 
 limited store of patience. Prevention was better 
 than cure : what was the use of staving in a 
 ship's side and then applying a patent plaster ? 
 Collisions meant bad seamanship or reckless 
 navigation, and neither of these was an offence 
 that needs must come. 
 
 After many years of these studies, unchecked by 
 experiment or experience, a serious collision 
 between two ironclads occurred, and Heseltine 
 went a long journey to see the nature and extent 
 of the damage. On his return, Shaw, who noted 
 that he was looking " rather down in the mouth," 
 asked if he thought his precious appliance would 
 have been of any use if it had been on the spot 
 at the time, and was utterly disarmed by the 
 candour and coarse simplicity of his reply : "I 
 never realised what a complete smash-up it would 
 be. The plates were ripped asunder as if they had 
 
THE BORE'S PROGRESS 85 
 
 been sewn with rotten thread. Use my invention on 
 that awful gap ? You might as well spit on it!^^ 
 
 Soon after this the models were turned into 
 birthday presents for young nephews and grandsons, 
 and Shaw did not even remind his old shipmate of 
 the celebrated chief-carpenter who began making 
 a mainmast out of a very fine tree-trunk, and after 
 a series of misfits ended by producing a good-sized 
 button for the captain's pantry door. 
 
 A few months later he suddenly took up the 
 decidedly illogical position that, although iron- 
 clads were a hideous and costly aberration from 
 the true doctrines of naval construction, sailing 
 and rowing-boats should no longer be made of 
 wood but of copper. The chief argument that he 
 brought forward was that when a wooden boat 
 was worn out the materials were fit for nothing 
 but fuel, while an old copper boat would be worth 
 very nearly as much as a new one. " Quite as 
 much," said Shaw drily. 
 
 With regard to the personnel of the navy, 
 Heseltine held opinions which he was never allowed 
 to explain at length if Shaw could manage to 
 silence him. His notions were ^' moonshine," or 
 '' in defiance of commonsense," and some were 
 even held to be against morality and the public 
 welfare. Heseltine highly disapproved of the 
 general lines of promotion — selection among the 
 lower ranks, seniority among the higher. " It 
 should be exactly reversed. It is useless to take 
 
86 SHIPMATES 
 
 a young man's character into consideration : he has 
 none. It is dangerous to ignore an older man's 
 character or to take his abilities for granted. To 
 borrow Pope's words and apply them to my own 
 purpose, the public services will never be properly 
 manned while ' People will establish their opinion 
 of us from what we do at the season when we have 
 least judgment to direct us.' " 
 
 Franks listened to this one day with his usual 
 patience, but shook his head over the prospect 
 opened up. " If every hare-brained midshipman 
 became a mate, and every drunken mate a lieu- 
 tenant, do you seriously think that the standard 
 of character and ability among commanders and 
 captains would be improved ? " 
 
 " They wouldn't have any character at all," 
 said Langley, " except the sort of character that is 
 given gratis to dead men. Shut your eyes to 
 every youngster's conduct, and every ship would 
 be sunk and every man drowned." 
 
 Late in life Heseltine was invited to contribute 
 a brief article to a "monumental work." During 
 its lengthy and laborious compilation none of his 
 old shipmates ever met him without being told of 
 some new theories of philology or teleology that he 
 had formed by the way and introduced, but the MS. 
 must have been severely edited. When his friends 
 examined the text every one of these jewels of 
 thought had been so skilfully unset and removed 
 that no trace of the operation could be discerned. 
 
V. NATHANIEL 
 
 A disputed right — Schooldays — The art of dress — An expert 
 witness — Intermittent zeal — Landlord and tenant — Investments 
 — Developing the property — A lodge in the wilderness — The 
 main structure — A visit of inspection — Buying and selling — 
 Living on the loss 
 
 JOHNNY ELLIOTT— Jacks were mostly lower- 
 deck folk in those days — was Shaw's oldest 
 friend, and he was sincerely attached to him. 
 Few people could have criticised him in his hearing 
 without provoking the recital of a long list of vir- 
 tues and good deeds. Nevertheless, he persisted 
 in regarding Johnny's marked Scotch accent as an 
 offensive affectation. A Scotch accent was not a 
 bad thing per se, in truth it was pleasing in his 
 ears, but he maintained that no man could be 
 entitled to it from the mere fact of marriage with 
 a Scotswoman, and that that was his sole claim. 
 
 " He's English. As English as I am. His father 
 and grandfather were in the navy before him, and 
 his mother was born in Plymouth. One of her 
 brothers was lost out in Corsica. I have often 
 heard the tale. He and the paymaster drew some 
 money and went ashore together one afternoon, 
 and disappeared as completely as if the earth had 
 
 87 
 
88 SHIPMATES 
 
 swallowed them up. They were never heard of 
 again ." 
 
 " Was no search made ? " 
 
 " I suppose so. After a fashion. But people 
 didn't set the same value on life in those days. 
 It was taken for granted that brigands had killed 
 them. Why, a man not much my senior was lost 
 in Borneo, and years afterwards a report reached 
 England that he had been seen working up in the 
 interior as a slave in a mine. His mother believed 
 it, and to her dying day she was always expecting 
 him, but nothing was done. So " — suddenly re- 
 turning to the point — " what possible right has 
 he to multiply his r^s and lengthen out his a's ? 
 Why, a Scotch surgeon would be ashamed of it ! " 
 
 '' That memory of yours will bring you into 
 trouble one of these days," said Langley. '' A nice 
 little libel action would sweep off all your savings 
 and land you in the bankruptcy court before you 
 knew where you were. Eighty pounds a year is 
 about what they'd allow you. You may be careful, 
 but you'd find it a tight fit. Johnny told me that 
 his father had a coastguard billet up the Clyde 
 for twenty years. He was what they used to call 
 Riding Officer. I remember it because once — ^he 
 must have been a bit like Johnny — he thought he 
 would review all his men on a village common, 
 and the horse got frightened and bolted oft with 
 him ten miles to the farm where it was bred. His 
 mother's father was a Writer to the Signet in 
 
NATHANIEL 89 
 
 Edinburgh, and he never came across the border 
 until he was twelve or thirteen." 
 
 " I was at school with him in London, and I 
 can assure you he hadn't a trace of the accent 
 then." 
 
 '' Perhaps you weren't as hypercritical in those 
 days. Any way, he must have been a jolly little 
 chap. I never went to school. My father's living 
 was £200, and always in arrears. My mother 
 taught me the three R's — parts of them — and 
 my father tried to knock a little Latin into my 
 head, and then I was pitchforked into the navy. 
 I had never heard of decimals, and as for Euclid 
 — an angle might have been the feminine of an 
 Anglican for all I knew or cared." 
 
 " Johnny was in the same boat. He learnt a 
 few problems of Euclid by heart, but if you 
 changed A for B he was done for. As for algebra, 
 he never looked at it through the wrong end of 
 a spy-glass. He didn't learn vulgar fractions 
 until long after he entered the service, and even 
 then he couldn't tell what two-thirds of three- 
 fourths of a shilling amounted to without getting 
 a pencil and paper to calculate. As to his hand- 
 writing, well, a boy fresh from a modern crammer's 
 could hardly write worse. 
 
 ' ' Poor old Johnny ! He used to write his wife 
 a sheet of foolscap every week. First it was 
 covered in black ink and then crossed at right 
 angles in red : one letter must have lasted until 
 
90 SHIPMATES 
 
 the next came. About five years after he was 
 married we were lying out at Spithead, and he 
 had a letter from the admiral and couldn't read a 
 word of it except his own name. I couldn't make 
 head or tail of it myself, neither could anyone 
 else in the mess, and Blissett shouted out : ' Take 
 it home to your wife. If she reads your writing 
 she can read anything under the sun, barring 
 Chinese.' And so she did. She stood it on the 
 mantelpiece and walked up to it suddenly, stopping 
 about four feet short, as she says it is a mistake 
 ever to hold bad writing close to you. It was an 
 invitation to dinner. Johnny only just had time 
 to scramble into full-dress uniform and scuttle off 
 without stopping to brush his hair." 
 
 " What a mop he has ! " 
 
 " Yes ; a marvellous crop. Perhaps I saved it 
 for him. When he came to school it was awfully 
 thin ; I fancy he had been ill, and his mother had 
 given him a pot of bear's grease to rub on at 
 night. One of the boys had a hair trunk, a thing 
 rather out of date even then, but Johnny admired 
 it hugely. If ever he envied anyone in his life 
 it was that boy ! I said in jest : ' It only comes 
 from a different way of treating the leather. Rub 
 your bear's grease on it and it will bring the hair 
 out in no time.' He rubbed the whole of the 
 pot in that very night ! 
 
 " The last thing I remember of him at school 
 was a row about window-smashing. It rested 
 
NATHANIEL 91 
 
 between Johnny and about a dozen other boys. 
 They all denied it, and there wasn't a particle of 
 evidence against any one of them, but the master 
 picked out the most likely criminal and sent him 
 to the head-master to be birched. Just in time 
 Johnny owned up. I told his wife about it the 
 other day, and she really seemed rather shocked 
 that he had ' so nearly let the other poor boy be 
 punished.' Johnny said: 'I tell you what, dear: 
 if I had had the least conception how infernally 
 it would hurt me I should never have owned up.' " 
 
 '' I remember when they used to shut him inside 
 his chest on Sunday mornings while the captain 
 went his rounds. It saved swearing. Did you 
 ever see a man dress so badly, in uniform or out ? " 
 
 " Not often. But it was merely in a shabby, 
 comfortable, harmless way. He never ran to 
 checks and stripes and jewellery." 
 
 "' A precious good thing, too ! " cried Langley, 
 defending himself from a side-blow at some youthful 
 indiscretions in that line. " His taste is execrable." 
 
 Shaw hesitated over the choice of pleasures, and 
 then succumbed to temptation. 
 
 " When we were out in China he set his heart 
 on a shawl, ' the loveliest thing you ever saw,' 
 and asked me to come and help him buy it. You 
 know in those days there was no such thing as a 
 fixed price, and it sometimes took you five weeks 
 to spend fifty dollars. The shawl was the most 
 awful thing imaginable — magenta picked out with 
 
92 SHIPMATES 
 
 pale blue. I persuaded him that as his wife was 
 nearly always in mourning — never knew a woman 
 with so many cousins — a white one would be 
 better. I don't think I should have won the day, 
 but I looked in one afternoon by myself and advised 
 the heathen Chinee to put it in an awfully gaudy 
 lacquer box, and say ' all best missus likee same.' " 
 
 " I remember the shawl," said Langley. " My 
 wife always said the cousins were a polite fiction 
 to prevent Johnny from choosing her clothes. 
 When she sees a desperately ill-dressed woman 
 she says, ' If her husband had bought everything 
 she has on, she couldn't look worse.' " 
 
 '' No, the cousins were genuine enough, but she 
 made the most of 'em. I've known one last her 
 three or four years when they hung fire a bit. You 
 can't wonder at it. Even after we arrived in Eng- 
 land he wasn't satisfied about that shawl. We went 
 in to Emmanuel's together and he bought his wife 
 a gold chain like a publican's in a teetotal tract." 
 
 " And you changed it the next day for that 
 thing six yards long and a himdred links to the 
 inch. It is usually tied up in six or eight places 
 with white silk. When it comes to a dozen she 
 sends it to be mended." 
 
 " 'T any rate it's more in keeping than a chain 
 you could have moored a brig with," protested 
 Shaw. 
 
 " Well, I've seen her wearing beads that might 
 have been used for shot drill." 
 
NATHANIEL 93 
 
 Shaw turned a deaf ear : he had sanctioned the 
 purchase of the beads, regarding them merely as 
 curiosities, and never imagining that " any white 
 woman " would be complaisant enough to wear 
 them. 
 
 " Do you remember bullying him into wearing 
 your wedding waistcoat instead of the one he had 
 chosen ? And you compelled at least six other 
 fellows to do the same." 
 
 " Only three. Their wives don't know what 
 they escaped. They ought to have been most 
 grateful to me." 
 
 '' Perhaps they would have been, but wives 
 had a fancy for keeping pieces of their husbands' 
 wedding waistcoats, and they could hardly nip a 
 piece out of yours." 
 
 " Couldn't they ! Stewart's wife collared it 
 whole. I never saw it again." 
 
 " Aha ! that explains why I didn't have to wear 
 it myself. I marvelled at my escape." 
 
 " What was it like ? " asked O'Keefe, who was 
 born a little too late for fancy waistcoats. 
 
 '' White satin embroidered with blue forget-me- 
 nots with green leaves and gold eyes." 
 
 " They were very small and — and — dim," 
 stammered Shaw, flushing a little at O'Keefe's 
 obvious astonishment, " and very little of it 
 showed." 
 
 '' Now my wife would have let you have a piece 
 of it. Look here, Stewart and his wife are in 
 
94 SHIPMATES 
 
 town. If I meet them next week I'll tax her 
 with it, and see if I can't get it out of her." 
 
 '' After all these years she thinks it's her own." 
 
 '' Anyway she can't deny that you were married 
 in it yourself. She ought to go shares with your 
 wife and Mrs. Elliott. And Mrs. Heseltine would 
 like a piece. She spends half her time making 
 patchwork." 
 
 '' No, no — I don't want it broken up. I'd rather 
 she kept it." 
 
 '' A second judgment of Solomon ! If you could 
 repeat that cri du codur in a law-court the jury 
 would instantly inform the judge that they didn't 
 need any more evidence." 
 
 " I've only been in a law-court once in my life." 
 
 " Assault and battery ? " suggested O'Keefe. 
 
 '" You can tickle a giant when he has had a 
 good dinner. I was an expert witness. An awful 
 lot of hard swearing both sides." 
 
 " Ah, Admiralty and Divorce ? That's the real 
 reason why they're always bracketed : it maintains 
 a comparatively high standard in the other 
 divisions," explained Langley. 
 
 '' There was an impudent Q.C. who harassed me 
 a good deal. I told him the plain truth, but he 
 didn't want to know it." 
 
 " It must have made the rest of the tale look 
 ' a lee-tle out of drawing,' as Heseltine used to 
 say when Johnny showed him his attempts as a 
 marine artist." 
 
NATHANIEL 95 
 
 " And then the fellow looked at me most super- 
 ciliously and said : ' I don't agree with you.' I 
 said : ' As you know nothing whatever about it 
 except what you sat up last night to learn, I don't 
 care a hang whether you agree with me or not.' " 
 
 " Who won ? " 
 
 " Our side." 
 
 " Mark how a plain tale put them down." 
 
 '' Not a bit of it. It was a clear case with no pos- 
 sible room for doubt, but we should never have 
 won if a dozen or more men on our side hadn't 
 sworn hard and fast about details they couldn't 
 possibly remember, and which every seaman knew 
 weren't of the smallest consequence." 
 
 " No wonder Mrs. Elliot hardly likes to leave 
 you alone with Johnny. He picks up scraps of 
 cynical commonsense, and they sound as odd as 
 if he were five years old." 
 
 Elliott was a zealous officer when actually at 
 work, but unambitious and with little staying 
 power. He went cheerfully wherever he was sent, 
 but found excellent reasons for not remaining 
 there. At a time when commissions were nearly 
 double their present length he boasted that he 
 had never remained two consecutive years out of 
 England. He had no children, and his wife had 
 an independent income, otherwise the system 
 would have been a little too expensive. On one 
 occasion, all other plans having failed, he asked 
 permission to return home " on urgent private 
 
96 SHIPMATES 
 
 affairs " from the other side of the world. He 
 was only allowed to remain six weeks, and he had 
 to pay his own passage home and his successor's 
 passage out, but he said it was " well worth it." 
 He did, however, suffer a passing pang of annoy- 
 ance when he learnt, nearly a year later, that he 
 must pay his successor's servant's passage in 
 addition ; but, as he said cheerfully, '' I never 
 yet made a calculation without omitting one of the 
 factors. If I add up a bill three times I am ex- 
 tremely lucky if I don't get more than two widely 
 different results." 
 
 Johnny could live at peace with anyone and 
 everyone except his landlord. Barring the fact 
 that his rent was invariably paid before twelve 
 o'clock on the day it was due, he had almost every 
 fault that a tenant could possess. Early in his 
 married life he formed the conviction that to have 
 a house of his own was an indispensable part of 
 a man's domestic happiness. His wife, a gentle, 
 peace-loving woman, wearied of wrangles in which 
 she frequently had the distress of knowing that 
 Johnny was entirely to blame, and imagining 
 that a suitable house was to be selected and 
 bought, did much to encourage the idea. When 
 she grasped that his intention was to buy land 
 and build a house of his own design it was too late 
 for her to draw back. Besides house-planning 
 relieved her from the nightly corvee of card- 
 playing. A young nephew once asked her if she 
 
NATHANIEL 9T 
 
 thought it wrong to play cards, and she replied 
 with unusual vehemence : " I wish I did ! Then 
 I should never have to play any more." 
 
 Johnny's love of card playing bore no proportion 
 to his ability and success. As a whist-player his 
 demeanour was childlike, though scarcely bland. 
 He had no confidence in the power of any card 
 to win a trick except the ace of trumps, and even 
 that he liked to " make " as early as possible. 
 He felt a thrill of excitement when he laid down 
 the king, even if the ace had been turned up by 
 his own partner and there was good reason to 
 believe that he had some small trumps. As for 
 the rest of the suit, he thought nothing could be 
 expected of them and flung them away with 
 desperation. If a knave or a ten chanced to take 
 a trick, he found it miraculous and " very hard 
 lines " for his opponents. His favourite complaint 
 was : " I never have a trump, never." " You 
 must have one at any rate when you deal," 
 objected the literal-minded Shaw. " I don't. I 
 assure you I don't. We play very strict whist. 
 Whenever I deal someone's sure to say they 
 haven't the right number of cards, and then I 
 lose my turn." 
 
 In Mrs. Elliott's eyes, however, cards had the 
 negative merit of " not being quite as bad as 
 backgammon," a game for which her husband 
 had at one time a passion, excused by the fact 
 that he " stood to win." The rattle of the dice 
 
 G 
 
98 SHIPMATES 
 
 was music in his ears, the only form of music 
 that really appealed to him being a drum-and- 
 fife band. It was on record that one night 
 when he closed the board at ten, after more than 
 two hours' play, his wife said with mechanical 
 amiability, hardly knowing whether she had lost 
 or won, and much too tired to care : " You must 
 give me my revenge to-morrow." " Dear, how 
 selfish of me to leave oft when I have won every 
 rub I You shall have it note." He opened the 
 board again, and they played till midnight. 
 
 " It is strange," said Mrs. Elliott quite inno- 
 cently, "that I nearly always lose. Considering 
 how much depends on chance I really ought to 
 win oftener than I do." " D'you keep an eye on 
 his points ? " asked Langley drily. After that 
 Johnny had such a long run of "bad luck" 
 that he wearied of the game. 
 
 Shaw's attitude towards the house-building 
 scheme a little surprised his friends. At Mrs. 
 Elliott's earnest request he had spent many heated 
 hours trying to prove to her husband that after 
 seven years' dabbling in gold mines he had halved 
 his capital and received an average of one per 
 cent, interest on the remainder, and he therefore 
 regarded the project with very mild reprobation. 
 " After all, a house can't vanish, and he can live 
 in it himself even if no one else can." He had 
 tried to explain to his old schoolfellow that even a 
 successful mining enterprise was not like industrial 
 
NATHANIEL 99 
 
 businesses which might increase to an indefinite 
 extent, that a mine at best was a fixed amount of 
 property, and the only certainty concerning it 
 was that the more you took out of it the less there 
 remained to take ; but he told his wife afterwards : 
 
 "When Elliott dies I shall be pleased to do any- 
 thing I can, but this is the very last time I shall 
 speak to him on business matters. I — I — have 
 my own health to consider. It's all very well for 
 you to laugh, my dear, but a chain is no stronger 
 than its weakest link. I had to walk ten miles 
 before I got over it, carrying my hat nearly the 
 whole way. He keeps every blessed document 
 he possesses jumbled together in an old ditty-box 
 under his bed, and he hadn't even a list of his 
 securities until I drew one up. Turning the box 
 out is regular midshipman's pleasure with him. 
 He has only the vaguest idea of its contents, and 
 as for finding any particular share-certificate, he 
 couldn't do it under three hours, and the effective 
 five minutes would be put in by his wife. And 
 the money he has muddled away ! " 
 
 " I wonder he has any left." 
 
 " 'Tisn't the same money. He has had three 
 small fortunes already. He was always a favourite 
 nephew and all that sort of thing. It's — it's — mad- 
 dening. However, his wife has a proper settlement 
 of her own money. I saw to that. He simply 
 never thought of it, and she would have looked on 
 blandly while he lost the last penny she possessed. 
 
100 SHIPMATES 
 
 '" A few of his investments are fairly sound, 
 but he bought them at an enormous premium, and 
 firmly believes that he gets the same return for his 
 money as the original shareholders. He told me 
 he was getting 12j per cent, in one case, and 17 
 in another. When I worked it out it came to 
 2J and 3|. But he no more cares or understands 
 than if he were twelve years old and working out 
 imaginary stocks and shares which he could drop 
 as soon as the clock struck. In fact he cares less, 
 because there's no chance of a caning. All I say 
 just goes in at one ear and out at the other. No, 
 I will not talk business to him whatever happens." 
 
 A few days later Johnny tested his resolution 
 by telling him that even if he did drop a little 
 money in gold mines it did not really matter, as 
 it was always possible to live very comfortably 
 in lodgings — "And then you pay no rates or taxes 
 or servants' wages." Shaw, mindful of his recent 
 vow, contented himself with casting an expressive 
 glance at Langley, who, thinking that thunder 
 must certainly follow lightning, said hastily : 
 '' Don't throw facts before angels. It scares 
 them : they think you are pitching stones. If 
 Johnny likes to believe that landladies entertain 
 him all for pure delight, what does it matter ? " 
 
 Ten years before there was any likelihood of 
 Johnny's retirement the land was bought. It was 
 a piece of scrubby pasture with a fine view of the 
 sea and, except that it was entirely without trees 
 
NATHANIEL 101 
 
 and several hundred feet away from the road, 
 there was not much to be said against it. All the 
 proud owner's ready-money had been exhausted 
 by the purchase, and he announced that he must 
 " rest on his oars for a time." 
 
 Shaw, exhausted with trying to explain that to 
 buy land years before you could use it and in a 
 place where prices had probably reached high- 
 water mark meant losing all the interest of your 
 capital in the meantime, suggested: "At any rate 
 you could get on with the garden. I mean as far 
 as the trees and shrubs are concerned. If you had 
 a hundred or so quick-growing things put in, they 
 would be a decent size by the time you are ready 
 to build. There is a good nursery-garden about 
 a mile off. You had better ask for an estimate, 
 including replanting and keeping an eye on the 
 trees until they can hold their own. It wouldn't 
 run you into very much." 
 
 Characteristically this was vetoed as a great ex- 
 travagance. The trees would cost a fabulous sum 
 and would die for want of " constant attention." 
 He would rear the trees himself " from seeds and 
 things." Shaw had about as much notion of the 
 time it takes trees to grow as he had of the length 
 of a butterfly's life, but after observing Johnny's 
 method of husbandry he thought himself in a 
 position to state with some confidence : " Things 
 don't flourish if you keep pulling them up by the 
 roots to see if they're growing." 
 
102 SHIPMATES 
 
 Mrs. Elliott had a small greenhouse, or rather 
 conservatory, which with much aid from the 
 florist had always been gay with flowers, but 
 henceforward it was devoted to the rearing of 
 trees in pots. They were grown from cuttings 
 taken in her husband's messmates' gardens, from 
 orange pips, lemon pips, acorns, yewberries, cherry 
 laurels, and horse-chestnuts. One of these last 
 possessed the " will to live " to such an extra- 
 ordinary degree that, aided by Johnny's absence 
 for thirty-one months of the time, it actually 
 reached the age of three years, was carefully 
 conveyed by train and solemnly planted at the 
 end of what was to be the lawn. Either some 
 child trod on it, or a hungry rabbit ate it, at any 
 rate it was never seen again. Some weeks later 
 Mrs. Elliott took advantage of a flying voyage to 
 the Pacific and had a few larches and poplars and 
 Scotch firs planted, and Johnny on his next visit 
 quite readily accepted them as the spontaneous 
 gift of nature. 
 
 The next step was to build a lodge, in which 
 a stout ex-coastguardman was established with 
 orders to " bring on the garden." He worked in- 
 dustriously, but as the sole products were potatoes 
 and cabbages, which he subsequently ate with the 
 assistance of a couple of pigs and a large family, 
 no permanent improvement to the property re- 
 sulted, though that he professed to have '' done 
 wonders for the soil." 
 
NATHANIEL 103 
 
 Johnny designed the lodge himself. It was 
 chiefly drawn with the aid of a ruler, but it was 
 a great success from the coastguardman's point 
 of view. It contained two rooms seventeen feet 
 square and about ten feet high, and three smaller 
 ones, liberal accommodation in the way of larder 
 and cupboards, a good entry, and quite a hand- 
 some staircase. Mrs. Elliott never saw the bills, 
 and was so much pleased with the structure that 
 she was more than half disappointed when Johnny 
 announced with determined cheerfulness that their 
 own house " must stand over for a year or two." 
 
 Just at the time when the house " was being 
 taken seriously in hand" Mrs. Elliott had a long 
 and severe illness, and although the plans were 
 almost daily spread out on her bed, and although 
 she did her best to visualise the building, she 
 received no clear idea of its size, design, or aspect. 
 
 During the intervals of comparative freedom from 
 pain some detached fact would recur to her mind 
 with disconcerting vividness, and she was sharply 
 conscious that one window was certainly too few 
 for the drawing-room, and three were probably 
 too many for the larder. But then, as she told 
 herself reassuringly, nothing was drawn to scale ; 
 in real life the one window might fill the whole 
 end of the room, and the three windows might 
 be mere portholes ; and although the window- 
 frames all seemed to be almost touching the floor 
 and four feet below the ceiling, there was no reason 
 
104 SHIPMATES 
 
 why the position should not be reversed " when 
 the builder had the plans in his own hands." 
 
 Once after a paroxysm of pain, which the doctor 
 was watching with a sense of helplessness which 
 thirty years' practice hardly enabled him to 
 conceal, she opened her eyes and with apparent 
 irrelevance asked him : "If the ground floor were 
 ten feet high and the hall were a small square, 
 could you put a straight flight of stairs there 
 without making them very steep ? " The doctor, 
 who had been expecting a question impossible to 
 answer and difficult to evade, replied with the 
 cheerful frankness kept for strictly non-professional 
 matters : " Not even if the staircase put its feet 
 on the doorstep." She sighed heavily : " A castle 
 in Spain is well enough — but when one has to walk 
 up and down the stairs ! " 
 
 But, after all, why should " poor Johnny's one 
 pleasure " be spoilt by criticism ? Even Langley 
 sometimes lent an indulgent ear because "if it 
 weren't for that blessed old house he would be 
 fretting himself to fiddle-strings about his wife, and 
 no one would have any peace, least of all herself." 
 
 The duty of making himself disagreeable fell, 
 as usual, upon the conscientious Shaw. He had 
 got hold of two very useful rules : windows should 
 not equal more than a fourth or less than a tenth 
 of the floor space, and a thousand feet of air per 
 head must be allowed in each room in continu- 
 ous occupation. Unluckily Johnny never grasped 
 
NATHANIEL 105 
 
 the difference between superficial area and cubic 
 contents for more than an hour at a time, and in 
 his calculations he almost invariably confused 
 them, and these excellent maxims bore strange 
 fruit. 
 
 Shaw then made a few inquiries into the water 
 supply, and learnt with dismay that the drinking- 
 water had to be fetched from a spring three hundred 
 yards away and accessible to cattle, and no under- 
 ground rain-water tanks had been provided. 
 '' There's always the sea," said Johnny, which 
 was undeniable, but not much to the point. The 
 bath-room was to be supplied from a tank in the 
 roof, which had to be filled every day by a pump. 
 " Just a little wholesome exercise." 
 
 " Call it what you like," said Shaw impatiently, 
 " but directly the rain-water runs short the boiler 
 will burst. A nice thing to have on your con- 
 science if it kills the cook ! " 
 
 " It's only to have a cold supply." 
 
 '' But what will you do in the winter ? Even 
 Byam used to let himself oft a cold bath when 
 the thermometer went below 36° F." 
 
 *' He was always a faddy man. I believe in 
 hardening. Why, I remember when I joined my 
 first ship he made a point of sending his linen to 
 the galley to be aired. How the fellows jeered ! " 
 
 '' Yes, and what's the result of it ? Byam was the 
 oldest man in the mess and you were the youngest, 
 and you are as rheumatic as an old hedger and 
 
106 SHIPMATES 
 
 ditcher, and all the rest are dead, and when I last 
 saw Byam his wife's reel of cotton rolled under 
 the table and he picked it up as easily as a boy." 
 
 '" I dare say he swore at her for dropping it." 
 
 " He'd swear a jolly sight more if he were as 
 rheumatic as you are," said Shaw, who thought a 
 good moral must stick however you pointed it. 
 
 The house was practically finished before 
 Mrs. Elliott was well enough to go and see it, and 
 she had difficulty in masking her astonishment 
 and dismay. 
 
 " I thought it would surprise you, Mary ? " 
 cried her husband delightedly. 
 
 ** It does indeed," she said with sweet com- 
 posure. " It's wonderful." 
 
 The house had been built on the lowest part 
 of the ground, and faced due north. The only 
 window from which a view of the sea could be 
 obtained was in a small attic at the back of the 
 house, and to obtain this glimpse conveniently 
 it was necessary to sit on the floor. There was 
 not a single good room in the house, and only two 
 rooms exceeded eight feet four inches in height. 
 The stairs were dark at midday, and nearly as 
 steep as a companion-ladder. All the bedroom 
 doors were so low that Mrs. Elliott, who was an 
 inch or so taller than her husband, could not pass 
 through them without bending her head, but he 
 took a childish pleasure in the fact that every- 
 one of them was provided with a brass knocker. 
 
NATHANIEL 107 
 
 The larder faced south-west, and bore a strong 
 family likeness to a home-made greenhouse. 
 " Nice and airy," said Johnny complacently. 
 The coalhouse was about two hundred feet from 
 the kitchen door, and most conveniently placed 
 for the ex-coastguardman, who achieved a 
 popularity which was far from him when he lived 
 like his neighbours on " a hundred and a half " 
 per week. 
 
 Before the furniture was well in place, Langley 
 and Shaw came fifty miles by train to make a 
 tour of inspection. Luckily it never entered 
 Johnny's mind that they could do anything but 
 admire and envy ; questions as to what would 
 happen when water collected on the roof and shot 
 through the skylight, or how fine gravel could be 
 induced to stick on paths which sloped one in ten, 
 passed for mere chaff. 
 
 " It's a nest of boxes," said Shaw as the train 
 left the station, " and the drains are all nowhere." 
 
 Langley nodded gloomily. " And the sooner 
 that bloated bluejacket is sent to the rightabout 
 the better. Garrulous, thieving scoundrel ! I 
 shall write and tell him so." 
 
 "Accuse not a servant unto his master lest 
 he curse thee." 
 
 " Most of the rooms you couldn't swing a cat 
 in." 
 
 " What's more to the point, you couldn't swing 
 a hammock. Even the two largest bedrooms are 
 
108 SHIPMATES 
 
 so cut up by windows and doors and chimneys that 
 a man of my size wouldn't be able to keep his head 
 and his feet all out of the draught at the same 
 moment." 
 
 " If another hundred or so were spent on the 
 lodge it would be quite large enough for two 
 people to live in quietly." 
 
 " For heaven's sake, don't tell him so. Re- 
 member the bear's grease. And if he doesn't 
 live in that contraption, who will ? " 
 
 Mrs. Elliott struggled valiantly against the mani- 
 fold drawbacks and discomforts of the house, but 
 the servants, put out of temper by the excessive 
 dullness, gave but grudging support, and in the 
 middle of the second year the doctor was obliged 
 to tell Johnny what she would have died rather 
 than acknowledge. Much to everyone's surprise 
 he bore the news with unaffected cheerfulness, 
 and put up a board, ''To be Let or Sold," the 
 printing of which he thoroughly enjoyed. Shaw 
 most overbearingly insisted on turning the S's 
 the right way round before they were inked in 
 with an old toothbrush, but Johnny obstinately 
 clung to his N's crossed from north-east to south- 
 west, although loudly assured that they " looked for 
 all the world like H's half -seas over." 
 
 The usual " small fortune " was spent in adver- 
 tising the property, and it was finally sold for 
 about two-fifths of what it had cost. 
 
 " And precious lucky to get as much," said 
 
NATHANIEL 109 
 
 Shaw irritably. " If I had built a rabbit-warren 
 like that I should have had to pay people to live 
 in it, and if I had tried to sell it I should have 
 found myself in gaol, and serve me right, too ! 
 Providence certainly does look after " 
 
 '' Well, in brief, after Johnny," interrupted 
 Langley, " but don't be envious — probably it is 
 on his wife's account. I was telling her the other 
 day about little Nothink's literal belief in guardian 
 angels, and she said : ' I hope poor Johnny has two. 
 One would find it overmuch work.' I told her of 
 a fat, idle parson I had heard assuring a harassed, 
 lower middle-class congregation that ' Heaven 
 meant a twenty-four hours' working day.' She 
 said she did not wish to go where there was no 
 more sea, but where there was no more /^d^." 
 
 " When the house was under weigh I did my 
 best to advise Elliott, until one day he had the 
 cheek to tell me that the foreman had said, ' Never 
 show an unfinished building to a fool or a gentle- 
 man.' After that I let him gang his ain gait. 
 And this is the end of it ! " 
 
 '' Not nearly as bad an end as it might have 
 been. But nothing ever equals his hopes or your 
 fears." 
 
 The money was spent in buying a compact, 
 well-situated house which thoroughly satisfied 
 Shaw's commonsense requirements, but he shook 
 his head ominously over the length of the garden. 
 
 " What possible harm can it do ? " asked Langley. 
 
110 SHIPMATES 
 
 " It's just long enough to keep the neighbours off 
 — the only good a garden ever is, as far as I'm con- 
 cerned. A garden like the one he had at the rabbit- 
 warren begins by being an amusement, then it's 
 an occupation, and before you know where you 
 are it's an infernal nuisance. But a mere strip 
 of town garden — I defy even Johnny to waste a 
 pound a week over it. My wife runs hers for 
 about five shillings." 
 
 " Wait till he has a little spare money and 
 you'll see." 
 
 Three years later the long, over-shadowed strip 
 of garden had four hundred pounds' worth of 
 glass houses. The ex-coastguardman was growing 
 tomatoes and grapes, and Johnny was growing 
 wiser — at about the same rate. 
 
 " What idiot was it," asked Langley, " who 
 spoke of counting peaches on the garden wall 
 as a soothing occupation ? I don't think our 
 guileless Nathaniel's character will stand much 
 more of it! Shades of the forcing-house begin 
 to close upon the growing boy." 
 
VI. A SWEARING ANACHRONISM 
 
 A survival — Messieurs et Mesdames — A striking tribute — A hero 
 at home — Domestic discipline — Compulsory music — Retreat and 
 defeat — Family history — Examinations — What stood in his light 
 — Lower-deck discipline — A fair start — Poetry and prose — 
 When wives were wives — An answer to prayer 
 
 JOHN BLISSETT was the youngest of the group 
 by six or eight years, but in some respects 
 he belonged to an older generation. Heseltine 
 one day called him an anachronism. 
 
 " A swearing anachronism," said Langley. Shaw 
 referred to Smollett, while Byam's five-word life- 
 history is scarcely fit for ears polite. 
 
 Blissett was famed for the strength of his 
 language ; its chief peculiarity being the ludicrously 
 frequent interpolation of the great big D. Whether 
 he gossiped peaceably with his wife, teased the 
 children who came to him so late in life, entertained 
 a scandalised chaplain-general or an appreciative 
 royal prince, the word ran in and out like a thread 
 which had no connection with the design. 
 
 At a banquet given in honour of a European 
 sovereign he was called on to make a speech, and 
 as he knew nothing of French it was arranged 
 
 that his secretary, a native of Jersey, should stand 
 
 ni 
 
112 SHIPMATES 
 
 beside him at the critical moment and dictate two 
 or three words at a time. 
 
 The ceremony began, and in heavy English- 
 French the secretary mouthed out ''Mess-ieurs et 
 Mes-dames." The unwilling orator stood silent and 
 erect, an expression of affected horror creeping 
 slowly from his eyes to his chin. 
 
 " M^^^ieurs et Mesdames " repeated the secretary 
 with nervous emphasis. A loud aside from the 
 admiral : 
 
 '' Hold hard, Blaqueney ! Remember the 
 ladies." 
 
 Towards the close of his life he was taking a 
 tour through Cornwall with his daughter, and 
 one Sunday afternoon they passed a village church 
 just as the service began. She expressed a wish 
 to attend, and he continued his walk, telling her 
 that he would be back in time for the sermon. 
 From early childhood she had been scandalised 
 by his behaviour in church, and on a recent occa- 
 sion he had made the clearly audible comment : 
 " D — d if I believe that ! Do you, my dear ? " 
 and she sincerely hoped that he would be too late. 
 
 The sermon began, and the peace of the atmos- 
 phere was destroyed by a sense of tension, which 
 seemed to be shared by those around her. She 
 glanced uneasily at the open west door, and there 
 stood her father, bolt upright and with his binoc- 
 ulars levelled at the pulpit. He stood motionless 
 until the concluding words were uttered, replaced 
 
A SWEARING ANACHRONISM 113 
 
 the binoculars smartly in their case, ejaculating 
 with cordial approval : " And a d — d good sermon, 
 too ! " 
 
 After listening to his daughter's remonstrance 
 and to her assurance that everyone in the church 
 had heard what he said, he strode after the vicar 
 and apologised, returning wholly impenitent. " He 
 didn't care a d — n, my dear. D — d if he didn't 
 take it for a compliment." 
 
 For ten years she was his chief companion, and 
 certainly found no difficulty in filling up her time. 
 It took four months to get him a suit of clothes, 
 and even then she only succeeded in getting them 
 worn by wrapping his old coat round a dead parrot 
 and burying it. He insisted on having it dug up 
 again, but the weather was hot, and his obstinacy 
 could not carry him to the last point. It took a 
 year to dissuade him from lending his name to 
 bogus companies which were rapidly reducing his 
 small private means to a cipher, and nearly twice 
 as long to induce him to be " dry-docked for 
 repairs at a dentist's." I saw him soon after 
 the long-delayed business had been completed. 
 
 '' How d'you like my head-rails ? " he asked. 
 ''No, no; above the water-line. The lower tier's 
 my own. D — d clever fellow that dentist. He 
 pulls teeth out d — d well. D — n me, my dear, if 
 it wasn't a pleasure to let him do it. And I told 
 him so. Didn't I, my dear ? " turning to his 
 daughter for confirmation. 
 
 H 
 
114 SHIPMATES 
 
 '' Among other things," she repHed drily. " He 
 must have thought us ' a pair of very strange 
 beasts.' If I had not been a Uttle eccentric my- 
 self he would have been quite overcome by pity 
 for my sad fate as your sole visible guardian." 
 
 Blissett had been twice promoted for gallantry, 
 once displayed under ordinary broad daylight, 
 drum-and-trumpet conditions, and once alone, 
 unarmed, and in the dead of night he had exposed 
 himself to imminent risk of hideous torture in 
 order to gain information that might perhaps 
 ^reduce the next day's death-roll. When he was 
 well over fifty his little daughter had measles, 
 and his abject fear of contracting the disease and 
 the strange nature of his precautions made him 
 the laughing-stock of the whole neighbourhood. 
 
 When still a very young man, Blissett and his 
 boat's crew were on one occasion hard pressed by 
 the enemy. The captain, unable to send im- 
 mediate support, gave the signal for retreat. 
 Blissett's attention was called to it, but he 
 shouted angrily : " D — n it ! Turn a blind eye ! " 
 and continued operations which in a few minutes' 
 time were completely successful. On returning 
 to the ship the captain met him with the suave 
 comment : " The next time you hold it advisable 
 to act in defiance of my orders, Mr. Blissett, may 
 I suggest that you should moderate your voice ? " 
 He always maintained that his reply was a quota- 
 tion from Marry at : '' Duty before decency, sir." 
 
A SWEARING ANACHRONISM 115 
 
 Although he allowed more license to his juniors 
 than was usual, Blissett had his own methods of 
 administering a telling reproof if any advantage 
 was taken of his unconventionality. One day in 
 a dockyard church he was sitting in the next pew 
 to his officers, the whole party in uniform. A 
 lieutenant of five or six and twenty, seeing a col- 
 lection most unexpectedly under weigh, leant across 
 and coolly asked for the loan of some money. 
 Without an instant's visible hesitation Blissett put 
 two fingers in his waistcoat pocket, and drawing 
 out a new sovereign handed it over with wooden 
 impassivity of countenance. The young fellow 
 flushed to the roots of his hair, but in spite of the 
 malicious smiles of his messmates he had the sense 
 and pluck not to give money that he could not 
 afford. He let the bag pass, and as soon as the 
 service was over returned the sovereign with an 
 apology, which was accepted with a grim smile. 
 Another day Blissett went into an Officers' 
 Reading-room, and although he was in full uniform 
 a midshipman occupied and retained the only 
 arm-chair. He said nothing at the time, but 
 made inquiries as to the delinquent's name and 
 ship, and the next time the lad tried to go ashore 
 he discovered that his leave had been stopped for 
 an inconveniently long period. He knew better 
 than to ask why ! 
 
 The Sunday after he was appointed to his first 
 command Blissett, prepared to read morning 
 
116 SHIPMATES 
 
 service to the whole ship's company, discovered that 
 eleven men were absent, and inquired the reason. 
 
 " They say they're Roman Catholics, sir." 
 
 ^' A large proportion aboard such a small craft. 
 Irishmen ? North country ? " 
 
 " No, sir ; London and west country." A 
 glance of intelligence passed between the two 
 men, and Blissett announced in stentorian tones : 
 '' Church of England service will begin in thirty- 
 five seconds. A Roman Catholic service will be 
 held this afternoon at two o'clock. It will be 
 twice as long — or more." 
 
 Conversion took place with the needful 
 rapidity. 
 
 Domestic discipline was very lax. One day 
 his little daughter declined to wear a pinafore 
 that her mother had made in some new but un- 
 attractive fashion. She persisted in the refusal, 
 and when her father roared angrily, " I'll be d — d 
 if you don't," retorted calmly, " I'll be d — d if 
 I do .' " He was so much shocked that he suddenly 
 changed the charge of disobedience to lawful 
 orders to one of " swearing at your poor mother." 
 By the time she had explained that if she had 
 sworn at anyone it was '' only " at himself the 
 storm had blown over. 
 
 The child had but one defect, in his opinion : 
 she had no ear for music, and was literally unable 
 to distinguish " Rule Britannia " from " The Girl 
 I left Behind Me." As soon as she grew a little 
 
A SWEARING ANACHRONISM 117 
 
 older he insisted on a great deal of time being 
 given to " exercise on the pianoforte," and was 
 amazed at the result. " But I have no ear," 
 she would plead. " D — n it, what d'you want of 
 an ear ? You've learnt the alphabet, and you can 
 read. You've learnt the notes, and why the 
 devil can't you play ? " 
 
 He neither liked nor disliked other people's young 
 children, but his power of attraction for them 
 was curiously strong, and as he found their pre- 
 sence no restraint he tolerated it to a degree quite 
 unusual in naval men. His chief charm in their 
 eyes was that he seemed wholly unconscious that 
 they differed from their elders in anything but size. 
 Also, he said and did with apparent gusto a larger 
 proportion of the things that they would have liked 
 to say and do than is usual with grown-up people. 
 
 There was one exception to his general tolerance : 
 he detested some exceedingly well-brought-up 
 children who lived next door to him when he was 
 on half-pay, and in spite of their persevering 
 efforts to attract his attention he persisted in 
 ignoring their existence. One afternoon he was 
 returning from a levee in exceedingly bad humour. 
 There was no carriage-drive, and he had to stride 
 up the path with cocked-hat and sword, gold- 
 striped trousers, and coat embroidered with laurel 
 leaves, in full view of his worshipping neighbours. 
 A polite little voice began : " How are you to-day, 
 Admiral Blissett ? " No reply. 
 
118 SHIPMATES 
 
 '' How is Mrs. Blissett ? " 
 
 " How is Adda ? " 
 
 He reached the steps in grim silence, mounted 
 them three at a time, and was fumbhng with 
 the latchkey when a fourth inquiry reached him : 
 
 " How is Reggie to-day ? " 
 
 The key stuck : he turned at bay, and shouted 
 in tones that should have dispersed half a street 
 full of children : 
 
 " How's your grandmother ! " 
 
 Polite, excited, triumphant chorus : 
 
 '' She's quite well, thank you ! " 
 
 " D — delighted to hear it," said the defeated 
 admiral. Safe inside the hall with the door well 
 slammed, he gave a roar of laughter which carried 
 away the last vestige of ill-humour. 
 
 " Little beggars, they won the day ! D — d if 
 I knew they had a grandmother." 
 
 One of Blissett's brothers held a good position 
 in the War Office, one was in the Admiralty, a 
 third was in the army, and his sisters married 
 well, but he loved to talk of " My poor old father 
 who hadn't a second coat to his back. We ran 
 barefoot half our time, and when there was any 
 duff we turned our one plate upside down." In 
 earlier versions the garment in question had had 
 a different name and served a different purpose, 
 but ten years' persistent " John, I wish you 
 would not ! " had not been wholly resultless. 
 
 " There was never any luck in our family," he 
 
A SWEARING ANACHRONISM 119 
 
 complained. " My grandfather was a half -pay 
 commander with eleven children. An old mess- 
 mate offered to take my father as a midshipman, 
 but he said, ' Hang it all, I've had enough of 
 honour and glory. I want to make him a pusser.' 
 The port admiral heard of it, and said, ' Send 
 the boy up to me after dinner, and tell him to 
 bring his copy-book.' So my father went. ' And 
 did you write this yourself, my boy ? And d — d 
 well written, too ! Tell your father it's all right.' 
 
 " Not much worry about examinations in those 
 days. If you had the right kind of a name they 
 made tender inquiries after your uncle's health, 
 and if you hadn't they asked how you spelled 
 believe and receive. If they didn't like the look 
 of you they told you to write Mediterranean or 
 Mesopotamia, and said you had made an awful 
 hash of it and that you didn't know B from a 
 bull's foot, and they were d — d if it was their 
 business to teach you. 
 
 '" But it brought no luck. Before my father 
 was old enough to have a look-in, I'm d — d if 
 picking and stealing and ullages and ten-upon- 
 eight and all that little game wasn't put a stop 
 to, and pussers had to take their pay and live on 
 it. And it was awfully against me as a youngster. 
 If ever I scowled when I ought to have smiled, 
 or vice versa, it was all because my father was 
 a purser. 
 
 '' The real truth was that he had a devil of a 
 
120 SHIPMATES 
 
 temper — till my mother came alongside and 
 knocked it out of him — and my grandfather was 
 afraid to put him in the executive. He thought 
 that if he had a sword in his hand he'd play 
 Balaam with the first ass he met. But an angry 
 man can always find a weapon. He hadn't been 
 three days aboard when he cracked the paymaster 
 over the wrist with a ruler. There was the devil 
 and all to pay, but things weren't managed by 
 hard and fast rules, and it blew over. 
 
 '' There are not many people living now who 
 have ever been shipmates with a real purser. It 
 used to be said, ' It's no sin to rob a pusser,' 
 but some of them were most d — d gentlemanly 
 fellows. I remember one — most polished fellow 
 I ever met, and awfully kind to youngsters. 
 Everybody loved him. He drew £1600 a year and 
 never did a stroke of work. He had a steward 
 who did all the doubtful business for him. 
 
 " Ah, those were the days ! They marched the 
 bullocks whole out of the victualling-yards. Then 
 came the time when the beef went away in quarters 
 over the ship's side, especially vessels where there 
 were heaps of boys content to let themselves be 
 robbed for a few sweets. I saw a fellow hauled 
 up before the captain for carrying two or three 
 gallons of spirits ashore. All he did to him was 
 to stop two goes of leave. D — d if they wouldn't 
 hang a man who did such a thing nowadays. 
 
 " And I remember one of the first of the real 
 
A SWEARING ANACHRONISM 121 
 
 paymasters. He was Hawtrey's father's secretary. 
 He was an awfully handsome fellow, and had the 
 cheek of ten thousand donkeys. I've often known 
 him ashore of a morning lounging about and 
 thinking who he'd propose to next while the 
 admiral was in his office and up to his eyes in 
 work. If a man had a secretary like that now 
 he'd smother him. Why, you can't deal out the 
 smallest punishment to a man without so much 
 clerical work that it would be a great deal better 
 to give a general order to the crew : ' D — n it ; do 
 as you like and have done with it ! ' The days 
 when any fool could be a paymaster are over." 
 
 Blissett at all times clung to nautical idioms. 
 On his knees in church he once discovered that 
 his Prayer Book was missing, and gave the order 
 to his daughter : '' Directly you go home, pipe 
 all hands and search for my Prayer Book. I'm 
 d — d if I can find my places in any other." In 
 the afternoon he sometimes went for a drive with 
 his wife and children. With imaginary steering- 
 gear in his hands he would look quickly round 
 the carriage and ask, " All aboard ? Shove off, 
 then ! " and he insisted on following the same 
 etiquette as if he were in a boat — ^that is to say, 
 he must be the last to get in and the first to 
 alight. 
 
 He was remarkably tall for a sailor of that 
 period, and held himself very much like the fabled 
 commander who believed that he had a glass 
 
122 SHIPMATES 
 
 back. His hair was prematurely grey and stood 
 on end. His eyes were hazel, and when he joined 
 the service they were shaded by lashes so exces- 
 sively long and thick that they excited a storm 
 of ridicule in the gun-room, scarcely to be held 
 in check by a ready tongue and a still more ready 
 pair of brown fists. The jeers were short-lived. 
 The first time he tried to look through a spy-glass 
 he found it obscured by dark lines, and speedily 
 discovered the cause. He exclaimed, " D — n my 
 eyelashes ! " found a minute looking-glass and 
 a pair of nail-scissors, and cut them oft close to 
 the lids. They never again reached even the 
 normal masculine length, and there was nothing 
 to attest the truth of the anecdote but a minia- 
 ture painted before he left home. 
 
 In spite of his superficial roughness Blissett, 
 unlike only too many of his contemporaries, was 
 absolutely free from the vice of cruelty. As a 
 lieutenant he fought long and dangerous battles 
 to save his men from arbitrary and excessive 
 punishment, and as a captain he never but once 
 sentenced a prisoner to be flogged, and then it 
 was with the full determination that the sentence 
 should not be carried out. He knew a better plan. 
 
 The prisoner was a notorious bully, and had 
 acquired a most pernicious influence over a large 
 number of the crew owing to the general belief 
 in his enormous physical strength. The war- 
 rant was signed by the admiral and the hateful 
 
A SWEARING ANACHRONISM 123 
 
 preparations were duly made, but at the last 
 moment, acting on secret instructions, the doctor 
 stepped forward and, saluting Blissett, gravely 
 assured him that the prisoner's constitution was 
 too feeble to bear the shock of corporal punish- 
 ment. From that moment the man's influence 
 was gone, and his mutinous speeches were received 
 with scoffs and contumely. To provoke punish- 
 ment that he could not endure violated the lower- 
 deck code of honour. 
 
 Throughout a very long commission Blissett's 
 second in command, one Lafferty, was a man 
 who snored stupendously. Blissett often boasted 
 that for three years he had slept over a gun that 
 was fired at daybreak, and that after a few weeks 
 the report had ceased to wake him ; but he soon 
 found to his cost that an explosion when he was 
 already asleep, and a series of small explosions 
 when he was trying to go to sleep, were very 
 different in their nervous effect. 
 
 One night in harbour Lafferty was unusually 
 quick in turning in, and the snores promptly 
 began and continued until Blissett was beside 
 himself with irritation. Wrenching open his cabin 
 door, he told the sentry to "go and see if the 
 commander is asleep ; and if he isn't, tell him I 
 should like to speak to him." 
 
 From early experience he knew the precise 
 manner in which such an order would be carried 
 out. The sentry hammered loudly at the door 
 
124 SHIPMATES 
 
 with the butt-end of his musket and, as soon as 
 he heard Lafferty yawn and sigh, cried in a voice 
 fit to wake the Seven Sleepers : " The captain 
 doesn't wish to disturb you, sir, but if you're 
 awake he'd Hke to speak to you." BHssett waited 
 on his door-sill until some articulate reply was 
 forthcoming and then shouted : " Don't turn out, 
 Lafferty. D — n it, all I want to say is — LeVs 
 start fair, ^^ He flung himself back into his berth, 
 and was asleep before Lafferty had grasped his 
 meaning. 
 
 BHssett had enemies, but very few. One of 
 them had contrived by secret influence to deprive 
 him of an official residence and then ventured to 
 condole with him publicly. " I'm afraid you must 
 feel rather sore about it. A most awful nuisance 
 when you thought you had another eighteen 
 months clear." 
 
 " Feel, my dear fellow ? I feel like Adam and 
 Eve when they were turned out of the garden of 
 Eden. And d — n me if I don't know who the 
 angel Gabriel is ! " 
 
 When he told the story at dinner some years 
 later, Heseltine ventured on a correction : " The 
 rabbis believe that Gabriel was solely employed on 
 works of mercy. I think you must mean Michael." 
 
 " D — ^n it, I don't. I'm a Christian," he retorted 
 with decided irrelevance. 
 
 '' I suppose Milton was a Christian too, though 
 I should hardly call him one," said his wife. 
 
A SWEARING ANACHRONISM 125 
 
 "Milton?" 
 
 " Yes. Did you ever hear of him ? " 
 
 '" I bet you I know a d — d sight more about 
 Milton than any man within hail, bar Heseltine." 
 
 " What do you know ? " 
 
 '' He had a lot of wives, and he wanted to have 
 a lot more, but I'm not quite clear whether he 
 meant to ship them all at once or one at a time. 
 I'm rather inclined " 
 
 '' Leave out the wives, John. Tell us about his 
 poetry." 
 
 '' You've pulled me up with a run just as I was 
 getting into the swing of it. The sum and sub- 
 stance about his writings is this : When he was 
 a youngster he took pains and wrote poetry quite 
 as well as anyone else. When he grew old and 
 surly, he said he'd be d — d if he'd find any more 
 rhymes to his reasons. People could take it or 
 leave it. And I leave it. What's the use of 
 poetry unless you want to sing ? If there is any 
 sense in it, it is worth more as prose, and if there 
 isn't, make pipe-lights of it." 
 
 '' You prefer prose ? " asked Heseltine, secretly 
 astonished that Blissett was so much in advance 
 of Monsieur Jourdain. 
 
 '' Poetry and prose to my mind are like salt meat 
 and fresh. If beef is good, why salt it ? If it is bad, 
 why eat it ? " 
 
 ** I doubt if you have ever read any books except 
 Peter Simple and Handy Andy,^' said his wife. 
 
126 SHIPMATES 
 
 '' I bet you I've read as much as Shaw, and 
 you don't find fault with him." 
 
 '' Shaw was taught to read out of Msoy's Fables,''^ 
 said Heseltine, "and he says he has never learnt 
 anything since. He has only been verifying the 
 facts." 
 
 '"And I learnt to read out of the Decline and 
 Fall of the Roman Empire, and you can't verify 
 'em. The fifth volume. I was the fifth child." 
 
 '' I do not see the connection," said Heseltine 
 with some hesitation. 
 
 '' Shows how much you know of the wear and 
 tear of teaching a boy to read when he doesn't 
 want to learn ! My poor mother " 
 
 '' Indeed I do pity her, John dear. Her arm 
 must often have ached." 
 
 " Not a bit of it ! She wasn't a woman to keep 
 a dog and do the barking herself. She looked out 
 that my father always had home appointments, 
 and took jolly fine care that he rope's-ended us 
 all round twice a week. The poor old boy was 
 almost as anxious to shirk it as we were, but it was 
 no go. If ever he was ordered abroad she took 
 the next coach to London, went straight to the 
 Admiralty, and had the appointment cancelled. 
 Once they told her he must either go to China or 
 go on half -pay indefinitely, as there wasn't another 
 home billet in existence. She found a vessel that 
 was just going to be broken up for firewood, and 
 made them commission her. When the captain was 
 
A SWEARING ANACHRONISM 127 
 
 appointed, his wife went to my mother in tears — 
 they were cousins, and my mother had always 
 bulHed her — and said her husband had served in the 
 rotten old craft when he was a mate, and even then 
 you could have rammed a walking-stick through any 
 part of her hull. My mother said that if she made 
 herself disagreeable about it she would take d — d 
 good care that her d — d old Queen's hard-bargain 
 never had another billet. And then " 
 
 " John, your mother would no more have 
 dreamed of saying such a thing than I should. 
 She was most religious." 
 
 '" I should just about think so ! It would have 
 been more than your life was worth to say she 
 wasn't. Well, my poor old cousin went on like 
 the importunate widow, and at last my mother 
 said she'd consult the hydrographer and have the 
 old boat moored in one of the safest reaches in 
 the shallowest river he could find. They did her 
 up with tin tacks and brown paper and a couple 
 of coats of paint, and she lasted six years and nine 
 months. I believe she would have lasted seven, but 
 two young fools in a dinghy ran foul of her one 
 foggy morning and stove her side in. She sank 
 in three minutes and twenty-five seconds." 
 
 '* Indeed ! " said the unsuspecting Heseltine. 
 " I should hardly have thought that a wooden 
 vessel. Did many men lose their lives ? " 
 
 '' D — d few. Considering that hardly any of 
 'em could swim." 
 
128 SHIPMATES 
 
 " And your cousin's husband ? " 
 
 " Wasn't aboard. He lived ashore and his wife 
 never let him come down till the day was well 
 aired. All the papers were sent up to his house to 
 be signed. Simpson ! " — ^turning to the impertur- 
 bable marine in plain clothes who waited at table 
 — " Simpson ! Who made this mustard ? " 
 
 '' I did, sir." 
 
 " Make some more like it, and go ! What were 
 you saying, dear ? " 
 
 Mrs. Bhssett, half audibly, had been making 
 a calculation. " John, you were the sixth child." 
 
 " Damn it, so I was ! But it was the fifth 
 volume all the same. Two of us were twins, and 
 they managed on the fourth volume between 
 them. Tom held the book, and Mary turned 
 over the leaves and did as much of the pointing 
 as he would stand. Thought you'd caught me 
 out, eh ? " 
 
 " It must have been a fine edition," said Hesel- 
 tine regretfully. Mine had only two volumes. I 
 bought it out in Rio for nine shillings and six- 
 pence." 
 
 " And I broke the back of one of them slinging 
 it at young Carter's head. Not Charity : the one 
 who came to grief. If I hadn't missed — What 
 d'you suppose it weighed ? " 
 
 '^ About four pounds." 
 
 '' Gad — a narrow shave." 
 
 '' You don't take much rope to hang yourself, 
 
A SWEARING ANACHRONISM 129 
 
 John. Confess, wasn't that the first and only 
 time you ever handled a volume of Gibbon ? " 
 
 '' Liars always are found out, whichever way 
 they whirl about." 
 
 '' Ah ! that is much more the kind of literature 
 you were brought up on." 
 
 " I think we all were," said Heseltine, smiling. 
 " I recollect being stood on a chair to recite ' I 
 thank you, pretty cow.' It went a long way 
 towards perverting my moral sense. I loathed 
 milk, and I was horribly afraid of cows and 
 thought them hideous." 
 
 " I believe my husband is afraid of them still." 
 
 " And if anyone says they aren't, I donH believe 
 'em. Shaw and I met one the other day, and we 
 went down a side-road at a double. He says cows 
 won't listen to commonsense, but I'm d — d if he 
 gave her a chance ! Of course if you say you're 
 not afraid of them, my dear, I'm bound to believe 
 you. All I know is that if twenty years ago I'd 
 asked you to go up and bully the Second Lord 
 into giving me an appointment out of my turn, 
 you'd have been in a blue funk." 
 
 '' I could have given the hall -porter five shillings 
 and run away. I am quite sure that is all you 
 ever did." 
 
 '' I'm d — d if I gave him more than half a 
 crown. Even at that rate he raked in the shekels 
 a good deal faster than I ever could." 
 
 As a rule Blissett was well served by his 
 
 I 
 
130 SHIPMATES 
 
 subordinates, and an extraordinarily large propor- 
 tion of his " youngsters " lived to hoist their flag, 
 but he once had an exasperatingly incapable 
 first-lieutenant. He was on his knees in his cabin 
 early one morning when the young man burst in, 
 crying excitedly, " Sir, sir ! " 
 
 Blissett leapt to his feet : " Who the devil sent 
 for you, sir ? How dare you break in on my 
 devotions ? D — d impertinence ! " 
 
 '' Sir, the mail is in, and my cousin is drowned, 
 and I've succeeded to the title ; and I'm wanted 
 in England at once, sir." 
 
 Blissett clasped his hands and raised them 
 above his head dramatically : 
 
 '' The Lord be praised : my prayers are heard ! 
 I'd made up my mind that sooner than go to sea 
 with you again I'd sit on the doorstep at the 
 Admiralty until they consented to promote you. 
 You may be a fool, but you're a d — d good-natured 
 fellow, and I said to myself I'm d — d if I wouldn't 
 sooner kick you up the ladder than down." 
 
VII. CLEMENT URBANUS 
 
 The power of a name — A stand-outer — Confidences — Sab- 
 batarianism — Missionaries — Brotherly feeling — Backing bills 
 — A hyaena and a rat — The lower deck — Mutiny — Modern 
 discipline 
 
 <^X X THAT'S in a name ? Everything's in a 
 Y \ name," said Langley dogmatically. " I 
 grant you that a John or a William can 
 do pretty well as they choose : there are too many 
 of them to be coerced by public opinion ; but if 
 parents go beyond that they ought to be precious 
 careful. I had a messmate once and he said to his 
 mother : ' When I was a miserable little shaver, 
 helpless enough to move the heart of a stone, you 
 went and called me Joshua, and as long as I live 
 I'll never forgive you.' He came to no good ; 
 he was bound to be resentful and pugnacious, and 
 no one was bound to put up with it. When he 
 married his wife started calling him Jock, and it 
 must have done him some good, because he was the 
 only fellow I ever knew who was turned out of the 
 service twice. I mean he never would have had 
 a second chance if it hadn't been for her. And, 
 look at Benjamin Byam ! How could a Benjamin 
 ever remember that those on watch must be 
 
 131 
 
132 SHIPMATES 
 
 served first ? The necessity is laid on him to keep 
 his eye on the main chance, and to demand five 
 rations to his brethren's one. And then there's 
 Franks. How could a Clement be anything but 
 urbane ? Of course there's some room left for 
 individuality. Franks puts more backbone into 
 the name than we're strictly entitled to. He's a 
 regular stand-outer. A Clement pure and simple 
 would play cards ' for love,' and read ' religious ' 
 novels, and go to ' moral ' plays, and tolerate 
 * quiet ' Sabbath-breaking, and look on at billiards 
 while other fellows played, and have a perceptible 
 dash of the backbiter in his composition. What 
 was his father's name, Shaw ? " 
 
 " Gascoigne." 
 
 " H'm. Doesn't account for anything. Morally 
 speaking it's a weak-kneed sort of name. And 
 his grandfather's ? " 
 
 But for once Shaw was nonplussed. 
 
 " I've known him on and off for thirty-seven 
 years, and I only know his father's name was 
 Gascoigne because I was one of the witnesses 
 when he married, and I saw it on the certificate. 
 His wife told me who one of his ancestors was, 
 and that's all I know of his family history." 
 
 " At any rate you always contrive to know 
 more than anyone else." 
 
 '' Well, I don't do it by asking questions," 
 retorted Shaw irritably; and kept to himself the 
 remaining piece of information derived from a 
 
CLEMENT URBANUS 183 
 
 casual glance at the certificate twenty years 
 previously, namely, that Franks' name was also 
 Gascoigne, though it never appeared in the Navy 
 List or in his ordinary signature. 
 
 " I suppose people ' confide ' in you," said 
 Langley, on provocation bent. " I'm thankful 
 to say I have only received two confidences in the 
 whole course of my life." 
 
 " What were they ? " asked Shaw naively. 
 
 " Shows what you understand by a confidence ! 
 However, it was a good many years ago ; even you 
 won't be able to put two and two together. A 
 man told me exactly how long it took him to trans- 
 fer his affections from a lady who didn't want them 
 to a lady who did." 
 
 " Inside of thirty-six hours — or never ? " 
 
 " Perhaps people do confide in you sometimes. 
 I never believed it before. I thought you practised 
 * a kind of conjectural sagacity and rash dexterity.' 
 All the same, you can't guess this : a woman told 
 me exactly how she felt towards a very respectable 
 person who had been exceedingly good to her 
 children when she was too ill to look after them 
 herself. Give it up ? She simply hated her ; 
 she even felt angry with the children for looking 
 strong and well-dressed." 
 
 Shaw appeared puzzled and slightly shocked at 
 such strange perversity : 
 
 " But my wife " 
 
 " My dear fellow, if a man's wife weren't different 
 
134 SHIPMATES 
 
 from every other man's, what a bore she would 
 be!" 
 
 This was a wide subject for reflection, but 
 Langley's thoughts soon veered round to the man 
 under discussion : 
 
 '' I always thought he would have come to grief 
 over Sabbatarianism, but his religion became 
 broader as he grew older : it generally does if the 
 roots run deep. The Fourth Commandment 
 wrecked the career of three very good fellows of 
 about his standing." 
 
 '' And much smarter officers than he ever was. 
 I've often wondered what became of them : I lost 
 the run of them directly they left the service. 
 They all commuted. I wrote to one of them, and 
 pointed out that if he didn't even take the trouble 
 to keep his name on the Navy List his widow would 
 lose her pension. The year after I saw it was 
 restored, but he never answered the letter." 
 
 '' I can tell you what became of Leigh. He was 
 the smartest of the lot, and a fellow of good family, 
 too, and I dare say it's a fair sample. He was a 
 sort of home-missioner in a gone-down suburb. 
 My wife got let in for some working-parties — rather 
 a fish out of water, because when she works she 
 works, and she doesn't see the fun of sewing a sleeve 
 in upside down one week and inside out the next — 
 and she met his wife, a kind, dowdy little woman, 
 who found her rather a fearful joy, and she said 
 that as he was an old shipmate we ' ought ' to call 
 
CLEMENT URBANUS 135 
 
 on them. I knew it wouldn't answer, but I took 
 her. They lived in a house called Prospect Villa : 
 cemetery in front, railway behind, infant school 
 on one side, and the fag-end of a row of bankrupt 
 shops on the other. It was a bitter day, several 
 degrees below zero, and they kept us on the door- 
 step until my wife shook with cold. I wanted to 
 push our cards into the letter-box and go, but she 
 said she could hear them scuttling about inside. 
 At last a scared-looking maid with her toes through 
 her boots opened the door and let us in to a vault 
 where a fire had just that moment been lighted — 
 and for the first time that winter, judging by the 
 smell. Leigh came in, looking for all the world like 
 an out-of-work nonconformist minister, and his 
 wife and a girl about sixteen. We talked diligently 
 about the weather, and I got my wife away as 
 quickly as possible, for the room spelt bronchitis 
 and sciatica. ' Well,' she said when we were safe 
 outside, ' I'd trim my bonnet on Sunday if I wanted 
 to, and if I knew how, but I'm hanged if I'd risk 
 people's lives rather than own I hadn't a fire in my 
 drawing-room. And it's simply tragic to see that 
 girl : she might be the daughter of a lawyer's clerk. 
 And where are the tracts you promised me ? ' 
 There was only one. He had slipped it into my 
 pocket when he was opening the hall door for us." 
 " What was it about ? Against drunkenness, 
 or gambling, or any other of your known habits ? " 
 asked Shaw. 
 
136 SHIPMATES 
 
 '' Nothing of the sort. It was one of a series of 
 tracts specially written for respectable members 
 of the professional classes. It described the 
 * conversion ' of a thoroughly worthy and hard- 
 working Anglican clergyman, a man who was 
 ' a good citizen, a good father, husband, son, 
 neighbour, and friend ; but what is that, my 
 brethren, in the sight of God ? ' " 
 
 " How can you read such infernal twaddle ? " 
 
 " My dear fellow, I can no more resist reading 
 a tract or a preface than you can look at a man 
 without calculating his expectation of life and 
 deciding whether he is more or less a fool than 
 his father's cousin who made such a hash of things 
 out in China. From the time I was seven years 
 of age I have read every tract thrown in my path. 
 I have only come across two worth reading, and 
 one preface. Timothy wrote the preface, and it 
 is short enough even for an impatient man like 
 yourself : ' Consider what I say ; and the Lord 
 give thee understanding in all things.' " 
 
 '" Well, at any rate Leigh did not become a 
 missionary." 
 
 '' To you a missionary is like a red rag to a bull. 
 You should be more tolerant. The other day I 
 was going a short journey on one of those as-you- 
 like-it joint-railways where the guard says * Right ! ' 
 when he has finished talking to his wife's cousin, and 
 the engine-driver goes ahead if he happens to hear 
 him. We were delayed at one station a little longer 
 
CLEMENT URBANUS 137 
 
 than usual, and I looked out to see who was 
 responsible. Quite a little crowd was seeing off a 
 young missionary, and when they had finished 
 kissing him he got into my carriage ; and I 
 recognised him as a barber's assistant. He had 
 always cut my hair very decently, so I said to 
 him : ' Let me give you one piece of advice, young 
 man : never walk in the sun on an empty stomach, 
 and you'll live to come home again.' Oh, some of 
 them are honest enough ! " 
 
 " Yes ; I met one once. It was out in China. 
 After dinner I said to him : ' How many converts 
 have you made ? ' ' Close on two hundred.' 
 ' Are they all genuine ? ' ' Well, I have always 
 been doubtful about two of them.' ' And you 
 are sure of all the rest ? ' ' Quite sure.' The 
 words may be open to two meanings — but the 
 expression on the man's face wasn't." 
 
 Clement Franks, to sum up more quickly than 
 his old messmates were disposed to, was the direct 
 descendant of a judge famed for his piety, economy, 
 and humanity. He entered the navy at sixteen, 
 a tall, grave studious lad, with the foundations of 
 a good classical education, but totally ignorant 
 of arithmetic and of all modern geographical 
 knowledge. Some sudden change in his destiny 
 must have taken place. It cannot have been by 
 his own wish that he found himself one of twenty 
 members of a gun-room mess " with room for 
 ten and food for fifteen," but he made no 
 
138 SHIPMATES 
 
 complaints and no confidences, and in a marvellously 
 short time occupied much the same position that 
 he held throughout his entire service career. He 
 was " nothing of an officer," but his superiors 
 never told him so, and somehow or other any 
 gaps in the performance of his duty were always 
 filled up or overlooked. 
 
 Franks was loved, believed in, consulted, and 
 admired, but seldom consciously imitated. It was 
 said that in the forty years of his service life he 
 had never been known to swear or drink spirits, 
 that he had never borrowed money and never 
 refused to lend any sum that he could afford to 
 lose, and that he had never flattered a popular 
 shipmate or irritated a cantankerous one. He 
 rarely sat in judgment, but one of his shipmates, 
 a notorious gossip, said of him : '' He's a most 
 libellous fellow : people believe every word he 
 says, and more too. If a man can say, ' Why, 
 even Clement Urbanus calls him this or that,' it 
 is all up with the fellow's reputation." 
 
 Franks belonged to the early evangelical school, 
 and although pressure of circumstances made him 
 give a wide interpretation to " works of necessity," 
 all Sunday amusements and almost all voluntary 
 occupations were anathema. To write a letter 
 to his wife, to read any book but the Bible or some 
 arid volumes which professed to be concerned with 
 its interpretation, would have been the darkest 
 sin. Even on week days legitimate amusements 
 
CLEMENT URBANUS 139 
 
 were few in number. Theatres, dancing, novel- 
 reading, billiards, and card-playing were alike 
 forbidden. Notwithstanding the strictness of his 
 opinions and practice, he was greatly loved by 
 many of his old messmates' children. Often when 
 he made an unexpected evening call the cards 
 were hasily flung under the table, lest his feelings 
 should be wounded and fears for their " future " 
 aroused. 
 
 One day he heard Shaw making his favourite 
 boast that he had " lived on his pay from the day 
 he joined the service." 
 
 " No," said Franks gently but with great 
 decision ; " it is impossible to live on your pay. 
 No one has ever done it." 
 
 Shaw stuttered with astonishment at an assertion 
 that could so easily be refuted, but Franks quietly 
 continued : 
 
 " Either one must have a great deal more than 
 one's pay, or else have a wife, or a mother, or a 
 sister, who needs every penny of it that can pos- 
 sibly be spared. I have known good men and 
 successful men in both these positions, but there 
 is no middle course. 
 
 " In spite of all the quarrels and jealousies, and 
 there were more grounds for them than there ever 
 will be again, there was more brotherly spirit in 
 the navy in the old days. No pay was handled 
 until the end of a commission, however long it 
 might be, but while one man in a mess had money 
 
140 SHIPMATES 
 
 no one went without. They had not even to ask 
 for it. I have often known fellows come into the 
 messroom and say : * I've just had a draft : who 
 wants any ? Come on, now's your time ! ' 
 
 '* I remember when a former shipmate of mine 
 was tried by court-martial for losing his ship. I 
 was prisoner's friend, and although the case looked 
 black at one time he got off with a reprimand. 
 But the law is, or at any rate was then, that if a 
 man is found guilty, in however small a degree, 
 of causing the loss of his ship, he receives no com- 
 pensation for his personal losses. Everything he 
 had was twenty fathoms under water — ^uniform, 
 books, instruments, even his watch and chain and 
 cash-box. He had nothing but what he was wear- 
 ing when the ship struck, and he was four thousand 
 miles away from home." 
 
 "If he had been next door they couldn't have 
 raised twenty pounds to save him from being 
 hanged," muttered the all-knowing Shaw. 
 
 " He asked me to back a bill for him, but my 
 father had made me take a solemn oath the day I 
 entered the navy that I would never do it for any- 
 one, and I had my poor sister to think of, and I was 
 engaged to be married." (Shaw gave a nod of rati- 
 fication. He himself had brought the eleven years' 
 engagement to a calmly happy conclusion by advis- 
 ing Franks to spend an unexpected legacy in buy- 
 ing an annuity for the chronic invalid, whom he had 
 decided to be ** as hard as nails," and had composed 
 
CLEMENT URBANUS 141 
 
 the letter asking the patient fianc6e to *' trust to 
 my pay while I live and your pension when I die.") 
 
 " He was such an awfully unpopular fellow 
 there was no one else he could ask. Well, just as 
 I was thinking that perhaps I ought not to let my 
 promise stand in his light, and yet how my father 
 used to say that he'd been — that he'd known — 
 hundreds of fellows ruined by backing bills, and 
 devil a one had they saved" (Shaw noted the slip 
 and the unconscious quotation, and with the silent 
 passion of a collector finally labelled the long- 
 deceased Gascoigne Franks), " and I was getting 
 desperately worried over the whole business, when 
 I had a note from a fellow who had been at daggers 
 drawn with him since they were mates. It con- 
 tained a cheque for thirty guineas, and just three 
 lines : ' He must be precious hard up. Do the 
 best you can with this. It's not a loan, and it's 
 anonymous.' It gave me courage to ask two or 
 three other fellows, and with fifty pounds he 
 managed until his agent was willing to make him 
 an advance. 
 
 ' ' And people talk a good too much about the 
 selfishness and brutality and arbitrary conduct 
 of the captains. Of course there was a good deal 
 of it, but there were men at both extremes. I 
 remember one ship where we were frightfully over- 
 crowded and the captain had three cabins, one of 
 them not even furnished. A young fellow who had 
 no cabin at all, though strictly speaking he was 
 
142 SHIPMATES 
 
 entitled to one, was dangerously ill, and for weeks 
 he had to lie in his hammock in a regular gangway. 
 Then, on the other hand I knew a ship where one 
 of the junior officers got yellow fever. He was a 
 young fellow of no family and rather disagreeable 
 temper. Well, the captain had only one cabin, 
 but he sent for the carpenter, had a partition run 
 up, and gave him half. Many men would have 
 gone a thousand miles, and paid their own travel- 
 ling expenses, rather than do it." 
 
 Franks professed to care nothing for animals, 
 but he was constantly saddled with pets that the 
 owner was parting with " through no fault of their 
 own." Destruction of life was a terrible thing in 
 his eyes, and it was well known that he would 
 always yield to the ultimatum : " Then it will have 
 to be thrown overboard." 
 
 One of the most troublesome of these pets was 
 a hyaena of such tender age that it had to be fixed 
 in a sponge-basket lined with flannel while it was 
 fed from the spout of a small teapot. When it 
 grew older it always appeared at afternoon tea, 
 an early custom, if not an invention of sailors, 
 and no charge could be brought against its be- 
 haviour beyond a general superciliousness of 
 manner, which turned to an angry glare at anyone 
 who approached Franks too closely or who seemed 
 to be contradicting him. A recently appointed 
 doctor, however, unsoftened by recollections of 
 the animal in the sponge-basket stage of its 
 
CLEMENT URBANUS 143 
 
 existence, observed with some uneasiness that its 
 manner at dinner-time had less repose, and per- 
 suaded its indulgent master that it would be 
 happier in a menagerie, '' a prison without the 
 chance of being drowned." 
 
 A still more undesirable pet lived with him day 
 and night for eighteen months, but for this infliction 
 none of his friends were responsible. Late one 
 evening, just after he had turned in, he heard an 
 awful squeaking and gibbering in the gangway. 
 Opening his cabin door a few inches to find out 
 what was going on, he saw a dozen or more rats 
 making a dead-set on one rat, which was defending 
 itself with desperate courage. The creature made 
 a bolt towards him. He shut the sliding-door, 
 but not quite in time, and the poor brute's tail 
 was cut oft close to the root. He did not wish 
 either to kill the rat himself or to hand it over to 
 its enemies, so he turned in and went to sleep. 
 When he woke the next morning the tailless rat 
 was swimming round and round in his bath which, 
 sailor-fashion in the tropics, had been poured out 
 overnight to cool by evaporation. He found 
 the creature convinced that he had gone out of 
 his way to save its life, and as tame as a dog. In 
 the daytime it hid under his pillow, and at night 
 it curled up on his shoulder, and every morning 
 had the first dip in his bath. 
 
 Franks, unlike the majority of his messmates, 
 believed in education for the lower deck, and was 
 
144 SHIPMATES 
 
 always ready to lend any of his small stock of books 
 to a careful man. On one occasion he noticed 
 that a bluejacket had selected a small encyclo- 
 paedia, but thinking he wished to look up some 
 special point he made no comment. A few days 
 later it was returned with the patient criticism : 
 " I read down to K, sir, but I didn't find it not 
 over and above inter ^^tin'." 
 
 He was anxious to encourage any man or boy 
 who combined ambition with steadiness, and until 
 recently there were aged warrant-of3ficers who 
 could not recall his memory without tears. When 
 he was quite a young man, and not at all well off, 
 he formed a high opinion of an intelligent lad 
 who acted as his servant. He was sent to England 
 on promotion, and wishing to make him a parting 
 present devoted some thought to the form that it 
 should take. He finally decided to give him his 
 own watch, as he would so soon have an oppor- 
 tunity of replacing it. In those days a watch 
 was a very rare possession on the lower deck, 
 and most sailors would have thought it doubtful 
 whether a boy of sixteen would manage to retain 
 it for more than a week. " Now remember," 
 said Franks when he gave it to him, '' I expect you 
 to become a first-class petty officer." 
 
 Twenty-two years later he was walking through 
 Portsmouth Dockyard, and a warrant-officer saluted 
 him. He returned the salute, as he did fifty times 
 a day, without glancing at the man. " Beg pardon, 
 
CLEMENT URBANUS 145 
 
 sir, but you don't remember me ? I think 
 you'll remember fM^," drawing out his watch. 
 '' It has never been out of my possession for an 
 hour from the day you gave it to me. I have 
 never spent a penny on it, and it has always 
 kept excellent time." 
 
 '' I remember a lot of boatswains," he told me, 
 " most excellent fellows, as good as you would 
 find at the present day, or better. There was one 
 I always kept up with, and I used to go and see 
 him from time to time. To my knowledge he 
 saved fourteen lives from drowning. You know 
 the saying, ' Looking for it like a boatswain for his 
 whistle ' ? Well, on one of these occasions he 
 sprang overboard without an instant's pause — 
 so many of the men could not swim three strokes 
 that there was never much time to be lost. It 
 was a narrow shave ; I thought we must have lost 
 both of them. And the first thing he said when he 
 was pulled over the side was : ' Where's my 
 whistle ? ' It was between his teeth ! 
 
 '" Almost the last time I went to see him I 
 found him ill, and greatly worried over the loss 
 of eighty pounds swallowed up in some rotten 
 investment. It was not that he really needed the 
 money ; it was chiefly the mortification of thinking 
 that he had denied himself *to feed landsharks.' 
 I met Admiral Hawtrey soon after, and told him 
 about it. He said he had dropped two thousand 
 in the same concern. The next day he sent the 
 
 K 
 
146 SHIPMATES 
 
 boatswain five guineas, with a note saying he was 
 sorry to think that two old shipmates had both 
 been so badly served. Coming from Hawtrey, I 
 believe it did the old fellow more good than if he 
 had had all his own money back again. Hawtrey 
 never had the reputation of being a generous man, 
 because he was not impulsive ; but over and over 
 again, when I have told him of former brother- 
 officers who had come to grief, or left widows and 
 orphans badly provided for, he has written to me 
 a week or ten days after, saying : ' I have been 
 thinking over what you told me about poor So- 
 and-so. I enclose a cheque, and shall be glad if 
 you let me hear about him again later on.' 
 
 " The old boatswain did not do very well with 
 his sons. He tried to make two of them follow 
 his footsteps, but they simply hated the sea. 
 One left the navy as soon as he could and became 
 a casual labourer, and one bought himself out at 
 twenty-seven and became a policeman. He was 
 like his father in one way, however : he saved 
 eight lives before he was thirty. The old man 
 lived to be eighty-six, and died of what his wife 
 called ' saline decay,' but he retained his faculties 
 up to the last, and suffered strangely little." 
 
 The mutiny of a ship's company was a common 
 event in Franks' youth, but a very rare one by the 
 time he was a middle-aged man. Although the 
 punishment that invariably followed was abhor- 
 rent to him, he was too Just to imagine that all 
 
CLEMENT URBANUS 147 
 
 mutiny had its origin in harshness and cruelty, or 
 to heap undiscriminating blame upon the head of 
 the captain actually in command at the moment. 
 
 '' Mutiny often resulted from the effects of 
 previous slackness. A newly-appointed captain 
 found himself elbowed on the quarter-deck, and 
 had done nothing but try to establish a reasonable 
 amount of discipline. Directly and indirectly ten 
 times as much trouble arose from over-leniency 
 as from severity. Even nowadays laxity very 
 quickly leads to disorder; and you can hardly 
 imagine how soon Jack was as good as his master 
 in the days when there was no continuous service, 
 and quite a third of the men were street-sweepings, 
 and three-fourths of the remainder were about as 
 reasonable as young schoolboys, and there was 
 always a handful of sea-lawyers ready to make 
 mischief. 
 
 '' Sometimes trouble arose from want of tact, 
 especially if the men were called on to face a dis- 
 appointment. I remember one of the most orderly 
 ship's crews I had ever known mutinied en masse 
 because they were not allowed to go ashore in a 
 place where yellow fever was raging. If the news 
 had been broken to them with a little consideration 
 for their feelings the trouble would have passed 
 over, but, as Shaw said, the captain went at it 
 like a bull at a gate. In ten minutes marline- 
 spikes were flying — I have the mark of one on my 
 forehead now, but I am thankful to say no one ever 
 
148 SHIPMATES 
 
 knew who threw it — and in about two minutes 
 more the marines with fixed bayonets were driving 
 the men below. 
 
 " Even if Heseltine had given the order he would 
 have spun such a lengthy yarn that the more 
 sensible men would have had time to recover their 
 temper and would have done their best to check 
 the rest, while Blissett could have sent them away 
 grinning. Blissett had his faults, but none as far 
 as the lower deck was concerned. He could deal 
 out punishment with a better grace than some men 
 could give rewards. I don't think any blue- 
 jacket ever bore a grudge against him. 
 
 " Discipline is a much more mechanical thing 
 than it used to be, and it doesn't need the same 
 discretion. An officer sits down with an open book 
 in front of him. A prisoner is brought in ; he 
 hears the charge, and asks what the man has to 
 say for himself. He puts the forefinger of his right 
 hand on one column and the left forefinger on 
 another, and runs them along until they meet. 
 Then he glances at the fellow's record and says : 
 ^ You are proved to have done so-and-so, and the 
 penalty is such-and-such ; but your record being 
 so-and-so, it is reduced — or increased — to such-and- 
 such.' And that ends it. Still, the eternal diffi- 
 culty remains : when to turn a blind eye, 
 
 '' In spite of all the talk about the spread of 
 education it strikes me that the gap between 
 warrant-officers and commissioned-officers is wider 
 
CLEMENT URBANUS 149 
 
 than it used to be. The chief improvement has 
 been in the rank and file : there is an enormous 
 difference between the ordinary seaman in the 
 days of non-continuous service and the seaman- 
 gunner of the present moment. 
 
 " Up to a certain point education outside the 
 home can do a great deal, and a great deal that is 
 worth doing, but it doesn't make a gentleman or a 
 man able to control large numbers of subordinates 
 peaceably and without apparent effort. It ought 
 never to enter an officer's head that any reasonable 
 order could possibly be disobeyed, but that doesn't 
 prevent the instinctive use of tact at critical 
 moments. 
 
 " I recollect once that our ship was being coaled 
 by slave-labour. Of course the coal-owners knew 
 we didn't like it, and they dared not make any 
 attempt to force the pace. Nevertheless the work 
 was done in record time. 
 
 " The first-lieutenant stood on deck the whole 
 time, encouraging the men to ' come on.' A South- 
 American said to me afterwards : * Englishman 
 strange, English officer more strange. Spaniards 
 go behind with a whip and say '' Get on ! " and they 
 crawl. Englishman stand in front and say: 
 '' Come on, come on ! That's the way, up with 
 it ! Come on 1 " and they laugh, they run, yes, 
 they run.' 
 
 " When one thinks of the brutal forms that 
 discipline sometimes took one must remember 
 
150 SHIPMATES 
 
 that cruelty cannot be practised unless the general 
 level of humanity and the general sensitiveness 
 to pain is decidedly low. The very men who 
 ordered corporal punishment had been subjected 
 to it themselves at school, and often to great 
 excess. I recollect one afternoon at school when 
 out of a class of thirty-three boys, eleven, including 
 my brother and myself, were severely caned. None 
 of us had done anything that would be considered 
 deserving of more than a sharp reproof at the 
 present day, but I cannot honestly say that I 
 believe reproof would have had much effect. We 
 were all harder and less easily influenced. Dis- 
 cipline may affect character, and no doubt it does, 
 but even at the worst of times there was a rough 
 proportion between discipline and the character 
 men already possessed." 
 
 The men who had " gone under " turned to 
 Franks for help as a mere matter of course, and 
 perhaps the greatest distress of his life was that he 
 had so little to give, and that little often seemed to 
 do harm rather than good. " At the present day," 
 he told me, " there is no reason to feel it in quite 
 the same way, because if a man has ever been 
 worth anything the Admiralty give him a bare 
 maintenance : he is not left to starve. I used to 
 begin by helping the fellows I had known, but they 
 always sank lower and lower, and I had so many 
 claims on me, and it seemed right to give most to 
 people who had made a hard struggle and kept 
 
CLEMENT URBANUS 151 
 
 their heads above water. But it went against my 
 nature ; at heart I always wanted to give to the 
 worthless, hopeless, half-starved, half-drunken 
 scoundrels who had once sat at meat with me. 
 
 " I remember one foggy winter's afternoon 
 Carter's brother came to my house, and the maid 
 let him in by mistake. I had determined not to 
 do any more for him ; it was useless, worse than 
 useless. I would not even see him ; I only heard 
 his cough as he went down the path. My wife 
 knew how much I felt it, and she said to the maid, 
 not observing that I was within hearing : ' You 
 really must be more careful, Mary. Couldn't you 
 see he was not the sort of person to let in without 
 question ? ' The girl said : ' He spoke like a gentle- 
 man, ma'am, and there wasn't much light in the 
 hall, but when I went back to the drawing-room 
 to light the gas I saw that I had done wrong. He 
 was drying his hank'chiff by the fire, and it was so 
 black.' I can't tell you how the girl's words hurt 
 me. Every foggy winter's day the scene comes 
 back to me, and it will as long as I live. Two or 
 three years later I heard he was dead. Well, I 
 suppose he just had to begin again as we all shall ; 
 and perhaps he started this time knowing things 
 that we haven't learnt yet. But it hurts me, it 
 hurts me now, to think I let him go out in that fog 
 without a word. What are we that we should 
 ever withhold our hands from a fellow-creature ? 
 The best among us might well remember that 
 
152 SHIPMATES 
 
 heathen's prayer : ' O God, be merciful to the 
 wicked ; to the good Thou hast already been 
 sufficiently merciful in making them good.' " 
 
 Quite unconsciously, and while retaining and 
 frequently using the same forms of speech, in old 
 age Franks had wandered far from one of the 
 leading dogmas of Evangelicalism : man's share 
 in working out his own salvation became larger 
 and larger, and the period of time granted to him 
 was indefinitely extended. He silently dropped 
 all crude speculation as to the origin of evil, and 
 had no doubt as to its ultimate destruction, but 
 greatly concerned himself to know whether this 
 consummation might in any way be hastened. 
 "' We are told that the action of good and evil are 
 eternal, but if a man does me an injury and I 
 endure it, and take care not to pass it on in any 
 shape or form, have I not destroyed that portion 
 of evil ? In the same way, can I not arrest and 
 destroy good by accepting it thanklessly and 
 letting it die uselessly within me ? " 
 
VIII. ^O'ER MANY MASTERS 
 
 An Order in Council — Opposition — A quiet rubber— A glorified 
 omnibus driver — The good captain — A practical joke — An 
 embarrassing moment — His new masters — The duties of a naval 
 chaperon — The round voyage — A tender precaution — Writing 
 up the route — The last straw 
 
 SULIVAN O'KEEFE was dissatisfied with his 
 position and prospects in the navy and 
 most thoroughly convinced that he had 
 been " shamefully treated." He had always been 
 more or less discontented, but he was not entirely 
 devoid of prudence, and his frequent threats 
 to " chuck the service " caused his wife no serious 
 anxiety until a new Order in Council supplied 
 the temptation of voluntary retirement at the 
 age of forty-five and a pension equal to quite 
 three-fourths of his pay. She did not greatly 
 object to his retirement, as apart from service 
 grievances he was an amiable man, and easily and 
 cheaply amused, and " no trouble in a house," but 
 she strongly objected to his openly avowed inten- 
 tion of seeking employment in the mercantile 
 marine. The pay and allowances and the profits 
 derived from letting one of his two cabins to any 
 passenger anxious to secure it might be even larger 
 
 163 
 
154 SHIPMATES 
 
 than her husband's most sanguine estimates. She 
 had not been brought up in naval circles, and was 
 almost entirely uninfluenced by the notion that 
 O'Keefe would lose in social consequence. Her 
 acknowledged motive for opposition was her real 
 one : a firm belief that " naval ships " were safe, 
 and that merchant ships " were always getting 
 lost." As a last chance she appealed to Shaw to 
 " speak to " her husband. 
 
 Shaw was ready to do a kindness to anyone, 
 more especially to a woman with a low, sweet voice 
 and an Edinburgh accent of the precise kind en- 
 deared to him by childish recollections of " jahm 
 and bread " and boundless indulgence, and while he 
 had no dislike to her husband he cherished the be- 
 lief that she '' had had a great deal to put up with." 
 But he was getting on in years, and long experience 
 had weakened his faith in the irresistible power 
 of commonsense to influence human sentiment. 
 Only a few days previously Mrs. Byam in her lonely 
 old age had exclaimed : " Ah, if my little Dora 
 had been spared!" and when he had replied: 
 " Bless my soul ! If your little Dora were alive 
 she would be a woman over forty years of age and 
 most likely have half a dozen children of her own," 
 even he had observed that the poor lady had 
 neither been soothed nor cheered nor convinced. 
 And would any Irishman be as reasonable or as 
 well-trained as Byam's wife ? He promised that 
 he would " put the case before O'Keefe plainly," 
 
O'ER MANY MASTERS 155 
 
 but he accepted the office without alacrity or 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 Moreover, although he knew a great deal about 
 the merchant service, his knowledge was of ancient 
 date, and he had an uneasy feeling that arguments 
 based on his recollections of captains of sailing 
 vessels, in the days when voyages lasted for several 
 months, would not apply with much force to life 
 on a modern liner. He clearly remembered the 
 time when the skipper often had the privilege of 
 " victualling the passengers, and ran things so 
 close " that, if the voyage were lengthened by 
 bad weather, his clients' position varied from 
 one of serious discomfort and annoyance to one 
 of actual danger. 
 
 A standing dispute with Heseltine was that he 
 possessed, and in heated moments was even accused 
 of having actually worn, a medal awarded to him 
 by the Board of Trade for saving life at sea, " when 
 all he did was to hand them over a barrel of 
 government flour and some salt-beef. They had 
 already picked up some pork from another 
 merchant ship, but it stunk so abominably that they 
 had to shut the passengers below while it was 
 hoisted on board, and when it came to table one of 
 the women burst into tears, and couldn't touch it 
 even to save her baby's life. The child literally 
 died of starvation, and her boy of three had been 
 living on coarse water-gruel until he was just two 
 handfuls of skin and bone. The captain had 
 
156 SHIPMATES 
 
 provisioned for 80 days, and the voyage had 
 lasted 120." 
 
 An equally characteristic story was of a ship 
 taking a single passenger who had paid high terms 
 and expected decent consideration. The first day's 
 dinner to which he sat down with the captain and 
 the second mate consisted of lobscouse, followed 
 by plum-duff, the shape of a stout rolling-pin and 
 much the same consistency except at the two ends, 
 which were white and pulpy. The captain sus- 
 pended his knife above it, and asked, " D'you like 
 ends ? " the first words uttered during the meal. 
 " No," said the passenger with decision. " Me 
 and my mate does," was the reply, and cutting 
 the pudding in two he slipped half on his own 
 plate and half on his subordinate's. 
 
 '' Heseltine and his blessed old medal ! There's 
 always been a lot of bunkum talked about saving 
 life at sea, and I suppose there always will be. 
 Only the other day one of Hobbes' sons was in 
 command of a gun-boat, and he heard unofficially 
 that a big merchant ship had run aground 
 about a hundred miles off, and he went full speed 
 to see what he could do for her. He soon saw 
 that she would be right enough if they got her 
 off within a couple of hours. There was no time 
 to be lost, but the skipper held him off, and at 
 last asked point-blank : ' What'll you charge ? ' 
 * Charge ? Charge ? Nothing at all, of course. 
 It's our business.' ' Come on, then ! — But I'd 
 
O'ER MANY MASTERS 157 
 
 like to see the vessel of our size that Fd put a 
 line aboard under three thousand pounds ! ' 
 
 " There's some excuse for bargaining when you 
 know how little shipowners will give voluntarily. 
 I had a pleasing specimen of their conduct once. 
 I had a large party of bluejackets out on the rocks 
 salving a ship, working for hours in a blazing sun 
 and cutting their boots to pieces. A few weeks 
 later a sum of money was sent me to be divided 
 equally among them, and really I couldn't offer 
 it to them seriously — I had to make a jest of it. 
 It literally wasn't enough to replace their shoe- 
 leather. 
 
 " And the innocent public haven't much idea 
 how many ships are lost on purpose, even now. 
 And others would be lost if some of the more 
 intelligent men were not on the look-out for tricks 
 of that kind. I know a case where the engineer 
 went to the skipper, revolver in hand, and said : 
 * I can see you've orders to lose this ship ; you 
 don't lose her while /'m aboard.' And he didn't; 
 but she was lost the very next voyage. 
 
 '' O'Keefe hasn't the faintest idea of the kind 
 of thing he is letting himself in for. There was a 
 time — five and thirty years ago perhaps — when it 
 was a toss-up whether a man who hadn't a service 
 name wouldn't be as well off out of the navy as in it, 
 especially if he hadn't much brains. Why, even 
 nowadays, I could teach any boy who knows 
 decimals all he needs for a merchant-skipper's 
 
158 SHIPMATES 
 
 certificate in six weeks. I mean a teacher could 
 do it : it would drive me mad. But the days 
 when anything was to be had in the merchant 
 service are over. I know fellows of my own age 
 and standing who were getting £850 and perfectly 
 open and above-board opportunities of trading 
 on their own account when my full pay was ten 
 shillings a day. And now they grudge me my 
 pension ! " 
 
 After some thought Shaw decided to invite 
 O'Keefe to spend the evening with him, and 
 asked Langley, who had a brother-in-law in the 
 merchant service, to '' back him up." He hesi- 
 tated long over the fourth member of the party. 
 Franks' judicial mind was of value, and his serene 
 temper made him an excellent moderator in merely 
 academical disputes, but this discussion was 
 fraught with practical consequences. Besides, a 
 quiet rubber was the ostensible inducement offered 
 to O'Keefe, and Franks had never even played 
 Patience until his wife died and his sight began 
 to fail. Heseltine's hesitating wordiness excited 
 Shaw's contemptuous impatience, but he was likely 
 to see sides of the case that quicker men over- 
 looked, and his childhood in Ireland, though past 
 before O'Keefe was born, might supply the ele- 
 ments of a common language. Moreover, he could 
 be trusted to minimise what Shaw secretly con- 
 sidered the one great advantage enjoyed by the 
 captain of a passenger ship, namely, the frequent, 
 
O'ER MANY MASTERS 159 
 
 if brief, opportunities of seeing wife and child, 
 home and country. 
 
 Langley was the first to open fire. 
 
 " How do you think you will enjoy being a sort 
 of glorified omnibus driver, patronised by the 
 passengers in fine weather, and held responsible 
 when the stormy winds do blow, and asked to 
 explain great circle-sailing to a director who 
 doesn't know an arc from an ark ? You who 
 can hardly be civil to a live admiral if he dares 
 to be foolish ! " 
 
 '' It won't take them long to learn with whom 
 they have to deal." 
 
 '' Well, just look at that brother-in-law of mine, 
 Rhys. He's like yourself, proud as the devil. 
 If you have all the Irish kings, he has all the 
 Welsh princes on one side and an English duke 
 on the other. His wife thinks more of the duke. 
 So do I. He's an ugly-looking customer but he's 
 alive, and that's the main point when you want to 
 get anything out of a man. I saw him once : 
 he was wearing white-duck pants with a hole in 
 'em, and a monkey-jacket with brass buttons. 
 When he asked for a railway ticket the booking- 
 clerk offered him a pilot's at a reduction, and he 
 took it like a shot and gloated over it. Well, Rhys 
 has commanded ships since he was twenty " 
 
 *' Oh, come, Langley," put in Shaw hastily, 
 '' that won't do. There's law 'n order even in the 
 merchant service. You can't have a master's 
 
160 SHIPMATES 
 
 certificate till you're twenty-one." (He suddenly 
 recognised that this was cross-firing, but tactically 
 it might not be an error : it looked better than a 
 united and continuous attack.) 
 
 " You could if your uncle was a parson and 
 copied your baptismal certificate for you," re- 
 torted Langley with dark significance. '' Any way, 
 he's sixty now, or more. People must have had 
 time to find out he's a gentleman, but the other 
 day a passenger leaving the ship offered him the 
 remains of a bottle of whisky that he hadn't had 
 time to finish." 
 
 ''Oh— well— " said O'Keefe disgustedly, "that 
 kind of thing must be quite exceptional." 
 
 " You wouldn't want it to happen often, would 
 you ? Then how would you like to be questioned 
 to death ? It's a sort of thing captains are not 
 trained to in the navy." 
 
 '' Indeed, no," cried Heseltine. " I have known 
 a single question drive them raving mad on the 
 spot. One day I saw old Bewley walking up and 
 down the quarter-deck and he seemed absolutely 
 sane. The senior doctor, a man quite as well 
 born as himself, and a good deal better bred, said 
 to him just for the sake of saying something : 
 ' Do you think we shall get in to-night, sir ? ' 
 He turned and glared at him like a maniac : 
 ' By what right do you presume to question 
 ME, sir ? ' Nice training that for the 'merchant 
 service ! " 
 
O'ER MANY MASTERS 161 
 
 " I'm sure no one can call me bad-tempered," 
 said O'Keefe huffishly. 
 
 " My dear fellow," said Shaw, " it isn't a ques- 
 tion of good temper or bad. It's a sort of special- 
 ised temper that is wanted, just as a club servant 
 has a specialised memory for hats and walking- 
 sticks. With all due deference to Langley, Rhys 
 ashore has the most abominable temper I ever 
 came across. First he rages, then he sulks. Even 
 poor Byam got over things in time, but Rhys 
 wouldn't find eternity long enough. And as to 
 Bewley, as an old boatswain said one day when 
 he had been pitching into him and the first- 
 lieutenant condoled with him, ' Oh, it's only a 
 little service-rosin, sir. It'll soon rub off.' " 
 
 " Service-rosin, indeed ! " interrupted Heseltine 
 indignantly. " One day his obstinate and arbi- 
 trary temper lost us four hundred killed and 
 wounded. The deck was swept clear in five 
 minutes, and not a shot fired in return." 
 
 " And the people at home thought how fierce 
 the fighting must have been, and that anyone but 
 Bewley would have lost twice as many. My dear 
 fellow, it's the way of the world." 
 
 Heseltine looked whole volumes of protest, 
 checked by a furtive jerk of Langley's thumb and 
 the significant reminder, " The boy stood on the 
 burning deck," and Shaw continued without 
 further interruption : 
 
 " The point we have to bear in mind at present 
 
 L 
 
162 SHIPMATES 
 
 is that you can't tell a single passenger the plain 
 truth, much less have the deck swept by cannon- 
 balls, because you choose to believe, in spite of 
 competent advice, that they are merely going to 
 whiz a hundred feet above your head. On shore 
 Rhys often refuses to speak to his own children 
 for a week on end, and yet he told me this him- 
 self " 
 
 Langley abandoned his brother-in-law's char- 
 acter to Shaw's tender mercies, made a long arm 
 for Mrs. Shaw's copy of LamVs Essays, refreshed 
 himself with ''The Good Clerk," and passed it on 
 to Heseltine, who caught the point after the story 
 was finished. 
 
 " Rhys told me that one day about eight hours 
 before they were due in New York he ordered a 
 quartermaster to stand near him and make a 
 pencil-stroke on a sheet of paper every time he 
 heard the question : ' Think we shall get in to 
 time. Captain ? ' When he counted them up it 
 came to 187, and each time he had said quite 
 pleasantly : ' Oh yes, I think so.' " 
 
 " Well, the ship exists for the passengers," 
 said O'Keefe ; " naturally they expect a little 
 consideration." 
 
 " You can be as considerate as you like, but 
 they'll have their knife in you ! One day my 
 brother-in-law went up to a passenger who had 
 just come aboard. ' I have had the pleasure of 
 meeting you before.' ' I think not,' she said, 
 
O'ER MANY MASTERS 163 
 
 but so suavely that he persisted : ' Oh, yes, you went 
 out with me two years ago in the Ostro.^ ' I cer- 
 tainly went in the Ostro, but I could not tell you 
 who commanded her. I was very hard up at the 
 time and I was a second-class passenger.'" 
 
 '' Well, a captain ought to remember that his 
 duty is to the whole of his passengers," said O'Keefe 
 virtuously. 
 
 Shaw looked up from the careful mixing of his 
 three- water grog and asked shrewdly : " When 
 do you go to Liverpool, O'Keefe ? Ah, well ; 
 suppose we have another rubber ? " 
 
 '' I must spin just one more yarn before we coil 
 up ropes," said Langley. " Rhys is hardened to 
 most things, but this gave him an awful shock, 
 A lady on board had made herself exceedingly un- 
 popular, and the last night before they got into 
 port some of the passengers wanted to score off 
 her, and asked Rhys how they should do it. Well, 
 I suppose being such a young and inexperienced 
 man he forgot what O'Keefe very properly calls 
 the duty of a passenger-captain, and he said : 
 ' Make her an india-rubber sandwich.' Sand- 
 wiches were always handed round at 10.30, although 
 dinner wasn't over much before nine. ' Capital ! ' 
 they cried. ' It only has to be the biggest on the 
 dish and she is dead-sure to take it.' She did : 
 she bit into it, and bit harder and harder. She 
 turned crimson, her brows twitched violently, and 
 to Rhys's amazement and horror one of her eyes 
 
164 SHIPMATES 
 
 started from the socket, rolled down her cheek, 
 and fell on the deck. He hadn't the faintest 
 notion that it was glass, and no one else had either. 
 They had all seen something queer in her look, 
 but called it a squint. 
 
 " Then at table in calm weather you have to be 
 amusing. Rhys has a list of stories which he tells 
 in succession, or when the right opening occurs. 
 Perhaps a shark is following in their wake, and the 
 passengers begin to talk of things that have been 
 found inside sharks, from a marine, with his bay- 
 onet fixed, downwards. Then Rhys strikes in : ' I've 
 seen many sharks opened, but the most curious 
 thing I ever saw inside one was a copy of the 
 Illustrated London News tied up and addressed to 
 myself.' No one believes the yarn, but my sister 
 says it is the only true story he ever tells. A little 
 girl passenger, a child just able to walk, had 
 wandered into his cabin and thrown the whole of 
 his mail overboard, and the shark was following 
 and snapped it up, and then they made a point of 
 catching the brute." 
 
 " There is a much more practical point to be 
 considered," said Heseltine. " You will find disci- 
 pline exceedingly difficult to maintain. In the 
 line you think of joining there is very little con- 
 tinuous service, very little indeed. You will have 
 a sort of skeleton crew who know the ropes a bit, 
 but the main part of your ship's company will be 
 swept up at the last moment from gin-shops and 
 
O'ER MANY MASTERS 165 
 
 common lodging-houses. The chances are that 
 quite fifty per cent, of them will be the worse for 
 drink until you are three or four days out." 
 
 '' But in a first-class liner " 
 
 '' I assure you that in this respect the main 
 difference between being the captain of a liner 
 and the captain of a rotten cargo -boat is that 
 you will not personally search the lowest dens of 
 Liverpool or Cardiff or Glasgow at midnight to 
 find your men. That part of the work will be 
 done for you." 
 
 O'Keefe looked a little harassed and made no 
 reply. Shaw began to feel that he had done well 
 in making choice of Heseltine as an ally, but un- 
 luckily the momentary silence encouraged him to 
 continue, and he weakened the point he had made 
 by adding : 
 
 " The marvellous thing is how rarely these men 
 behave badly in an emergency. A fellow who had 
 been over forty years in the merchant service told 
 me that he had only once known men refuse to 
 go aloft." 
 
 " What happened ? " 
 
 " He knew that unless the sail were shortened 
 they would be done for. He said all he could 
 think of, and not a man budged. He said it over 
 again, and then one fellow broke out of the crowd 
 and made a run for the rigging. It was a French- 
 man. That gave him a stirring text, and in no 
 time the work was done and the ship saved. He 
 
166 SHIPMATES 
 
 said it was the only time in his life that he had 
 ever been in danger at sea." 
 
 " And how shall you like having your wife 
 patronised by the owner's wife ? Despard & Co. 
 married quite an uneducated person, but my sister 
 has to sleep and dine there twice a year, and 
 she's supposed to live on the honour for the rest 
 of the six months. She was telling my wife how 
 intolerable she found it, and how the good woman 
 called her ' Mrs. Rhys ' every time she opened her 
 lips, and it got on her nerves until she could have 
 screamed. My wife said : ' I should call her Mrs. 
 Despard just as often.' ' And if they gave David 
 the sack ? ' my sister asked. ' Oh — ^then it would 
 be Mrs. Despair.' " 
 
 '' That's about what it would be ! " said Shaw 
 with conviction. " If you once lose a billet of that 
 kind you're out in the streets. You never get 
 another." 
 
 '' The Admiralty are our father and mother," 
 declared Heseltine. " They may be hard on you 
 sometimes, especially when you are young, but 
 you have to be a very black sheep indeed before 
 they utterly disown you." 
 
 " And owners are step-parents," said Shaw. 
 " Nothing that you can do is considered enough to 
 cover your miserable keep." 
 
 " Say what you like, there were twenty good 
 men after the berth." 
 
 O'Keefe was the first to leave. Not one of the 
 
O'ER MANY MASTERS 167 
 
 trio was in the least anxious to retain his name 
 on the active list of the navy, but they re- 
 sented his desertion, and took severe views of his 
 character. 
 
 "He has one great advantage," said Langley: 
 " he's not easily put out of countenance. Twenty 
 years ago when he was a very handsome young 
 fellow he was out in the West Indies — Barbadoes. 
 About a dozen of us were smoking and talking 
 when some black women came aboard with the 
 laundry baskets. One of them, a fat, jolly old 
 soul as black as your hat, peeped in at the mess- 
 room door, drew back and peeped again, and after 
 doing it half a dozen times or more she sang out 
 joyfully : ' Yes, it am my dear Loberty-boy ! ' 
 rushed in like a tornado, flung her arms round 
 O'Keefe's neck, and kissed him fondly. He never 
 turned a hair. He kissed her, got up, placed a 
 chair for her, introduced her all round as his old 
 nurse, poured her out a glass of wine, and sent her 
 off as pleased as Punch, and of course no one could 
 say a word. If he had shown the least embar- 
 rassment he would never have heard the last of it. 
 He really was awfully good-looking in those days. 
 I remember his calling on my wife while we were 
 in lodgings. When we came back to tea the maid 
 told us someone had called but he had left no card, 
 and she couldn't for the life of her remember his 
 name. I asked what he was like, and she said: 
 * Sure and his eyes were never made for the saving 
 
168 SHIPMATES 
 
 of his soul.' We both exclaimed, ' It must be 
 O'Keefe!' in the same breath." 
 
 " The Barbadian negroes are a proud people," 
 said Heseltine, who had just had time to arrive 
 at the conclusion that the laundress had mistaken 
 O'Keefe for one of her former nurslings. " Do 
 you remember how they used to say, ' Victoria 
 nebber fear while Barbadians stan' 'tiff ' ? " 
 
 '' I remember the sergeant's orders: 'You that 
 got shoe an' 'tocking stan' in de front rank.' " 
 
 " Let me tell you an occasion when Langley 
 did look embarrassed," said Shaw. " We landed 
 together one afternoon at St. Helena and met an 
 official who was an old acquaintance of his, and 
 he asked us to come out and dine with him and 
 his wife. Presently I noticed that we were followed 
 by a child dressed in the ten-little-niggers' style — 
 ragged straw hat, striped shirt, and bare legs. I 
 put my hand in my pocket and gave him some 
 coppers. He took them, but continued to follow 
 at very close quarters. At last Langley noticed 
 him, and asked, ' Who's that ? ' ' Oh, it's my 
 boy.' Langley knew that slaves were landed 
 there and apprenticed (the old ladies in England 
 imagined that they were returned to their happy 
 homes in Central Africa, all being able to give 
 correct postal address), and he said : ' Rather 
 small to be much use. What made you take the 
 little nigger ? ' The man pretended not to hear. 
 A few minutes later his wife ran out and seized 
 
O'ER MANY MASTERS 169 
 
 the little ragamuffin by the arm : ' You naughty- 
 child, where have you been ? Nurse has been 
 looking for you all the afternoon ! ' " 
 
 '' I wish I knew where that artificial eye was 
 made," said Heseltine, still far astern. 
 
 Shaw fidgeted restlessly with the cards. 
 
 *' As far as your experience goes, Langley, how 
 long do you think O'Keefe will stand the work ? 
 My own impression is that he'll be out of it, lock, 
 stock, and barrel, in less time than he spent in 
 talking about it." 
 
 "I doubt it," said Langley; *' as a favourite 
 author of mine says, ' It ain't natur for a feller to 
 let on that he's sick o' any bizness that he went 
 intu of his own free will and accord.' " 
 
 " It's over forty years since I left. It was a hard 
 enough life then, but no doubt things have vastly 
 changed." 
 
 " They haven't altered much as far as boys are 
 concerned. Only the other day I knew a case 
 where towards the end of the voyage the appren- 
 tices lived chiefly on grain and raisins — part of the 
 cargo — steamed over sea-water, and even at the 
 beginning the lads could only draw fresh water 
 for washing once a week. There were seven of 
 them and they instantly split up into two messes, 
 and the water was the Shibboleth that divided 
 them. Four of them instinctively decided that 
 they would draw their allowance on Sunday, but the 
 other three, Rhys's son, and the son of a banker. 
 
170 SHIPMATES 
 
 and the youngest son of an Irish baron, said: 
 ' Wash on Sunday ? Never ! ' and drew it on 
 Wednesday." 
 
 Some years later Shaw, with shghtly malicious 
 satisfaction, related a few of O'Keefe's experiences 
 as captain of a liner : 
 
 " The first voyage across the Atlantic began 
 with bad weather, and it got worse and worse, 
 so he was very little troubled with the passengers ; 
 but one night an old lady sent her maid to him with 
 her compliments, ' and did he think the ship would 
 roll much more.' He said : ' Give my compliments 
 to your mistress, and say that if she does roll much 
 more she'll roll over.' 
 
 " On the way home there was an American 
 statesman on board, a fellow who thought he knew 
 everything. He took an observation, muddled 
 his head over it for a couple of hours, and then 
 stepped up on the bridge and told O'Keefe he 
 was out of his reckoning. O'Keefe was so much 
 astounded at his impertinence that he was simply 
 speechless. The old fellow showed his figures to 
 the senior apprentice, and the boy very quickly 
 put his finger on the error. He was a decent old 
 chap in his way, and, instead of letting well alone, 
 he thought he ought to make some acknowledg- 
 ment to O'Keefe. O'Keefe listened to it, and 
 made a quotation — he must have picked it up 
 from Langley or Heseltine, or he would never have 
 got as far as the words that did the mischief. 
 
O'ER MANY MASTERS 171 
 
 The wind carried the harmless part away, and all 
 that the old fellow heard was : ' Drink deep, or 
 taste not.' He took it for a personal insult, and 
 all the fat was in the fire. O'Keefe never knows 
 anyone else's business, and if you don't know 
 anyone else's business you canH know your own. 
 I suppose he was about the only person on the ship 
 who didn't know the man's private character, and 
 even without any previous knowledge he might 
 have seen that the fellow he called his secretary 
 was a doctor, and that he was perpetually on the 
 watch to keep him away from the whisky bottle. 
 
 " Well, the owners soon decided that his manners 
 were hardly bland enough for the Atlantic, and 
 they put him on the Cape line. There was rather 
 a boom in South-African marriages just then — I 
 mean among the kind of people where the man 
 couldn't afford the time to come home to fetch 
 his wife — and although O'Keefe likes girls well 
 enough he got pretty well sick of chaperoning 
 brides-elect. 
 
 '' You might imagine that it would be easier 
 than chaperoning unattached ones, but not a bit 
 of it. Nine women out of ten lose their heads on 
 board ship ; their previous conduct doesn't give 
 the least assurance how they'll behave. He took 
 out one girl whom I knew very well, had known 
 her from a child, always a quiet, well-behaved 
 little thing. She flirted so desperately all the way 
 out to the Cape that the fellow heard of it and 
 
172 SHIPMATES 
 
 refused to marry her. O'Keefe had to bring her 
 back again and break the news to the family. 
 They had spent pretty nearly a year's income on 
 her trousseau, not counting the passage-money. 
 He took out another bride and the man was 
 bankrupt before she arrived ; so she had to be 
 brought home. 
 
 " All that kind of thing got on his nerves, so 
 they put him on the round voyage. He had to 
 take charge of passengers with suicidal or homi- 
 cidal tendencies, people in the last stage of con- 
 sumption, and millionaires' half-baked sons. 
 Naturally O'Keefe hated them the worst of the lot. 
 One day they were passing down the north-west 
 coast of Africa, but a long way out. One of these 
 youths was looking through a telescope, and asked : 
 ' That Africa, Cap'n ? ' ' Yes ; that's Africa.' 
 ' I don't think much of Africa, Cap'n.' I really 
 think that if Langley had tried to make him realise 
 that he would be called ' Captain ' like a dog and 
 much oftener, it might have had some effect on 
 his decision. I never knew anything about it myself 
 until I retired and found that large numbers of 
 quite decent people thought it the proper way of 
 addressing me. I never heard it without wishing 
 to wring their necks ! 
 
 " O'Keefe was a sympathetic fellow, and the 
 consumptives used to wring his heart, especially 
 the lads, because they came alone. They were 
 always going to get better and never did, and the 
 
O'ER MANY MASTERS 173 
 
 best he could do for them was so beastly uncom- 
 fortable. He used to rage at their friends' folly 
 in sending them : ' The poor young beggars have 
 got to die, but why on earth can't they be let die 
 at home in peace with their women-folk to look 
 after them ? ' 
 
 " One day a few hours before they left England 
 the purser came to him with a telegram in his 
 hand : 
 
 '' ' What am I to do about this, sir ? It's a tele- 
 gram from that young Hirton's mother telling me 
 to buy him a lead coffin.' 
 
 '' ' What on earth ! ! ' 
 
 '' ' Well, to begin with, men are almost as super- 
 stitious as ever they were, and to get them to 
 sail with a coffin aboard is probably more than 
 could be managed. And a lead coffin costs forty 
 pounds ; and when I tried to get the woman to 
 pay about a third of that amount, to secure a cabin 
 with some chance of fresh air, she almost told 
 me in so many words that I meant to put the extra 
 money in my own pocket.' 
 
 '' ' Mean old hag ! If I were sure it wouldn't 
 be wanted I'd carry it in my own cabin, just for 
 the pleasure of making her pay for it.' 
 
 ''*He's no more likely to die during the next 
 few months than I am,' protested the purser. 
 
 '' ' Then,' said O'Keefe, veering round suddenly, 
 ' if the poor lad can't have the cabin he does want, 
 I'm hanged if he shall have the coffin that he doesn't. 
 
174 SHIPMATES 
 
 If he lives it will scare him, and if he dies it won't 
 do him a ha'poth of good.' 
 
 " ' What reply shall I make ? ' 
 
 '' * Say that her telegram has received due 
 attention.' 
 
 " Not long after this O'Keefe was in a white fury 
 over a letter from the owners saying that they 
 were giving a celebrated author a free passage on 
 the tacit understanding that he ' wrote up the 
 route,' and he was to have the best cabin in the 
 ship and receive ' every possible attention.' 
 O'Keefe simply handed the letter over to the 
 unlucky purser, who had to shift about twenty 
 people, and got worn to a shadow persuading 
 them that they had all gained by the change. 
 
 " The man arrived, and of course sat at O'Keefe's 
 table, but beyond wishing him good-day, or an- 
 swering a question in as few words as possible, 
 O'Keefe never spoke to him. Whether this 
 influenced the passengers, or whether they did it 
 on their own account, I don't know, but they all 
 gave him much the same treatment. 
 
 " About a week after they set sail O'Keefe's 
 private servant made a charge against the fellow. 
 He denied it flatly, but O'Keefe came down on 
 him like a cartload of bricks. He sputtered with 
 rage : ' Is a servant's word to be taken before 
 mine ? ' ' My servant's is,' said O'Keefe. Of 
 course he vowed vengeance, and O'Keefe prepared 
 to resign, but the owners were dumb as a fish. 
 
O'ER MANY MASTERS 175 
 
 He never heard a word more of the matter. The 
 fellow was an impostor ; the real Simon Pure 
 was paying his own passage on another line. 
 Served them jolly well right ! A decent man 
 might work his passage in the stoke-hole, but he 
 wouldn't consent to do it in a state-room. 
 
 " Then another class of passengers gave him a 
 lot of trouble, although personally he got on with 
 them swimmingly — elderly working-women going 
 out as first-class passengers to join sons who had 
 made money, and who refused to allow them to 
 travel in any other way. One of them, an honest 
 old soul, looked with vexation at the conglomera- 
 tion of spoons and forks and wine-glasses, and said 
 to a fine lady whose origin she had instantly 
 detected : ' Me and you would be a deal more 
 comferable travellin' second. P'r'aps we're a bit 
 old for steerage, though it's luckshury to what it 
 was when you remembers it.' 
 
 " Another, grieved to the heart at her son's reck- 
 less outlay on her behalf, tried to cut down the 
 incidental expenses by washing and drying her 
 clothes in her cabin. The other ladies objected, 
 especially to the drying, so she hung the garments 
 over her shoulders in festoons and sat in the sun 
 on the promenade-deck. The thought of giving 
 tips to the servants was agony to her. She con- 
 sulted O'Keefe, and he told her that it was abso- 
 lutely necessary. She turned the matter over in 
 her mind for some days, and then asked if it would 
 
176 SHIPMATES 
 
 be sufficient to give the head-steward five shilUngs 
 * and the rest accordin'.' He remorselessly told 
 her that if she did not give the man a sovereign 
 he should have to do it himself. Otherwise every 
 old lady travelling alone would have to suffer for 
 her parsimony. She stood firm ; so did he. When 
 she found the steward actually had the sovereign 
 she gave way, but it was like pulling out her eye- 
 teeth. 
 
 *' But it was a girl who was the last straw, a 
 pretty little creature not more than eighteen, but a 
 confirmed mischief-maker, and O'Keefe was sup- 
 posed to be in charge of her. One day an elderly 
 lady who was of more social importance than any- 
 one else on board, and a remarkably pleasant 
 woman, asked a man young enough to be her son 
 to have a game of chess with her. He made some 
 clumsy excuse, and moved away. Presently she 
 asked another young fellow, and the same thing 
 happened. O'Keefe felt desperately annoyed, and 
 came forward and asked if she would play with him, 
 and she did. As soon as he could catch the men 
 alone he fell foul of them, and asked if they did not 
 know that they ought to have felt honoured, &c. 
 He spoke to them separately, but they both went 
 in for an Adam-and-Eve business and told the 
 same tale : the little minx had seen them playing 
 chess with the old lady on the previous day, and 
 had threatened that she would never speak to 
 them again if they did it any more. 
 
O'ER MANY MASTERS 177 
 
 " O'Keefe said nothing to the girl about that, 
 because he thought it decidedly mean of them to 
 give her away, but she was mixed up in five or 
 six disturbances, and he lost all patience. He had 
 a cutting tongue when he was angry, and the girl 
 subsided ; but she had her revenge. Just after 
 they got into harbour, when the deck was crowded 
 with all sorts and conditions of men and he was 
 alone on the bridge, she went up to him, tilted 
 his cap back and kissed him — a good fore-and-aft 
 kiss — ' Good-bye, you dear old stoopid ! ' " 
 
IX. GEESE AT HOME 
 
 Tailors and outfitters — A Blue-Nose — The dyer^s hand — Waste 
 labour — The un-handy man — Cant phrases — A cot-quean — 
 Child^s play — A safety-valve — Widows — Counsel for the defence 
 
 " "W "T THO is that man talking to your hus- 
 y y band ? " asked Mrs. Shaw. 
 
 " A sailor for a penny ! " exclaimed 
 Mrs. Langley. 
 
 " But how do you know ? " protested Mrs. 
 Elliott from the creaking, uneasy depths of a cane 
 chair brought from Madeira for her special use. 
 As far as she was concerned there were only two 
 classes of living men, John and not-John. There 
 were many classes of women, and in her inmost 
 heart she labelled Mrs. Langley as " just a little 
 bit too much like a soldier's wife." 
 
 '' The clothes are enough to prove it," explained 
 Mrs. Shaw equably. 
 
 '' Ready-made clothes on a man who ought not 
 to be wearing them, who looks as if his boots and 
 shirt cost more than all the rest put together." 
 
 " They're not exactly reach-me-downs," con- 
 tinued Mrs. Langley critically ; " modern naval men 
 are a step beyond that. His outfitter keeps his 
 
 178 
 
GEESE AT HOME 179 
 
 measure, and goes on board to meet him every 
 three or four years, and assures him his figure 
 hasn't altered half an inch in the interval. Up 
 to five-and-thirty a man's appearance may be 
 able to stand that sort of thing, but by the time 
 he begins to notice that his coats are ' a bit tight 
 in the armhole ' he ought to know the difference 
 between a tailor and a naval outfitter. The out- 
 fitter takes uniform seriously, and unbends his 
 mind over plain clothes." 
 
 " I think sailors looked best when they were 
 not ashamed to be seen in uniform," said Mrs. 
 Elliott. 
 
 '' Perhaps they were younger then," suggested 
 Mrs. Shaw, smiling down on her husband's thin fair 
 hair and Johnny's tousled grey mop. They were 
 sitting on the balcony of the Elliotts' new house 
 while their husbands smoked and took a quarter- 
 deck turn on the only path wide enough for three 
 to walk abreast. A fourth man had joined them, 
 and they stood perforce in a knot, as Johnny was 
 eyeing the sparsely-sown lawn with what Langley 
 called '' a keep-clear-of-that-paint-can't-you " ex- 
 pression. The balcony faced north and had no 
 view of the sea, but they sat there contentedly : 
 it was a hot day in July, and naval officers' wives 
 have about as much satisfaction in gazing at 
 salt water as farmers' wives find in a ploughed 
 field, or clergymen's wives in hearing sermons. 
 Early in their married life Mrs. Elliott had once 
 
180 SHIPMATES 
 
 innocently suggested that her husband should 
 take her out for a row. He was, and remained, 
 her lover, but he was sailor enough to reply with 
 unaffected consternation : 
 
 '' Out for a pull ? For pleasure ? Dear, I call 
 it tempting Providence, besides letting my country 
 off too cheaply if I get drowned. You wouldn't 
 think of asking me to go tiger-shooting, but I 
 assure you that for two people to go out in a boat 
 of the size that one man can pull is far more 
 dangerous." 
 
 " Uniform is like the shirt of Nessus now," 
 continued Mrs. Shaw. " They are all frantic to 
 drag it off even when they know it must be put on 
 again an hour after." 
 
 " I don't know how they would fill up their time 
 otherwise," said Mrs. Langley. '' I have known 
 Will change seven times in a day, and not make 
 half as much fuss over it as a civilian does over 
 changing a pair of muddy boots." 
 
 " Uniform is so becoming," repeated Mrs. 
 Elliott regretfully. 
 
 '' They used to wear it a good deal when I was 
 a girl out in Halifax," said Mrs. Langley. " It's 
 rather uncomfortable for other people, especially 
 when they wear epaulettes," shrugging her 
 shoulders at the prickly remembrance. 
 
 Mrs. Langley, as Heseltine hastened to inform 
 every stranger inclined to admire her, was a Blue- 
 Nose, and he usually^added with acid emphasis : 
 
GEESE AT HOME 181 
 
 '' I cannot imagine how it is that so many naval 
 men married them." BHssett once checked this 
 little habit for many months by shouting genially : 
 *' Then I'll tell you. No imagination needed. 
 Plain matter o' fact. After you'd been knocking 
 about in the West Indies for five or six months 
 they sent you up to Halifax, and every single Blue- 
 Nose looked so absolutely lovely that only two 
 things on earth could prevent you from marrying 
 them. One was being married already, which 
 was my case, and the other was if they wouldn't 
 have you. Perhaps that was your's ? " 
 
 " After all," said Mrs. Shaw, as the knot broke 
 in two and the quarter-deck exercise was resumed, 
 " why trouble about their clothes ? If they went 
 to the best tailor in London anyone who had ever 
 seen a sailor before would find them out in five 
 minutes. And at worst it is only a misfortune to 
 be a naval officer ; it isn't a crime. I suppose it is 
 entering their profession so young that stamps 
 them so deeply, and that is a thing which cannot 
 be helped. As my husband says, no one but a 
 fool or a boy would be a sailor, and they don't 
 want fools." 
 
 " Perhaps sailors are tidier than other men," 
 said Mrs. Elliott vaguely, trying to recall the 
 domestic habits of her father in order to contrast 
 them with Johnny's. 
 
 " I can't give Will a certificate. He has three 
 chests of drawers in his dressing-room besides a 
 
182 SHIPMATES 
 
 wardrobe and two old sea-chests, and his rule 
 appears to be ' a case for everything and nothing 
 in its case.' Luckily seven or eight of the drawers 
 have stuck fast, but that leaves him twelve to turn 
 upside down every time he wants a necktie or a 
 stud." 
 
 '' I think most of them are orderly when they 
 have become accustomed to the loss of their 
 servant," said Mrs. Shaw, casting her impartial 
 mental glance over three generations, " but they 
 have no sense of beauty. They like things ' ship- 
 shape,' and some of them like ' clear decks,' but 
 as long as their possessions are piled neatly one on 
 top of the other they care nothing about colour 
 or congruity." 
 
 ** Or waste of labour. And a sailor never wishes 
 to spend money on mending anything. However 
 valuable it may be, you either patch it up yourself, 
 or pitch it overboard." 
 
 '' There are worse alternatives : you treasure it 
 in a useless condition, or spoil five or six other 
 things propping it up. One of the legs came off 
 the sofa in the dressing-room. Dick put his dress- 
 ing-case under it. A second leg came off, and he 
 put his father's old mahogany shaving-case and a 
 last-year's Navy List. A third came off, and he 
 confiscated the two French dictionaries that my 
 father bought in Madeira after his ship had taken 
 Napoleon to St. Helena. I know the fourth leg 
 will be oft soon, and then I really must make a 
 
GEESE AT HOME 188 
 
 point of having the thing mended. He does not 
 realise how these tricks hinder the servants. When 
 he first retired he had seven sea-chests of ancient 
 date piled up in the garden with an old tarpaulin 
 over them. Our only boxroom was far too small, 
 and nothing would induce him to part with them. 
 He wanted to put one in each bedroom, but I was 
 afraid. Bob and Willy once nearly suffocated 
 Gertie by persuading her to play at the * Mistletoe 
 Bough ' and rather miscalculating the time. 
 Finally some inexperienced burglars tampered 
 with the pile, and then he paid a marine-store 
 dealer five shillings to take them away." 
 
 '' If ever servants complain of any difficulties 
 with their work, sailors always say : ' Bad workmen 
 find fault with their tools.' But so do good, and 
 servants ought to complain on that score very 
 much oftener than they do. I am sure I have 
 hardly ever done any piece of work usually done by 
 a servant without discovering some bad tool 
 patiently endured for weeks and months. Make- 
 shift may have been a great virtue in the old days 
 at sea, but it is folly and extravagance on shore." 
 
 '' All cant phrases are irritating," said Mrs. 
 Elliott. " The other day I was in a railway car- 
 riage with a woman who had a six-weeks'-old baby 
 in her arms, and was in mourning for a child who 
 had died suddenly about two months before. 
 Her husband was working half-time, and not even 
 certain of that. She was on her way to a distant 
 
184 SHIPMATES 
 
 hospital where her widowed mother, after an ap- 
 parently successful operation for cancer, had had 
 a dangerous relapse. ' I'm afraid,' she told me, 
 ' she'll be gone before I get there, though I started 
 the very moment I got the telegram. It's dread- 
 ful for all of us. We've had such a heap of 
 trouble.' ' Oh, you must look on the bright side 
 o' things,' said a fellow-traveller with cheerful 
 impatience." 
 
 '' Talking of hindering the servants. Will ex- 
 pects two maids to do all the work of the house 
 inaudibly and invisibly, and because it can't 
 always be managed he says I have no idea of dis- 
 cipline. As if one could discipline a maid on a 
 month's notice ! I can't send them to prison, I 
 can't stop their pay or their leave, I can't even 
 swear at them, and yet the work is done." 
 
 " More or less," said Langley, who was walking 
 alone now and had good hearing. 
 
 " More or less ! The last time I had tea on the 
 guardship there were nine mess-servants, and an 
 average of six men for them to attend on. All 
 the same, the teapot had yesterday's leaves in it. 
 Not an odd two or three such as my poor undis- 
 ciplined maids would overlook, but the whole lot. 
 And as to getting a stitch of sewing done — why 
 the marks on your socks were sewn on at right 
 angles ! But come up here if you want to argufy. 
 At that distance your voice gives you too great an 
 advantage." 
 
GEESE AT HOME 185 
 
 " Let me finish my pipe." 
 
 '' Smoke in peace. The conversation has swung 
 miles away from you, Mrs. ElHott ; he is afraid I 
 am going to talk about the Carters. They are 
 my neighbours now." 
 
 " Poor woman, has she any servants ? She 
 always has so much trouble with them." 
 
 " They are supposed to have three, but they 
 seldom have more than one, and not always that. 
 Mrs. Carter never will keep any while she has a 
 husband, and when he dies I dare say he'll take 
 care she hasn't any money to pay them." 
 
 " But my husband has always spoken of ' old 
 Charity Carter ' as if he were as steady as time," 
 objected Mrs. Shaw. 
 
 '' So he is. And in any case that kind of thing 
 wouldn't put you on the servants' Index. He 
 has a mania that everyone wants to rob him, and 
 he will manage everything himself. He looks 
 through the larder, orders the dinner, buys the 
 children's clothes, and settles when the sweep is 
 to come. He can order a dinner, too. That's 
 why he isn't half as unpopular with men as he 
 ought to be." 
 
 " But how did he manage when he was at sea ? " 
 
 " He didn't marry until he retired. That kind 
 of man never does. They say that a greedy 
 Irishman is the most grasping thing on earth, and 
 I am sure a suspicious sailor is the meanest ! He 
 married a timid girl five-and-twenty years younger 
 
186 SHIPMATES 
 
 than himself, with no mother to stand up for her 
 and no father worth naming. She was supposed 
 to have money and it turned out to be much less 
 than he thought, which did not sweeten his temper, 
 but it would not have made any difference. His 
 little plans would have been just the same. Soon 
 after he was engaged he happened to hear Will 
 say that the first thing he gave me after we were 
 married was a cheque-book, and that it was the 
 only thing I never lost, and he said- : ' I mean my 
 wife to ask me for every sixpence.' Old Heseltine 
 — you know he would compass heaven and earth 
 to get a rap at me — said it was the wisest thing 
 Will had ever done, as experience soon taught 
 a woman that she could not spend more than her 
 husband possessed, and nothing would teach her 
 to spend less." 
 
 ' ' Doesn't he make her an allowance of any 
 kind ? " 
 
 " Not a farthing. The other day she said to 
 me : * I did so beg Henry to buy me a bonnet, and 
 he wouldn't.' He went to the shop with her when 
 she wanted to buy a rattle for the last baby. It 
 was fivepence-halfpenny, and I heard him say 
 complainingly : ' The one we had before was four- 
 pence-three-farthings, and it was quite as good.' " 
 
 " Dick told me that when he was at sea he shut 
 down the lid of his inkstand between each dip 
 for fear anyone else should use it." 
 
 *' The worst of your husband's stories is that 
 
GEESE AT HOME 187 
 
 they are always true. I often wish they weren't. 
 I can take as many grains of salt with Will's as I 
 like. He was telling me the other day of one of 
 his early captains who was so saving in his habits 
 that all through a long commission he kept his 
 cooking-utensils in their original packings. He 
 arranged to have his meals at the same hours as 
 the wardroom, and however often they changed 
 his cook had orders to do the same." 
 
 '' The Carters have such a dear little girl of 
 seven or eight," said Mrs. Elliott. " She came to 
 tea last year when my brother's children were with 
 me. She had a pitiful little out-grown frock, 
 and when she took her hat off in my room I found 
 that her hair was tied up with a bootlace. I 
 thought the nurse had done it to make a firm hold 
 for the ribbon, and I said : ' You have lost your 
 ribbon. I must get you another.' The poor child 
 looked desperately uncomfortable, and while I was 
 turning over a box to find one she whispered, * I 
 didn't have any.' I said, ' At any rate you had 
 better have one now, and you can give it to your 
 doll when you go home.' " 
 
 " Was it a red ribbon, rather wide ? She wears 
 it still. There was such a fuss about it the last 
 time I was at the house. The child had washed 
 it herself and pressed it in an old leather-bound 
 book of logarithms that belonged to her father, 
 and some of the dye came off, and he was in a 
 sputtering rage. I should have liked to stand 
 
188 SHIPMATES 
 
 him in front of a looking-glass, as I used to do with 
 my little boys when they lost their temper. Old 
 gaby, I don't believe that at the best of times he 
 knew the difference between a logarithm and a 
 locomotive." 
 
 Mrs. Langley had always had a houseful of 
 children and saw no special pathos in the incident, 
 but Mrs. Elliott's eyes filled with tears, and in her 
 inmost heart she once more asked high Heaven 
 a never-answered question. 
 
 ''No naval man's daughter would put up with 
 money arrangements of that kind," said Mrs. Shaw. 
 
 " Perhaps that is why he didn't marry one ; 
 but if a man has to live on his pay he most 
 certainly should not marry outside the service. 
 I remember an assistant-paymaster who became 
 engaged to a city man's daughter. He introduced 
 her to me, and I felt so sorry for him that I tried 
 to make her understand what a divided income of 
 £300 a year meant, two messes to keep up, fre- 
 quent travelling expenses, uniforms, possible spells 
 of half -pay and all the rest of it. ' Oh,' said the 
 girl, ' I don't mind being poor. I should love a 
 small house, and at first I should only keep two 
 maids, and I'm sure I could dress quite well on 
 fifty pounds a year.' Even Mrs. Elliott raised 
 her hands in horror." 
 
 " And what happened ? " 
 
 " I could not tell him what she said to me, 
 but I conclude that she said very much the same 
 
GEESE AT HOME 189 
 
 to him. He got rather nervous, and talked so 
 much about what she would have to do if he 
 died that the engagement came to a sudden end." 
 
 " I think one of the strangest and most uncom- 
 fortable things about sailors is their constant 
 harping on the subject of their own death," said 
 Mrs. Shaw. 
 
 ''It is hardly to be wondered at," said Mrs. 
 Elliott a little reproachfully. She had never 
 arrived at the outwardly matter-of-course attitude 
 maintained by the average naval man's wife towards 
 the perils and dangers of her husband's profession. 
 " It is natural that they should think of death." 
 
 " Quite natural to think of it, but if they talk 
 about it until your children say ' when Papa 
 dies ' as calmly as ' when my boots wear out,' 
 people don't call it natural. They call them 
 inhuman little monsters, instead of thoughtless 
 parrots. In his first three or four letters after 
 leaving home my husband always dwelt at length 
 on his death, and every time he came back he 
 made a fresh will, and the old ones were left lying 
 about anywhere. Of course I locked them away 
 when I came across them, but one day I found 
 my eldest boy reading a copy to the other children, 
 who sat in a circle wearing black scarves and hold- 
 ing handkerchiefs and sniffing at set intervals." 
 
 Mrs. Elliott looked rather shocked : her dream - 
 children were of a different calibre. 
 
 '' At any rate it was safer than playing at 
 
190 SHIPMATES 
 
 courts-martial with the little ones for prisoners," 
 laughed Mrs. Langley. " One day I went to see 
 why Ted — he was just seven — had not started 
 for afternoon-school with his brothers, and I found 
 him dangling over the banisters by a rope. 
 Luckily they had had sense enough to put it 
 round his chest instead of his neck, for it was a 
 properly made running-noose, and pulled so taut 
 by his weight that I had to cut it with a knife. 
 I asked where Kathy was, and he told me quite 
 at leisure that she ' didn't wish to be hanged,' 
 so she was ' in the cells,' and the cells ' was the 
 rain-water tank under the roof.' I forgot that 
 it had not rained for a month, and flew up to the 
 attic like a whirlwind. She had managed to 
 clamber out of the tank, covered with soot and 
 dust, and was sitting on an old portmanteau under 
 the skylight poring over a translation of Les 
 Miserables, The elder boys used to tease Ted 
 incessantly, but they didn't get much change out 
 of Kathy." 
 
 " Such big boys — such a little girl — " mur- 
 mured Mrs. Elliott. 
 
 " Oh, I'm afraid that hadn't much to do with it. 
 Her father said she carried too many guns for 
 them. One summer I let them take Ted down 
 to bathe every morning. He looked rather blue 
 after it, and I asked Willy if he remembered to 
 see that he always dipped his head well under. He 
 said with such suspicious readiness, ' Yes, I always 
 
GEESE AT HOME 191 
 
 dip him myself, mother/ that I thought that 
 might be the explanation, and asked, ' How long 
 do you keep him under ? ' He considered the 
 matter solemnly, and then said very slowly, ' As 
 long as I think sufficient.' " 
 
 " Poor wee Teddy. He nearly killed my little 
 nephew out of pure kindness. He had been very 
 ill and was still in bed, and we had to be extremely 
 careful about his diet. He was beginning to get 
 dull and fretful, and I asked you to let Teddy 
 spend Saturday afternoon with him. They seemed 
 shy of one another, so I left them for a few minutes 
 to see if that would break the ice. Very soon I 
 could hear them through the door chattering 
 like magpies. Then there was a sudden silence, 
 and something warned me to go back. I was 
 just in time. Teddy had spread out a halfpenny- 
 worth of periwinkles and a halfpenny-worth of 
 green plums, and he was saying as I went in : 
 ' No, you are to have them all. I bought them 
 for you. / get plenty to eat at home.' He was 
 a most amusing child. A few months later you 
 changed houses, and he told me quite seriously: 
 ' I shall come and see you, you know, Mrs. Elliott, 
 although we do live in such a big house now.' 
 
 " My boys ought never to have found time to 
 do the wrong thing — they were always saying it. 
 I used to envy Mrs. Shaw. The most embarras- 
 sing thing I ever knew one of her sons do was to 
 fall asleep while old Heseltine was 'explaining.' 
 
192 SHIPMATES 
 
 We both had a good deal of responsibihty. It is 
 rather trying to have a houseful of boys and to be 
 their sole parent for two or three years at a 
 stretch." 
 
 " I don't think it was much easier when the 
 father returned," said Mrs. Shaw. " All men are 
 a little unreasonable about children, but sailors 
 are most desperately ignorant." 
 
 " They think children ought to be born grown-up, 
 and would be, if it were not for their mothers' 
 over-indulgence." 
 
 " Perhaps they suffer more from their ignorance 
 than the children do. When Admiral Bewley 
 came back from China his eldest son, a little fellow 
 not able to speak plainly, said to him, ' What have 
 you dot for me ? ' He was cut to the heart. More 
 than twenty years after he told me the story with 
 tears in his eyes : ' I said, " I have brought nothing 
 for you, and I never will." And I never did.' 
 Everyone knows what an awful time he had had, 
 and that it was a wonder he came home alive, but 
 if the child had been three times the age he could 
 not have understood it. I should expect more 
 disinterested affection from a dog than from a 
 little boy. And one day, years ago, when I was at 
 their house the youngest girl came in from school 
 and complained that a chimney-sweep had pushed 
 against her on the pavement and blacked her 
 dress. He turned to her, and said in the bitterest 
 tones • ' As you go through life you will do well 
 
GEESE AT HOME 198 
 
 to remember that you are in other people's way, 
 not they in yours.' It might have been a wise 
 thing to say to conceited, selfish young people 
 of double her age — but to a sensitive child of 
 eleven ! She used to pick up everything he said, 
 and it was impossible to know how much she 
 understood. One day she was talking to me in a 
 terribly grown-up fashion, and at last I said : ' But 
 my dear, if this is true, why do we live at all ? ' 
 She looked straight in my face, and replied in the 
 most matter-of-course way : ' We live because we 
 can't help it ! ' " 
 
 " In some ways sailors are extremely careful 
 what they tell children," said Mrs. Langley, but 
 they put most cynical notions into their heads. 
 One day when Kathy was between five and six 
 Will took her for a walk. He did not think of 
 leading her, and presently she exclaimed : ' I wish 
 you would hold my hand like the other little girls' 
 papas ! ' He said : ' Oh, you mustn't believe all 
 the humbug you see and hear. When those men 
 go home they beat their little girls.' I don't 
 know whether she believed it or not, but at any 
 rate she never forgot it ; and children can dis- 
 believe a thing and yet be quite as much affected 
 as if they did believe it — in addition to being 
 able to believe and disbelieve almost at the same 
 moment. 
 
 " Soldiers are not quite as unreasonable. My 
 brother was invalided last year after that nasty 
 
 N 
 
194 SHIPMATES 
 
 little frontier war, and he had a serious relapse 
 after he arrived. The only boy is the youngest of 
 the family, and one afternoon he was allowed to 
 stay alone for half an hour with his father. To 
 amuse himself he turned out his father's dressing- 
 case, and came across his medals. My brother was 
 feeling most depressed, and a trifle sentimental, 
 and he said seriously to the little fellow : ' If I 
 die, Herbert, those will be yours.' The boy made 
 no immediate answer, but after a few moments he 
 said coolly : ' They're three-quarters mine already, 
 aren't they ? ' My brother burst into a fit of 
 laughter. He said it might have killed some men, 
 but he thought the little beggar's horrible coolness 
 actually did him good." 
 
 " One never knows what children think," said 
 Mrs. Shaw a little sadly, " though I have heard 
 mothers — and teachers — boast that they knew 
 ' every thought that passed through their little 
 brains,' " 
 
 " What consummate idiots ! I had not many 
 delusions of that kind, but I did think Kathy was 
 a religious child, and I often took her to church 
 in the evening because I thought she liked it. 
 After she was grown up she told me that until she 
 was fourteen or fifteen she hated Sunday so in- 
 tensely that she was out of spirits as soon as it was 
 Thursday, and that when I made her go to church 
 a second time, especially in the summer, she felt 
 that life was not worth living, I might have had 
 
GEESE AT HOME 195 
 
 my eyes opened one day when she was about 
 eleven, but I lost the chance. She had two much 
 smaller cousins staying with her, and Will noticed 
 the way in which she seemed to be finding their 
 places for them, and he said to her very sharply 
 afterwards — though I believe the thought had 
 only just flown into his head, and there was no 
 reason why it should be in hers — ' If it's too much 
 trouble for you to find their hymns, I'll do it 
 myself. Even if they can't read three words at 
 a stretch they are trusting to you, and I call it an 
 act of deception to open a book anywhere and 
 ram it down in front of them.' She was too much 
 hurt to say anything to him, but she said to me 
 afterwards : ' Mother, I did find them the right 
 hymns. I never have to turn over more than 
 two or three leaves, and I very often open just at 
 the right place.' I made Will see her do it ; men 
 have such a way of coming down with a crash on a 
 child, and then saying they don't want to hear 
 any more about it. I never thought of asking 
 her how it was that she could do it ; I took it for 
 some peculiar exactness of touch. And then only 
 last week she told me that when she was a small 
 child her one consolation in church was to make 
 bets with herself as to how few leaves she would 
 turn over before she found the hymn ! She did 
 it for years, and if she lost she returned home 
 more depressed than before." 
 
 '^ Even if you had known I do not see what you 
 
196 SHIPMATES 
 
 could have done. I often think that children's 
 misunderstanding of what we tell them is worse 
 than the original error." 
 
 " If ever I tried to explain anything to my boys 
 they took the most public means available of mis- 
 applying what I had said. The first time Ted 
 heard of half -pay he was anxious to know what it 
 meant, and who halved it, and why it wasnH half, 
 and so forth. A few days later he was found 
 fault with in school for having an exceedingly 
 black handkerchief, and replied : ' I'm very sorry, 
 Miss Mitchell, but I can only afford two a week. 
 Papa is on half -pay.' After Will had been at home 
 a week or two his ideas became rather confused, 
 and he said to a roomful of strangers : ' I like half- 
 pay best. There's more to eat.' Will, don't fill 
 your pipe again. We really must go. All of us. 
 Mrs. Elliott is tired to death." 
 
 " Well, now that the corroboree is over, what 
 is the conclusion of the whole matter ? " 
 
 " I can tell you that," said Shaw, eagerly thrust- 
 ing in his oar. " It's the one conclusion our wives 
 always arrive at when they get together and com- 
 pare notes : Sailors may be swans abroad, but they 
 are certainly geese at home." 
 
 '" Nice, useful birds, too. Why don't you order 
 a dozen, Johnny, to eat down the grass ? Save 
 a lawn-mower, and last you all the winter." 
 
 " Bless my soul, Langley ! " cried Shaw, " do birds 
 eat grass ? I give you my word I never knew it." 
 
GEESE AT HOME 197 
 
 Johnny surveyed the lawn doubtfully — carefully 
 sifted brown earth lightly pricked at irregular 
 intervals by delicate green needles — 
 
 " What do you think, dear ? " 
 
 " I think the nightingales will be sufficient for 
 the work at present," replied his wife with her 
 usual serenity. After all, was he not more to her 
 than ten sons, or even one little daughter like 
 Milly ? 
 
 '' What does the compound interest amount 
 to ? " asked Mrs. Langley a few minutes later. 
 
 Shaw looked down at her slightly puzzled. 
 
 " I saw you pacing out the lawn." 
 
 " Three-sixteenths of an acre, and I calculate 
 that the cost per foot amounts to " 
 
 " I can't see that Johnny is more absurd than 
 any other sailor-man, and he is far more amiable." 
 
 " He's the most amiable fellow under the sun, 
 but of all the unreasonable " 
 
 '' Anyone who has the gift of being unreasonable 
 without being disagreeable would be a fool not 
 to use it. It is a very rare talent. If you and 
 Will and I possessed it, I don't think much more 
 would be heard of our consistency or common- 
 sense." 
 
 ''I don't think I have heard much of Langley 's 
 commonsense." 
 
 "Or of my consistency ? I saw you were 
 dying of thwarted contradictiousness, so I cleared 
 a safety-valve for you. Some women plaster them 
 
198 SHIPMATES 
 
 over thickly with soft answers, and are quite 
 amazed at the wholly unscriptural result. You 
 know how atrociously I play whist ? Old Bewley 
 was my partner the other night. I really did 
 my best, because I knew Will would pitch in to 
 me afterwards if I upset him ; but even luck was 
 against me, and I saw that it was getting more 
 than he could stand, so I said in a very airy way, 
 ' I don't play by rule.' ' So I should judge, 
 Madam ; so I should judge.' Then he quite 
 recovered his temper. If I had made abject 
 apologies it would have been oil on flames." 
 
 " I detest people who do it," said her husband, 
 who had caught her last words as he halted to 
 say good-bye to the Shaws when their roads 
 parted. " There is only one genuine apology, and 
 it would never be accepted : ' I meant it, and I 
 mean it now, but I was a fool to say it.' And often 
 it's only a mean way of putting a spoke in your 
 enemy's wheels. And in any case it's embar- 
 rassing." 
 
 " When Captain Shaw has changed his mind 
 about my inconsistency it won't embarrass me to 
 hear him say so. If he likes to call it unwearied 
 aiming at perfection it will do quite as well." 
 
 " I think I'll change my mind about Langley 
 first. Any message for Heseltine ? I shall see 
 him to-morrow." 
 
 " Oh — just chin-chin." 
 
 " How that woman talks, Mildred ! " com- 
 
GEESE AT HOME 199 
 
 plained Shaw as they turned away. " I wonder 
 you can endure being boxed up with her for two 
 soHd hours." 
 
 "None of you seem able to * endure' your 
 messmates' wives. Fortunately it is not part of 
 your duty to Queen and Country." 
 
 " I can endure Mrs. Elliott. She's one of the 
 kindest and sweetest and most tender-hearted 
 of women." 
 
 " So kind and sweet and devoted that if Johnny 
 were ill, and if she thought it would do him any 
 good, she would see you roasted by a slow fire, 
 and ask you ' not to disturb him ' if you squealed." 
 
 '' And Mrs. Langley, then ? " 
 
 " You men can't perceive it because her sharp 
 tongue confuses you, but she belongs to a much 
 higher and more humane type. In such a case 
 she would say : ' You really mustn't be fanciful. 
 Will. If we shoot him through the head first 
 it'll answer quite as well.' " 
 
 " If Johnny had had any children he would 
 have had to take a back seat like the rest of us," 
 said Shaw, who suffered from the true sailor's one 
 form of jealousy. 
 
 " For a time. If you could only believe it, it 
 is our children's need that appeals to us. We 
 have no illusions as to their merits." 
 
 '' Not even about your sons ? " 
 
 " Not even about them. Did you hear how 
 Mrs. Langley defended herself when Johnny accused 
 
200 SHIPMATES 
 
 her of caring more for her sons than her daughters ? 
 She said : ' From the day they were born they have 
 been so much more trouble to me than the girls 
 that, unless I made-believe they were worth it, I 
 really could not put up with it.' " 
 
 " She would say anything but her prayers. 
 The other day she was telling me a long yarn, and 
 I said : ' You really must excuse me, but this is 
 rather a different version from the one you gave 
 me last autumn.' She laughed, and said as coolly 
 as you please : ' Surely you wouldn't like me always 
 to be saying the same thing ? ' When Heseltine 
 boasted that he had never had an hour's anxiety 
 over his sons, she snapped out : ' Then you ought to 
 have had a great many ! ' " 
 
 " But you know that you agreed with her." 
 
 " Well, as Langley generally remembers when 
 it is a little too late, truth is a poor excuse. What 
 was she saying about the Carters ? " 
 
 " Oh, nothing new. Why do you always call 
 him Charity Carter ? " 
 
 " It was Carrotty Carter originally, to distinguish 
 him from his brother, who had the same initials. 
 About the most stupid trick that parents can 
 spring on their children. Then he lost his hair, 
 and he lost his brother " 
 
 " Lost him ? " 
 
 " Kicked out. The exact opposite of Charity. 
 Solomon talks about the uselessness of braying 
 a fool in a mortar, but perhaps if he had tried 
 
GEESE AT HOME 201 
 
 braying two fools together it would have been a 
 more successful experiment. Fellows went on 
 calling him Carrotty Carter all the same, until 
 one day Stewart was abusing him for his meanness 
 in Franks' hearing, and he said : ' As far as my 
 experience goes, finding fault with a man to his 
 face only makes him angry, but doing it behind 
 his back has no effect at all — on him. Carter is 
 not generous to his equals, but for all you know 
 he may be extremely charitable to the poor.' 
 From that hour he was called Charity. Poor 
 old Franks declared he would give up opening his 
 mouth except to put food into it, and he really 
 did get very silent as time went on." 
 
 " I never found him a silent man." 
 
 " No ; he would always talk to women, and to 
 me and two or three other fellows who, as he ex- 
 pressed it, ' tried to keep the door of their lips.' 
 He hated swearing, and he simply couldn't stand 
 coarseness. He was fond of Blissett when he was 
 a youngster — ^there was about twenty years' differ- 
 ence in their age. One day Blissett was swearing 
 rather freely, and another man said : ' What must 
 your pious friend think of you ? ' ' D — n it ! ' 
 said Blissett, ' he would rather hear me blaspheme 
 than hear you snigger.' And so he would, though 
 he blamed himself for it, and thought he ought to 
 have ranked blasphemy as the first and greatest 
 sin of the tongue. It is just a trick of speech 
 with Blissett. He means no more when he says 
 
202 SHIPMATES 
 
 D — n it ! than you do when you say ' How annoy- 
 ing.' Once we had a Frenchman on board for a 
 day or two. He spoke EngHsh remarkably well, but 
 he kept on saying ' What a damage ! ' as a com- 
 ment on Blissett's yarns. Blissett doesn't know a 
 word of French, and he got rather vexed — ^thought 
 the fellow was poking fun at him. Talking of 
 Carter, he looked an awfully bad colour the last 
 time I saw him. He eats too much. He'll get an 
 apoplectic fit one of these days." 
 
 " His widow would hardly be inconsolable." 
 
 " There you quite make a mistake. I don't know 
 any woman who would miss her husband more. 
 You don't know as much about widows as I do. 
 I've seen an awful lot of them. She'd be most 
 hopelessly at sea without him. When Langley 
 and I die it will be a very different matter." 
 
 " Dick ! " 
 
 "My dear, I'm not saying anything personal; 
 I'm only trying to explain what I mean. I don't 
 say you wouldn't regret us, but you'd find your feet 
 immediately, and if you married again it would be 
 because you chose to, and very likely the men 
 would be a vast improvement on us. I don't 
 say that either of you have been accustomed to 
 have your own way, for married people never do — 
 neither a termagant nor a wife-beater is half as 
 free as if they were single — but you've been accus- 
 tomed to manage things, and you know where to 
 go and what to do and whom to ask. You have 
 
GEESE AT HOME 203 
 
 no conception how helpless a woman is if she 
 marries, like Mrs. Carter, at eighteen, and then for 
 the next twenty years has never been allowed 
 to call her soul her own. Why, I knew one widow 
 who dressed to go for a walk, and then sat down 
 and cried because she had never been for a walk 
 by herself ! " 
 
 '* Poor man. I am afraid your messmates' 
 widows have been rather a burden to you. No 
 wonder you criticise their wives so much : you 
 look at them with a prophetic eye." 
 
 " Well, it's no wonder that St. James makes it 
 a leading Christian virtue to visit widows. Any- 
 one might fancy it was a very ordinary human 
 impulse. Let 'em try it, that's all ! And then in 
 a year or two, after I had done all I could for her, 
 she would be married to someone who wanted her 
 money, and the children would be planted out in 
 charity schools, and the boys pitchforked into the 
 merchant service, or packed off to the colonies." 
 
 " You make me understand some things that I 
 never understood before. Many men think of 
 training wives, but you think of training widows. 
 It is generous, but a little unusual." 
 
 " One ought to be prepared for every con- 
 tingency." 
 
 *' One contingency never seems to have crossed 
 your mind. I might " 
 
 " I never let it," said Shaw vehemently. " How 
 could I have gone on serving if I had let myself 
 
204 SHIPMATES 
 
 think of it ? How could any man ? Do you think 
 that sailors' wives are ever quite fair to their 
 husbands ? Or even to one another's husbands ? 
 Take Carter. You only think of him as a man 
 who bullies his wife and is too fond of eating and 
 too fond of money, and his brother was too fond 
 of other men's money and other men's — well, 
 he's dead. But what made Carter what he is ? 
 
 " I knew his father, a man about twenty years 
 older than myself. He was a paymaster, a steady- 
 going, honourable man, as generous as he could 
 afford to be, and as unsuspicious as a child. He 
 married a girl down in the country somewhere. 
 Her father was a solicitor, who had always sailed 
 too close to the wind, and he died soon after, and 
 it appeared that he left very little money and 
 oughtn't to have left any at all. I don't mean 
 that Carter wanted money with his wife, but he 
 wanted a woman accustomed to straightforward- 
 ness in money matters, and he didn't get it. 
 
 " He was ashore for nearly two years after 
 he married, and they were very happy together. 
 Then he went abroad, leaving her with a baby 
 a few weeks old. His pay was about five hundred 
 all told, and he allowed her three of it, and sent 
 her all he could screw up in addition. 
 
 "At the end of the commission she was seven 
 hundred pounds in debt. Of course he ought to 
 have cut her allowance down and paid off the 
 money gradually, and let her feel the pinch. He 
 
GEESE AT HOME 205 
 
 was too proud and too impatient to do that. He 
 sold out a few shares that his father had left him, 
 and that he had intended to keep for Charity's 
 benefit when he was old enough to enter the 
 service, and let her start fair again. 
 
 " The next time she wasn't as much to the bad, 
 but he had to borrow money, and from that time 
 until he died he was never entirely free from 
 money troubles. A stern chase is a long chase ! 
 The boys must have heard an incessant talk about 
 money from the time they were six or seven years 
 old. Sometimes things were at such a pass that 
 they scarcely had food to eat. At last she died, 
 and Carter managed to pull things together a 
 little, and put them both in the service, but he 
 died, a worn-out man at fifty-six, before they could 
 well look after themselves. Can you wonder at 
 the result ? If Charity had done as his father did 
 I believe the result would have been all right. 
 His wife was very timid and rather credulous, but 
 experience and the children to take care of would 
 have cured all that. She might have paid people 
 twice over, but she would have been sure to pay 
 them once. Still, can you be surprised that he 
 hadn't the courage to try the same tack ? " 
 
 " Tout comprendre " 
 
 " Yes, but after all it doesn't do to make too 
 many allowances. I think Charity Carter is about 
 the most kickable man I ever met." 
 
 " You are rather fatiguing, Dick. First you 
 
206 SHIPMATES 
 
 make me cry peccavi as a most censorious person, 
 and then you veer round without any warning and 
 shout, ' As you was ! ' " 
 
 " It does no harm to look at both sides of a 
 question ; but you have to drop one of them if you 
 want to get any forrarder." 
 
X. DEAD POS'-GAP'ENS 
 
 Retired leisure — The mighty fallen—One Gallio — Red-tape — A 
 choice of acquaintances — Wholesale catering — Rum-drinking — 
 Physical labour — Commuting — The test of poverty — The general 
 thanksgiving — Imagination — Soldier, sailor, and civilian 
 
 WHEN I first retired," said Langley, " I 
 used to polish the furniture. And now if 
 I had any work to do I wouldn't do it ! 
 'Stonishing how little it takes to fill up your days. 
 I was always walking over the house altering the 
 blinds, and I used to watch the fire, hoping it 
 would do something that would be a pretext for 
 poking it." 
 
 " Like Squeers on the look-out for an excuse to 
 box a boy's ears," suggested Shaw. 
 
 " I wonder your wife's nerves could stand it," 
 said Heseltine. 
 
 " Pooh ! It's only the women who haven't any 
 nerves themselves who won't allow their husbands 
 to have any. My wife did draw the line at letting 
 me walk up and down in my socks — said the sound 
 reminded her too much of a caged bear — and 
 there's very little satisfaction in walking on a 
 carpet in your boots. In ten minutes you've had 
 enough of it. But she let me poke the fire as 
 
 207 
 
208 SHIPMATES 
 
 much as I chose. Coal was cheap that winter : 
 we only gave nineteen shillings a ton." 
 
 " I wouldn't let you poke the fire if coal were at 
 pit-mouth prices," protested Shaw, the only 
 * first-class stoker ' in existence, according to his 
 own belief. " You do it like a woman — from 
 the top." 
 
 " My dear fellow, the right way to do things 
 depends on your object in doing them. When I 
 poke a fire I want to let off steam and make a 
 confounded row." 
 
 " I think I felt retiring more than any of you," 
 said Shaw. " The first year I wore out an awful 
 amount of boot -leather. I walked an average of 
 fourteen miles a day, chiefly by myself. I could 
 never walk and talk except on deck. I've brought 
 it down to a fraction under ten now." 
 
 " Perhaps it was a mistake for you to break 
 away so completely from old associations," sug- 
 gested Heseltine, whose interest in naval matters, 
 exceedingly languid while on the active list, had 
 increased with each year of retirement. 
 
 '' There isn't much fun in being a dead dog in 
 places where you've been a live lion. It's best to 
 clear out and keep out until men have some excuse 
 for forgetting that they used to grovel before 
 you." 
 
 Langley nodded appreciatively : 
 
 '' One day some years ago I was walking with my 
 wife, and I saw Bewley about a hundred yards 
 
DEAD POS'-CAP'ENS 209 
 
 ahead. I slowed down because I didn't want to 
 overtake him. I get on well enough with him alone 
 because I know his susceptibilities, but my wife 
 wonH know them — says she does it on principle. 
 Two young subs from the College came along, so 
 busy talking and gesticulating that they didn't 
 see him. He was on the kerbstone. He always 
 walks on the extreme edge of everything, and if 
 there's a sea-wall he lifts up the chain and walks 
 outside : I think it's a morbid fear of being elbowed. 
 Whether they actually touched him or not I can't 
 say, but at any rate he went staggering into the 
 road. They stopped at once and raised their hats, 
 and mumbled something in a perfunctory way, 
 and came on towards me. I recognised them, and 
 said : ' You young ruffians, it isn't three years 
 since he hauled down his flag.' ' It was the merest 
 accident, and we apologised.' ' I don't suppose,' 
 I said, ' that you are capable of pitching a man of 
 his age into the road, and then passing on without 
 a word, but will the incident affect your night's 
 rest ? Do you think you take it as much to heart 
 as if he were the junior captain on the list, or a 
 commander, or even a lieutenant tolerably certain 
 of being made in the next batch ? ' They only 
 grinned." 
 
 " Astonished they didn't wink and dig you in the 
 ribs. No doubt they agreed with a man who told 
 me forty years ago, ' It's better to be a live mast- 
 'sistant than a dead pos-'cap'en.' Young rascals ! 
 
 o 
 
210 SHIPMATES 
 
 I was going up that steep hill near my house one 
 foggy evening last winter and three grammar- 
 school boys passed, and one said : ' Look at that 
 old fogey in a white muffler.' I said, ' Take that 
 from an old fogey,' and cut the two nearest over the 
 shoulders with my walking-stick. They tore down 
 the hill as if the Old Gentleman was after them." 
 
 '* I thought Bewley went at once to live in Ken- 
 sington ? " said Heseltine. 
 
 "So he did ; but he used to come down for a 
 few weeks from time to time when his son was 
 stationed at Selsea. He knew well enough what a 
 difference retirement would make. Two of their 
 servants were most anxious to go to Kensington 
 with them. His wife rather liked the idea, but he 
 did all he could to choke them off, told them it 
 would be a small house, no men about the premises, 
 and only three servants all told. They stuck to it 
 and he gave in, but in a very few weeks they were 
 in a hurry to leave. It wasn't the work : they 
 couldn't stand the loss of consequence, and were 
 simply enraged because people didn't come in 
 shoals to call. Mrs. Bewley was thankful to get 
 servants who hadn't the faintest prejudice as to the 
 way in which an admiral should be treated — in 
 fact half-mistook the title for his Christian name. 
 I think they got among rather a queer set of 
 people. I was at their house one day, and a 
 woman who was calling told me that she had a 
 young cousin in the navy : ' he was only a mid- 
 
DEAD POS'-CAP'ENS 211 
 
 shipman to begin with, but he behaved so well that 
 they made him an officer.' Imagine the lad's 
 feelings if he had heard her ! " 
 
 " People talk a good deal about the navy," said 
 Shaw, " but it would astonish you to find how 
 little is understood just outside the circle. Even 
 among soldiers I never come across a man who 
 grasps that commanding a ship doesn't necessarily 
 mean that you are a captain. A lady in the 
 provinces, a fairly well-educated woman, asked 
 my son when he was passing his examinations for 
 a lieutenant : ' and then will you be an A.B. ? ' 
 A girl in the north of England, whose father was 
 a big ironmaster, asked my wife : ' What is the 
 use of the navy ? What does it do ? ' She really 
 wanted information, but when my wife had said 
 all that could be said in two or three minutes, her 
 idea seemed to be that we are a kind of water- 
 police ; and a dressmaker here, a woman who goes 
 out to work by the day, tells everyone that she has 
 put her son in the merchant service in preference 
 to the navy because he would be ' so much sooner 
 a captain.' " 
 
 " One can hardly wonder at her ignorance," said 
 Heseltine, '' but my son told me that only the other 
 day a parson had a proteg6 on a naval training-ship, 
 and he addressed the lad's letters, H. Smith, Esq., 
 and seemed so utterly at sea with regard to his 
 position and prospects that the first -lieutenant 
 thought the best thing he could do would be to 
 
212 SHIPMATES 
 
 invite him to spend a couple of days on board. 
 By dinner-time the second day he seemed to have 
 grasped that the boy had no great certainty of 
 becoming an admiral, and announced at table : 
 ' I think I shall make him a paymaster.' The 
 paymaster, a stout elderly man of very good 
 family, was only saved from apoplexy by the first- 
 lieutenant's prompt declaration : ' It is just within 
 the bounds of possibility that he may stand in 
 my shoes, but all the silver in Broken Hill Mine 
 could not turn him into a paymaster.' " 
 
 " A little further out there is just as much 
 ignorance about the army," said Langley. " I 
 recently had a young nephew at Sandhurst, and 
 just before he passed out he met an old school- 
 fellow who was ' something in the city.' He told 
 him that he was a lieutenant in some volunteer 
 regiment, and added quite kindly : ' I wish you 
 could be one of us, old fellow. It must be beastly 
 having to work up from the ranks.' " 
 
 " It's a change of atmosphere when you retire," 
 said Shaw, and I felt it more than either of you 
 because I never cared for books, and it was months 
 before I could get into the way of reading news- 
 papers every day. It isn't easy to work up much 
 interest in politics. Although I was a householder 
 before I was thirty, I was over sixty before I had 
 a chance of recording my vote. But I was hardly 
 ashore when they began plaguing me to know if 
 there was any reason why I should be exempt from 
 
DEAD POS'-CAP'ENS 213 
 
 serving on a jury. I said I had an ungovernable 
 temper, and if I were shut up in a stuffy court- 
 house for three hours they would have to take 
 the consequences — I should bring everyone in 
 guilty, with evidence or without." 
 
 " Law is one thing and justice another," said 
 Heseltine. *' Out in the West Indies one of our 
 youngsters was ashore and he saw a negress, quite 
 an old woman, walking along quietly with a basket 
 of clean clothes on her head. A white man pushed 
 against her so roughly that the things were all 
 flung in the dirt. The lad felt so enraged at such 
 idle brutality that he struck the man. Instead of 
 returning the blow he summoned him for assault 
 — just the spiteful trick you would expect of a 
 bully, and quite enough to give the captain a 
 handle if he wanted to get rid of the boy. The 
 magistrate fined him ten shillings, and then asked 
 him to dinner and returned the money. The boy 
 was glad enough to get it. He did not understand 
 that it had to come out of the magistrate's own 
 pocket." 
 
 " I think I more than half agree with Heseltine 
 that you made matters worse for yourself by break- 
 ing away from all the people you knew, and all 
 the things you were accustomed to. It was too 
 great a wrench." 
 
 " I turned it well over in my mind. I thought 
 I'd seen enough of service men. It's better to live 
 among civilians and enlarge your ideas a bit." 
 
214 SHIPMATES 
 
 " You confounded humbug ! For a couple of 
 years you knew practically no one at all, and who 
 are the men you see most of now ? Seven soldiers 
 of sorts, one sailor turned parson, one turned 
 imbecile, and one you've known half your life and 
 always disliked, and two Indian Civil Servants. 
 There was no need to take yourself and your furni- 
 ture sixty miles for that ! Your barber cut my 
 hair this morning, and gave me his views as to 
 the local amenities. ' There's a fairish number of 
 sojer officers, but they only know one another, and 
 there's a few naval officers and they won't know 
 anyone' Perhaps I don't do justice to his accent, 
 but I'll take my oath as to the substance of what 
 he told me." 
 
 " The only fellows who retired gracefully were 
 those who had spent a great deal of time on half- 
 pay," said Heseltine. 
 
 " And home-appointments ; especially the ones 
 where mud and water were about equally propor- 
 tioned. Shaw never believed in anything but foreign 
 service. Even now he thinks it more meritorious to 
 serve in far Cathay than in the Channel Squadron. 
 I know very well which rubs your hair off first." 
 
 " What a length of time the commissions used 
 to last, though we hardly saw the worst of it. Old 
 Sanderson told me that he was six years, getting 
 on for seven, out in the Pacific, and once for more 
 than a year he had not a chance of sending a letter 
 to England." 
 
DEAD POS'-CAP'ENS 215 
 
 " If I had had a wife Hke that I shouldn't have 
 cared if they'd lasted sixty years," said Shaw 
 impatiently. 
 
 " You would have been like Gallio, if you ever 
 heard of him." 
 
 " I should think everyone had, though I don't 
 see any point in the comparison." 
 
 '' I don't mean the one who drove St. Paul's 
 accusers from the judgment-seat — though it may 
 have been a further episode in his history for all 
 that I can tell. That's the worst of scrapping 
 up an education by miscellaneous reading — the 
 clerk at the bookstall complained to my wife the 
 other day that the list given him was ' varied and 
 'eavy ' — you don't splice the ends together pro- 
 perly. Well, this Gallio was banished to some 
 Greek island, and was supposed to be eating the 
 bread of bitterness and drinking the water of 
 affliction, but somehow news came to Rome — the 
 postal arrangements must have been pretty good 
 — that he was as merry as the day was long, so 
 the Senate recalled him to his wife ' to accommo- 
 date their punishment to his feeling and appre- 
 hension.' By the way, how do you manage to get 
 hold of your pay out here ? " 
 
 '" I show myself at the bank once in three 
 months." 
 
 " Stewart was in an out-of-the-way place like 
 this, and he was ill and had to let things slide. 
 Then he got a magistrate to witness the most recent 
 
216 SHIPMATES 
 
 of his pension papers and sent them all in. They 
 cashed that one, and wouldn't look at the others. 
 They knew he was alive, but wanted proof he 
 hadn't been dead during the interval." 
 
 '' Your friends seem to be scattered all over the 
 place," complained Heseltine. " You have no one 
 close at hand to drop in for an hour or two on a 
 wet day, and yet you are surrounded by people 
 living in decent houses. You ought to have a 
 large choice of acquaintances. Who lives in that 
 house at the end of the road with a couple of acres 
 of garden ? " 
 
 " Man called Baddesley." 
 
 " I seem to know the name." 
 
 " If you ever look at a newspaper you prob- 
 ably do. He's been bankrupt three times, and 
 he's living now on the money that he settled on 
 his wife." 
 
 " It's legal. And you're out for new ideas." 
 
 " Legal ! What's that got to do with it ? 
 Why, the fellow's living in luxury, and some of 
 the men he swindled can hardly keep a roof over 
 their children's heads or give them bread to eat." 
 
 " Well, there's that man we met coming up 
 from the station yesterday. He turned in some- 
 where quite close. You never introduced us, 
 though I felt he yearned to know me. Don't 
 fancy he was quite as much drawn to Heseltine 
 — ^looks too much of an ascetic. Why did you 
 shoulder him off ? " 
 
DEAD POS-'CAP'ENS 217 
 
 " He wears diamond rings." 
 
 " That's an old prejudice of yours ; now's the 
 time to shake it off. I've known quite decent 
 fellows wear rings." 
 
 '' Did they wear four at a time, and black finger- 
 nails in addition; and did they take the beastly 
 things off and expect you to handle them and 
 guess the cost ? " 
 
 " Can't say they did. How about that neigh- 
 bour who looked over the fence this morning and 
 said he couldn't find his claw-'eaded 'ammer, 
 and wanted to know if " 
 
 " He's a very shrewd, sensible fellow. H's 
 have nothing to do with ideas." 
 
 '' So I thought when he said he'd a h'idea of 
 training 'oneysuckle round a h'arch. I should 
 like to see more of him. Why don't you be a little 
 friendly and ask him in to-night to play whist ? " 
 
 "" I asked him once : once was enough." 
 
 " Doesn't look at all the sort of man to keep an 
 ace up his sleeve." 
 
 '' Up his sleeve ! I sent both packs up the chim- 
 ney when the door had hardly closed on him." 
 
 '' Lose your temper over cards ? What a falling 
 off is there ! " 
 
 " What had the man done to the cards ? " asked 
 Heseltine, who never voluntarily wandered from 
 the point. 
 
 " Said they were too thin, and every time he 
 dealt he licked his thumb." 
 
218 SHIPMATES 
 
 Langley repressed a sympathetic shudder : 
 
 " Is that all ? " 
 
 " How'd you like it yourself ? " 
 
 " I never said I wanted new ideas. I've too 
 many already. My brain's like Elliott's seed-beds 
 — ^in need of thinning out. But you've paid down 
 good money to get them, and it seems to me you 
 are squandering your opportunities in the most 
 reckless fashion. What's the use of conveying 
 all your goods and chattels here, and then asso- 
 ciating with seven old Indians as like as split peas 
 — and much the same colour — ^three Queen's hard 
 bargains and " 
 
 " I suppose Rhys will have to clear out next 
 year at the farthest. He'll be utterly miserable 
 ashore. No wonder he tries to cling on as long as 
 he can." (Whenever Shaw wished to produce a 
 more chastened frame of mind in Langley he made 
 a point of referring to his brother-in-law's " most 
 precarious position.") 
 
 "• I don't know why he should." 
 
 " Fifty years at sea " 
 
 " Well, he hasn't grown fins or anything of 
 that kind, has he ? With you at hand to dash a 
 bucket of cold water over him occasionally, 
 he'll breathe all right ashore. I pity the dog ; 
 he's always mistaken Rhys for a visitor up to the 
 present, and been extremely civil and indulgent, 
 but he'll have to put his paw down pretty firmly 
 when he comes home for good ; I pity the maid- 
 
DEAD POS'-CAP'ENS 219 
 
 servant ; I pity my sister ; but I'm hanged if I'll 
 worry myself about him. He must get on like the 
 rest of us ; he's saner than you think. But he'll 
 have to take in a great many reefs, bring his ideas 
 down a peg or two all round. My sister has to 
 waste more the fortnight he's at home than she 
 can save the ten weeks he's away. He has sat 
 at the table of a first-class liner for so many years 
 that he doesn't seem able to realise that five 
 people only need a tenth part of what you would 
 provide for fifty. The last time he was at home 
 my sister was ill. He was awfully concerned about 
 it, and kept plaguing the nurse to know if there 
 was nothing he could buy. She wanted to get 
 him out of the house for a couple of hours, so she 
 told him that new-laid eggs were exceedingly 
 scarce, but if he went to such and such a place — 
 two miles off — he might be able to get a few. He 
 bought five dozen, and came back enormously 
 pleased with himself. The woman hadn't the 
 heart to tell him that they would be chickens 
 before my sister could eat them. 
 
 " The worst waste is when he brings anyone to 
 the house — luckily it doesn't often happen. He's 
 so dead-sick of being civil to strangers that you 
 can excuse him for being inhospitable, but when he 
 does invite anyone everything under the sun has 
 to be at hand, whoever they may be. Once he 
 brought a fat old ship's purser to the house and 
 the man asked for rum, and he was wildly enraged 
 
220 SHIPMATES 
 
 because there wasn't any. As if a woman could 
 be expected to keep rum on the premises ! 
 There was brandy and whisky and all the rest 
 of it." 
 
 '' I can remember when rum was very commonly 
 drunk in the navy," said Heseltine. 
 
 " By hopeless old topers. I don't think in your 
 time it was ever the ordinary drink in a mess. 
 I've seen men swallow half a square Dutchman at 
 a sitting, and on top of all they'd had at dinner. 
 They couldn't do it now if they tried. I was 
 considered a very temperate man, and no one 
 remarks my sons' habits, but their wine bills are 
 about a third of what mine were." 
 
 " My sons are teetotallers," said Heseltine 
 complacently. 
 
 " Swing of the pendulum — natural reaction," 
 said Langley maliciously ; " must be a great relief 
 to your mind ! But talking of boredom, Shaw, 
 I wonder you didn't take to gardening ? Elliott 
 would have given you a leg up, and Heseltine knows 
 any amount. So does my wife." 
 
 " And you ? " 
 
 '' Bone in my back." 
 
 " So've I. I pass for a strong man. I don't 
 mind doing a dozen miles at a stretch, and I 
 believe I could stand on a bridge almost as many 
 hours as Rhys, but when it comes to work there 
 isn't a rheumatic hedge-gardener of seventy-five 
 who couldn't beat me to smithereens." 
 
DEAD POS'-CAFENS 221 
 
 *' Because I can't push a lawn-mower my wife 
 draws the conclusion that I never earned my 
 pay." 
 
 " And my wife locks the beastly thing up for 
 fear I should use it. She says I'm a most powerful 
 man — and totally unfit for physical labour." 
 
 " Fact is, we've never done any in our lives." 
 
 '*• Never," agreed Heseltine. 
 
 " And for the most part we were so crowded 
 together that only men with sedentary tastes 
 could do anything at all. Many of us were like 
 Indians — able to suspend thought. Fellows who 
 couldn't do it drank, or quarrelled, or threw up 
 the sponge. O'Keefe, for instance " 
 
 " Have you heard the last news about him ? " 
 asked Shaw. 
 
 '' Gone to sea again ? " 
 
 " He'll pretty well have to if anyone will take 
 him. Commuted and bought a farm in Kent. No 
 water, and after three years of it he's bankrupt." 
 
 " Meanest trick the nation ever played on us was 
 that commutation business." 
 
 '' The Admiralty made him keep eighty pounds 
 a year." 
 
 '' That only proves their villainy. They know 
 we're fools over money matters, or why did they 
 put in that provision ? " 
 
 '' O'Keefe on eighty pounds a year ! " exclaimed 
 Heseltine, shaking his head mournfully. " And his 
 wife ? " 
 
222 SHIPMATES 
 
 ^' Dead, I'm thankful to say," replied Shaw 
 bitingly. 
 
 " Don't you think she'd rather be alive and 
 making things a bit smoother for him ? When a 
 man's unlucky you seem to think his wife has a 
 right to get out of it." 
 
 " Unlucky ! I call it a breach of contract to 
 have made away with his income. She married 
 him, knowing he was a poor man and always would 
 be, and she was quite content, but there's a long 
 gap between poverty and pauperism. If a naval 
 man's a pauper it's his own fault." 
 
 " You used to talk a good deal about being a 
 pauper yourself," objected Heseltine. 
 
 " I know I did, but one day Hobbes said to me : 
 ' My dear fellow, you talk of poverty, but what 
 do you know of it ? ' I told him a few things I'd 
 done, and done without, and he said : ' Look here, 
 let's tie you down to a definite point ; when's 
 the last time you wanted fifty pounds and didn't 
 know where to lay your hand on it ? ' I couldn't 
 tell him. ' Then,' he said, ' don't talk to me of 
 poverty.' " 
 
 '* You're an obstinate fellow, but your skull's 
 not entirely without thorough-faresomeness." 
 
 '' Live and learn ; live and learn." 
 
 " At our time of life it should be live and teach," 
 said Heseltine sententiously. Langley winked at 
 Shaw, but not in time to stop the vehement cry : 
 
 " Teach ! I'd much rather die than teach." 
 
DEAD POS'-CAP'ENS 223 
 
 " To judge from many of your expressions you 
 don't value life at a pin's fee. It's really very good 
 of you to live so long. Or are you like Bewley's 
 little girl, live ' because you can't help it ' ? Do you 
 remember her rounding on old Bewley, and saying : 
 ' Why was I born ? I never asked to be ? '" 
 
 '' I had to read the general thanksgiving a good 
 many hundred times on board ship, but I assure 
 you I have never joined in it on my own account." 
 
 " You remind me of what my wife said the other 
 day when we came out of church : ' I may have 
 prayed for a humble heart, but I don't want to 
 have it.' She was evidently afraid she might 
 receive one unless she explicitly disowned her 
 share in the petition." 
 
 " I've never honestly felt thankful for having 
 been created. I don't see how anyone can reason- 
 ably be expected to be thankful. Just think of 
 all the things that are going on in the world at this 
 moment. Think even of the things one has seen. 
 And done I " 
 
 Heseltine was taken aback; Langley gazed in 
 the air and quoted : 
 
 '* Lord God ! judge mildly Thou this man. 
 For by his will he ne'er began 
 The toilsome road through life's short span." 
 
 Shaw listened approvingly : 
 " There's more sense in that than in most 
 hymns. 'Tisn't in the Ancient and Modern, is it ? " 
 
224 SHIPMATES 
 
 Langley peered at him for a moment, hardly 
 believing he could be in earnest. 
 
 " Why on earth don't you ever read poetry ? " 
 
 " I can't endure it. What's the good of imagi- 
 nation ? " 
 
 '' Imagination ? Why, we live by it," said 
 Heseltine. " What we imagine is one half of our 
 life, and what we imagine other people imagine is 
 pretty nearly the second half. When I was a 
 young fellow serving abroad I used to get very few 
 letters ; postage was too serious an outlay for a 
 widow with a scattered family. I knew it was no 
 lack of affection on my mother's part, and that 
 she would always write if anything of conse- 
 quence happened, but when the mail came in, 
 and other fellows had letters and I had none, 
 my heart went down into my boots. Even if 
 there were only a bill I was satisfied ; it was 
 a letter, and other fellows could not see the 
 contents." 
 
 " My dear fellow," said Langley, " if you hadn't 
 an imagination I wouldn't advise you to get one ; 
 but to have an imagination like yours and starve 
 it all your life — well, it takes it out of you when 
 you retire." 
 
 '' I cannot understand your caring to associate 
 with soldiers," said Heseltine after a pause. " In 
 our day there was a good deal of enmity between 
 the army and the navy, and I do not even profess 
 to be free from prejudice. The mutual distrust 
 
DEAD POS'-CAP'ENS 225 
 
 must have been of old standing, for I once read a 
 novel of Fielding's in which a soldier on board ship 
 complains of being treated more like a prisoner of 
 war than a member of the sister-service." 
 
 " A soldier may be this, or he may be that," 
 said Shaw, " but you soon find that he is nearer 
 to you by a long chalk than any civilian. A few 
 months after I retired I was walking along a 
 country road and an old soldier overtook me, 
 and we began to talk. Presently he said : ' You 
 are an army man yourself ? ' ' No,' I said rather 
 indignantly. ' Well, the navy then. It's all the 
 same thing.' I didn't agree with him at the time, 
 but I soon found he was right. You can't under- 
 stand civilians' point of view. This is only a trifle, 
 but it will show you what I mean : A lady in this 
 place — ^her husband was a soldier, but she was the 
 daughter and granddaughter of naval men — ^had 
 to sell all her furniture and go abroad with her 
 husband. She was at home a few days before the 
 sale, and I went to call on her. There were seven 
 or eight people there, and among them a very rich 
 merchant whom she and her husband had known 
 for some years. The sale was mentioned, and he 
 said : ' There is one thing of yours that I have 
 always admired immensely, Mrs. Cross. So has 
 my wife, and I am coming to make a bid for it.' 
 
 " Quite naturally she wondered what she had 
 worth his envy, and said : ' Is there really ? Do 
 tell me what it is ! ' He pursed up his mouth and 
 
 p 
 
226 SHIPMATES 
 
 said : ' You must excuse my answering that 
 question.' After he had gone she said to her son, 
 a young undergraduate : ' What did he mean, and 
 why did you look so black ? ' Well, I told that 
 story to six or seven naval and military men, and 
 they were all nearly as slow of understanding as 
 she was." 
 
 Langley, having received so much assistance, 
 caught the point instantly, and looked on with 
 amusement at Heseltine's conscientious rumina- 
 tions, ending in his frequent, " I do not quite 
 follow." 
 
 " I doubt if there is a child in this road who 
 wouldn't have seen at once that the old scoundrel 
 meant : If I tell you what it is I want to buy you'll 
 tell the auctioneer, and he'll run the price up for 
 his profit and yours." 
 
 Heseltine looked scandalised, and replied with 
 unusual haste and decision: "Nothing would in- 
 duce me to live in such a place ! " 
 
 " I think you'd better clear out of it, Shaw. 
 Heseltine evidently thinks you're not too old a 
 dog to learn new tricks, and you've often told me 
 that he's a man whose judgment can be relied on.'' 
 
XL CHANGES AND CHANGES 
 
 Ships and men — Parsons* sons — Discipline — Wine bills — Cooking 
 — Smoking — Fancy ratings — Uniform — Born sailors — Changes 
 in physique — Pay and allowances — A practical reduction — 
 ^^ Jolly sailors'* — Patronage— Courts-martial — The shadow of 
 death 
 
 " r I UMES are changed," said Shaw. 
 
 I '^ Times always changed as fast as they 
 
 could," replied Langley with equal truth. 
 
 " When I look at a modern vessel I say to myself, 
 
 ^ Poor old Nelson ! He'd be quite as much out of 
 
 it as I am.' " 
 
 Shaw was staying with him for a couple of days, 
 and they were both spending the evening with 
 Franks. He was considerably their senior and had 
 no sons, and the conversation had almost inevitably 
 turned to bygone days in the navy, while the 
 presence of Warren, his civilian brother-in-law, 
 encouraged them to repeat old yarns which they 
 might otherwise have spared one another from 
 hearing, although it is by no means certain that 
 they would have refrained. In some moods it 
 might be an intolerable bore to listen to thrice-told 
 tales and reminiscences which were of the nature 
 of common property, or even to relate them 
 
 227 
 
228 SHIPMATES 
 
 oneself, but in others it was quite as acceptable an 
 amusement as the occasional repetition of a well- 
 known air. 
 
 '* Newspapers," said Warren, " are never tired of 
 telling us that the greatest change that has taken 
 place in the navy is that formerly most of the 
 money was spent on the personnel, and now it goes 
 on the materiel Very ugly material it is, too. 
 A man-of-war was a glorious sight." 
 
 " I used to think so," agreed Shaw, " but really 
 when I had a look in at some of the building-slips 
 yesterday, and then went on to the Extension and 
 looked at some of the old vessels, it struck me that 
 they were all equally ugly — ^the whole box and 
 dice of them." 
 
 " Ah ! but a ship half out of water and with no 
 sails " 
 
 " The truth is," said Franks, " that when you 
 are once out of it all you think more of the men 
 you knew than of the ships they served in. You 
 compare the men of different periods rather than 
 the vessels. The education of naval officers and 
 their daily life have changed in so many ways 
 that their character is bound to be affected. Even 
 the varying age at entry made inequalities and 
 diversities which had widespread results. You 
 might be nine or nineteen or nine-and-twenty. 
 
 " Hobbes' uncle was at the battle of Trafalgar, 
 but for a long time after that he was made attend 
 a kind of dame-school whenever his ship was in 
 
CHANGES AND CHANCES 229 
 
 port. He wore uniform and bragged outrageously, 
 and spent most of his time drawing pictures of the 
 engagement. I saw him when he was over seventy, 
 and he was still doing it, although in the meantime 
 he had spent forty-five years in the army. He 
 left the navy at seventeen. Stamper's eldest 
 brother had his head knocked off by a cannon-ball 
 when he was barely nine — the first-lieutenant had 
 taken him aboard as an act of charity to his parents, 
 who were in very low water at the time." 
 
 " He was taken off their hands with a ven- 
 geance ! " said Shaw. " I knew one man who was 
 brought in from the merchant service when he 
 
 was close on forty-three to please the King of . 
 
 Why it should have pleased him or anyone else 
 I can't imagine, but that is nothing to the point. 
 Three fellows were told oft to examine him. They 
 received such a very broad hint that he was to 
 pass whatever happened that it put their monkey 
 up, and they determined that even if the ex- 
 amination was a farce it should be a decent farce. 
 That is to say, they were willing to confine them- 
 selves to questions he could answer — to begin 
 with, they knew that he had never served in a 
 square-rigged vessel in his life — but they drew the 
 line at getting wrong answers and then signing a 
 paper to say they had had right ones. They were 
 in correspondence with the Admiralty for weeks 
 as to the form the examination was to take, and 
 extorted three contradictory sets of instructions. 
 
230 SHIPMATES 
 
 When they were tired of the game they got private 
 information and drew up their own paper, and he 
 just managed to fill it in. After a decent interval 
 he was put in a hulk on a mud-bank and left there. 
 Of course there were heaps of men in the merchant 
 service who had had a good professional educa- 
 tion, but he wasn't among them. If he had been, 
 in those days he would have been in too good 
 a position financially to be eager to throw it up 
 for no certainty but a few shillings a day half -pay. 
 As to his scientific and literary education, few of 
 us could afford to throw stones." 
 
 " The frequent interchange between the navy 
 and the merchant service appears to have almost 
 entirely ceased," said Warren. " It seems a loss 
 to outsiders like myself, but I suppose it is the 
 necessary result of higher organisation, specialisa- 
 tion, or whatever one should call it." 
 
 '' At the present day it never answers to bring 
 a man in from the merchant service unless he is 
 quite young," said Langley, " and hardly then if 
 he has no connexions in the navy. Discipline is 
 utterly different, and it's absurdly difficult for them 
 to pick up their bearings socially. Only the other 
 day a man was qualifying for the naval reserve by 
 doing a year's time as a lieutenant. Everyone 
 wanted to be civil to him, and soon after he joined 
 the paymaster asked him to go ashore with him 
 and have a game of tennis. He actually went to 
 one of the lieutenants and asked in all good earnest 
 
CHANGES AND CHANCES 231 
 
 if it was ' correct ' for him to play tennis with a 
 paymaster I In the merchant service the pursers 
 have no position at all, and he hadn't the faintest 
 idea that naval paymasters are much more often 
 than not the sons and fathers and brothers and 
 cousins of the executive." 
 
 *' And how does it answer the other way round ? " 
 asked Warren. 
 
 '' Worse, far worse. A naval man is hopelessly 
 at sea on a merchant vessel. It is rarely worth 
 while for them to try it except as captains of 
 passenger ships, and even then they make rather 
 a hash of it." 
 
 " Strictly speaking, I came in through the mer- 
 chant service myself," said Shaw, " but even in 
 those days I don't think it ever answered unless, 
 as Langley says, you were quite young and knew 
 the ropes in addition. On both sides I belonged 
 to a backbone-of-the-navy family. The men on 
 my mother's side had served to my knowledge 
 from the time of Charles the Second. My parents 
 were young and had heaps of children. I was 
 the eldest son, and when I was about eight my 
 father took me to see an old admiral. He said I 
 was a pretty boy, set me on his knee, and asked 
 what I was going to be. I said — it's all nonsense, 
 you know, about cheeky youngsters being a 
 modern invention — ' I want to go into the navy, 
 but not as a midshipman. I want to begin as a 
 lieutenant.' The old man laughed, and my name 
 
232 SHIPMATES 
 
 was put on a ship's books at once, and my father 
 drew pay for me until I went away to school. 
 Once during the holidays I started on a cruise in 
 a very small vessel, but we were wrecked on the 
 coast of Ireland, and some hotel-keeper's wife came 
 down to the beach and took possession of me and 
 kept me until I was claimed. I should know the 
 place now if I saw it. She nearly killed me with 
 overfeeding. I think it's sheer waste being a 
 pretty boy — ^makes you expect too much of the 
 world when you grow up. 
 
 " When I was fifteen my father died, and my 
 poor mother didn't wish me to go to sea. She 
 wanted me to be a doctor. I ran away to Liver- 
 pool, and shipped myself on a vessel going to 
 Odessa. Five years later I was out in China, 
 third mate of a big merchant ship. One day I navi- 
 gated her up a river where a vessel of that size had 
 never gone before. We had no chart, not even of 
 the roughest description. The skipper was a man 
 who was always boasting or swearing or drinking 
 or saying his prayers. On this occasion he boasted 
 no end, and said he could do it again with the big- 
 gest vessel ever launched, though as a matter of 
 fact he had been drunk in his cabin all the time. 
 Well, the commodore of the station heard of it, 
 and sent for him to take up six men-of-war, as 
 there was a disturbance in the place and he wanted 
 to make a demonstration. The skipper was in a 
 most awful funk : he knew he could not do it, and 
 
CHANGES AND CHANCES 233 
 
 he knew I must have done it more by good luck 
 than good management, but he hadn't the face 
 to refuse. He went aboard the flag-ship and took 
 me with him. The captain was mortified enough 
 that any man should come, but when he saw me 
 — I was tall, but at that time looked younger than 
 I was — ^he asked what in thunder I'd come for. 
 The skipper mumbled out something, and the 
 captain turned on his heel. The navigating- 
 officer thought the skipper had been uncivilly 
 treated, and asked him to come down and have 
 a drink. That settled the matter : he returned 
 looking wise as an owl, but quite speechless. He 
 couldn't have given an order to save his life. 
 The captain recovered his temper, and said : 
 ' Take Saul below, and let us see what David 
 can do.' I set my teeth and said to myself : 
 ' If they do run aground, it's only mud.' I 
 led the way, the rest followed as closely as they 
 could, and all six were anchored before night- 
 fall. The commodore sent for me; I explained 
 how matters stood, and was allowed to re- 
 enter." 
 
 " Hickes was another who came in through the 
 merchant service," said Langley, " but it was rather 
 before your time. His father was a country clergy- 
 man, and he went to sea at ten years of age. His 
 mother and aunts knew so little of the business 
 that they made him six dozen white shirts, which 
 he popped for ginger-beer before they crossed the 
 
234 SHIPMATES 
 
 line. A few months later he was out in South 
 America. The crew mutinied, and they were all 
 lodged in gaol. He was such a shrimp of a fellow 
 that he wriggled through a drain-pipe and escaped, 
 and no one troubled to look for him. He got work 
 in a stable belonging to an hotel, and I suppose one 
 of the guests picked him out. He was always the 
 sort of fellow you would have noticed, more 
 especially in rags." 
 
 " Parsons never understand anything about life 
 at sea," said Shaw. " When I was about five-and- 
 thirty I was going up to Liverpool, and one of them 
 asked me to take his son with me and introduce 
 him to the merchant skipper he was to sail with. 
 He was a smart, handsome little fellow, got up like 
 a stage-midshipman. I took him aboard ; we both 
 had lunch with the captain, and I left. Six months 
 later, on the other side of the world, we entered the 
 same port, and the skipper asked me to dinner. I 
 thought I ought to go, just to see how the boy was 
 getting on. A very grubby-looking lad waited 
 on us, and stuck both his thumbs in my soup. 
 One I was hardened to, as it was before the days of 
 white-gloved mess-servants, every day of the week. 
 Each time I looked at him he grinned. I felt rather 
 annoyed, but I thought perhaps he had been given 
 the job because he wasn't quite all there. After 
 dinner we had a smoke, and I said : ' How's that 
 young South getting on ? I ought to have a 
 look at him before I go.' The skipper burst out 
 
CHANGES AND CHANCES 235 
 
 laughing: 'Didn't you see him? No more cats 
 here than can catch mice.' " 
 
 " I have heard that parsons' sons always made 
 the best or the worst sailors," said Warren ; '' they 
 have no idea of discipline." 
 
 " There's for you, Langley ! " cried Shaw with 
 mischievous satisfaction. 
 
 " Sometimes it's a good thing they haven't. 
 Good for other people. Breaks up a bad tradition." 
 
 '' So it does," said Franks, anxious to restore the 
 peace that his brother-in-law had unwittingly dis- 
 turbed. '' I recollect that the first-lieutenant of a 
 ship I was in ordered a midshipman, the son of a 
 canon, to stand out on the bitts as a punishment. 
 He said it was ' most derogatory,' and refused. 
 The first-lieutenant reported him to the captain, 
 who sent for him and called him, among other 
 things, a young blackguard. He said : ' And you, 
 sir, are a liar.' He was sent home for their Lord- 
 ships' disposal, but he was the last midshipman 
 who ever received such an order." 
 
 " I own that we did not take kindly to the one 
 great law : Obey orders first and complain after- 
 wards. It is rather a cunning doctrine, as after 
 you have obeyed them it hardly ever seems worth 
 while to enter a protest." 
 
 " People talk of the marvellous discipline that 
 used to be maintained on a man-of-war," said 
 Franks, " but to tell the truth there was mighty 
 little that would pass for discipline at the present 
 
236 SHIPMATES 
 
 day. The men were kept in order by main force, 
 modified by tact. If the tact ran short there was 
 a mutiny. I saw three before I had been in the 
 service any time at all. I don't mean that the 
 whole ship's company mutinied en masse^ but so 
 many of them were implicated that if we had not 
 had marines at our backs with loaded muskets, 
 it is difficult to say what the end would have 
 been." 
 
 " When I joined," said Shaw, " the drunkenness 
 among the officers was quite enough to prevent 
 any steady control of the men. On board my 
 first ship three of the wardroom officers were more 
 often drunk than sober, and the captain was worse 
 than any one of them. Up to the time I was quite 
 a middle-aged man it was rare to find a ship where 
 at least one of the principal officers was not a 
 heavy drinker and a perpetual nuisance to the 
 mess, and there would be three or four who occa- 
 sionally took too much. Even ashore I have seen 
 officers in uniform, half -seas over, rolling about like 
 an old seventy-four in a gale of wind. I remember 
 two brothers, one in the army and one in the navy, 
 who used to stagger down Portsmouth High Street 
 arm-in-arm, in full uniform, and so drunk that if 
 they had let go of one another for a moment they 
 would have fallen flat on the pavement." 
 
 " In those days sobriety was a positive virtue," 
 said Franks. " Any man who possessed it was 
 almost certain to rise." 
 
CHANGES AND CHANCES 237 
 
 " And now it's a mere negation ; if you're not 
 sober, out you go." 
 
 " Even the stupidity engendered by the ' little 
 too much ' constantly repeated is not tolerated, 
 and the distinction between being drunk and 
 being drunk on duty is practically lost, and quite 
 right, too. Potentially a man must always be 
 on duty." 
 
 " And a sharp look-out is kept on the wine bills," 
 said Langley, " but it does not work with absolute 
 fairness. No hard-and-fast system ever could. 
 In my day wine bills to a great extent were bills 
 for wine, and now they seldom are." 
 
 " I don't know that men are any more sober at 
 heart now than they were then," said Franks. 
 " The monotony and the bad food and bad water 
 were responsible for most of the drinking. The 
 second day out from port we were on weevilly 
 biscuit. There are men still living who have never 
 lost the trick of turning biscuit round and round 
 between the finger and thumb of their left hand 
 and tapping it on the cloth." 
 
 '' I have seen some of them do it with a piece 
 of bread when they went to a Company dinner 
 in London to return thanks for the navy," said 
 Warren. 
 
 " And to this hour if there are two water- 
 bottles on the table I don't help myself from the 
 nearest — I feel compelled to have it from the 
 fullest." 
 
238 SHIPMATES 
 
 " So do I," agreed both his younger messmates, 
 and Langley added : 
 
 " A teetotaller could hardly have lived : even 
 seven-water grog killed the visible insects and 
 made them sink to the bottom of the glass. My 
 wine bills averaged thirty pounds a year for 
 thirty years, and I only just escaped being looked 
 on as a ridiculously abstemious man." 
 
 " How about the cooking and the serving and 
 all that kind of thing ? " asked Warren, who knew 
 that he was regarded by the ascetic Franks as 
 something of a gourmet, even if not a gourmand, 
 but was in no way affected by his opinion. 
 
 " The serving didn't add to the attractiveness 
 of the cooking," said Shaw, always as fastidious as 
 was possible for a healthy man in hard training. 
 *' There are lots of fellows left still who can hardly 
 endure to pour anything into a tumbler until 
 they have held it up to the light. I often do it 
 myself when my thoughts wander, and it used to 
 be said that you could detect a naval man any- 
 where, because he gave his plate a violent push 
 with his thumb when he wanted it changed. It 
 was the established signal. Even if there were 
 so many men that they were tumbling over one 
 another behind your chair, you hardly ever got 
 anything till you asked for it." 
 
 " The first place where I ever saw any decent 
 waiting at mess was in China," said Langley. 
 " With Oriental servants it is a point of honour 
 
CHANGES AND CHANCES 239 
 
 that you shall never miss them — ^they always 
 instruct their successors. If the whole of them 
 left after lunch, the set who brought in afternoon- 
 tea knew which of us took sugar, and how much. 
 Of course they had their own idea of discipline. 
 If they wanted leave they never dreamed of asking 
 for it : you had a substitute, and what more could 
 you want ? And most likely you never noticed 
 it. My son tells me that they try it on even in the 
 engine-room, but their old engineer has had to 
 deal with a great many of them ; and when you are 
 once accustomed to Chinamen they are no more 
 alike than sheep or babies. One day he pounced 
 on a man : ' You are not Li-Ho.' ' No,' said the 
 fellow calmly, ' Li -Ho belly him father.' " 
 
 '' Warren asks about the cooking," said Franks ; 
 " how do you think he would have liked it, Shaw ? " 
 
 '' I don't know where the cooks came from : I 
 know where they were often sent ! I recollect 
 one very practical course of instruction. There 
 was a general outcry against the peasoup. The 
 captain tasted it, and then put a sentry over the 
 cook until he had eaten it all. And for weeks 
 and months at a stretch what was there to cook ? 
 The beef and pork-junk was as salt as fire. When 
 fresh water could not be spared to soak it out, I 
 have seen meat tied to a line and towed for miles 
 in the wake of the vessel. How could men have 
 lived without drinking more than they do now ? 
 On the other hand, smoking was a much less 
 
240 SHIPMATES 
 
 general practice. When I was about three-and- 
 twenty I thought it time to begin, and pictured 
 the dehghts of coming off watch on a cold night 
 and falling asleep with a pipe in my mouth. We 
 happened to be at Havana soon after, and I 
 bought ten thousand cigars. I found that each 
 cigar meant two glasses of brandy and water, 
 and neither my health nor my pocket would 
 stand it. Franks took a lot of them off my hands ; 
 he used to be considered a regular furnace. What 
 made you gave it up ? " 
 
 Franks seemed unwilling to reply, but Langley 
 struck in : 
 
 " I recollect the very day he gave it up. He was 
 sitting opposite a fellow who had already had too 
 much and ordered another glass. Franks remon- 
 strated, and he leant across the table and rapped 
 the bowl of his pipe : ' Thash your way o' takin' 
 too much.' Franks finished his pipe and laid it 
 down, and said : ' I'll never smoke another.' And 
 he never did. It was a real self-denying ordinance, 
 and of course the other fellow came to grief all 
 the same " 
 
 A look of pain was added to Franks' embarrass- 
 ment, and Shaw hastened to change the subject. 
 
 " Harking back to what Franks was saying 
 about the different age at entry, this will just show 
 you, Warren, how things have changed. A few 
 days after my wife's father died I attended the 
 First Lord's levee — a thing that came to an end 
 
CHANGES AND CHANCES 241 
 
 long since — and I stood behind two old men whose 
 chests were hardly wide enough for all their 
 decorations, and one said to the other : ' So poor 
 old John Cory is gone ? Well, well, well, what 
 changes and chances there are in the service! 
 Yes, yes, yes. He entered as the pet midshipman 
 of a man with more interest than any three men 
 you could name. I entered as a schoolmaster. 
 Heaven only knows what you entered as. And 
 yet here are we both admirals, and he's died an 
 old coastguard-lieutenant.' Men used to take any 
 rating they could get in those days, and then hold 
 on till some vacancy occurred, and you can't draw 
 any sure conclusion as to what their social position 
 really was. I knew a man who might be living 
 now as far as age is concerned, and he entered 
 as captain's-coxswain to his own father." 
 
 " Changes and chances seems the best way of 
 describing arrangements of that kind," said 
 Warren. " One more trifling change that has 
 struck me very much, visiting my brother-in-law 
 at long intervals, is that at the present day one 
 rarely sees a naval uniform worn except under 
 compulsion." 
 
 '' I recollect that my wife's father went to 
 church every Sunday adorned with a cocked-hat, 
 epaulettes, and sword. I think I wore out one 
 cocked-hat myself, but there are men now who 
 have hardly had one on their heads except on the 
 west coast of Africa. A young relative of mine was 
 
 Q 
 
242 SHIPMATES 
 
 out there, and a black servant shut his up with a 
 cheese in a tin case; but three days after he had 
 to land to call on a Governor, so not much harm 
 was done. Anywhere else the hat and the cheese 
 might have fought it out together for weeks. I 
 remember the last time I ever wore uniform 
 except on duty. My ship came in unexpectedly, 
 and I went home for a few hours without stopping 
 to change. My young sister-in-law made me take 
 her to hear a celebrated preacher who was causing a 
 good bit of excitement locally by prophesying that 
 the end of the world would take place in eleven 
 weeks. There was an awful crowd, and we had to 
 sit in the gallery. Towards the end she said she felt 
 faint, and I had to lead her out among whispers of 
 ' Buttons is clearing out before the collection ! ' 
 I felt rather savage, and when an old lady stopped 
 us in the road and asked if I believed the date had 
 been exactly calculated, I said : ' All I can tell you 
 is, that the preacher has just bought the remainder 
 of a ninety-nine years' lease from the father of a 
 messmate of mine, and he showed it to him signed, 
 sealed, and delivered. There are forty-seven years 
 to run, and the man paid the full market value.' " 
 " The last time I wore it was at Woolwich 
 Arsenal station," said Langley. " I was standing 
 on the platform waiting for someone, and a train 
 was just starting. Almost at the last moment a 
 major in the Royal Engineers jumped in, and then 
 turned on me and said, ' Why the devil don't you 
 
CHANGES AND CHANCES 243 
 
 shut the door ? ' I said, ' Why the devil should 
 I ? ' It was a mere question on my part ; at the 
 moment I couldn't conceive why he expected me to 
 do it. I suppose he did it himself when he recovered 
 the shock, but as long as the train was in sight the 
 door was flapping." 
 
 '' A few years later that kind of thing was always 
 happening at railway stations," said Shaw. " I 
 recollect a fat, fussy, four-stripe Engineer who had 
 to go a dozen miles by rail occasionally with 
 Blissett to attend courts -martial, and all the old 
 country-women going home from market would 
 mob him on the platform and ask if the next train 
 was theirs, and if it stopped at every station. He 
 used to get awfully mad over it. They treated 
 Blissett in the same way, but he didn't care a hang. 
 He tucked his sword under his arm and hob- 
 nobbed with the old souls until the station-master 
 came and saved them from his misdirections, and 
 locked him into his carriage, and told the guard to 
 put him out at the right station. He always lost 
 his bearings on shore. Naturally when there was 
 so much continuous sea service men got more 
 completely out of the run of things than they do 
 now. I remember when I came back from China 
 after seven years' absence and I wanted to go 
 from Portsmouth to Plymouth. It was the first 
 time in my life that I had even been inside a rail- 
 way station. I asked the fellow for a ticket, and he 
 said : ' First, second, or third ? ' Well, I thought 
 
244 SHIPMATES 
 
 trains were like coaches, and that you paid for 
 speed. I had none too much money to spare, but 
 of course I was in a hurry to get home, so I said 
 ' First.' Imagine my disgust when I found that 
 all three classes went in the same train ! " 
 
 " Even boys won't wear uniform now except 
 in a naval port," said Langley. " When Blissett's 
 son was on the Britannia he tried to make him 
 stick to it in the holidays, because the boy was 
 growing rapidly and he thought it waste to buy 
 plain clothes just for a few weeks. Besides, he 
 was a beautiful boy, and his mother thought it 
 ' suited him so well.' One day she sent him to a 
 friend's house with a message. The mistress was 
 out, and the housemaid, after hearing what he had 
 to say, bawled down the kitchen stairs : ' Cook ! 
 Mrs. Blissett's sent her Buttons to ast — ' He 
 was a sweet-tempered little chap, but hardly old 
 enough at the moment to feel amused, and 
 Blissett had to give in." 
 
 " That lad was about the last born sailor I ever 
 saw," said Shaw. '' At thirteen he could bring a 
 boat alongside as smartly as if he had been double 
 the age, and at fifteen he had as good an idea of 
 taking care of his ship as any man aboard. I don't 
 call a man a born sailor if he has no love for his 
 ship, and that kind of thing is quite out of date. 
 Only the other day a young relative of mine was 
 given a command, and what do you suppose was the 
 first thing he did ? Made out a list of seventeen 
 
CHANGES AND CHANCES 245 
 
 ' radical defects ' and got the admiral to forward 
 it ! In my day a man would as soon have done 
 such a thing to the wife he had married as the 
 ship he commanded. And the first, too ! Why even 
 Langley — I recollect a fellow was given a command, 
 and Langley called it an unsea worthy, rat-forsaken, 
 rotten old tub. Well, for some reason or other the 
 appointment was cancelled and the ship was given 
 to Langley, and he spent two of the best years of 
 his life trying to prove that she was faultless if 
 properly handled." 
 
 " So she was," said Langley obstinately. " See 
 her rise to a wave ! " 
 
 Shaw refused to be diverted from his course by 
 the interruption, and finished the yarn as coolly 
 as if Langley were invisible. 
 
 " Years afterwards she was dug out of the 
 Extension for some temporary purpose, and a 
 cousin of Hobbes had her, and Langley went out to 
 Spithead to see her sail, but there was a capful of 
 wind, and the fellow refused to leave his moorings. 
 An hour or two later Langley was walking along 
 the Hard in a fearful rage and met the man's 
 wife. She rushed up to him, and said : ' Oh, I 
 hope Herbert has not gone out in this frightful 
 weather ? ' ' No, no, don't be anxious — ' ' And 
 in that awful old ship.' Langley's temper got 
 the better of him, and he shouted : ' He isn't gone, 
 and he's the only man in the service who would 
 have refused.' " 
 
246 SHIPMATES 
 
 " So he was," said Langley, still unrepentant. 
 *' His wife said she would never speak to me again, 
 I only wish she hadn't, but she insisted on forgiving 
 me. A most wearisome woman." 
 
 '' I think we could have borne with a little more 
 of that kind spirit in the old days," said Franks. 
 " There was stufi enough in that incident for a 
 dozen service quarrels. When one looks back on 
 it all I think what strikes one most is the childish 
 absurdity of many of the quarrels. I remember 
 one day the captain's dog snarled at a boy, and 
 the boy kicked it. The captain's cook kicked 
 the boy. The boatswain roared, ' Isn't a boy 
 worth more than a dog ? ' and kicked the cook. 
 What happened next I don't know, but a few 
 minutes later the doctor kicked the paymaster. 
 No one took Ms part, so he kicked the doctor, 
 and luckily that ended the business.' " 
 
 '' I should think that the real root of the matter 
 was the bad cooking," said Warren. " With three 
 good meals a day seven days a week I have 
 passed for a good-tempered man, but I believe 
 I should have been murderous on salt-junk and 
 spirits and putrid water and weevilly biscuit." 
 
 " No doubt the appalling tempers that men used 
 to have, and the way they brooded over grievances, 
 arose chiefly from the physical hardships of the 
 life. I believe that most of poor Byam's cranki- 
 ness dated from that awful time when pretty 
 nearly half the ship's company died of yellow 
 
CHANGES AND CHANCES 247 
 
 fever, and half of the remainder were unfit for 
 duty. If he had been through a six-weeks' siege, 
 with the enemy picking off the garrison day and 
 night, and never able to get a shot in in return, 
 people would have remembered it all his life, and 
 made some allowance for him." 
 
 '" What I found so exasperating was his detailed 
 inaccuracy," said Langley. " Of course I can see 
 now that his brain must have been a bit touched. 
 I remember saying to you once, ' I can't stand 
 the fellow. He's such a confounded liar,' and 
 you said : ' No, no ; he's truthful enough. We all 
 have selective memories.' It was a bullet that 
 found its billet." 
 
 " I don't think I can have meant the shot for 
 you. I must have been speaking in a general 
 way." 
 
 *' Do you think the average physique of the 
 men has altered much ? " asked Warren, his 
 thoughts still dwelling on the vital matter of diet. 
 
 " I think the men have altered more with regard 
 to height than in any other respect," replied his 
 brother-in-law. " Family measure I was ' nearly 
 six feet,' Government measure just a hair's-breadth 
 short of five-foot-ten, and I assure you that very 
 few of my contemporaries could look down on 
 me. Five-foot-eight or nine was considered 
 a very fair height, and I had several messmates 
 who barely turned five feet. I don't know that 
 the life had stunted them ; it may simply have 
 
248 SHIPMATES 
 
 been that they entered when they were so young 
 that no one knew how they would shape." 
 
 " It was the same in the Marines," said Langley. 
 " I was shipmates with one who entered when he 
 was fifteen and very small for his age, and never 
 grew — except in girth. He couldn't keep step, 
 had to slip in five strides to other men's three; 
 but he got on well enough until he became a field- 
 officer, and then he couldn't be let mount a horse 
 in view of his regiment. He had to be hoisted 
 on somewhere out of sight. One day at a general 
 inspection he was thrown, and although he was 
 quite unhurt he couldn't manage to scramble up 
 again, and they made him retire." 
 
 '' It's just as awkward to be bigger than your 
 messmates," said Shaw. " I'm no height at all 
 compared with the youngsters I see knocking about 
 the place now, but I've often served on ships 
 where I could only stand upright between the 
 beams. The most unhappy shipmate I ever had 
 was six-foot-two. We were out in Borneo and 
 there was a military expedition, and he was ordered 
 to go on boat-duty up a river. He went to the 
 captain and remonstrated : ' Consider my length, 
 sir. Boats are built to suit men half a foot or 
 more shorter than I am. I shall be a misery to 
 myself and a nuisance to everyone.' The captain 
 said : ' You'll go, or you'll go home ! ' — and he 
 went home. I took his place. Three weeks in 
 an open boat : ague by night, sunstroke by day. 
 
CHANGES AND CHANCES 249 
 
 The only fighting men we saw were wasps. The 
 river was so narrow that often our oars disturbed 
 a nest. At first we fought them wildly, but we 
 soon learnt that the only thing to be done was 
 to throw ourselves flat on our faces till the excite- 
 ment was over." 
 
 " No fighting at all ? " asked Warren. 
 
 " We burnt a little powder when we got to our 
 journey's end, but not much. The fellows only 
 wanted to run away, and we let 'em do it. In 
 businesses of that kind what you really have to 
 be on the look-out for is fever. It bowled a great 
 many of our men over, and we lost several after 
 we got back — the strongest among them, too." 
 
 " In the matter of physique I wonder if we have 
 gone as much ahead as some people would have 
 us believe ? " said Franks. " Up to a certain 
 point health and strength are one and the same 
 thing, but not beyond it. The crux is to raise 
 that point. Men are healthier than they used to 
 be, but I doubt if they are as strong. How many 
 of them could endure the old conditions of life on 
 board ship, even for a few weeks, and if it were 
 a matter of sheer necessity ? The smell of the 
 lower decks in the morning was unforgettable, 
 even when you had smelt a slaver and the opening 
 of the ice-house on a West India mail-packet." 
 
 "Or a ragged school on a wet day," suggested 
 Langley, who had sometimes been drawn into 
 works of charity by his wife. 
 
250 SHIPMATES 
 
 '' I remember a case in point," said Warren. 
 " A cousin of mine, a colonel in the Indian army, 
 told me that he saw a regiment of soldiers brought 
 home from India on board an ordinary man-of- 
 war which already had her full complement. The 
 voyage, for some reason or other, lasted half as 
 long again as usual, and those unlucky fellows 
 only once had their clothes oft. Matters were 
 getting rather desperate, and the captain put the 
 ship about and had sails lowered into the water 
 to keep the sharks off, and they all had a bathe. 
 And in spite of all that there were no deaths, and 
 only the usual amount of sickness. It seems to 
 me that nothing would ever pay men for enduring 
 things like that — I mean even the men who had 
 the best accommodation in the ship." 
 
 '' No one ever tried to pay us," said Langley 
 drily. ^' Taking it all through, we had about half 
 what men get now. Pay and retirements and so 
 forth are on a much more liberal scale than they 
 were. I can remember heaps of old admirals, 
 mostly bachelors, who had only £300 a year. It 
 is true that it was not always substantive rank, 
 many of them had not served since they were 
 commanders, and not much then." 
 
 "• Regular pay is higher," agreed Shaw, " but 
 then other gains and allowances are practically 
 stopped. When I was on the west coast of Africa 
 my prize-money for the eighteen months exactly 
 equalled my pay, and if I had been in command 
 
CHANGES AND CHANCES 251 
 
 it would have far exceeded it. I did happen to see 
 a prize-Hst the other day. The single shares were 
 worth one penny ; I forget how many shares would 
 have fallen to a lieutenant, but about enough to 
 pay for a whisky-and-soda. In the first China 
 war, although I was quite a youngster I was given 
 £40 batta-money, an allowance meant to cover 
 damage to uniform. In the second, though natur- 
 ally I held a much more important post, my share 
 was £16. Of course to pick up much money you 
 had to be in command. I brought home treasure 
 once, a few bars of gold that I had nailed under 
 my wash-stand, and that never cost me a second 
 thought, and I was given nearly £200 for my 
 trouble. Another time I was second in command 
 with two million dollars in silver on board, a 
 most awful responsibility, and I never had a 
 penny." 
 
 '' But then incalculable expenses have stopped 
 also," said Franks. " They were a heavy trial to 
 a man like myself, who not only had to live on his 
 pay but a long way within it. On joining a mess 
 I nearly always had to pay about £30, and on 
 leaving it I thought myself lucky if I got £8 ; and 
 if one was in and out of a good many ships the loss 
 came to something considerable. Then, although 
 the nominal charge for messing was almost as firmly 
 fixed as it is now, there was much less supervision. 
 Three times within a year I have known a mess 
 meeting called, and the caterer announced that 
 
252 SHIPMATES 
 
 the mess was in debt, and each time we had 
 to pay up six or eight pounds per head." 
 
 " What amounts to a practical reduction of 
 income," said Langley, " is the increased cost of 
 setting your sons out in the world. Until within 
 the last few years any ordinary boy of thirteen 
 or fourteen could pass into the navy straight from 
 any ordinary school, and after that you might 
 safely calculate that he would not want more than 
 a thousand pounds from you. At a pinch it might 
 be done for seven or eight hundred, and if money 
 was scarce, or if you could not get a nomination 
 in time, there was always the navigating branch. 
 If you wanted to make him a doctor, which was 
 usually the second choice of a father who had 
 very little beyond his pay, he began at sixteen ; and 
 if he took his degree in Edinburgh or Dublin, after 
 studying in London, you could have him in the 
 navy or the army and quite off your hands by the 
 time he was twenty-two." 
 
 " It certainly used to be a great deal easier for 
 widows in the old days," said Shaw. '' I knew one 
 who was left with a young son and hardly anything 
 but her pension. She went to a post-captain, an 
 old friend of her husband, and asked him to take 
 her boy as a clerk's assistant. He said he had no 
 vacancy except for a naval cadet, but he would be 
 glad to let the boy have it. The poor woman said 
 she was much obliged, but it was far beyond her 
 means. He said : ' In point of fact everything is 
 
CHANGES AND CHANCES 253 
 
 beyond your means, and you may as well be hung 
 for a sheep as a lamb. Beat a drum, and go round 
 and tell all your relatives that the nomination is 
 yours if they will guarantee even £40 a year. 
 You'll find they'll give it like a shot to put him 
 in the executive, although they won't spend a 
 farthing to make him a purser.' She followed his 
 advice, and the boy became an admiral." 
 
 " The accountant line used to cost almost 
 nothing," said Langley. " It was the usual resource 
 of widows, or a makeshift for a third or fourth son. 
 I don't know what it used to cost to make a man 
 an engineer ; none of my messmates ever did it. 
 They remembered the days when engineers messed 
 apart till they were quite middle-aged men, and 
 the young ones blacked the boots of the old ones. 
 Prejudices like that die hard. They were a rough 
 set, especially those who married early in life, 
 when they had a very limited choice, though a 
 percentage of them were as good as any you can 
 find now, look where you may. The days are not 
 so very far back when if you had a chief -engineer 
 who could pass muster and did not drink to excess, 
 and a doctor with a London degree, and a chaplain 
 who had seen a university even through the wrong 
 end of a spy-glass, you thought yourself blessed 
 above all the rest of the fleet." 
 
 " Everyone was rougher," said Franks. " If 
 some of the old admirals that I can remember 
 were to reappear, even the most harmless part of 
 
254 SHIPMATES 
 
 their manners would create vast astonishment. 
 1 recollect a commander-in-chief who only ate 
 twice a day — and it was a fearful sight. When 
 you thought he must have finished dinner, he 
 broke up a half-quartern loaf and munched it 
 like a horse." 
 
 " And it was cheaper to put a boy into the army, 
 too. Clever lads passed in without any special 
 preparation, and it was an understood thing that 
 you gave them an allowance for eight or ten years, 
 and then they must stand on their own feet. Only 
 very exceptional men can do it now." 
 
 " The navy was rather a close borough," said 
 Franks. " Just a percentage belonged to the titled 
 classes and hoped to swoop off all the prizes, and 
 most of the rest belonged to naval families in 
 their third or fourth or fifth generation. There was 
 a general belief that sailors' sons made the best 
 sailors, and therefore naval officers should be 
 encouraged to let their sons follow them." 
 
 " I never wholly accepted the doctrine," said 
 Shaw. '^ Sailors' sons settled down to the life more 
 readily and with less wastage, but, as far as my 
 personal experience goes, all the men who really 
 left their mark came in from outside and had no 
 previous connection with the service." 
 
 " I could prove anything under the sun from 
 my personal experience," said Langley. 
 
 '' How do you account for the fact ? " asked 
 Warren. Shaw made no verbal reply : facts were 
 
CHANGES AND CHANCES 255 
 
 facts ; it was not his business to account for 
 them. 
 
 " My theory is that a kind of paralysing melan- 
 choly seizes men who have been too much at sea," 
 said Franks. " Sometimes it runs its whole course 
 in a single lifetime, but usually it takes two or 
 three generations to develop." 
 
 '' I wonder who originated the expression ' jolly 
 sailor,' " said Warren, " and how it is that the 
 myth has such extraordinary vitality." 
 
 " No facts can kill it," said Langley. " I know 
 three dear old women living at Leamington who 
 have a nephew in the navy, ' the first for five 
 generations.' He is one of the most gloomy, 
 saturnine persons I ever came across. His cast of 
 countenance and his small-talk — when he has any 
 — remind me of a stickit -minister turned lawyer 
 that I met in Edinburgh. He is a teetotaller 
 and never plays cards for money, and he married, 
 when he was quite young, a woman slightly older 
 than himself, and has no end of children, and very 
 little to give them. He has been wherever he was 
 sent, and stayed as long as he was told, but he has 
 never heard a shot fired in anger, and he has got 
 on by sheer force of brains. Although he is middle- 
 aged, and his name is not even John, those dear 
 old souls persist in speaking of him as ' our sailor 
 nephew Jack ' ; and in their mind's eye I am sure 
 they see him rolling along the street slightly the 
 worse for drink and trolling a rowdy song, or else 
 
256 SHIPMATES 
 
 boarding a pirate with a cutlass between his 
 teeth." 
 
 " If a man is not naturally cheerful I'm blessed if 
 I can see what there is in the life to make him so," 
 said Shaw; " while if it happens to be his disposi- 
 tion there are a dozen things to knock it out of 
 him before he is any age at all. I've known four 
 generations of naval officers, and I can only call 
 to mind one man remarkable for his cheerfulness — 
 and he had so little reason for it that I doubt if 
 he was quite sane. He had two brothers in the 
 service. The elder one went melancholy mad and 
 cut his throat, and the younger had the kind of 
 temper that makes other men run amok. -He ex- 
 asperated one ordinary, good-natured young fool 
 to such a degree that he tore his commission to 
 tatters and flung it on the floor in front of him. 
 
 " The admiral patched it up — I mean the whole 
 affair. That used to be one of the great injustices 
 of the service. Nothing short of concerted mutiny 
 or deliberate murder would induce some men to 
 order a court-martial, while others would send their 
 secretary round to nose out quarrels and foment 
 them. After admirals were deprived of the patron- 
 age of court-martial vacancies they lost all interest 
 in stirring up strife. They held on to the invalid- 
 ing vacancies for some time after that, but even 
 those were a temptation. Often a billet would be 
 given to a man who could not decently be passed 
 over, but on the secret understanding that he 
 
CHANGES AND CHANCES 257 
 
 invalided within a certain time. Then, when he was 
 disposed of, the berth was given to the favourite for 
 whom it had been intended all the time. Death 
 vacancies was the last bit of patronage taken 
 away. As far as I know, admirals always stopped 
 short of murder, but it was just as well to make 
 a clean sweep." 
 
 " Among the men quarrels did sometimes end 
 in murder," said Franks. " Fellows would get a 
 hatred for one another that was nothing short of 
 madness. I heard of one case where two men 
 could not set eyes on one another without fight- 
 ing, even in the presence of the captain and half 
 the officers. At last they were both drowned trying 
 to save the same man." 
 
 '' I know it to my cost, Franks, especially as I 
 have always shared your views about capital 
 punishment. On board the second ship that I 
 commanded one man deliberately killed another, 
 walking the whole length to choose his weapon, 
 and after he was in irons he planned to kill a second 
 whom he hated equally, and almost succeeded. 
 It was this fellow's duty to wait on him, and he 
 pretended his leg-irons hurt him, and while he 
 knelt down to readjust them he struck him on 
 the head until he fell senseless. 
 
 " He was hanged a few days later. I was 
 simply besieged with applications from people, 
 women as well as men, who wanted to be present. 
 I should have had some satisfaction in stringing 
 
258 SHIPMATES 
 
 them up ! The only person I allowed aboard was 
 a newspaper reporter. He said it was the most 
 decent and humane execution he had ever wit- 
 nessed. Take it how you like, the world is a 
 horrible place, and the chief difference between 
 us is that some people are not found out." 
 
 " Sometimes you could hardly wonder that senior 
 officers tried to hush matters up and avoid the 
 scandal of a court-martial," said Langley, " though 
 it usually led to a bigger scandal in the end. 
 There must be a first time when a fellow does a 
 shady thing, but I doubt if there is ever an only 
 time. One afternoon out in Halifax I was on 
 deck talking to the commander when a mate 
 came up with the usual form : ' Can I go ashore, 
 sir ? ' Leave was given, he saluted, and was 
 turning away when the commander said sharply : 
 ' What's that lump on your chest ? It's quite a 
 disfigurement.' The mate changed colour, and I 
 should have been more surprised if he hadn't. It 
 was an amazing thing to say, and doubly amazing 
 coming from him, as he was one of the civillest 
 little fellows imaginable. Generally speaking, a 
 small man has about as much manners as a cock- 
 robin. ' It's my cigar-case, sir.' ' Remarkably 
 bulky. Let's have a look at it.' He drew it out 
 and handed it over. It was a leather case that 
 may or may not have been meant for cigars, but 
 it was cram-full of coarse money. There must 
 have been twenty ounces or more, ' You had 
 
CHANGES AND CHANCES 259 
 
 better not take this ashore,' the commander 
 said ; ' I'll look after it for you.' The mate 
 turned away without a word, and I felt that I 
 had been caught as a witness in an exceedingly 
 nasty case. 
 
 " It appeared that early that morning a first- 
 class petty officer reported to the commander 
 that during the night the whole of his money, 
 rather over five pounds in silver, had been stolen 
 from him. He told him to say nothing and keep 
 a good look-out. When the money was counted 
 up it came to the precise sum that the petty 
 officer had lost, minus half a crown. Inquiries 
 were made ; a man came forward and said that the 
 mate had given him half a crown that morning 
 for slinging his hammock, and he produced the 
 coin. A few days previously the caterer had 
 pressed the mate to pay his outstanding mess 
 bills, and he had protested that he had no money 
 at all, and would have none until the following 
 month. Nevertheless the matter was hushed up." 
 
 " Yes, one blames them," said Franks, " but 
 I know from an experience of my own that it is 
 a natural instinct. As a young fellow I was wine 
 caterer in one mess, and I was troubled by several 
 small losses of money from the cash-box. I got 
 a new one with a better lock, and kept the key 
 under my pillow. I was known to be rather a 
 heavy sleeper, but the matter worried me so much 
 that I slept more as a sailor was expected to sleep 
 
260 SHIPMATES 
 
 in those days, with one eye open. One night I 
 felt a hand fumbhng under my head. I gripped 
 it, and sang out for a light. When the first flicker 
 touched the man, I let go with a run and said I'd 
 had nightmare. The world never seemed quite 
 the same again." 
 
 " Franks is looking awfully old," said Langley 
 to Shaw as they came away together, " I dare say 
 he thought the same of us." 
 
 Langley's thoughts wandered a little further. 
 
 " Do you still go to funerals in the winter ? 
 Now I'm turned sixty-five I only go — oh, well, I 
 thought you liked talking about that kind of 
 thing." 
 
 " Leave off ! " said Shaw in tones that carried 
 his shipmate back some forty years, and he said 
 apologetically : 
 
 " When Franks goes you'll be my oldest friend 
 here on earth. It's enough to make me feel a 
 little cantankerous and contrairy." 
 
 Shaw smiled unwillingly : " You always had 
 rather a ' doobersome ' way of putting things." 
 
 " What's wrong with Shaw ? " Langley asked 
 his wife after their guests had departed. ''He has 
 lost all taste for wills and executors and advance- 
 payment for graves, I thought he would have flung 
 me off the pavement last night when I mentioned 
 a funeral." 
 
 " I wonder he didn't." 
 
 " Surely you don't mean his wife ? Franks and 
 
 / 
 
CHANGES AND CHANCES 261 
 
 Warren said she was ' as young as ever,' and I 
 almost thought so myself." 
 
 " I believe he knows that she will soon be much 
 younger." 
 
 " Good Lord 1 He'll be a worse handful for us 
 than any of his widows and orphans have been 
 for him." 
 
XII. NEAR HORIZONS 
 
 History — Astronomy — Mathematics— Languages— Literature — 
 Music — Painting — Architecture— Sociology — Taxation — Educa- 
 tion — Foreign politics — Social prejudices — Theology — Social 
 duties 
 
 IT was sometimes difficult for those who only- 
 heard the group of old shipmates talking 
 together, or with a civilian who confined the 
 conversation to subjects that they understood 
 or to certain aspects of matters that closely 
 affected them, to realise in how many directions 
 they found the world a sterile promontory, a mere 
 blank devoid of rational interest. They scarcely 
 knew the barest outlines of ancient history, and 
 of modern European history even less. Except 
 for events within their own memory or that of 
 their parents they were almost entirely ignorant 
 of English history, whether social, political, mili- 
 tary, religious, or literary, and even these personal 
 recollections supplied them with curious details, 
 rather than a connected or reasoned account. 
 
 Interest in politics developed — if at all — ^late in 
 life ; it was strongly partisan and of a wholly 
 undiscriminating nature. Right was on one side, 
 wrong on the other ; there were no good men in 
 
 262 
 
NEAR HORIZONS 263 
 
 the enemy's camp, and no benefit to the country 
 could possibly be derived from the action of your 
 political opponents. Civilians might pardonably 
 hold other views, as they had not the same oppor- 
 tunities of enlightenment, but a man of their own 
 cloth who differed from them could never have 
 been worthy to wear it. 
 
 Geography was mainly learned by voyaging, 
 and in their mental maps countries with no coast- 
 line were an indefinite blur. Meteorology was 
 also to a great extent acquired by experience : if 
 you had previously served in such-and-such lati- 
 tudes you " knew what to expect." If you had 
 not you must listen to those who had, and use 
 your own discretion as to whether you would be 
 guided by their advice. As '' weather-prophets " 
 on shore they were absolutely useless. Most of 
 them foretold fine weather when they intended 
 to go some distance from home, and bad weather 
 when they preferred remaining indoors. The 
 strictly accurate frankly confessed that to foretell 
 changes of weather on shore is much more diffi- 
 cult than at sea, as more factors have to be taken 
 into consideration, and gave up all pretension to 
 the art. 
 
 Some knowledge of astronomy was general among 
 them, but it was usually confined to such portions 
 as were of practical use in daily life at sea. On a 
 fine night, as they walked home from church or 
 club or whist-party, they might cast a glance at the 
 
264 SHIPMATES 
 
 heavens and say in tones of friendly recognition, 
 '' There's old So-and-so : I haven't seen him 
 lately," but neighbours who painfully studied 
 astronomy were hardly regarded as sane. It was 
 a chilly, uncomfortable occupation, and " What 
 business is it of theirs ? What does it lead to ? " 
 
 Elementary mathematics were familiar to most 
 of them, but the very existence of physical science 
 was unknown or unrealised. 
 
 Their knowledge of languages was as a rule 
 confined to the remnants of such Latin as had been 
 reluctantly acquired before the age of twelve or 
 thirteen, and a limited but practically useful ac- 
 quaintance with French, while a small proportion 
 had a smattering of Spanish or Italian. 
 
 The lack of classical education inevitably affected 
 their knowledge of literature, but did not fully ac- 
 count for its excessively narrow limits. With such 
 chapters of the Bible as form part of the church- 
 service they were so familiar that their frequent 
 use of its phraseology was usually quite un- 
 conscious, but few of them had read any other 
 portions or any book of the Apocrypha. They 
 possessed a few works of scriptural exegesis, 
 generally the gift of chaplains with whom they had 
 been on friendly terms, but these bore no signs 
 of use though outwardly injured by climate and 
 travel. 
 
 Some of them disapproved of novel reading, and 
 nearly all of them affected to despise it, but they 
 
NEAR HORIZONS 265 
 
 had all owed more hours' pleasure to Scott, Dumas, 
 Marryat, and the earlier writings of Dickens and 
 Thackeray than they were willing to acknowledge, 
 and translations of Don Quixote and Gil Bias must 
 have been common possessions, if one may judge 
 from their quotations and references. 
 
 Essayists were little read, and poetry was a 
 despised art. The only conceivable use of verse 
 was as a mnemonic ; to assist their memory they 
 nearly all had doggerel compositions, in which they 
 found great satisfaction. They fully sympathised 
 with their young relatives' indignation when lessons 
 in literature became part of the ordinary teaching 
 on board the Britannia, and were pleased with the 
 tactful instructor who soothed the boys' wounded 
 feelings by assuring them that the verses they 
 were called on to learn by heart " were ballads, 
 not poetry." 
 
 Music was regarded as an occupation for angels 
 and young women and professionals. It was just 
 permissible for a man to like listening to any of 
 these, or even for him to sing, provided that he 
 never practised and was unable to play his own 
 accompaniments. To touch any musical instru- 
 ment was an effeminacy, but it was sometimes 
 condoned in surgeons, paymasters, and chaplains, 
 or even marines, if they played from ear or from 
 memory. Few of them seemed to have the faintest 
 conception that music demands serious study, and 
 that they could not expect to be able to appreciate 
 
266 SHIPMATES 
 
 its more highly developed forms without having 
 undergone this discipline. 
 
 A practical knowledge of drawing and painting 
 was commonly found among them, but landscape 
 was the only branch they at all understood or much 
 admired. They seldom visited picture-galleries, 
 and even men like Heseltine knew very little of 
 the history of art. Occasionally they would form 
 a strong attachment to a single picture, go to see it 
 whenever they had the opportunity, and carry 
 some cheap reproduction of it wherever they went, 
 but although this work was generally one of the 
 world's great treasures their feeling for it had but 
 little connection with its artistic value. 
 
 Architecture affected them to an extremely 
 small degree, in fact only those who had served 
 in the Mediterranean seemed clearly conscious 
 that the art existed. Abroad one went ashore 
 " for the sake of walking," and looked at a few 
 buildings by the way. In England a castle was 
 merely an unshapely heap of stones which could 
 not face modern weapons, and had therefore most 
 properly been allowed to fall into a state of ruin ; 
 a palace was an inconveniently large house in 
 which " poor Prince So-and-so " was condemned 
 to live ; and a cathedral was a church where it was 
 rather difficult to hear what was said, but where 
 it was not necessary to keep a very bright look-out, 
 as you were tolerably safe from innovations or 
 priestly assumptions. A fine bridge extorted 
 
NEAR HORIZONS 267 
 
 admiration, perhaps because they understood some 
 of the difficulties of construction. 
 
 Their views of sociology were unbelievably 
 crude ; in their lack of appreciation of the extreme 
 complexity of social life most of them could have 
 given points to a radical cobbler or a self-taught 
 artisan. They argued in much the same way, 
 clinging to isolated " facts " (seldom verified, and 
 not always verifiable) and from these drew bold 
 and wide conclusions. One characteristic assertion 
 frequently made was this : " When I was a boy 
 the poorhouse in Portsmouth was a very small 
 building, and look at it now ! Pauperism has 
 enormously increased." 
 
 Although in some moods professing to despise 
 laws and law-makers, in others they seemed to 
 have boundless faith in Acts of Parliament, 
 especially if backed up by drastic penalties. There 
 may have been no real self-contradiction in this, 
 as the regulations they advocated were generally 
 for the prevention of disorder. 
 
 In general terms they expressed profound and 
 entire distrust of the working-classes, who seemed 
 to be exclusively composed of idle, dishonest, 
 shiftless, thriftless, drunken persons, most un- 
 accountably permitted to live apart from all 
 discipline, whether that provided by nature or 
 with the improvements thereon suggested by 
 the Queen's Regulations. These opinions had 
 no effect upon their intercourse with any members 
 
268 SHIPMATES 
 
 of those classes ; it was usually friendly and 
 trustful, as every man with whom they had 
 exchanged fifty words was " quite an exception 
 to the rule. A very decent, hard-working fellow. 
 I'm sure I don't know how he keeps his head 
 above water on such miserable pay : he must have 
 an excellent wife." In the abstract the most 
 villainous of all workmen were those who had 
 anything to do with house-building, plumbing, or 
 decoration, and it was necessary to " keep an eye 
 on them " incessantly. When it came to practice : 
 " Of course I shouldn't like to give any ordinary 
 paperers and painters the run of the place, but 
 Robinson employs most respectable men. I just 
 keep out of the way till the work is finished." 
 
 They expected unbroken and invariable civility 
 from their servants, but as they very rarely failed 
 to treat them courteously their demands were 
 constantly and punctually met. Next to showing 
 plain and direct rudeness they would have counted 
 it a crime to harass any subordinate, and one rule 
 of prudent discipline that they were always trying 
 to impress upon their wives and daughters was : 
 "Never find fault with a servant just back from 
 leave. They can't stand it. They may seem 
 firm enough on their feet, but you don't know 
 what they have had to drink. Wait till the next 
 morning. Aboard ship when any man came back 
 from leave I looked the other way. I never saw 
 him." 
 
NEAR HORIZONS 269 
 
 As a rule the naval men of this period were 
 eager to pay their debts to shopkeepers and 
 tradesmen of all kinds, and although they fre- 
 quently quoted the proverb about the two bad 
 paymasters they could hardly be restrained from 
 paying in advance, and the fact that men in a large 
 way of business preferred receiving their money 
 in the ordinary course to having it thrust on them 
 at any odd moment was quite beyond their grasp. 
 
 Often the most harmless and necessary ways 
 of retail trade were an offence to them. If Shaw 
 hesitated over a purchase, and the owner thought 
 to settle matters by lowering the price, he at once 
 left the shop. " To have two prices is only fit 
 for a Chinaman or an Indian." Another man 
 when told that a half-pint bottle of a certain 
 mixture cost three shillings, but that the seller 
 would be glad to supply a pint bottle for five 
 shillings, replied : " Then if I buy half a pint you 
 rob me of sixpence." That the price of similar 
 articles should be altered, even if years had elapsed 
 between two purchases, was a most suspicious 
 circumstance. A London tailor was once called 
 to account by an old naval man, and scored a 
 victory. " What would you charge for a dustcoat 
 like the one I am wearing ? Phew ! Why your 
 predecessor made it the year before last for thirty 
 per cent. less. How do you account for that ? " 
 " By my predecessor's speedy bankruptcy, sir," 
 replied the tailor, and booked the order. 
 
270 SHIPMATES 
 
 They resented paying taxes, and were firmly 
 convinced that most of the money was wasted, but 
 at the same time they thought it a duty to set an 
 example to the presumably lax civilian by paying 
 them at the earliest possible moment. In fact 
 if they were not among the first to arrive at the 
 office the collector formed the gravest opinion 
 of their state of health, and took an early oppor- 
 tunity to make respectful inquires. They liked 
 to receive his never-failing assurance that " if 
 everyone were like them " tax-gathering would 
 be a temptingly easy business. 
 
 Schools were chiefly looked on as places where 
 boys too big to spend their days in play could be 
 kept out of mischief until they were old enough for 
 real work. The art of teaching was unrecognised, 
 and there was no mystery in the discipline of the 
 young. Boys who wished to learn could learn 
 anywhere, and boys who were determined not to 
 learn would not learn wherever you sent them. 
 The fact that the vast majority of boys were 
 between these two classes was not taken into their 
 calculations. Boys were merely the raw material 
 of men, and some of it must inevitably be spoilt 
 in the process of manufacture. 
 
 From the time sons were seven or eight until 
 they were four or five-and-twenty there was often 
 a great deal of apparent coldness and indifference, 
 though anything in the nature of open disagree- 
 ment was extremely rare, After that age they 
 
NEAR HORIZONS 271 
 
 drew together, and by the time sailors' sons were 
 thirty they could generally accept them as equals. 
 
 At heart they had much sympathy with boys 
 who did not wish to learn, and sincerely pitied 
 their children for having to submit to a larger 
 amount of formal education than had fallen to 
 their own share. The constant question was : 
 " What is the use of it ? What good will it be to 
 them ? " To learn more than was needed for 
 immediate practical purposes seemed to them 
 sheer folly. A disinterested love of learning, if 
 comprehensible at all, was only comprehensible in 
 women, who would never be called on to earn 
 their own living. It " filled up their time," but 
 men had more serious business in hand. 
 
 Opinions as to the characteristics of foreign 
 nations were firmly held, though, to judge from 
 the evidence produced, the foundations for these 
 convictions was exceedingly slight. England was 
 pictured as a lamb among wolves, a dove among 
 serpents. She was surrounded by foreign ene- 
 mies of superhuman cunning, always deceived 
 and outwitted, foolishly content with the shell 
 while others devoured the oyster. When one of 
 Langley's sons was considered old enough to speak 
 in the council of his elders he said : "Is England 
 quite as foolish as you think ? I have been pretty 
 well all over the world, and it seems to me that, 
 one way or another, she has secured about all that 
 is worth having." 
 
272 SHIPMATES 
 
 His opinion was dismissed as that of a cynical 
 youth lamentably injured by having spent part of 
 his schooldays in Germany, though it was duly 
 placed to his credit that he had acquired but little 
 of the language, and seemed to have retained no- 
 thing but a few apparently harmless expletives. 
 
 They had many social prejudices. Lawyers 
 were deeply distrusted, especially those who went 
 regularly to church, or took any share in public 
 movements of a charitable nature. Doctors were 
 chiefly humbugs, but there was no great danger in 
 knowing them as long as you did not employ them. 
 There was a superficial dislike and suspicion of 
 soldiers, but the smallest intercourse was generally 
 sufficient to brush it away. It probably dated 
 from the time when the proportion of soldiers not 
 compelled to take their profession in earnest was 
 very large, and the proportion of moneyed men 
 among sailors extremely small. 
 
 With regard to the clergy, they seemed unable 
 to separate the man and his office ; even if 
 faith could endure the inevitable inconsistencies of 
 doctrine and practice, sight could not, and they 
 nearly all shared Byam's dislike to knowing the 
 vicar whose church they attended. Shaw was 
 playing billiards one afternoon with a soldier, a 
 clergyman, and their host, a Civil Servant. The 
 church bell struck out ; the clergyman dropped his 
 cue : '' I must fly ; I shall be late," and long before 
 it was possible for him to be in his place the bell 
 
NEAR HORIZONS 273 
 
 ceased. The soldier and the sailor were scanda- 
 lised, the Civil Servant quite unmoved. 
 
 Although experiencing no difficulty as to out- 
 ward conformity, each man held his own views. 
 They accepted much of the practical teaching of 
 Christianity ; they were eager to feed the hungry 
 and clothe the naked as far as their means per- 
 mitted, and not over-precise in their inquiries as 
 to how these lamentable conditions had arisen; 
 and they were willing to forgive their enemies — 
 even fairly prosperous enemies — after a reason- 
 able interval ; but it would be difficult to name any 
 dogma of the Church that they definitely believed 
 or thought it necessary that anyone else should 
 believe. On returning from evening service one 
 of them said to his children : " If we believe all 
 that we say we do, we should be glad to die 
 to-night. Do we wish to ? " 
 
 They all professed to enjoy what they called 
 ** a good sermon," but as they never entered into 
 details it was doubtful what they meant by the 
 term. A chance gleam of light came from an un- 
 expected quarter. A civilian walking home from 
 church with Blissett said to him : '' That was a 
 very good sermon. It touched them up a bit." 
 Blissett agreed, but a moment later changed his 
 mind : '' D — n it, it wasn't ! If it was, we should 
 be saying: ' That touched me up a bit.' " 
 
 With the exception of the very small number 
 who were landowners, few retired naval men of 
 
274 SHIPMATES 
 
 this period took any share in local government or 
 displayed active interest in politics. Their duty 
 to their country had been very real, but it was 
 " done " ; no further claims could be made on 
 them. The affairs of the nation might be — and 
 usually were — in a parlous state, but " It's their 
 look-out. We've turned in." 
 
 They demanded no gratitude from their country- 
 men for the dangers they had faced ; they usually 
 denied that there was any risk in a life at sea apart 
 from bad seamanship, bad navigation, bad con- 
 struction, and bad discipline, and for all of these 
 they held themselves, to say the least of it, more 
 responsible than the great mass of excusably ignor- 
 ant civilians. As to fighting, most of them had 
 done their share ; but these were ugly, mismanaged 
 episodes, best forgotten. They asked no pity or 
 consideration on account of the physical hardship 
 they had endured : those they regarded as past and 
 done with. Vaguely but insistently they claimed 
 sympathy for wounds that had reached mind and 
 heart, demanded intangible payment, not for what 
 they had done, but for what they might have 
 been. 
 
XIII. FAILED-CHRISTIANS 
 
 Social duties — A melancholy Christian — Failed-Christians — 
 Sacrifice — Insurance — Hard lines — The point of honour — 
 Homoeopathy — Unrequited affection — Credulity — A compromise 
 
 " "W T TE really must call on the Heseltines," 
 ^^ said Mrs. Langley. This was a social 
 duty that sat lightly on her, and her 
 husband felt sure that it was at least three months 
 overdue, but as he was to share in it he tried hard 
 for further postponement. 
 
 " I believe Heseltine's in town." 
 " Then it's an excellent opportunity." 
 " But his wife isn't. I met her this morning. 
 He has either been summoned to the Old Bailey 
 with an imaginary line between him and the dock, 
 or he's sitting on a russia-leather chair giving 
 evidence, at his natural pace, before a select com- 
 mittee of the House of Lords. I feel justified in 
 saying that it's one or the other, but from his wife's 
 account I defy anyone to say which." 
 
 " She's as vague as she is vacant ; even her 
 beloved patchwork has no edge to it, but I believe 
 she's more vague about her husband's affairs than 
 about anything else. I often feel sorry for the old 
 
 275 
 
276 SHIPMATES 
 
 boy, but he would detest me more than ever if he 
 knew it." 
 
 " Well, as he would say if anyone else were 
 concerned : ' You would have it, George, you would 
 have it ! ' I spare you his French accent — and 
 mine." 
 
 '^ Just as well. It saves misunderstanding. 
 When that young relative of Mesurier's came 
 over from Brest, Heseltine asked him : ' How do 
 you like the English cousine ? ' The young man 
 looked surprised, and then said rather stiJBBy: 
 ' I like her very much, thank you.' They were 
 married a few months after." 
 
 '' You laugh at our French, but I assure you I 
 often wonder how it is that we can speak any 
 language at all. It's marvellous. There we were, 
 bundled off to sea at ten or twelve with less edu- 
 cation than a modern errand-boy; we associated 
 almost exclusively with one another, and yet 
 we speak English quite decently. The grammar 
 may be a bit shaky, but there is nothing wrong 
 with accent or intonation. The few exceptions 
 that I can remember were among those who were 
 caught late — ^nineteen or twenty." 
 
 " Don't try to talk the question out. We are 
 going this afternoon. Mrs. Heseltine will think 
 it a compliment if we go although we know her 
 husband is away." 
 
 " The part that really matters is what she will 
 think of it by the time we leave. You sometimes 
 
FAILED-CHRISTIANS 277 
 
 lead us both into benevolent enterprises beyond 
 our moral reach. Do be careful what you say to 
 the woman." 
 
 From the very beginning Heseltine's marriage 
 had to some extent separated him from his old 
 cronies. Shaw disliked silence, and therefore 
 silent people ; he said that they exhausted him. 
 Moreover, he called Mrs. Heseltine lugubrious. Of 
 this failing she was not wholly unconscious, for 
 towards the close of the duty call, which up to that 
 moment had prospered beyond Langley's hopes, 
 she said with a sigh : 
 
 '' I am afraid people think me a very melan- 
 choly Christian." 
 
 " Are you a Christian ? " asked Mrs. Langley 
 airily. " I didn't know." 
 
 '' 1 wish you'd hit someone of your own size," 
 was Langley's irritable reproof as they came away. 
 
 " I wish I had the sense to ! Just because she 
 is a pale meek woman you think she is easily per- 
 secuted and trodden down." 
 
 ** You mistake me : I am not accusing you of 
 cowardice but of foolhardiness. She has about 
 as much brain as a jelly-fish, but she stings. You 
 are certainly among those who go a warfare at 
 their own cost, and without sitting down to calcu- 
 late what forces the enemy can bring against you. 
 That woman will hate you as long as she lives, and 
 she will persuade herself that it is because you are 
 not a Christian." 
 
278 SHIPMATES 
 
 "" Well, I oughtn't to have said it. And I don't 
 think I am a Christian. Have you ever met 
 any ? " 
 
 " Any Christians ? I think not. But I have 
 come across a few people who were fairly entitled 
 to write Failed-Christian after their names, if they 
 had only known it : Franks and his wife and her 
 two old sisters, and little Nothink and Leigh, and 
 sometimes, I think, yourself, and Byam in his 
 latter days and Hobbes." 
 
 '' A motley crew," said his wife, but she was 
 strangely touched, and hastily added : " You have 
 forgotten the Elliotts." 
 
 " No ; I don't include them." 
 
 *' I can't imagine how you frame your definition 
 if it shuts out the Elliotts and almost includes me." 
 
 '' I have never arrived at a definition that satis- 
 fied myself, much less anyone else, but it would 
 lay stress on active destruction of evil. The 
 Elliotts are just pleasant, easy-going pagans." 
 
 " But surely there is such a thing as destroying 
 evil simply by encouraging good, and so crowding 
 it out." 
 
 " Certainly there is, but is that the effect that 
 Johnny and his wife have on our characters ? I 
 observe that after spending two or three hours 
 with them Shaw is invariably more arbitrary and 
 dogmatic, Heseltine more pompous and egotistical, 
 and I myself am more cantankerous and far more 
 of a Heady Highmind." 
 
FAILED-CHRISTIANS 279 
 
 " After being with them I always come home in 
 the sweetest of tempers." 
 
 " I know you do ; but why ? " 
 
 " Don't look a gift-horse in the mouth." 
 
 " I don't want you to give me the answer, but 
 just ask yourself why ? " 
 
 '' You old bully ! You know perfectly well 
 that it is because I return home convinced that 
 it is better to be clever than good, and persuaded 
 that I am clever." 
 
 "• By their fruits ye shall know them! When I 
 came away from Franks' house I always felt that 
 any man who took an unfair advantage of another 
 man ought to be keelhauled." 
 
 " But you never wanted to do it." 
 
 " Except verbally. And Franks made you re- 
 alise that a man who uses an unsound argument, 
 knowing it to be unsound, or who doesn't give in 
 as soon as he is convinced, or who pretends to be 
 quite sure of a thing after he has begun to doubt, 
 is just on a par with a man who makes a foul stroke 
 at billiards, knows it's a foul stroke, and goes on 
 with his break as if nothing had happened. Have 
 you never seen me stop short in the middle of an 
 argument when I seemed to be gaining the day ? " 
 
 '' Often." 
 
 " That's my offering to Franks. D'you remem- 
 ber that High Church parson you were so gone on 
 about twenty years ago ? He had a little heresy- 
 and-schism shop in a back street. I went there 
 
280 SHIPMATES 
 
 with you once ; it was all needlework of divers 
 colours. I never saw anything like it outside a 
 joss-house. He preached about offerings. I've 
 never felt I had anything worth laying down 
 precisely where he said it ought to be laid, but I 
 make offerings to all my Failed-Christians, dead 
 and living. I have a notion they are better 
 Judges of value than I am, and if there were 
 anything worth having they — well, they wouldn't 
 keep it themselves." 
 
 '' Will, in the words of the hymn you ' pour 
 contempt on all my pride.' I was perfectly 
 foolish over that man. I believe I thought he was 
 the only person who had the Way and the Life. 
 I went to hear him scores of times. I remember 
 I went once, although there was just an off-chance 
 that your ship might be in and I hadn't seen you 
 for six months, and yet I can't recollect a single 
 thing he ever said except that we were to imitate 
 Jezebel and take warning from Elijah — or was it 
 Elisha ? " 
 
 '' Rede me the riddle." 
 
 " When everything was lost she painted her 
 face and tired her head and looked out of the 
 window and mocked her conquerors, and when 
 things didn't go quite well with Elijah, he went 
 out into the wilderness, and sat under a juniper 
 tree and prayed that he might die." 
 
 '' Now I understand. But you had no special 
 need of the doctrine; you were always awfully 
 
FAILED-CHRISTIANS 281 
 
 plucky. I used to make that an essential when 
 Heseltine and I talked about our wives — before 
 we had any, I mean. Naturally we couldn't do 
 it after." 
 
 "• What kind of a wife did he wish to have ? " 
 
 ^' Remarkably like the one he has, poor beggar, 
 except that she was to be good-tempered and 
 sympathetic. How she was to be sympathetic 
 without understanding, or good-tempered without 
 tolerance or generosity or good health, he didn't 
 attempt to explain. We all want bricks without 
 straw — or bricks with nothing but straw." 
 
 " Did he want quite an uneducated wife, a woman 
 like Mrs. Byam ? " 
 
 " Bless me, no ! He would have been shocked 
 at such a notion. He didn't take all learning for 
 his province : his wife was to be allowed a sandy 
 corner here and there, but there wasn't to be any 
 common ground. The main point was that if a 
 man and his wife were to be happy they must 
 be utterly unlike. And apparently there was so 
 much danger that they would be alike, that you 
 had to be precious careful what you taught either 
 of them ! He even made up his mind that sons 
 ought to be born first for fear that their sisters 
 should influence them too much in childhood, but 
 Hobbes unsettled him by asking whether it 
 wouldn't be just as deadly if elder brothers 
 influenced younger sisters." 
 
 "' Imagine you or Dick Shaw or John Blissett 
 
282 SHIPMATES 
 
 in fear that any woman should be too much Hke 
 them ! Men and women will always be unlike 
 enough for all good purposes. I don't see that 
 education makes much difference, but some degree 
 of similarity in upbringing ought to give them a 
 better chance of understanding one another." 
 
 '' It supplies common language, a common 
 standard of values. For want of it, when Hesel- 
 tine ought to gain his point he can only do it by 
 brutality, and when his wife ought to gain hers 
 she can only do it by damnable iteration." 
 
 " I suppose men get the wives they deserve." 
 
 " I am hardly in a position to say so. Perhaps 
 we get the wife that we need." 
 
 " No doubt all my enemies need discipline, but 
 I don't like to see them get it." 
 
 " Oh, you needn't pity Heseltine too much. He 
 has plenty of outside interests, and we never 
 accustomed him to sympathy. Hobbes said he 
 needed bracing treatment, and we let him have 
 it ! You never knew Hobbes. After he married I 
 did not see much of him except on duty, and we 
 have not met since I retired, but that summer you 
 were out in Halifax I went three or four times to 
 his house with Shaw. Mrs. Hobbes was rather 
 cranky, and not many of his old shipmates got 
 on with her. She was a little ' gone ' on quacks, 
 medical and religious. Not much mixed : as a 
 rule she kept 'em fairly well apart. She used to 
 remind me of the old fellow in the Malade 
 
FAILED-CHRISTIANS 283 
 
 Imaginaire who felt seriously disturbed because 
 his doctor had told him to walk twelve times up 
 and down his room every morning, and he had 
 forgotten to ask whether it was to be en long ou 
 en large, ^^ 
 
 " When did you read Moliere ? " 
 
 " Never. Heseltine bought a faded Edition de 
 luxe out in St. Helena — I believe he gave three- 
 and-sixpence for it — and for half a year he read 
 nothing else. He used to stand at his cabin door, 
 looking like a long thin wizard with a huge book 
 of magic, and implore us to listen, and sometimes 
 Shaw would say : ' Well, I don't mind if you just 
 give me the gist of it.' And that was enough to 
 set him going for an hour. 
 
 '' I always had a great respect for Hobbes. He 
 was an awfully zealous and hard-working fellow, 
 clever too, but somehow he was continuously 
 passed over. Fact is, clever men were too scarce in 
 the navy in those days even to keep one another 
 in countenance. No one wanted them, and they 
 didn't always want one another. There were only 
 three ways of getting on in the service : by interest ; 
 by fighting for your rights, which was a risky 
 method and didn't often succeed ; or by being 
 an apparently amiable nonentity with only two 
 ideas in your head, one of which you held on to 
 like grim death, while you changed the other as 
 often as necessary. The first idea was that you 
 meant to have a soft billet, and the second was that 
 
284 SHIPMATES 
 
 you must stick to Admiral A. or Commodore B. or 
 Lord C. because he was the person most Hkely to 
 help you ; but you had to be ready to pitch him 
 overboard as soon as you found a more influential 
 man. Your motto was, ' Turn to the rising sun.' 
 
 " At last in some very small and awkward 
 international business Hobbes showed a great deal 
 of sense and moral courage, and pulled the thing 
 through and saved everyone's face, and there 
 happened to be a minister on board, I mean a 
 Minister of the Crown; and he was rather struck 
 by the whole affair, and took care that all the 
 kudos did not go to the captain, and Hobbes was 
 made in the next batch. 
 
 " But, you see, by the time he got into the upper 
 ranks of the service his age told against him ; 
 promotion went by seniority, and he couldn't 
 afford to wait as long as the others did. The 
 upshot of it all was that he never had a billet 
 worth accepting until he was fifty-seven, but he 
 knew he could keep it for three years, and he 
 thought better late than never. 
 
 " The indirect expenses of taking it up were 
 rather heavy, and it turned his thoughts to his 
 private affairs, and he asked Shaw to draw up a 
 new will for him. Shaw took his instructions, 
 as solicitors say, and then began one of his de- 
 pressing harangues : ' I don't want to say anything 
 disagreeable, Hobbes ; I know you have done 
 your utmost in the matter, and many women 
 
FAILED-CHRISTIANS 285 
 
 are left in a far worse position, but if you were 
 to die to-morrow ' (Shaw draws the line at 
 suggesting that you may die to-night) 'this would 
 be a mighty poor provision for a delicate woman 
 and a girl not in the least likely to marry : mighty 
 poor.' 
 
 " Hobbes isn't the kind of man to live to a 
 hundred : he has far too much self-respect to do 
 anything that would entitle people to stare at him 
 or incite them to write familiar letters without 
 previous acquaintance, but he is as likely to see 
 the shaky side of eighty as any man I ever met. 
 However, he was a good deal upset about it, and 
 decided to insure his life, though the premiums 
 would be very heavy. If a man owns to having 
 been in the Tropics the doctors prod his liver as if 
 they were poking up Welsh coal. 
 
 ** Naturally the first thing the insurance people 
 wanted to know was his precise age. Of course he 
 was born long before the Registration Act, and 
 he had lost his baptismal certificate, but he felt 
 no more doubt about his age than he did about 
 the Queen's, and told them he should be fifty- 
 eight in the latter part of the year. When they 
 asked for proof he produced papers showing that 
 at a certain date the Admiralty had accepted it 
 as a fact that he was twenty-one years of age. 
 That wasn't enough for business purposes ; he 
 belonged to an old-established middle-class family, 
 and they had no difficulty in tracing him out, 
 
286 SHIPMATES 
 
 and to his disgust and dismay they told him that 
 he was within a week or two of his fifty-ninth 
 birthday. He felt bound to inform their Lordships, 
 and at the end of the year they superseded him. 
 Shaw was terribly put out at the share he had 
 had in the matter, but he saw there was nothing 
 else to be done, though it was hard lines. At the 
 present day men might take Hobbes' conduct as 
 a mere matter of course : people have got used 
 to the idea that an iron law clears them off at a 
 hard-and-fast date. But it was a new notion in 
 his day, and many men would have argued that, 
 considering all the circumstances, they were jus- 
 tified in keeping the information to themselves. 
 It showed that he had progressive ideas of honour. 
 With many people honour is just an antiquated 
 form that permits them to do things that honest 
 men don't. He never talked about honour ; he 
 said it was a thing honest men should mention 
 rarely, and rogues not at all. Franks was like 
 him in that respect ; he could scarcely endure 
 to hear the word used." 
 
 " I don't think religious people ever like to 
 hear it." 
 
 " Oh, it wasn't that exactly. I asked Hobbes 
 once if he could see any difference between honour 
 and honesty. He said honesty was the tree 
 and honour the flowers : you could have the tree 
 without the flowers, but not the flowers without 
 the tree. I think Franks had the same thought 
 
FAILED-CHRISTIANS 287 
 
 in his head one day when he said that the Victoria 
 Cross was not given to a man for doing his duty, 
 but for doing something that no one could reason- 
 ably have blamed him for not doing : a thing that 
 other men would not have refused to do, but 
 would never have thought of doing." 
 
 '' How did the cranky wife like Dick Shaw ? " 
 " You conjecture she would prefer even me to 
 a man who cheerfully suggested that her husband 
 might die at any moment, and that her daughter 
 would never be married ? They were most awful 
 cronies : I never saw two people get on better. 
 You can't imagine how funny it was to see them 
 talking together. Shaw has hardly a spare pound 
 of flesh even now; but he has such a powerful 
 frame and such a well-fed voice that somehow 
 he always reminds me of those of the Psalmist's 
 enemies who were ' fat and well-liking,' and he is 
 full of colour and expression and energy. Mrs. 
 Hobbes was what our old boatswain called 
 ' gash'ly to be'old,' and his wife went a step 
 further and said : ' She looks as if she'd bin buried 
 and dug hup again.' She was very tall and thin 
 and bent, and looked like an aged priest who had 
 been doing too much fasting ; her face seemed all 
 coast-line, and she wore dead-black hair as smooth 
 as a reel of silk. She had a lapdog, a dingy 
 Maltese of low intellect and too delicate to be 
 washed, and it simply worshipped Shaw. Directly 
 he was announced it would hurl itself recklessly 
 
288 SHIPMATES 
 
 from her lap and perform a mystic dance round 
 his boots. When he sat down I used to take pity- 
 on him — you know he loathes dogs — and pick it 
 up gingerly with both hands and put it back on 
 her knees. There it would sit gazing at him with 
 its beady eyes, devouring every word he uttered, 
 and when he left it lifted up its voice and 
 wept. 
 
 '' They used to tell one another the most appal- 
 ling yarns conceivable — I mean Shaw and Mrs. 
 Hobbes — and the more he told her the less dismal 
 she became. Every time he finished one of his 
 ' and-that-was-the-^nd-of-it ' tales, shrugging his 
 shoulders and showing the palms of his hands, 
 she threw her long fingers back like the old woman 
 in the School for Scandal and said gloatingly, 
 ' De-ar me ! You don't say so,' and the Maltese 
 said ' hoo-hoo-hoo ' more like a horse giving an 
 ecstatic wicker than any human dog — I mean 
 any ordinary dog. And then Hobbes would break 
 oft* in the middle of whatever he was telling me 
 and say : ' Shaw always does my dear wife so much 
 good. He cheers her up marvellously.' Marvel- 
 lously was the only word : I suppose it was a kind 
 of homoeopathic cure. 
 
 " I think he only jarred on her once. She told 
 him that although extremely subject to colds — 
 much detail offered in proof — she had never caught 
 one whilst attending an outdoor service. The 
 inference she wished him to draw was plain enough 
 
FAILED-CHRISTIANS 289 
 
 — special Providential arrangement. Shaw in his 
 crushingly practical fashion said : ' Indeed, Mrs. 
 Hobbes, it would astonish me more if you told 
 me you had never caught cold in a church. The 
 ventilation of churches is atrociously bad : it would 
 not be tolerated in a theatre.' " 
 
 " How strangely credulous some people are." 
 
 '' We all have our credulous point. Mine's 
 Jesuits. There's nothing you could tell me about 
 Jesuits that I shouldn't swallow whole. Evidence ? 
 The very idea of waiting for any ! " 
 
 '' I think you learnt that from the Franks. Their 
 charity stopped short of all Roman Catholics." 
 
 '^ Well, if they had been perfect, why should 
 their probation have continued? Besides, I 
 don't care what anyone says, there are popish 
 plots ! " 
 
 " Dick Shaw never allows me alternative plead- 
 ings. He says you can't plead innocence and 
 justification." 
 
 '' Hard-hearted old rascal ! If he had even 
 tweaked that dog's ear with his gloves on I 
 might have counted him among my Failed-Chris- 
 tians, but he said he couldn't have touched the 
 poor beast with the end of a forty-foot pole. It's 
 a queer thing for such a healthy man, but he's 
 what my dear old mother used to call ' disgust- 
 able.' If the value of a sacrifice depends solely 
 on what it costs you, to have fondled that dog 
 would have been more than looking after the 
 
 T 
 
290 SHIPMATES 
 
 interests of six wearisome widows and their half- 
 provided-for families." 
 
 '' But my dogs always make a straight line for 
 him although he ignores them, and if old Hesel- 
 tine talks to them they look as bored as human 
 beings." 
 
 " Shaw thinks it part of dogs' inborn depravity 
 that they sit as close to him as possible, and if 
 they are ordered away they resist, but the ex- 
 planation is very simple. Heseltine is a sedentary 
 man, and they know it, but they listen with all 
 their ears open to hear Shaw make his usual 
 suggestion before he has been five minutes in 
 anyone's house : ' I say, let's get out of this ; 
 we're losing all the pride of the day.' " 
 
 " How could he endure life cooped up on a brig ? 
 Did he always suffer from claustraphobia ? " 
 
 '' More or less. Except when it was his ship ! " 
 
 " I think he has had a hard life. Somehow he 
 isn't made to match, and people expect too much 
 of him. When a man as thin and dry as you are 
 is bad-tempered, everyone calls it nerves or dys- 
 pepsia or intellect, but in him it's sheer villainy. 
 I shall count him a Failed-Christian whether you 
 do or not." 
 
 " Let's compromise : I'll put him on the waiting- 
 list. I know very well that when you're a widow 
 and an orphan he'll do anything on earth for you." 
 
 " Except draw fancy portraits — probably the one 
 thing I shall be bent on doing. He would insist 
 
FAILED-CHRISTIANS 291 
 
 on your being drawn as like * as thou art to thy- 
 self.' Well within a week he would cut me short 
 by saying : ' My dear Mrs. Langley, surely you 
 
 must remember ' " 
 
 " No, he'd say, * bear in mind when you are 
 speaking to people who knew your husband.' 
 He'd jolly well know you hadn't forgotten ! " 
 
XIV. DREAMS AND PORTENTS 
 
 Elliott's revenge — Changes of the moon — Theosophy — Love and 
 fear — The dog in possession — Dreams and premonitions — Punc- 
 tuality — Malingering — Counter-irritants — A prophet's privilege 
 
 " ^^ HAW is going to give Elliott his revenge," 
 
 ^^ said Langley to his wife at breakfast. 
 "He has bought a house, and wants us 
 both to run up for the day and look at it." 
 
 " I really can't. I'm sure to say the wrong 
 thing." 
 
 " So 'm I." 
 
 *' But we should be more than twice as un- 
 lucky if we both went. D'you remember soon 
 after we were married the admiral's wife asked 
 me if I drank hot water, and I said. No, I keep 
 that for shaving ? " 
 
 '' Not observing her beard ? " 
 
 '' I wonder I live to remember it. You were in 
 a most awful rage with me." 
 
 " 1 only said I could destroy all my chances of 
 advancement without your assistance. And I 
 could and did." 
 
 " Only ! You remind me of Kathy when she 
 complained to me that Bob had shaken her. I 
 
 292 
 
DREAMS AND PORTENTS 293 
 
 asked her what she had done to make him lose his 
 temper, and she said : ' I only hit him on the head 
 with a croquet mallet.' " 
 
 " Will you go ? " 
 
 " No ; I'm not much wiser than I was then — 
 except in theory. Ask old Heseltine. He thinks 
 before he speaks. Besides, he had a house of his 
 own once." 
 
 '" The house is sure to be all right. I can see 
 it in my mind's eye. Four-square to all the winds 
 that blow, and decent accommodation for every- 
 thing but ghosts and cockroaches." 
 
 '' You never know how mad a sailor can be until 
 he buys a house or loses his wife." 
 
 " And poor old Dick — you really ought to come. 
 You haven't seen him since." 
 
 '' After that as a specimen of the kind of thing 
 I might say ? " 
 
 '' You would remember if you saw him. He's 
 very much altered." 
 
 '' He was always convinced that he would die 
 first." 
 
 '' Yes, I know he was. Soon after they were 
 married — in fact it must have been during the 
 honeymoon, for he was hustled off to China five 
 weeks after the wedding — he told her quite seri- 
 ously, as a point useful for her to bear in mind, 
 that if she married again she had better take a 
 soldier, as then she could have both pensions, 
 whereas if she took another naval man she could 
 
294 SHIPMATES 
 
 only have the more valuable of the two. Well, 
 if you don't believe me, ask Heseltine." 
 
 " I would believe anything rather than look at a 
 diagram. He drew four the other day to prove 
 to me that it couldn't be full moon for three days 
 in succession." 
 
 " Had you thrown any doubt on the point ? " 
 
 " Not in so many words. I only said casually 
 that I thought when there was a full moon it lasted 
 ever so long." 
 
 " Phew ! Lucky you didn't say it to Shaw. 
 He's awfully touchy about the moon. Only time 
 I ever heard him swear was one night when he 
 drew up a blind and looked out, and someone 
 asked, ' Are you looking for the moon ? ' and he 
 shouted, ' I'm not such a d — d fool as to look for 
 her in the wrong quarter.' It was a girl, too, but 
 I don't think she was half as much taken aback 
 as Byam and I were." 
 
 '' Does he ever speak of his wife ? " 
 
 '' Never. Some people who have only known 
 him during the last year or two asked me if he 
 had ever been married." 
 
 "' Then I simply daren't go with you." 
 
 '* A few months ago I had a scare about his 
 taking to theosophy, though he doesn't know it 
 by name. I'm really rather glad about the house. 
 I know there won't be anything radically wrong 
 with it, but it is sure to bring a small train of 
 worries, and it will fill up his time. You never 
 
DREAMS AND PORTENTS 295 
 
 know how a man will take a thing. I thought 
 there was nothing under the sun that David 
 Rhys wouldn't talk about, except when he was 
 in a sulky mood and wouldn't speak at all. His 
 favourite daughter died suddenly while he was out 
 in the Pacific, and he has never mentioned her 
 name since, not even to Lucy. I wish you had 
 known her. I never cared a rap for the rest of 
 Lucy's children. They're so like Rhys. 'Tisn't 
 as if they had anything to gain by it ! That's 
 what comes of mixed marriages. Well, what can 
 you call it but a mixed marriage when people are 
 so utterly unlike ? You can strike a spark from 
 Lucy sometimes, but it's a mere flash in the pan, 
 and she couldn't sulk if she tried." 
 
 '' There's something in your theory, Will, but 
 though a sulky wife might be a wholesome dis- 
 cipline, a sulky mother would hardly answer the 
 purpose. If she gave up mending the children's 
 clothes and ordering their dinner for ten days at 
 a stretch, what would become of them ? And if 
 Lucy were as fiery as her husband — well, I don't 
 think people would be able to mention a halter 
 in your presence." 
 
 " Evelyn was the only person who wasn't afraid 
 of him on shore. He has been bald for years, and 
 flies exasperate him. One day when she was 
 quite a child he was swearing over the nuisance, 
 and she said : ' Do let me paint a spider on your 
 head ! ' He said to Lucy once : ' Perfect love 
 
296 SHIPMATES 
 
 casteth out fear/ and she said : ' Then I have 
 never loved you. I am afraid of you, and I always 
 have been." 
 
 " H'm. She paid off a good many old scores 
 that day. Wouldn't any man hate to think his 
 wife was afraid of him ? " 
 
 "Men — born of women — want incompatibili- 
 ties. I would often gladly have frightened you 
 for five seconds, but I certainly should not have 
 cared to do it for five minutes, so I refrained. In 
 the moral sphere effects cannot be nicely cal- 
 culated." 
 
 '' Wasn't it Cobbett who boasted that no child 
 had ever felt frightened in his house ? Much he 
 knew about fear if he thought it was in his power 
 to shut it out from another soul." 
 
 " Do you know much about it ? " asked Langley 
 curiously. 
 
 " Don't you remember how horribly frightened 
 I was out in Hong-Kong " 
 
 '' When you woke me up in a hurry one night, 
 and that greased Chinaman slipped through my 
 fingers and carried off all the money we had in 
 the house ? " 
 
 '' Yes, and that winter in Schleswig, when 
 those chattering German women persuaded me 
 that the powder mazagine was going to blow 
 up in ten minutes and wanted me to wake the 
 boys, and I said I preferred letting them die in 
 their sleep " 
 
DREAMS AND PORTENTS 297 
 
 " I don't mean things like that : anyone can 
 be frightened when danger is under their nose, 
 just as the man shivered and shook when his 
 princess-wife obhgingly dashed the bucket of cold 
 water over him one winter's night. I mean 
 shadowy, impalpable things. Could you sit down 
 in your own house in broad daylight and feel des- 
 perately frightened for no reason whatever ? As 
 if there were something horrible that might at 
 any moment be revealed ? No, don't tell me ! It's 
 worse than theosophy. Then you won't go ? " 
 
 " No ; I'll stay by myself and learn to govern 
 my tongue." 
 
 " People may learn a great deal in solitude — 
 though I don't know what — but they most cer- 
 tainly don't learn prudence. However, a single 
 day can't make either of us much worse. I'll 
 go alone if I can't get Heseltine. He always 
 has a host of ' binding engagements,' but I dare 
 say he can fit it in somehow." 
 
 The little expedition took place during the 
 following week. Shaw met them at his garden 
 gate, accompanied by a black retriever, for whose 
 presence he seemed unwilling to account, and 
 whose egotistical amiability he was totally unable 
 to restrain. The house, as Langley expected, 
 was so precisely what ' any man with a grain of 
 commonsense ' would wish it to be that even 
 Heseltine's wordiness failed him, and the inspection 
 was brief and perfunctory, and the dog did its 
 
298 SHIPMATES 
 
 best to cut the ceremony still shorter by making 
 pointed inquiries about lunch. 
 
 As soon as the meal was over Shaw led them 
 out on to a small common almost adjoining the 
 garden, and asked proudly : " Who would think 
 we were within five miles of Charing Cross ? In 
 fact we're barely outside the cab radius. If you 
 stand just here you can't see a single house. It 
 might be the depth of the country." 
 
 " How you'd hate it if it were ! You don't 
 care for horses, and you don't see the fun of killing 
 things, and you don't know one crop from another 
 till it's full-grown, and not always then. The 
 only time I can remember your spending a month 
 in the country you told me when you came back 
 that all the talk about agricultural depression 
 didn't in the least surprise you, as you had seen 
 one farmer take three hours to pay fourteen men, 
 while in Portsmouth you had seen five thousand 
 paid in twenty minutes. And as to the water 
 supply — no one would ever have imagined that 
 you had drunk Thames water from a cask ! 
 Don't you miss the sea ? " 
 
 " I never think of it, except sometimes at night 
 when I hear the wind in the trees." 
 
 '* Those poplars ? Yes, they're noisy beggars. 
 I got my landlord to have them cut down. I 
 always hated wind. I was thankful when steam 
 came in and we were able to give up talking 
 about it." 
 
DREAMS AND PORTENTS 299 
 
 '' I wasn't. I never slept better anywhere 
 than on a stormy night in a good saiUng-ship and 
 with plenty of sea-room. I used to see everything 
 all right aloft, and then turn in and sleep till day- 
 light. I can't do it now." 
 
 " I never did it. I had no fancy for being 
 drowned in my berth." 
 
 " Like that poor young nephew of mine," said 
 Heseltine." 
 
 " Ah, but that was in the Channel. I don't 
 pretend that I took things easy in crowded waters. 
 No man who calls himself a sailor ever does. 
 When I crossed the Channel in a packet-boat I 
 always slept in my clothes, and put all my money 
 in my pocket. Some months ago an old general 
 told me that his son was going back to India after 
 a year's leave, and he meant to pick up his ship 
 at Brindisi instead of starting from Southampton. 
 The old fellow was awfully annoyed about it, 
 called it a beastly effeminate thing to do, and 
 thought that being a sailor I should agree with him. 
 I said : ' If you had seen as much as I have you 
 wouldn't be over and above anxious to have your 
 son going down Channel on a foggy night. You 
 run more risk going from the mouth of the 
 Thames to Land's End than you would in making 
 the round voyage.' A week or two later he was 
 singing a different tune. The ship never reached 
 Brindisi, and half the passengers and most of the 
 crew were lost. He wrote to his son and took 
 
300 SHIPMATES 
 
 back all he had said, but the young fellow wrote 
 by the next mail and said : ' My dear Father, so far 
 from your having any reason to reproach your- 
 self, let me tell you that if it had not been for 
 your most generous parting present — given in 
 spite of our little dispute — I must have started 
 from Southampton whether I wished to or 
 not.' " 
 
 "' It was a curious thing about my nephew's 
 death," said Heseltine. " That night his sister — 
 he had no mother — dreamed that he was drowned. 
 At breakfast she said so. Twenty-four hours 
 afterwards my brother opened the Standard, and 
 the first words that met his eye were the name of 
 his son's ship and ' Only Two Survivors.' I re- 
 member over in Ireland my mother dreamt that 
 three men carried a coffin into her room and laid 
 it down by my father's side. He was a compara- 
 tively young man and in sound health. The next 
 morning he met with a trifling accident while 
 working in the garden. Blood-poisoning set in, 
 and in three days he was dead." 
 
 " I often dream of ghosts — often," said Langley 
 with resolute inconsequence. ** Sometimes they're 
 black, sometimes they're white ; sometimes I'm 
 horribly frightened, and sometimes it's quite 
 tolerable ; sometimes I know who they are, and 
 sometimes I don't. They're always determined 
 to hem me into a corner, and I'm equally deter- 
 mined to walk through them. The chief likeness 
 
DREAMS AND PORTENTS 301 
 
 between the whole crew is their most uncommon 
 toughness." 
 
 " Dreams are unaccountable things," said Shaw. 
 ^' I knew a fellow who had a brother that was 
 giving him no end of trouble. One night his wife 
 woke him up and said : ' What is the matter ? You 
 seemed to be having a most worrying dream.' 
 He said : ' I dreamed George had done something 
 — I don't know what — but the papers were full of 
 it. The front sheet and big headlines.' He fell 
 asleep and dreamed it again, and then a third time. 
 At five o'clock he couldn't stand any more of it, 
 and the papers didn't come to the house till eight, 
 so he dressed and went down to the railway station 
 to get the first copy that came to hand. They were 
 putting up a placard at the bookstall : ' Attempted 
 Assassination of the Queen.' It turned his 
 thoughts — till he got the paper and found his 
 brother was the man." 
 
 " Nearest approach to a true dream that I ever 
 had was this," said Langley. " Our knife-and- 
 boot boy is supposed to fill up his time by weeding 
 the carriage-drive. They are both rather unneces- 
 sary, and one has to justify the existence of the 
 other. One night I dreamed that he had been 
 doing the work with a large carving-knife, and that 
 he had left it out in the rain, and I found it at the 
 left-hand side of the gate covered with rust. There 
 was no reason at all why I should dream it ; he 
 was no worse than other boys, and the only tool 
 
302 SHIPMATES 
 
 I had seen him use was a small table-knife super- 
 seded after a long and honourable career of potato 
 peeling. The next day was rather wet, but to- 
 wards noon the sun came out, and I was walking 
 up and down the path smoking when exactly on 
 the spot that I had dreamed of I found that young 
 ruffian had left, not a csLYving-knife, but a carving- 
 fork, and it was red with rust." 
 
 Heseltine hesitated whether to reject this con- 
 tribution as a whole or in detail, and thus lost 
 his turn, 
 
 " Dreams are things that you can hardly be 
 expected to believe unless you dream them your- 
 self," said Shaw with unaccustomed tolerance. 
 " When it comes to that we're like the Jews of old ; 
 a dream makes a much deeper impression than 
 anything we experience in actual life. I'll tell 
 you a dream I had out in China. It had such a 
 horrible effect on me that from the moment I 
 knew it was true up to the present time I have 
 never spoken of it to anyone. 
 
 " I was in the Euterpe, She drew very little 
 water for her size, and we lay some miles up a 
 river. We were waiting orders from the admiral, 
 and lay there several weeks. Three young English 
 merchants had a go-down a little higher up, and 
 I became friendly with them, especially with the 
 eldest, who was about my own age, and we often 
 dined together. At last our orders came ; dis- 
 turbances had broken out, foreign-devil riots, and 
 
DREAMS AND PORTENTS 303 
 
 we were to rejoin the admiral at once. I thought 
 these fellows were in a position of great danger 
 and went to the captain, and as there was just 
 time to do it he gave me leave to go up and warn 
 them and offer them a passage. Nothing I could 
 say would induce them to budge ; they laughed 
 at the notion of there being any danger ; they 
 knew their men, and so forth. I felt most uneasy, 
 but I had to hurry back to duty and leave them 
 to take their chance. 
 
 " A few nights after I dreamed that their go- 
 down had been attacked by a howling mob armed 
 to the teeth, that two of the young fellows had been 
 killed defending themselves, but the third, my 
 special friend, had been taken alive and put to 
 death by tortures spun out in the most fiendish 
 way for three whole days. 
 
 " I told all my messmates what I had dreamed, 
 and I was so awfully upset by it that they had 
 to take it seriously and say everything they could 
 to reassure me. The dream did not recur, and 
 naturally in the course of a few days I began to 
 shake off the effects. We missed the admiral, and 
 were cruising round trying to come up with him, 
 and it was nearly six weeks before we got any 
 mails. The first thing I learnt when we reached 
 Foo-Chow was that my dream was true, every 
 iota." 
 
 " In most of these relations one finds the 
 words ' just at the very time ' or ' just before,' " 
 
304 SHIPMATES 
 
 complained Langley. It would be more useful if 
 premonitions were a reasonable time in advance." 
 
 " They are sometimes," said Heseltine, " but 
 the result is much the same. I suppose it is 
 because they do not come to the right people. 
 I will tell you a strange experience that I had. 
 A little girl of about seven was staying with 
 my wife. She was a sensitive, nervous child, 
 but very intelligent. My wife quite unconsciously 
 offended her the day after she came by giving her 
 a picture-alphabet, and she attached herself to 
 me. One afternoon I took her into the dockyard 
 to have a look at the ships. We went on board 
 several. She was pleased and excited, and said 
 very much what you would expect a clever child of 
 that age to say. Last of all I took her to have a 
 look at the Captain, I knew several of the fellows, 
 but I did not go aboard ; they were sailing the 
 next day, and I thought they might find the child 
 a nuisance, but we stood on the jetty, almost 
 touching the vessel. She was holding two of my 
 fingers, and I felt her grasp tighten. I thought 
 perhaps she had spoken before and my wits had 
 been wool-gathering, and I looked down at her 
 and said : ' What is it, dear ? ' She was staring 
 at the ship with her eyes quite twice their usual 
 size, and she seemed not exactly frightened but 
 deeply concerned. ' Oh,' she said, ' I don't like 
 it. I don't like it at all. It's most dreadfully 
 dangerous. Look how the water could sweep 
 
DREAMS AND PORTENTS 305 
 
 through her ! ' She made a gesture with her hand, 
 and I could see that ship heeling over as plainly 
 as I saw her moored to the jetty. I took the 
 child away and tried to make her forget it, but 
 all the way home she plied me with questions 
 as to how many men were on board, how long 
 it took to lower life-boats, and so forth. I can 
 tell you I thought of that child when the news 
 came." 
 
 ''That child will certainly make us lose the 
 train, Heseltine," said Langley impatiently. 
 '' Come on ! " 
 
 But during all the years of their acquaintance 
 Heseltine had hardly ever been able to get Shaw 
 to listen to him for two minutes at a stretch, and he 
 could scarcely be expected to lose the opportunity 
 given by his unusual quiescence. He turned a 
 thin, obstinate shoulder on Langley and continued 
 to talk. 
 
 " I had another nephew who certainly had a 
 long enough warning. He was in the merchant 
 service. A fine, handsome fellow with a most 
 attractive disposition, but somehow, if you can 
 understand what I mean, he always seemed out- 
 side life. One day when he was about twenty - 
 two he went for a joke with some of his messmates 
 to consult a wise woman. She said the usual 
 things to them, but she told him that he would 
 die before he was thirty. It had a disastrous 
 effect on him for some years, and he spent every- 
 
 u 
 
306 SHIPMATES 
 
 thing he could lay hands on. Then he saw the 
 folly of it and pulled himself together, and was 
 given command of a ship. She was only a cargo- 
 boat, but brand new and a very large vessel, and 
 well manned. I saw him just before he set off 
 to join her, and I remember that his sister, a 
 girl some years younger than himself and the best 
 friend he had in the world, spoke of a recently 
 dead acquaintance as ' poor fellow.' He turned 
 round on her in the strangest way and said : 
 * Why do you call him poor fellow just because 
 he is dead ? People who are dead are a lot better 
 off, / can tell you.' 
 
 " A few weeks after that his ship got into a thick 
 fog ; he lost his reckoning, and ran on a rock. It 
 was not absolutely certain that she could not hold 
 together, so he felt bound to stand by her. Three 
 or four of the crew volunteered to stay with him, 
 and the rest got safely to the shore in boats. At 
 daybreak they found my nephew's body washed 
 up on the beach. It was a few days before his 
 thirtieth birthday." 
 
 " What is the house like ? " asked Mrs. Langley 
 when her husband returned tired and depressed. 
 
 " It would have stumped you to find anything 
 to say about it. Even Heseltine's well of English 
 undefiled ran dry in three minutes." 
 
 '' How came Dick to let you lose the train ? 
 His first question always used to be, ' How did 
 you get here ? ' and the next was, ' When does 
 
DREAMS AND PORTENTS 307 
 
 your train go ? ' And then he reminded you of 
 it from time to time, and marshalled you down 
 to spend forty minutes on a draughty platform, 
 regarded with pity as persons who had just missed 
 the previous train. He said to a city man once, 
 ' I'm a very punctual person ; I'm always half 
 an hour too soon,' and he said, ' Do you call that 
 punctuality ? I should soon be ruined if I set 
 so little value on time.' After that he did his 
 best to cut it down to ten minutes, but it was 
 beyond him." 
 
 " Oh, it was the dog's fault. We were on the 
 platform about a quarter of an hour too soon, and 
 however often we turned it would walk next to 
 Shaw, and Heseltine trod on its paw. He can't 
 have hurt it ; a puff of wind would blow him over. 
 He never weighed much, and now if you were to 
 put him in one scale, and his clothes and loose 
 cash in the other, he'd kick the beam, but the 
 brute howled most appallingly. There was Shaw 
 down on his knees in the dust and dirt, imploring 
 it to leave off and say where it was hurt. A knot 
 of porters and old ladies collected round us in no 
 time ; the porters said it had been nipped between 
 two coal-trucks, and the old ladies ordered me ' to 
 put the poor creature out of its pain.' I asked 
 whether they expected me to give it the happy 
 despatch with a blunt penknife or to strangle 
 it with my necktie. The youngest and fiercest 
 called me a vivisectionist, and said it would serve 
 
308 SHIPMATES 
 
 me right if I died of hydrophobia. Suddenly I 
 remembered that Shaw had apologised for the 
 brute's manners at lunch by saying that it usually 
 went to the station at eleven to buy itself a bun, but 
 he had stopped its leave that morning because he 
 didn't want its paws to be muddy when we arrived. 
 I stooped down and said : ' Would you like a bun ? ' 
 You should have seen the creature wink at me ! 
 Heseltine produced a penny, and in two seconds 
 it was bounding across the line without even a 
 decent pretence at a limp. Unluckily the girl in 
 the refreshment room was not the one who usually 
 served it ; she guessed it wanted a bun and laid 
 one down on the floor, but the brute wouldn't 
 touch it, and stood there barking in the most 
 reproachful manner, apparently demanding the 
 penny back again. Shaw had to hurry round by 
 the subway and explain that it liked having the 
 bun in a bag just for the pleasure of taking it out 
 again. And then the train sailed out and left us 
 stranded for nearly two hours." 
 
 " Is it Mrs. Hobbes' Maltese ? " 
 
 " No, no ; not quite so bad as that ; in the 
 course of nature the poor little beast must have 
 been promoted years ago. It's that great lumber- 
 ing wet-mouthed retriever of Blaquey's. He died 
 last spring, and he made Shaw promise to keep it 
 as long as it lived. He's in for ten years of it." 
 
 " I don't remember Blaquey." 
 
 " No ; I never knew much of the fellow. Besides 
 
DREAMS AND PORTENTS 309 
 
 — ^but no matter. Shaw knew him out in China. 
 At least he wouldn't know him, but when the usual 
 result of all that kind of thing happened he fought 
 tooth and nail to prove that Blaquey was tem- 
 porarily insane, and got him reinstated on the 
 lowest rate of half-pay. Soon after that he was 
 paralysed, though he was well under forty, and 
 Shaw used up half a ream of foolscap trying to 
 bully the Admiralty into increasing his pension; 
 but they adopted a serve-him-right attitude, and 
 broadly hinted that if he couldn't live on five 
 shillings a day he had better resign it and go to the 
 workhouse. Then Shaw got Franks to write to old 
 Hawtrey, and he looked up three or four fellows he 
 had known when they were poor young nobodies, 
 and he sunk a small sum that Blaquey hadn't 
 had time to squander, and altogether made up a 
 couple of hundred a year, and he used to go and 
 see him every few months. 
 
 " The dog's a most awful nuisance. It was 
 trained to fetch and carry for Blaquey, and wants 
 to do exactly the same for Shaw, and if ever he 
 tries to snub it the poor creature brings more 
 and more things, expecting to please him. It lies 
 in wait for the paper boy every morning, and 
 if the postman has no letter he has to deliver a 
 bogus one or run for his life. Shaw puts on 
 gloves before he opens them." 
 
 " Had you to talk dog all the time ? " 
 
 '^ No ; it ate a heavy dinner and fell asleep — 
 
310 SHIPMATES 
 
 using Shaw's feet as a pillow — and then we talked 
 ghosts and dreams." 
 
 " But doesn't theosophy generally begin with 
 that kind of thing ? " 
 
 '" Course we oughtn't to have done it. Between 
 the pair of us, we did Shaw a lot of harm. I wish 
 you had been there, even if you had spent the time 
 sparring with Heseltine. It was just his cussed- 
 ness. He ran aground on the beastly things. I 
 put a line aboard and tried to haul him off, but 
 there he stuck. I invented awfully nice dreams on 
 the same lines as theirs, but nothing would jerk 
 them off the track. They listened quite gravely, 
 and merely thought that trivial manifestations 
 were all that could be expected in a case 
 like mine. I wish Shaw had taken to the Lost 
 Ten Tribes. Byam and Bewley both hammered 
 away at it for years, and it didn't do either of 
 'em a scrap of harm." 
 
 " But a practical man like Dick Shaw " 
 
 '' The very person to take it badly if he gets 
 bitten with that kind of thing. I only know one 
 worse subject — Blissett. He could be frightened 
 into his grave in a month. However, I can tell you 
 one decidedly hopeful thing : the house is built 
 on clay, and it's most perceptibly off the perpen- 
 dicular already. If he has to start underpinning 
 I shall have no fears for his sanity. An expen- 
 sive counter-irritant, but effectual. Won't Elliott 
 crow ! " 
 
DREAMS AND PORTENTS 311 
 
 " I hope he will. You've frightened me for 
 more than five minutes." 
 
 '' Oh, what I say when I'm tired and hungry 
 isn't necessarily true. When's dinner ? Pity I'm 
 not a prophet — I could exaggerate as much as I 
 liked. Just think of Isaiah and his ' Stars falling 
 like leaves.' And how can one speak of fears and 
 shadows and mind-shivers without making too 
 much of them ? You can't stand my French, but 
 just put your hand on your nerves for a moment 
 and let me tell you this : ' La parole est un lami- 
 noir qui allonge toujours les sentiments.' And 
 yet you will make me talk." 
 
 "Things you prophesy don't often happen," 
 said Mrs. Langley, still seeking reassurance. 
 
 '' I don't want 'em to ! I may be a very minor 
 prophet, but I'm not a Jonah. And to see how 
 that fiendish retriever has Shaw in tow is more 
 than enough to convince me I'm a fallible man." 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. 
 Edinburgh & J^ondou 
 
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